Before the service Chris had a picture of free range chickens.
He grew up and his parents had free range chickens in the
garden and they were extremely happy and healthy.
And also there's a lot of mess and that's our aim at hope.
It's we don't want to have battery farmed people.
It's a very, very serious point I'm making that are weak and
anaemic and will kind of produce the goods, but a kind of real
deficit. So we pay a price in that.
It's not, we're not going to be a battery farm church.
We're just not going to be that. And I think when we've paid that
price, we can know that we will be healthy and well because
we'll be deeply relationally connected with God and each
other and everyone. So I just want to kind of like
show this is what lead leadership is making these
choices that are costly because we are convinced that a more
relational way to live is the way God's designed us to live.
And that's very hard to put into a religious context, but we're
committed to that. So I wanted to share that word
free range chickens. We're going to produce healthy
eggs and mess. And today we've got Bill
speaking 3rd on the series of crucifixion.
And we are wrestling with a big conversation that's going on.
And we want hope to be really on the front foot of this
conversation about really why did Jesus die?
That's a big conversation now when you came here, like maybe
screaming with your kids in the car or you're like had a big
night and you're just kind of wanting to have a decent Sunday
or you've got a really stressful job.
You might be thinking, why the heck do we keep thinking about
why Jesus died? Just tell me how to live and
have a happy life and, you know, give me a pat on the back and
send me off. And in some ways, we can never
go wrong through this whole process with just loving God and
loving our neighbour. If you want to know how to live
a happy life, love God and love our neighbour and we will be
fine on that for the rest of our lives.
We could never think or meditate on anything beyond that.
And at the same time, what we're digging into is the nature of
this God we're loving and there and the nature of the neighbour
we're loving. So it's helping us to understand
who God is, who humans are and how we're designed to be.
So we're wrestling with some complex and controversial
issues. And what Chris and I are going
to do is we're kind of sitting with these things and then
probably around the summer, maybe come through to a place of
Kate. How then do we live, which is
the main point of this? And Bill will be, he's doing one
more set of three on faith in the summer term and then three
in September of therefore how do we live?
So it kind of fits in with that sense of, OK, in conclusion,
having wrestled through what we think the nature of God is and
how who Jesus is and, and what his death meant, we then can be
people who are equipped to live well.
So bear with us in this process. The image I keep getting is the
yeast in the dough if anyone's actually made bread from
scratch, rather than the fake version, which is you just put
stuff in a KitchenAid and let it sit there for about 5 hours.
What I mean is people who actually need, you know, like
really need with their arms and hands every single day yeast
into a dough. Jesus said that's all the
Kingdom of God is. Like there's a, there's a kind
of a wrestling and a, a process and a fermentation that happens.
That isn't that that makes us fitter and stronger and produces
good bread, but it, it's not, it's not a supermarket loaf.
So that's what we're doing and we won't need to do it for a
very long time. So you can breathe on that.
But today we are going to look at the third in Bill's
miniseries. He's just been doing on the
crucifixion, digging into Romans.
And what we all need is revelation.
We need literally God to reveal reality to us.
This isn't something we can get through intellect.
The flesh counts for nothing. The flesh resists the reality of
God. The flesh can't understand the
things of God. So we need to humble ourselves.
It's an anti elitist way of life.
We literally need to humble ourselves.
Every single person, old or young, whatever our background
is, we need to humble ourselves and ask God for revelation.
So we're going to do that now as Bill speaks, God, thank you that
you love to reveal yourself to us.
And I've just been reading in Luke, when you say the son, the
father can only reveal the son and the son can only reveal the
father. And, and we, we need you to
reveal yourself to us. We need you to do that.
We need you literally to unveil our hearts and minds so we see
more clearly. The eyes of our hearts are
enlightened that we may know you better and know being
experienced you. And so we welcome you today.
We welcome you to come through this morning through Bill's
teaching, through what we perceive in Romans, through our
conversations. We welcome you.
We want to know you more and experience you more so that we
can fulfil that command for life, to love God and love our
neighbour as ourselves. Amen.
Thank you Alice. OK, you ready for more Romans?
Here we go. This is Romans 6 started last
week. We were looking at Romans 5.
This is Romans 6 from verse one. First 11 verses.
What shall we say then? Should we go on sinning so that
grace may increase? By no means.
We are those who've died to sin. How can we live in it any
longer? Or don't you know that all of us
who are baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his
death? We were therefore buried with
Him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may
live a new life. For if we've been united with
Him in a death like His, we will certainly also be united with
Him in a resurrection like His. For we know that our old self
was crucified with Him, so that the body ruled by sin might be
done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin,
because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live
with Him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead,
he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over
him. The death he died, he died to
sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but
alive to God in Christ Jesus. You may notice a #10 in there.
I, I, I missed one. I normally remove the the verse
numbers when I prepare a slide and one slipped through the net.
So I apologise for that. 10 Yeah, getting You're right,
Andrew, I can only apologise. I'm the only one to blame.
Thank you for that feedback. So I got a new phone, new mobile
about four weeks ago. You know how some people when it
comes to technology, they're, I think they're called early
adopters. They like to have the latest
thing. Now.
I don't know what the name is for the other end of the scale,
but I'm the other end. Luddite is probably sorry,
whatever techno fear is what I have.
So I had an 8 year old phone. It was called a who are we?
Which was great. You know, every time I got a
text it was like it asked me this philosophical question and
it was a good question. You know, who are we really?
Anyway, after eight years, my who are we conked out.
So I had to get a new phone and it's been 8 years since I've got
a new phone. And the process of I spent a
whole evening reloading all my apps as I believe they're
called. And every single app they were
like these terms that, you know, you have to read through the
terms and conditions. And so I got the first one and I
got down to clause 17 and I thought, this is ridiculous.
Do people actually read this stuff?
Well, that's what I conclude. I mean, it's you all know this
because you get the latest phone every six months.
This is news to me. And I I every single app, you
know, after after half an hour, I was a pro.
I was going, yeah, accept, accept.
Yeah, whatever. Yeah, yeah, fine.
Now this passage I would suggest is like the small print for
baptism, OK, because I'm, I, I didn't read the small print for
all my phone, all, all my apps on my phone.
I just clicked through and I said yeah, yeah, I'll sign up
for that. I didn't read, I didn't check
the detail. I didn't really know what I was
signing up for. Here's my question.
When you were baptised, if you've been baptised, did you
read the small print? Did you realise what you were
signing up for? Did you realise that you were
announcing your own death? I didn't.
I mean I, I've had three goes at being baptised to be honest.
Now did I understand what I was doing in any of those 3
attempts? Probably not really.
I mean, in my own defence, the first one was when I was six
months old, so I didn't didn't really know what was going on.
Apparently our dog bit the vicar, that's according to my
mother. But whether the dog bit the
vicar or not, I've no idea. I don't remember anything about
it. I was six months old.
But the second attempt or kind of attempt was I was 16.
I'd become a Christian at school and the thing you did at my
school, if you were a Christian, was you got confirmed.
So I did the confirmation thing because it's what you did.
Did I know what I was doing? It was just what we did.
And then when when I was a student, I was a student in
Manchester at Manchester, Polly and I went to this wild and
crazy church that told me that getting confirmed being
sprinkled as a baby and then confirmed that didn't count.
What you wanted was proper baptism, which meant being an
adult and being in a swimming pool in Manchester with two
blokes pushing you under the water and, you know, lots of
people watching. Now that's proper baptism with a
capital B. Did I understand that time?
I mean, I should have got the message, you know, there was
these two people trying to drown me.
You know, I'd if, if I'd been paying attention, I'd have
realised that it was somehow to do with death, but I hadn't read
the small print. I love verse 3 in this.
Don't you know, I hear Paul saying to me, don't you realise,
don't you realise Bill, what this is all about?
Aren't you paying attention? Don't you know that you're
telling people that you're choosing to die?
Baptizo is is a Greek word and it just means immerse.
It just means immerse and Paul is saying if you're immersed in
Christ, if you're in Christ, then you're immersed into his
death. That's what you're doing.
That's what we're announcing when we get baptised.
That's the contract we're signing up for.
Don't you know? Did you not read the small
print? One thing I've noticed in this
whole series which has been going on for months and months
is when I was told the gospel, the gospel I heard 40 years ago,
40-5 years ago, the person kind of justify or or backed it up by
quoting verses from Romans. And they quoted Romans 323 and
they quoted Romans 623 and Romans 5 verse 8.
And they said, look, this proves that the message is Jesus has
died for your sins. Therefore if you accept him into
your life, you will go to heaven when you die.
And here's the proof. These verses from Romans, and
what I've been trying to do is read Romans as though it is a
letter, as though it is a coherent argument, as though all
the bits join up into a single message.
And what I discover is I find myself thinking again and again,
where's Paul getting this stuff from?
I mean, hasn't he heard the gospel?
Doesn't he know that? Romans 323 says, and somehow,
Well, The thing is if you take a single verse out of context and
join it with another verse taken out of context and then a third,
you can pretty much get the Bible to say whatever you want.
Now, I'm not saying that that gospel is rubbish.
I think it contains lots of truth, but it's a very strange
experience to be reading through Romans and thinking, wow, this
is new, this is original. I mean, last week it was about
Adam and Genesis one to three and the Garden of Eden.
This week it's about baptism. You know, when have you been in
a gospel presentation, a gospel meeting, and it's been about the
Garden of Eden. But I would suggest that this is
that, that Paul's message is completely coherent, it's
logical, it fits together, it's a single argument.
It makes sense. One of my favourite Tom Wright
quotes is versus mean what they mean within paragraphs.
Paragraphs mean what they mean within chapters.
Chapters mean what they mean within letters.
If you put it back into context, you get the full picture.
So for example, last week. Do you remember last week?
If you were here, we looked at how in Romans 5, Paul compares
the story of Adam in the garden and the story of Jesus in the
garden. The story of Jesus life, his
death and his resurrection and the conclusion, the conclusion
at the end of last week was there are now two ways to be
human. Because of the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus, there is now a choice.
We can either be in Adam, we can be an Adam type of human being,
or we can be a Christ type of human being.
And that's the choice. That's the choice that the news
of the gospel, the news of Jesus, life, death and
resurrection, that's the choice it presents to us.
Now, what's the logical next question?
What's the next step? Well, Paul, tell me more about
this in Christ. What does it mean?
What does it look like? How do I do it?
What does it mean to live in Christ?
And this week that's what Paul tells us.
Romans 6 is all begins this great 3 chapters which is all
about what being in Christ looks like, how to live as a Christ
type human being and how to do it, how you can actually do it.
In practise. This is the human response to
the gospel message, which is the message of Jesus life, death and
resurrection. And what does he say?
What's the answer? The answer is that we are in
Christ when we imitate Christ, that the pattern of Jesus life,
in particular his the pattern of dying and rising, becomes the
pattern in our life. Our life retells the story of
dying and rising, of sacrifice and new life that becomes the
pattern of our lives so that the news of what Jesus did is not
just something that happened a long time ago that we somehow
get the benefit from now. Jesus is our model and we are in
Christ. We are Christian.
In other words, we're like Christ when we live out his
death and resurrection in our lives.
That's what it means to be a Christian.
Scholars have a word for this this idea because it's a key
theme in Paul. In lots of his letters, he talks
about this idea of how we respond to the message of Jesus
and and scholars call it cruciformity.
Cruciformity, the idea that we live a cross shaped a cruciform
life. We live a life which it looks
like dying and rising, imitating him.
It's an essential part of Paul's gospel message.
Didn't you know? Have you not read the small
print? Were you not aware?
I mean, we had communion early today, earlier on, and we went
round the room saying what it means.
We're eating Jesus, death, his body and his blood.
We're saying we want that in US. Baptism is saying we want to be
in it. Communion is saying we want it
in US. Us in him and him in US.
Well, thank you very much, Andrew.
Did you hear that? He said it's good.
It's nice to have feedback as you're going on.
Yeah, I know, Fickle. That's me.
But what are you saying, Bill? Are you saying we literally have
to die? You know, are you asking us to
be crucified? Well, in Bristol in 2026, it's
unlikely. It's unlikely.
But that's not really the I don't think that's really what
Paul is saying. What Paul is saying is that if
we acknowledge God, then every day.
As we sit before him, he will ask us stuff, He'll ask us to do
stuff, and that gives us a choice.
And when? When we're before him and we say
you are my God, you are my Lord, and he asks us something, then
we find ourselves in exactly the same position as Adam in the
garden. We find ourselves in exactly the
same position as Jesus in the garden.
We're faced with a choice. Are we going to say yes or are
we going to say no? Do we acknowledge that he is
God? Do we accept him as our personal
God? Do we think he knows what he's
doing? Do we think he's good and wise?
Do we trust Him that that's the position we're in if we say
you're my Lord? And The thing is, the point is,
if we say yes, if we're faithful servants, if we want to obey his
command to love Him and love our neighbour, to serve Him and
serve our neighbour, there will be a cost.
There will be a cost. It'll often involve sacrifice.
It'll sometimes involve suffering.
And the question is, are we willing to lay down our lives in
that sense in order to say yes to him?
Are we willing to do that? Because that's the contract.
If you read the small print Haven't You heard?
We had a perfect example, really perfect example, a couple of
months ago. Someone here was talking about
their process of adopting two children and they described
exactly that process, of having a growing sense that this was
something God was asking them to do.
And then realising that it would be a huge ask, that it would
look like laying down their lives.
There would be a great cost, a great sacrifice.
It would mean giving up so many things and they chose to do it.
That's cruciformity, that's the cross shaped life.
That's what we say we want to do when we get baptised.
And now I know what you're thinking.
What you're thinking is, Bill, I thought the gospel meant good
news. I thought this was about good
news. And all you're talking about is
cost, sacrifice, suffering, death, laying down your life.
Is that really good news? Because it doesn't sound like
it. Is it really good news?
Yes, absolutely. This is the good news.
Why? Well, verse 4, we were therefore
buried with him through baptism into death in order that what's
the outcome of that choice? In order that just as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may
live a new life. That's why we do it where the
passion of Jesus life was laying down his life in order to
receive new life. And the promise for us is new
life. And that's, that's the promise
which will be fulfilled if we're willing to lay down our lives.
The the example I've mentioned before of the couple who chose
to adopt what I clearly remember is this difficult process.
But then the person speaking said the result has been, she
said, it's life, it's real life, it's rich, satisfying life.
And it's so much more than the humdrum, everyday, slightly
dissatisfying life that the world has to offer.
And that's the whole point. That's a that life, that eternal
quality of life, the life of the age to come.
Zowy life, life in all its fullness is available now if
we're willing to lay down our Adam life.
That's the contract, that's the deal, that's the small print.
When I think of this, I, I always, it reminds me of
something I did in my 20s. I think it's telling that the
example I I just gave of the person who spoke a couple of
months ago, that's real for them right now.
Whereas when I want to look for an example, I have to go back
decades. That probably tells you how good
a Christian I am. But in my 20s, I helped on these
teenage house parties. And what I remember is every
single I I did it year after year and every single year in
the weeks leading up to the house party, I would say to
myself, why did you agree to do this?
Why? What were you thinking?
I mean, I, I was, but I was mid 20s.
I had, I was working for the first time in my life.
So I got four days, sorry, four weeks.
I got 4 weeks holiday a year. And this meant sacrificing a
week's holiday a week out of four just to, you know, be with
these spotty teenagers. And it was a it was
uncomfortable. You know, it wasn't a luxurious
place where it took where it happened.
It was hard work. It was the whole thing leading
up to it was about the cost. And I'd say to myself, why am I
doing this? I didn't feel like doing it.
I didn't want to do it. Why had I said yes?
And then I'd get to the week and it would be a taste of heaven.
It really what every single year I would say to myself, Oh, yeah,
Oh, yeah. That's why.
That's why I said yes. And I'd sign up for the next
year. It was life.
It was life in all its fullness. It was a taste of heaven.
That was my experience. And I think the deal is you need
to make the sacrifice in order to experience the resurrection
life. It's a package.
It goes together. The Christian life is not a menu
in a tapas bar, but most of us treat it like it is.
You know, we read one of our favourite verses will promise
peace or joy or love, and we'll say, Oh yeah, I'd like some of
that along with my king prawns and my patatas.
Yeah, get me some of that piece. I'd love some of that.
And God, why am I not feeling peaceful?
You promised peace and I asked for peace.
I'm still slightly anxious about this situation.
Where's the peace, God? Liar.
I thought you promised. Well, no.
The deal is if you choose to be in Christ, then you experience
resurrection life. And we have a number of
different words to describe different aspects of that
resurrection life like Lovejoy, peace, patience, et cetera, et
cetera, life, love. But you get it all when you sign
on the dotted line. Now that's it's not hard and
fast. My, my real life experience is
that God is generous. He's so he's far more generous
with this stuff than I deserve. And he gives me a taste of all
of this stuff. And I think, oh, more please.
And then he says, OK, you can have more, but you need to take
a little further step in terms of sacrifice.
Are you willing to give that up? Because this is a process, but
this is the choice. I'd say overall it's a package,
not a menu. What I find is the more I'm
willing to empty my own life, the more he fills it with
delicious things. A few last week, I think, or the
week before Christmas was asking me about this series and Chris
said, are you going to talk about the fact that this isn't
about what happens when we die? That the gospel isn't about what
happens when we die, that it's about now, that it's about
putting it into practise now. And I said, yeah, probably
because that's the big question. You know the gospel I heard 45
years ago, the message was if you sign on the dotted line now,
then you'll reap the benefits when you die.
It's about that, your destination when you die.
But then in Christian, when I became a Christian, it was more
about it's not just about when you die, it's now.
It's about living the life now, putting it into practise now.
And I'm pleased to announce that Paul is quite clear that this is
all about what happens when we die.
It's all about what happens when we die.
It's just that he brings forward his death and makes it.
Now his death is something that has already happened.
He counts himself as dead. So this is what we experience
when we die. Have a look at this.
This is verses five to seven. Look at the tenses, the tenses
in this For we have been united with Him in a death like his.
That's already happened. We've already joined Him in that
death, for we know that our else old self was crucified with him.
Done deal. It's in the past.
Anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
The new life starts now. I retired last week.
Absolutely. I decided to bring it forward.
I I mean state retirement age is 67.
I think if you're a bloke you should know and I'm only 61, but
I was fed up with that life. I was sick of living as a slave
to sin. Sorry to Bristol City Council.
I was sick of that meaningless, empty, unsatisfying,
unfulfilling existence. And so I laid down that life
last Monday in order to live a new life.
I put it to death and I discovered a new Lord and
master. And she's giving me a list of
it's all right. She's in youth.
She doesn't know a new Lord and master with a list of tasks,
which I'm glad to obey, but I'd be mad to go back to the office.
Why do I want to live there? I've, I've, I've, I've rejected
that way of life. Verse 11, Paul says, in the same
way, count yourselves dead. Count your consider yourself
dead. We're all going to die anyway.
So why not live now as though we're already dead?
Because if we do, because we will then start to experience
the resurrection life today. And then when we die, it's just
more of the same. It's just an upgrade now.
What does Paul say? To live his Christ and to die
his gain. If we're living the resurrection
life now, then that's true. If we're in Christ today, then
to die is just more of the same. So the gospel is absolutely
about today and our response to the gospel, the way we receive
the gospel and engage with it and put it into practise, is to
imitate Jesus life, to imitate the gospel message of dying and
rising again in our own lives every day.
That is the cruciform life and it is life in all its fullness.
But how do you do it in practise?
It's a neat theory and it sounds attractive, but if I'm honest,
I'm I'm Adam. It's so hard.
It's so hard to do that day after day.
It's such a challenge to lay down your life, to choose death
in order to live. The encouraging thing is that
Paul knows that. He absolutely knows that and
where he goes next in the second-half of chapter 6 and
then seven and eight is all about how we actually do this,
how we actually live that cruciform life in reality, the
process we go through in order to become the kind of person who
can be in Christ rather than in Adam.
And so that's where we're going to go next in June. 3 more weeks
of this in in June, but that's the next big theme.
Oh, thanks, Alice. So we are gonna have a time of
response now. And I think someone once said
they don't deal with theoreticals.
They deal with God doesn't deal with theoreticals.
He deals with the person. And we don't deal with
theoretical things. We have to surrender.
We deal with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that
is in front of us right now. The thing that said we're
attached to, the thing that we think is shiny and will give us
life today, that's the thing. We we are being invited to
crucify, walk past and move into the tree of life, into Jesus.
And I think that's the way we can have this transformation
happen into us, be forged in US. So what I'd love us to do is, is
quieten ourselves and listen, what?
What's the attachment? What's the thing that God is
saying if I'm sorry, the enemy is saying lying to us and if you
could just have that you could just sort short circuit this.
If that shiny happy thing, that thing that will give you life.
You know what the pull is. We know what the pull is.
The Holy Spirit shows us immediately and and what I want
us to do is either today or find people we walk closely with to
say stand with me like Jesus invited his friends to stand
with him and Gethsemane, just stand with me that I can say no
to that and then say yes to to Jesus.
And what I think is a really helpful understanding of the
word faith because we've almost become faith is like a creed.
We believe, but actually the word pistees is far more like
trust. So I don't actually use the
faith, the word faith much anymore.
I always when I hear it, I think trust.
Do I trust Jesus? Do I trust him with this thing
that's that's pulling me to to let it go?
Do I trust him with my finances? Do I trust him with career?
Do I trust him with relationships?
Do I trust him with things that are going on in the world?
Do I trust him? It's the vulnerability, the
unravelling, the weakness of actual relationship rather than
the self governing, autonomous. I'm just going to live grasping
this thing in independence from God.
So that's what we're going to do.
And I know some people when I think of the journey of the
cruciform life, some people are on their their horses riding
into Jerusalem. You think of Palm Sunday.
They're in a position of, you know, it's good, their lives are
good, the career is good. They haven't hit the cruciform
life yet. Then you have other people who
it's, it's very, very disruptive and they're feeling their world
starting to shake. And then you have, you know, we
see we stand with each other and we hit those places of
Gethsemane, which are deep and personal.
And we just have to be aware when we're in them and other
people are in them just to be with them.
And then, you know, there's, there's the process of
crucifixion and then there's a relief of death when the things
just we just died. It's just died and, and it's
just buried. And then these unbelievable
radical experience of God raising dead things back up that
you never, ever thought possible.
You, you could, it would be on your wildest dreams that he
could bring resurrection. And we're all in those journeys
in multiple ways in multiple areas of our life.
And it takes an emotionally healthy community to be aware of
the stage another person's in, to rejoice with those who are
rejoicing because they've come through to resurrection.
And to mourn with those who are mourning because they're in a
process of cruciformity. And as people say, we're in
battles and blessings. At the same time, we can be
experiencing 1 area of unbelievable favour and
breakthrough and ease and resurrection and another area of
extraordinary pain. And so that's the complexity
following Jesus. And what I'd like us to do now
is, is to kind of come to a place in an area where we're
wrestling to say we trust. That's the thing today we try, I
trust you with this. So I'm going to pray now and I
have some time of quiet. If you'd like to find someone to
pray with you, please do that here or could pray with any of
us up here or if you know there's someone you can pray
with. But if Jesus needed people to
stand with him, we do. There is no such thing as
following Jesus on your own. He put us in a body and it's the
body that gets formed. Lord, we welcome you here.
Thank you that you, you walked this path and you said no
student is above their teacher. This is the path you walked and
this is the path we walk and, and we walk it with you.
And so we, we just call into the light.
Now, any area, the area of attachment, it could be
attachment, it could be idle, it could be something we're
grasping for that the that is like the temptation of the tree
of the knowledge and good and evil today that it's the thing
we're facing today. And we ask you to show us what
it is and we ask you to take us through a, a kind of an internal
surrender that we can trust you with this particular area or
person or way of life. We just, we just pray you take
us there really gently. Now, I'd ask people to turn to
the people next to them to start to share anything, to ask for
prayer. And we're up here.
If you want to pray with someone a bit separately, come to us up
here. And we want to stand with each
other in this process, to mourn with those who mourn, rejoice
with those who rejoice, but be people of faith.
We actually trust God with these precious things in our lives.
And I'm going to this is the official end of the service.
So if you do need to collect children, please do that.
But please don't leave without being prayed for if you'd like
to, or offering to pray for someone else and stand with them
through this process of surrender.