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The Bigger Tank · The Holy Pause

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: A reading from Scripture, Romans 6, verses 15.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Should we sin because we aren't under law but under grace?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves,
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: that you are slaves to the one whom you obey?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's true whether you serve as slaves of sin,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: which leads to death,
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: or as slaves of the kind of obedience that leads to righteousness.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: But thank God that although you used to be slaves to sin,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: you give wholehearted obedience to the teaching that was handed down to you,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: which provides a pattern.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now that you have been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm speaking with ordinary metaphors because of your limitations.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Once you offered the parts of your body to be used as slaves to impurity and
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: to lawless behavior that leads to still more lawless behavior,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now you should present the parts of your body as slaves to righteousness,
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: which makes your lives holy.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: When you were slaves of sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: What consequences did you get from doing things that you are now ashamed of?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: The outcomes of those things is death.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: But now that you have been set free from sin and become slaves to God,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: you have the consequence of a holy life.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the outcome is eternal life.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: The wages that sin pays are death, but God's gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: When my mother was in high school,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: she did a project, a science fair project, and it had to do with some goldfish.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: In the science fair project,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: she started these goldfish in a small bowl on her dresser,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: and then eventually she got a slightly bigger bowl And then eventually she got
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: a full-sized tank.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: But when she put the fish in the tank,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: they would only swim around in a very small section about the size of the bowl
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: that they'd started in.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually she put in a divider and she put some other fish in on the other side
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: to see if she could tempt the original fish through the door and into the other side
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: of the tank,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: into the bigger, wider,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: broader area of the tank Those little fish who had grown up in
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: that little bowl never left the small area of the tank,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: even when the divider was taken out and they had all the freedom of the tank
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: that they wanted.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what Paul is talking about here in this passage,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: that even though we are given the opportunity to enjoy freedom in God,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: we still choose to stay limited by the bounds of sin.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: That we get so used to the patterns of the old life,
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: that we get so used to the way things are,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: the way things we have always done things.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: We get so used to swimming in the little bowl that we find it so difficult to see
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: the possibilities God has in front of us.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It makes it so hard for us to actually live into the freedom of God.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's a second part to that story, and that's that the fish needed a tank.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: You see,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: we think freedom means not being bound to any rules at all,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: that we are free to make whatever choices we want.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: We think sometimes that freedom is the same as hedonism,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: that we can do anything and everything and there will be no consequences
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: to our hearts and to our lives.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul here reminds us that we need structure.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: We need boundaries that we actually do better when we have a tank to confine ourselves in.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom as the idea of being to do whatever we want actually leads us back into
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: the smaller and smaller tank.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: That when we want to live a life of expanded goodness and glory, we have to do that inside.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Of the boundaries that God's grace provides for us.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: True freedom actually means obedience,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: not to ourselves,
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: not to our heart,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: not to our sinful desires,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: but to the freedom found in obedience to God and God's lordship of our hearts.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: It feels contradictory.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: But when we remember that what God is doing is leading us out from the confines of
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: the small area in which we hold ourselves,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: that small area that sin allows for us to see into the freedom of the larger area
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: of God's grace, it can be a little scary.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But that is where joy and abundance is to be found.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I invite you to try it on today.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: How are you allowing sin to confine you into a narrow view of what is possible?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: How are you allowing your obedience to sin to keep you inside of a small and smaller fish tank?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: What's one way you can allow yourself to experience the freedom God offers?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: How can you allow your obedience to be shifted for today?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Towards God's grace and possibility.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Join me in prayer.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: God, sin causes us to see the world through a narrow and small lens.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us to believe that the only thing that's possible is what we can see
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: and feel in touch with our own hands.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: We ask you to give us the grace of seeing the possibilities which you offer to us.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And to step through the door into the larger and wider view of this life
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: that we have so that we can live into your possibilities and your future for us.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 6:39
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