It Doesn't Matter What You Do

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. All right, let's pray. Lord, as we are in this season of prayer here at Thrive, we just ask for your spirit to be fully present here this morning, as we know you want to be, to soften our hearts to your word and your will, to your ways in our lives, that you would speak to us personally, Lord, today. We thank you for so many in our community, so many other churches that are sharing your word of truth, your gospel, and we pray, Lord, it would move powerfully among all who are hearing today, and that you would begin a movement here in Estero, a movement here in Southwest Florida, where your spirit has his way with each of us, and you, Lord, have your kingdom extend in our hearts and lives through all the relationships in our lives. So bless the word today and in our lives, in Jesus' name, amen. You can follow along in this sermon with the notes on the You version of the Bible that are available under events, and you can look up on the screen how to do that. We're going to be starting out in Romans chapter 6 today, a huge section of scripture, but I think it's a very important one. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. That word is meganito, like no way, Hosea. Okay, just to let you know. I know, pretty lame. Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him in 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 newness of life. For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 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. Now, if we've died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. Wow, week three already. So the first week, a couple weeks ago, we went through that myth, that cultural myth, as we are doing each time, where people really think God said, but he never really said. All God wants you to do is be happy, and we said he never said that. He has so much more than happiness for you. Last week, we went through one that people think is actually in the Bible, okay, in some form that God won't give you more than you can handle. He never said that. The truth is, God won't give you more than God can handle. We rely on him always. Next week is actually maybe the most important week of all, and it's one where we're going to kind of look at this myth that people say, you know, it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere about it. And you might know some people next week that are really kind of questioning, they're doubting, they're not quite sure what to make of what to believe in or how to believe in, and it would be a fantastic week for you to invite them, because I think it's going to be a great, I know I'm kind of, you know, hyping my own message. I know that's kind of bad, but, you know, but I think it would be a great week to deal with that, and also an encouragement for you too, because I think there's a lot of confusion out there of what we can believe, how we can believe, how do we know, what do we, all that stuff, and we're going to deal with that next week. But today, as you saw that video before, kind of the humor of it all, a lot of people will use kind of, I think, more of an excuse, well, it doesn't matter what you do as long as you don't hurt anybody. Really? That's it? God only wants you to be benign, you know what I mean? Don't hurt anybody and that's fine, that's all it takes, you know, just be neutral, be kind of like, hmm, it reminds me of what's been called the silver rule. Have you ever heard that one before? This is the way Confucius said it, many others have said it, and the silver rule is what you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others. And so that's, you know, that's a good way to live. Don't do anything to others you wouldn't want done to you. Great, don't harm anybody. The Hippocratic Oath says much the same thing. I don't know if ...