Phil: Well, praise the Lord! You think the Lord’s trying to encourage us in our songs this morning? Anybody need encouragement? Absolutely, we are in a war and the devil is not happy. And I just confess, I have struggled with what I’ve had on my heart this morning and last week, which was with a bit of an interruption. But anyway, I believe the reason that for the struggle is the devil doesn’t like it.
If There’s one thing that he hates, it’s the truth of the gospel and what took place on the cross, what took place in the empty tomb. And he knows, he is terrified that people will understand the gospel.
And, as those of you who have been here recently know, we’ve been kind of going through Romans, the first part of Romans where Paul is unlocking the gospel that God had revealed to him, and that he had been commissioned to preach among the Gentiles. And I believe in all my heart, that’s a message that the devil has done everything in His power to compromise.
There are so many ways that people can somehow become Christians without really getting the depth of what the gospel is about. And so just very briefly in the way of introduction, Paul unlocks the fact that the whole human race is under the wrath of God and they’re under the wrath of God because that what they do know, they rebel against, they refuse to listen to it. They refuse to recognize God’s mercy and his patience that would lead them to repent. Instead, they choose to cling to their sin. Therefore, judgment hangs over this world.
And, of course, he had to deal with the fact that the Jews thought they were righteous because they had Moses’ law and they kept it up to a point in a fashion. And Paul has to come down to the point where he realizes, and he expresses that it doesn’t make any difference whether you know the law or you don’t. You’re still a sinner.
And he quotes a whole lot of scripture about that, where you have to come to a realization that sin reigns, that sin is a terrible power and that the people of the world live under a power called sin. And it’s not just a bunch of mistakes. It is a tremendous power that grips this planet that we need to understand if we’re gonna understand salvation, okay? And so that was what he was unlocking.
And he deals with the fact briefly that the law was given not to help the situation, but to reveal it. The law can’t help us. I mean, how many of you use a mirror to comb your hair, to wash your face? We understand the mirror is meant to be a reflection. We can go along with a lot of ideas about what we actually look like. Our hair could be a mess, our face could be all streaked with dirt. But a mirror shows us the truth about ourselves. And the first thing God has to do is to show us the truth about ourselves. And that was the purpose of the law in the first place. It was never given as a path so we could help ourselves to become righteous in God’s eyes.
And so he unlocks the simple truth that God has another way, that it’s what Jesus did in our place. He absolutely stepped in and took the guilt that was mine. He got what I deserved. And Paul was, I mean you’ll see as we go along, how real this was to Paul. This was not just some doctrine. He just didn’t look up a bunch of scriptures and say, Oh yeah, we’re all sinners. It had to become very personal, didn’t it?
But it was and so he unlocks the fact that the truth is revealed even in the Old Testament, that people are absolutely made righteous in God’s eyes, not by anything they do or any virtue that they present to God, but simply because God has made a provision and the person believes it and believes it in the face of everything that would rise up against it.
And I sense from the way the service has gone, that the devil has risen up quite a bit, hasn’t he? To tell you it can’t be so, it’s not for you. It’s 1,001 lies like Brother Ron was talking about. Well, he has done the same with me, but I thank God that he’s defeated.
And even as Abraham faced the facts that seemed to militate against the promise of God, seemed to make it impossible, he still believed God anyway. And folks, that’s what God is calling upon his people today to do.
I’ll guarantee for everyone who really knows the Lord and has been seeking him and seeking to walk with him, you have encountered things this week that seem impossible and seem to just fight it and say, This cannot be. Well, that’s the devil’s job. God is bringing forth a people who will stand in the face of that. But we are not gonna stand because of any virtue or any ability in us. We’re gonna stand because we steadfastly believe in what God did for us on the cross through Jesus Christ, his Son, thank God. And so Abraham was declared a righteous man.
And then you begin to get into chapter five where he unlocks, he gives a hint that, okay, now we made the point, I’ll back up. We made the point that there are two problems that we have. One is what we have done, that’s the guilt. But the other is that our utter inability to live up to the glory of God, God created us to be glorious beings in fellowship with him ruling over a perfect creation, that got thoroughly messed up in the garden when Adam made the wrong choice. And he has passed that choice and the conflict, the results of that onto every single one of us. And so God is dealing, God dealt with the guilt of our sins by punishing Christ in our place, okay?
But now he begins to unlock the fact that brings us into a relationship with God, where instead of living under His wrath, we live under His grace. And what is grace? It’s God’s power at work saving sinners. It’s an active thing. It’s God literally intervening in the life of a helpless sinner to give me power I just don’t have. Anybody need that? Yeah. That’s the only way we stand, it’s by grace, okay? And our confidence in that needs to be in that and not in the things that we see and feel.
And, of course, he talks about the fact that we are sinners because we were born into a family, but we’re righteous because we’re born into a different family. And we receive not just a certificate of membership in the family, but we receive the life that was in Jesus. It’s not just about the cross, it’s about the empty tomb and the life that brought him forth. That’s the life that he shares with everyone who comes to him, by the way of the cross.
Praise God, praise God, I have no way to get to that. That’s something that I was gonna say at some point this morning. And I think this would be as good a place as any. Our world today is full of deception of every kind. One of those deceptions is, or one kind of deception is, the devil will invent every way that he can think of to present a version of so-called Christianity and Christian faith that bypasses the cross.
Oh we got a Jesus who loves us so much, all we had to do is believe in him, or we just believe in him in this mental sense and accept, Okay, I accept him, quote unquote. And he died for my sin, so I get to go to heaven. It misses the cross, it misses the reason why he died. It misses the depth of our need. Oh, may God help us to face the facts of why he had to die.
Praise God and of course, remember chapter six gets into the wonderful other fact that we need to realize. When we are guilty, when we do something, when we fall short, what do we do? Where do we go for forgiveness? And on what ground do we go to Him? By the blood of Christ, well, where did that happen? That was on the cross, wasn’t it? We look to the cross and say, just, Yes Lord, I need help. I need forgiveness, I don’t deserve it. There’s no way I could make up for this.
The devil will trick people into thinking, I gotta make up for being a sinner. No you don’t, Jesus already paid the price. That’s what we’ve been singing this morning, praise God! What he did was a full and complete sacrifice for my sins. I look there with faith that God has already punished that sin. And if I’m willing to agree with him about it and not soft pedal it and say, Oh I’m sorry I made a boo boo, but realize where that came from and how much I need Him, there’s a forgiveness we can be as clean as if it had never ever happened. Praise God, what a salvation, what an amazing thing.
But now in chapter six, he comes to a different point where it’s not just about after the fact, okay, I’ve messed up, where do I go? He says we need to go to the cross before we do that, why? Because it wasn’t just that he died in my place, it’s that I died in him. I died, I was there. That’s a hard thing for us to wrap our minds around, but God did something. In fact, he took the whole human race into that grave with him, judged for the sin that rules this planet.
So, I died with him, what does that mean? That means I’ve been set free from my old master. Now, I may not understand that. I may have to learn how to not agree with that old master because he’ll come along and give me all kinds of orders. But I have the power and the right, the right to say, no, and to learn how to recognize that I’ve not only died there, but I was raised to a new life. I have a new master.
And so chapter six is not just about saying, no, to what’s wrong, it’s saying, yes, to what’s right and saying, I have the power to actually live a life that is pleasing to God, not because of any power I possess, but because of what he did for me. I was there and so I get to live out something that is history.
[Audience] Yes.
It’s wonderful that I can think about, Oh, I’m gonna get in all kinds of situations and his grace will be there to help me. Well, the problem is we get into situations. We don’t feel His grace, we don’t feel like it. It doesn’t look like it. The devil’s telling us 1,001 contrary things. But God wants us to unpack these different aspects of the gospel, to see the cross in the light that God revealed it to his servant, Paul.
There’s a reason God is unpacking this in this kind of detail. He wants us to understand what He did for us so that we can benefit, we can walk in that truth. Praise God, praise God! Anybody need to learn more about this? I mean, I know that in a way, a lot of this is repetitious, but I need this. I don’t just need it in general. I need it this morning because I feel my need. I feel my weakness, I feel the enemy just fighting this. He has done everything in his power to discourage me from even talking about some of these things. But he is a liar, praise God!
All right, and then we come to chapter seven and it’s awfully easy when you read this to say, What in the world is that? That’s a discouraging chapter. Why do I have to wade through all that stuff? That’s just a real downer. I mean, here I am trying to get encouraged and all that does is tear me down and make me feel bad.
But do you believe there’s a reason why the Lord put this in here? Do you think it has a place? Do you think there’s a need for it? Well, one thing that he does make a point in the first part of this chapter and it looks to the cross about something else because when we are just simply part of the world and does not God’s law reign over us? Are we not responsible to what God says is right and wrong? Yeah, we’re under that law. In fact, that’s what the cross is about. It’s the condemnation that results from our not obeying that law. That’s why we’re put to death.
But what Paul makes the point is this, we didn’t just die to sin, we died to the law itself. Do you know the law has been taken off the table? That sounds an awful lot like you could see the devil taking that in the wrong direction? But that’s not the point, God has taken us out from under an old master, one that we could never live up to but it’s God.
And he uses a simple illustration, in God’s design now, marriage is ‘til death do us part. And so he talks about the situation where a woman is bound by that law to her husband as long as he lives, but if he dies, then she’s free to marry somebody else. Well, we have died to the law, why? So that we could just be free and do as we please? No, so that we could be married to another. God wants us to be married in this sense spiritually to His Son, so that that life that’s in him gets reproduced in us. And we’ve been set free from the power of the law to do that, praise God!
So now he gets into some things, some of it, I’m not gonna try to unpack every bit of it, even if I thought I could.
(audience laughs)
So anyway, verse, what is it? Four of chapter seven. So my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ. Why? That you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead. Now why is that, what’s the purpose of that? Why is that significant? In order that we might bear fruit for God.
Anybody here has power to bear fruit for God apart from this? See that’s the whole point of the gospel. The gospel has got to paint a true, honest picture of our need before it’s ever really worth anything, before it’s ever really the gospel, okay? And I see in this passage, God took Paul through some deep waters to get him to that point.
But anyway, it says, For when we were in the realm of the flesh, that was the dominating principle in our lives, in other words, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us. Now what’s he talking about there? You remember how he talked about earlier that the law actually comes along and makes it worse? Why? Because what does human nature do when law is imposed on it, it says, Uh uh. There’s automatically this resistance, this rebellion.
And so one of the things that God did was to impose the law so that our problem would become more obvious. It’s more than just a mirror that I can look in. It actually provokes the very thing that’s wrong with me, okay? That’s what he’s saying there.
They were at work in us so that the result of that was we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we were prisoners, weren’t we? By dying to what once bound us, we have become released. We have been released from the law, why? So that we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. So there are two ways to serve God that Paul’s gonna deal with here. Now, this is a, well, let me go ahead.
For what shall we say then? What’s the conclusion of this? Does that make the law sinful? If sin is made worse, it rises up because the law is imposed. Does that make the law sinful? No, that’s not the point at all. Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law, for I would not have known what coveting was, really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet’?
What’s coveting by the way? You want something that belongs to somebody else, you’re jealous, there’s a selfish possession, spirit of possession there, okay? So he says, I wouldn’t have even known that was wrong until God had told me it was.
All right, But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment…. There’s a principle in us that actually takes advantage of God’s law when it’s imposed, it rises up and takes a deeper hold and deeper control. That’s the problem, folks, and you know what? Well, I’ll get to it in a minute, but praise God!
All right, Sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment produced in me every kind of coveting, for apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I’m not gonna try to unpack that. People have tried to explain it. The Bible doesn’t explain it beyond that. But one thing it does mean is there’s a sense of responsibility that comes with light and with truth, with the knowledge of what’s right and wrong. Once we know that we’re responsible, okay? I’ll leave the rest in God’s hands as to how that’s applied, okay?
I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me. And it was though, Oh God, I got this wonderful way I can be righteous. And sin just took over and said, Uh uh, no way, all right?
Deceived me and through the commandment put me to death. So then the law is holy and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Did that which is good then become death to me? By no means, nevertheless, now, here’s a key, In order that sin might be recognized as sin. It used what is good to bring about my death so that through the commandment, sin might become utterly sinful.
Do you see where God’s going with this? He talks about in chapter two about the goodness and the patience of God that would lead men to repentance. But how can we be led to true repentance if we don’t know what we need to repent it of?
[Audience] That’s right.
God has got to show us the absolute unvarnished truth about ourselves, okay? So Paul goes on, all right, We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual sold as a slave to sin. Now this is the passage that’s confusing because you read it and you say, My God, is this what Paul’s life was like? That doesn’t make any sense. Here’s Paul the Apostle, and he’s painting a gloomy picture of struggle and strife and total failure.
You know I believe with all my heart that God has to take us through deep personal experiences many times to reveal truth to us. We can hear things in scripture, but unless we go through them, it doesn’t really become personal. You could read for example, all of the scriptures that Paul quotes from the Old Testament. There’s none righteous, no not one, and on and on and on. All those scriptures that are absolutely true. But oh my God, don’t we need to be able to see the true condition of our own heart?
We all come to the gospel with different preconditions and preconceptions is the word I want. And some of them are religious, some of them are just natural, the way the world thinks, the way we see ourselves, the way we’ve been taught to see ourselves. And that gets in the way of truth.
Think about Paul’s background, what was Paul’s background? Yeah, he was a Pharisee, he was known as Saul in those days. Now, what was the deal with the Pharisees? They were a religious sect among the Jews that had built a religion out of the law of Moses. Now they made some very convenient interpretations of that, but nonetheless, they had compiled for themselves a religion of do’s and don’ts of religious practices. And in their minds, As long as I do that, God will accept me and count me as one of the righteous.
You remember what Jesus said on several occasions, He talked from the first place, He talked about there their being like cups. They’re beautiful and washed on the outside, but you don’t dare look inside ‘cause it is full of all kinds of corruption. So that’s what your religion is like.
But he also talked about the day when a Pharisee and a tax collector, tax collectors were despised as crooked collaborators with Rome, sinners, looked down upon by the religious. And so this Pharisee gets in there and prays, I thank you Lord that I’m not like other men. I do this, I do that, I do the other. I’m especially glad I’m not like him.
Oh my God, but do you see something in that? Do you see someone who has any idea what’s in here? What does the Lord say in the Old Testament, Man looks, where? On the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. And so here was a man who had no clue what the true condition of his heart was and he was just presenting himself as you know, Here I am, I’ve done all this. Therefore, you regard me as righteous, you accept me. I’m so proud, and used it to look down.
Folks, we have no way, if we know the true condition of our heart apart from Christ, there is not a person on this planet we have the right to look down upon, not one.
