Law & Gospel – Part III
Part 3 of the “Law & Gospel” sermon series. This week is an exegetical sermon on Romans 7:7-12 addressing how we can be deceived by the law and buy into a false promise in the way we approach it. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on March 4th, 2007 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
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:: The Resolved Church :: March 4th, 2007
duane matthew smets
(pastor/overseer/evangelist)
Romans 7:7-12
7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
“Law and Gospel – Part III”
I. The Charge: “Law is Bad”
II. The Defense
1. Law Uncovers Sin
2. The Example of Coveting
3. Law as Opportunity
4. Sin’s Life and our Death
a. A Metaphor and Wordplay
b. Paul’s story
c. Spiritual Death
5. False Promises
6. Law as Deception
III. The Jesus
Introduction
Good morning everyone. This is the last week we’ll spend on verses 7-11 of Romans 7 talking about the relationship between law and gospel. Next week a good friend of mine, Philip Struyk and his wife and little baby will be with us, and he is going to preach on the story of the prodigal son, a guy who was lost in the craziness of this world but then found his way. So it will be a good week for you to invite someone to church if you’ve been thinking about doing that. Then the week after that I’ll preach a whole sermon on verse 12 and we’ll look a little more closely at the ten or tender commandments and how they are a reflection of the God we adore and strive worship.
Here’s where we are today…for the last two weeks now we’ve been digging into these verses, trying to get into the author’s head. That’s Paul, the ex-lawyer, ex-executionist, ex-self-absorbed jerk…turned Christian and now he’s giving his every breath to try and convince the people of his time and the people of ours that Jesus Christ is in fact what what we need as humans and that Jesus really is for everyone everywhere because we’ve all got this issue with sin, which really shows itself when it bumps up against law or commands.
Last week we took some time talking about Paul’s life, his story and how he got converted and how he saw, looking back over his life the way that law worked in him. His argument has been that the law is not bad, but that sin, in us, just uses the law to work it’s evil, and the result is that the law just ends up looking bad. Sin in us either takes the law and tells us we can’t do it so forget it or it takes the law and says we can do it because we are good people. The result is that we become either self-indulgent or self-righteous which can go on for awhile…but will utimately lead you to a point of crisis or a state of pure ignorance. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus delivers us, he becomes our idulgence, our righteousness, and with a strong arm he rescues us in crisis and he kindly confronts us with truth that breaks our ignorance.
This week, we’re mainly going to focus on verses 9-11 and look at the next two of Paul’s seven reasons in his defense of why the law is not bad. This week we’re looking at God’s overrall purpose in even making a law and then we’ll look at how that played out in the story of humanity. Which are Paul’s last two lines of defense in his attempt to exonerate the law from those who might misunderstand him and hear him saying, the law sucks, we don’t need it and we never needed it or the law is awesome because I so good at it and privileged because I know it.
So let’s read the whole section because verses 7-12 all go together. Let’s pray.
God, Holy and good Father of all things, Lord of history, time and our days…we come to you this morning asking for insight into your Bible, this book you birthed long ago so that we might know and understand the depth of your glory as you have revealed it in your Son Jesus. Would you impart your Spirit to us today so that we might perceive and understand and be drawn with great affection into your grace. Teach us who you are and they way that you have set things up. Give us an awareness of ourselves, who we really are as humans and what we need in our lives, wherever we are at in them. Amen.
A False Promise
First point for today, A False Promise. In verse 9 we read “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.” Last week we talked about how by the age of 13 Paul had memorized word for word the first five books of the Hebrew Bible which is our Old Testament. That’s called the Torah or the Law. So in Paul’s reflective experience he started encountering the written commandments from as far back as he could remember.
As far as the internal moral commandments, that sense of “ought” or “law” within all of us…I’m sure, Paul too, like us began encountering that as well as far back as he could remember. Do you remember the first time you either felt or were told that something was wrong? I don’t. I sure do remember getting in trouble a lot…that’s for sure. I can still picture my mom’s face and her finger shaking in my face saying, “no!” I can’t really think of what I did but I do remember thinking that maybe if I made a sad enough face, I would be in trouble. That’s all I really cared about, was not getting caught and if I did get caught not getting punished.
So there is law in two ways so far, what we feel or know is true and right, and there is what people, usually our parents, tell us is true or right. For Paul, a Jew, and for his parents, that second type of law was totally wrapped up in what the Torah said and even more specifically, the peak or summary of the Torah, the ten commandments…where the internal ought and the external command match up.
So what I want to do is probe a little bit deeper this morning into the phrase, “when the commandment came.” And the reason I want to do that is because thought Paul has been using his personal experience, he has been using it to relate to the corporate experience of his fellow Jewish brothers…and even beyond that he believes that what happened in the corporate experience or history of the Jews is specifically related God’s intention of revealing himself to all mankind.
Here is why I say this because in Acts 13, Paul is preaching to a huge crowd, almost the whole city of Antioch, where there a ton of Jews and Gentiles, and he quotes a passage from Isaiah in the Jewish Hebrew Bible and says, “So the Lord has commanded us, saying I have made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth (Acts 13:37 – Is. 45:7).” A bold statement for a Jew to make. But when we look at the whole Old Testament, we discover this theme, that Israel was intended to be a light to the nations, to bring the whole word into the love and favor of God. In Exodus 19, just before God gives the ten commandments he says, “you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples…and you shall be a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:5-6).” So God’s design of Israel was for them, as a nations, to be a channel of God’s grace to everyone else…a kingdom of priests.
What that means for us is that when God gave the ten commandments, that had a lot of significance for us. So in Romans 7 when Paul says “when the commandment came,” I don’t think the story of when God gave the ten commandments could be very far from Paul’s mind or the mind of his listeners. And the story proves to be very tellling for us on how a commandment comes as life and turns out to be death to us.
A False Promise
a. The Commandment Came
So here’s the story. We’re back in Exodus. Moses has already led the people of Israel out of Egypt were they were slaves for 430 years. When they’re leaving all these crazy things happened…apparent miracles attacking each one of the supposed Egyptian gods. Now they’re out in the desert, not knowing what to do or where to go and so Moses does what any good leader should do and he goes up on a mountain to meet with God and get some direction.
He gets up there…God shows up in this thick cloud, lights the whole mountain on fire, and causes an earthquake. That’s how God does things. So Moses is up on the mountain with God and God is speaking to him for forty days…telling him how they are to worship and live, how they are going to be this kingdom of priests, and when God’s done he gives Moses these two tablets of stone, with the ten commandments written on them by God.
Moses has got to be stoked. He just spent over a month with God, on a mountain, and God gives him this gift to take back to the people, these stone tablets with God’s instruction on them. Moses comes down the mountain, his face is somehow exuding light from being in the presence of God, and he gets back to the camp where all the people are and they have taken all the women’s gold earrings and thrown them into fire pots to melt them all and then use their tools to form this golden calf. It’s hard to tell how big is was…there were 600,000 men not including women and children, so their were easily over a million people in the camp. Something like the size of San Diego. So it is probably a pretty big golden calf and when Moses gets there they are having a party, getting drunk, and they’re singing and dancing calling this calf they made the god who delivered them out of Egypt.
Moses is so pissed he throws the stone tablets on the ground and breaks them. These tablets, engraved by God with the ten commandments, the first line reading “I am the LORD…you shall have no other gods before me.” The next line, “You shall not make for youself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under ground. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I (am) the LORD your God (Ex 20:2-4).”
Do you see how this story helps to understand Romans 7:9-10? “9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.” This story is a picture of all humanity.
We know God is God…that he is real and that we should love and worship him and him only. The commandment is already there, written on our hearts, the moral ought. But we can’t seem to follow it, at least for very long…we’re so short term, so we start doing our own thing. Then the commandment comes. Someone telling us striaght out that we are screwing up, that our way of life is wrong, and the written Word spoken to us…is immediately death. We are ruined because we know it’s true and then we either begin to give excuses or try and find some way out of punishment.
A False Promise
b. Is Life Promised?
Now, here is the question, did the commandments promise life? verse 10 says, “The very commandment that promised life.” So Paul summarizes all law or commandments in singular way here, “the very commandment,” what God says he requires and is right…was there a promise of life in accomplishing the law? Doing exactly what it says perfectly? Is that what God offered in the commandment? If you merely do this, this, and this then you will be okay, you will be saved. Is that the offer?
It kind of sounds like it right? Exodus 19:5 “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession.” Deuteronomy 30:16 “I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the LORD your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess.” It sounds like, if you keep my covenant, do what I command, then there is life, salvation, favor.
But notice something with me. Notice the word, covenant, a relational agreement. Notice that keeping God’s commandments flows out of loving the LORD God. Almost every time there is a promise made of life or blessing in one way or another, there is always something about loving God and seeking him and knowing him.
So keep the question in your head. In looking at the whole course of history, God gave written commandments at one time. Was the reason because God was offering a contractual agreement, like if you mow my lawn I’ll give you ten bucks? Is that what is going on with law? So just sort of set that over here and we’ll come back to it. Let’s talk about the Law and deception for a couple minutes first.
A Deception
Verse 11 says, “For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” What we have here is another Old Testament story reference. Paul is masterfully clever in the way that he crafts his sentences. Like an artist with their colours Paul with his words picks striking language to bring us full course into the weight of what he talking about.
Look at the word “deceived.” With the use of this word and with the sequence of reasoning Paul has been using he throws us right into the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. I’ll show you how in a second but first let’s go there and recount the story. It’s good for us to go other places in Scripture and get to know our Bibles better…because part of becoming or being a Christian is embracing the worldview of the history of God and his people that are presented in this book.
So Adam and Eve and the story of the garden of Eden. Some of you know it well but you may not have thought of it quite in these terms. God creates the universe, we don’t squabble here at The Resolved about whether God used evolution or not…doesn’t really matter on a theological level because even if evolution is true something had to start and carry through that process…something like God.
The Bible pictures the story this way… God creates the heavens and then the earth and then he fills the earts with plants and animals and he puts man in the middle of it. God gives the man a woman, puts them in this beautiful garden and tells them to be fruitful and multiply and to take care of his creation.
The place is lush. There’s all kinds of beautiful trees with different kinds of fruit, there are rivers that flow through the garden, there is wildlife all around, the climate is perfect…everything is perfect. Genesis 2:9 says that everything was “pleasant to the sight and good for food.” San Diego is a beautiful place but it’s a dump compared to the garden of Eden.
Its like Maui on speed. Adam and Eve the first man and woman are on their honeymoon. They just cruise around having a lot good fun kinky sex, they eat a lot of good food, drink as much as they want, go swimming a lot…it’s good times. An age of innocence if you will, in paradise.
They do whatever they want and it’s all pleasing to God which makes it pleasing to themselves and everything is right. There’s one command from God, don’t eat of this one tree. Not because there was necessarily anything specifically bad about this tree except that God said not to eat of it because if you disobey him, you will know evil and pleasure and free love will run from you.
So God gives a command, a law… And like us, or rather us like them…once they hear that command they are drawn to breaking it, they are deceived, coveting starts going crazy…that want for something else than what God has given, they do the one thing God said not to do and the dark sad emo ending is that this disobedience leads a death sentence. And now, ever since, like some prophets, preists, poets and preachers have had to give no fun sermons about sin and death. Honestly, I’m not some sicko that just loves talking about sin all the time. J I just know that actually talking about it is the only way that we can ever really begin to find Christ and start to build a life of real joy instead of fake fleeting deceptive joy.
So that’s the story. Here’s the parallels with Romans 7: there’s an age of innocence in both (“I was once a alive apart from the law” = freedom & fun in Eden), there’s a commandment God in both (moral ought or ten commandments = don’t eat of the tree), there’s a coveting in both, there’s a deception in both, and there’s a disobedinece to the command in both. Striking comparisions.
Let’s look a little deeper at the deception. How did deception work in the garden? In the garden there’s a talking snake. There’s always a talking snake, whether it is the voice of a supposed friend or a voice in your head, there’s always a talking snake. And here is what the snake says, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? …You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:1-5).’” How does deception work? It takes a little truth and mixes it with a little untruth. Do you see that? You will not surely die…not right away at least, not to mention the emotional death and suffering that will occur. God knows when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. An appeal to a desire to be our own God and make our own rules for our life. True, eyes are opened…not true, you will be more like God.
How does deception work in Romans 7? “10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” What does the deception sound like? It sounds like to me that the deception was thinking that simply obeying the law or the commandment would grant life. And isn’t that the same thing being offered in Eden? You will not die. Deception.
So again, let’s ask the question we asked when we talked about the coming of the written law on Mt. Sinai…why did God give the law? Why did he even put this one tree in the garden and give a commandment about it? Why did he put a moral ought in us? Why did he give written commandments on top of it all? What the purpose? Is the reason to offer life and teach that if we are good enough we can do it and earn life and salvation by how well we perform?
The Jesus
I don’t think so. I don’t think that was ever the purpose. Not in the garden of Eden. Not at the foot of Sinai. Not in 1st century Palestine. And not in 21 century America in the city of San Diego. Here’s why I say that…I alluded to it earlier when I mentioned that the conditional statements surrounding God’s law in the Old Testament are almost always accompanied by some reference to loving God. But this is what I think and you can disagree with me if you want, if you want to be of that sort of dispensational breed that thinks God saved different ways at different times or dispensations…I think the purpose of the law was and is and always has been to point us to our need for Christ. In the Old Testament too? Yes.
Here is why I say that. Galatians 3:23-24 “Before faith came, we were kept in custody (or held captive) under the law, being shut up (or imprisoned) until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our tutor (guardian/schoolmaster) to lead us to Christ (NASB).”
That word tutor is so significant. This is one place that I actually really really like the NIV translation (that rarely happens)…but the NIV uses the word “schoolmaster.” That’s a good translation. The greek word is paidagogos, that’s where we get the English word “pedagogy” which means teaching, like in school. So what this verse is saying is that God gave the law for the purpose of teaching us that we need Christ!
That is the reason for the law. That is why God speaks it into our consciences, why God gave it in Eden, why God gave it on Sinai, why it abounded in the 1st century, and why God continues to let his law be known now. So that we would come to know and love the gospel of Jesus Christ! There is an intimate connection between law and gospel. Law shows us the brokenness of our hearts…with a holy hammer it cracks open the hard outer shell and shows us weak and sick and then the wonder of the Gospel remedy is able to pour in and heal and restore and give life and love and meaning and purpose.
This is exactly what Jesus himself taught. After he rose from the dead he spent some time with a a couple of guys, one named Cleopas, and Jesus took them through the whole Old Testament and beginning with Moses (the law), and all the prophets (obey the law), he showed them how it all pointed to him (Lk 24:27). On another occasion during Jesus’ famous sermon on the mount he said this, “Do not think I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come…to fulfill them (Mt 5:17).”
Do you see? The purpose of the law, the promise of the law is for us to realize that we can’t do it. We are too weak and too inadequate and God is too holy, too perfect, too wonderful for us ever to attain his perfection. So out of love we cry, Lord help!
Moses got this, along with a few other godly men in the Old Testament…men like Abraham and Elijah and David, and Isaiah and handful of others. Moses is a good example. After he comes down the mountain, smashes the tablets, he doesn’t know what to do. So what does he do, he goes to prayer. It’s one of my favorite stories in the whole Bible. Listen to what he prays, he says, “You say to me, bring up these people (command), but you have not let me know whom you will send with me (I can’t do this God). Yet you have said, I know you by name and you have also found favor in my sight. Now therefore if I have found favor in your please show me now your ways, so that I might know you in order to find favor in your sight.” And God answers and says, “My presence will go with you and I will give you rest (Ex 33:12-14).”
Moses knew the commands of God were too great and that he needed a mediator. He knew he needed Christ, a God-man but didn’t know his name. That’s what Jesus says about the Jews of the Old Testament who truly loved God. In John 8, Jesus says this, “’Your father Abrahm rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.’ So the Jews said to him, ‘You are not fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM (John 8:56-59.” Oh the glory of the Son of God…it makes me tremble to hear his words.
conclusion
Okay let’s conclude with some application. There’s a lot of things we could take from today. Let’s begin with “the commandment came.” Just as there was a specific time in history when God gave in written form the law he had already given in our hearts…there was a specific time in history when God gave his Son to us. Galatians 4:4-5 says, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law.”
So look at history through the eyes of God. That what you experience inside lines up with what God has been working throughout all of history. There is one big metanarrative, one big story going on, and the significance and happiness and meaning of your life is the point at which you connect to that big story and the place that you connect at is Jesus. Those before Jesus came on the seen look forward in faith and those who came after look backward in faith. So if you haven’t converted and become a Christian yet, embrace Christ today.
If you have made that turn, but you came to him selfishly, trying to earn some salvation, like getting Jesus was a law of promise just to get into heaven, repent of that and begin to wholly rely on the fullness Christ and not your own strength. We all need that. So often I find myself slipping back into the law, I keep going back to it, getting deceived, thinking there is a promise of life that I can fulfill myself. I can’t. I need Christ despertly.
So let’s read our Bibles so that we get convicted so that we discover more of the quanity and quality of our sin so that we will find great joy in experiencing the savior rescuing us of from it. Saint Augustine said it this way, “God commands what we cannot do that we may know what we ought to seek from him.” Digging into God’s law will help us know how we can better seek and savor Christ.
Let us not think that following Christ and loving God through following his commands means that things will go well for us. Easyness is not promised, deep joy and truth and love is, but not material prosperity with no season of difficulty. That is not the gospel. The gospel is a promise of Christ who will be our all if we cry out for mercy.
How about deception. Apply what we have learned today. Know that law can neither save you nor sanctify you but it can show you what you need. You nor anyone else will ever naturally think they are sinners unless confronted with law. Even if we admit to do bad we are stubborn to see it as sin that violates God’s law. But law is not sin. It never saved anyone and it never will it was not meant to. It cannot make you better, it cannot heal you, it cannot purify you…only Christ can do that.
Think about how you work. How sin works in you. When there is a prohibition about something it awakens a desire to transgression. There is this famous story about Saint Augustine when he was a kid hanging out with his friends and they stole some pears…not because they wanted to eat them but merely for the pleasure the excitement of stealing them and disobeying the law. I know that is true about me. Every time I see that movie, Point Break it makes me want to go rob a bank…not for the money but just for the fun of wearing a president’s mask and waving a gun around and taking off with a bunch of cash. That sounds fun! And that is sickness in us. When we’re told not to do something there is almost immediately something fun about doing it.
So here is an application…know that is true about your nature, recognize it as rebellion, and then plead for Christ to change you so that you don’t have to experiment with sin in order to find out the sinfulness of sin. Listen, you don’t have to go commit adultery and get wasted to discover that it is wrong no more than you have to drink all water in the ocean to find out it’s salty. Trust God’s Word and don’t buy into deceptive lies like you need this, or you deserve this, or this is okay, or this will make things better. Only Christ is all there is.
Jesus said, “If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love (Jn 15:20).” That doesn’t mean keeping the commandments is abiding in love…it means the fruit of abiding in the love of Jesus is keeping the commandments. So don’t get it reversed. Begin to build a life for yourself in the garden of love for Christ, where his life-giving vine is supplying your every need and giving you great strength and passion and wisdom to carry out his commandments.
That’s what we as The Resolved Church are trying to do in this city. We are on a mission to build a garden within this city…a place where the gospel of Jesus Christ flourishes in abudance. We need people who are willing to get an idea of how to love the city and then to lead a group in carrying it out. We need people who love Christ and his church so much that they’re willing to let it affect their lives to the point that we join together in this huge undertaking instead of just trying to fit it in. We have much ahead of us and we don’t have the strength so we cry out Lord help!
Lastly, for the kids, both in age or at heart or in understanding…your life is like a story, like in a book or a movie, and the thing that makes your story so great is when you meet and come to know Jesus. But in your story many things will come along to try and trick you into thinking you don’t need Jesus. So don’t be tricked into thinking that you can find happiness on your own without him because you can’t. That is a not a true promise.
Now we are going to take communion and give our money. This is a time for believers when worship and adore Christ and receive his loving grace provided for on the cross through the elements of seeking him in prayer and partaking of some bread and wine. This also a time where those who are part of this church give our money as part our worship of Christ to support His church and the expansion of His kingdom in this city and beyond. If you’re new with us don’t worry about giving and if you’re not new, get on board.
