This series covers our study through the book of Romans. These sermons with careful and slow exegetical expository coverage move through each chapter and verse following the theme and thesis of the book that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. These sermons were primarily preached by Pastor Duane Smets from April 2005 to November 2008 at The Resolved Church, San Diego, CA in its first three years of existence. Audio from the first year is unavailable.

   Audio & Manuscripts Below

The Gospel Thesis
 Listen     Read    1:1-7 |  An Introduction To Romans
 Listen     Read    1:2-6 |  The Validity, Content & Effect of The Gospel
 Listen     Read    1:7-15 |  Romans Is For God
 Listen     Read    1:14-15 |  Romans Is For Us
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  The Gospel Is The Power Of God Unto Salvation
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Thank God For Jews
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification By Faith
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification & Habbakuk
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  We Are Beggars. This Is True

The Problem Of Sin
 Listen     Read    1:18 |  The Wrath of God
 Listen     Read    1:18-21 |  What Is Plain About God
 Listen     Read    1:18-32 |  The Suppression of Truth and Consequences
 Listen     Read    2:1-11 |  Seek Glory (Part I)
 Listen     Read    2:5-11 |  Seek Glory (Part II)
 Listen     Read    2:11-16 |  The Impartial God
 Listen     Read    2:17-19 |  Circumcision of the Heart
 Listen     Read    3:1-18 |  Moribund No More
 Listen     Read    3:19-20 |  Put Your Hand Over Your Mouth
 Listen     Read    3:21 |  Righteousness From Without
 Listen     Read    3:21-23 |  No Distinction

The Promised Savior
 Listen     Read    3:24-25 |  Propitiation
 Listen     Read    3:25-26 |  Righteousness Demonstrated
 Listen     Read    3:27-30 |  One God & One Salvation
 Listen     Read    3:31 |  The Law Upheld
 Listen     Read    4:1-12 |  The Imputation of Righteouness
 Listen     Read    4:13-17 |  The Promise Secured
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part I)
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part II)
 Listen     Read    4:22-24 |  The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    4:25 |  Who Killed Jesus?
 Listen     Read    5:1 |  Peace With God
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  In The Throne Room
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  Rejoice In The Hope Of The Glory of God
 Listen     Read    5:3-5 |  Rejoicing and Suffering
 Listen     Read    5:6-8 |  Love and Some Verses
 Listen     Read    5:8-10 |  Salvation In Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    5:11 |  Joy In God
 Listen     Read    5:12-14 |  We Are From Adam
 Listen     Read    5:15-17 |  Jesus Is Better Than Adam
 Listen     Read    5:18-19 |  The Guilt & The Gift
 Listen     Read    5:20-21 |  It’s All About Grace

New Life In Christ
 Listen     Read    6:1-4 |  Baptism: The Life of the Buried Dead
 Listen     Read    6:5-7 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:8-11 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part II)
 Listen     Read    6:12-14 |  God Reigning In You
 Listen     Read    6:15-18 |  Master Jesus (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:19-23 |  Master Jesus (Part II)

Bearing Fruit For God
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part I
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part II
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part III

Law & Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 3
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 4

Inner Confliction & The Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 3

No Condemnation In Christ
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 5

Walking According To The Spirit
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 5

The Jesus Family
  Listen    Read    8:12-13  |  Jesus Family Does Not Lose the Battles Which Count
  Listen    Read    8:14-15  |  Jesus Family Welcomes Members and Leads Them
  Listen    Read    8:14  |  The Family of Old
  Listen    Read    8:15-16  |  Adopted Forever
  Listen    Read    8:15  |  The Great Father We Call Abba
  Listen    Read    8:17  |  The Future of the Family

Suffering And The Glory Of God
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  Natural Evil & Moral Evil
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  The Groaning of God’s Spirit
 Listen     Read    8:26-27  |  Prayer & Suffering
 Listen     Read    8:28  |  How God Works it For Good
 Listen     Read    8:29  |  The Image of Christ
 Listen     Read    8:28-30  |  Predestination
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Evil & The Existence of God
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Barriers for the Believer

The God(ness) of God
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part V)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part I)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part II)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part III)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part IV)

Viva La Vida Christus: Living The Life Of Christ
  Listen    Read    12:1-2  |  All of Life is Worship
  Listen    Read    12:3-8  |  Humility, our Gifts, and Real Life
  Listen    Read    12:9-21  |  The Life of Genuine Love
  Listen    Read    13:1-7  |  Life Under Temporal Law
  Listen    Read    13:8-10  |  Life Under Eternal Law
  Listen    Read    13:11-14  |  Living in Light of the Day
  Listen    Read    14:1-2  |  The Principle of Preference (Part I)
  Listen    Read    14:13-15:3  |  The Principle of Preference (Part II)
  Listen    Read    15:4-13  |  The Principle of Preference (Part III)
  Listen    Read    15:14-33  |  Fulfilling the Mission
  Listen    Read    16:1-27  |  Entrusted to God

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  Listen       Read        Romans 7:13-25  |  Part 1
  Listen       Read        Romans 7:13-25  |  Part 2
  Listen       Read        Romans 7:13-25  |  Part 3

Listen 
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:: The Resolved Church :: May 5th, 2007 :: Pastor Duane M. Smets

Inner Confliction and The Gospel – when sin gets the upper hand
Romans 7:13-25 (Part III)

introduction

Read text and pray. Father God you are a father. The father of all. A good heavenly father. Father us today and teach us about this passage as we attempt to work with it’s words and to deal with our hearts and this life. Would you cause your Spirit to work in us in a way that we would be opened up to the glory of the gospel and find all our peace mercy and joy in the grace extended to us in Jesus. Amen.

Last week we had my long-time friend and surfing buddy, who became my brother in-law, lead us in a day of worshipping God through song. There are times in a life of a church when you simply have to sit back and worship. It was good to do that. The two weeks before we were studying the same passage we are studying again this morning, Romans 7:13-25. And in those two weeks we looked at twelve reasons for why this passage can only be talking about the experience of Paul, and us, sometime after becoming a Christian. Now I’m not going to go back through all those reasons today. I checked and they are online at itunes, so if you missed those sermons, you can go there.

What I want to do first today is to go back through the passage and point out a few things, now that we have an established position on who it’s talking about. Because otherwise, if you don’t, then when you’re reading through it you are like, “what, who’s he talking about now?” So you almost have to know who you think this passage is talking about before you can even begin to kind of take it seriously.

And then we are going to spend a significant about of time today talking about introspection, since that is the final and chief applicational theme here. We already looked at the themes of seeking happiness and the theme of the Christian life being war in our other weeks. So this week we’ll focus on introspection.

This passage as a post-Christian experience

Verse 13 (re-read)

This is about the law. We know he is talking about the law becaue that was the whole subject in the verses before this passage (the role of the law) and because verse 14 begins with the words, “for we know that the law…” So how does the law function in the life of the Christian? It help show us our sinfulness. Look at verse twelve again. “In order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment become sinful beyond measure.”

That may not sound like a good fun thing. But it is. One of the reasons why we read the Bible as Christians, where God’s law is found, is because by doing that we come to see and know more sins or the depth of sin inside us which we may have not realized was there. And that is good. Coming to know that is good. Why?

Look at the phrase that is there “might become sinful beyond measure.” What does that mean? How can sin become more sinful? What does it mean for something to be sinful beyond measure? Just think about it for a moment and follow Paul’s reasoning and his view of God.

Who is beyond measure? Where does right and wrong come from? Who or what is sin against? God. At the beginning of this book, Romans, Paul said “what can be known about God is plain…his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature (beyond measure), have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made…so (none) is without excuse (Rom 1:20).”

Here at The Resolved Church we have talked much about sin, not being so much this violation of some moral, abstract code…but a personal wronging against the from who all that is good and holy and right and true comes from. The best definition of sin is “not glorifying God as we ought” because that is what we were made to do. We were made to worship God.

God is beyond measure. That is actually one the classic arguments for the existence of God. That God is the greatest of all possibilities and since it is greater to exist in reality rather just in the imaginiation, God must exist. If all of you are like what the ______! That’s cool. It’s not my point or purpose today to explain the ontoloigcal argument for the existence of God. My point from Romans 7:13 is that the law shows us the depth of our sin, that it is beyond measure because it is against God.

And once you know that, once you see yourself in relation to God, then you feel sick and then the salve of the gospel can come and minister to your soul. So the more you know of your sin the more of the love and grace and the compassion of Jesus Christ will become a deep experiential reality to you. The cross of Christ will overwhelm your soul that Jesus died for you and your sin.

Verses 14-15 (re-read)

Look at that phrase “sold under sin.” This is an intense picture. I doubt any of us here can even have the slightest idea of knowing what it is like to be a human that is sold. To be a prisoner of war taken away against your will and sold away for money to be a slave. That is the picture here.

There have been times in human history, like the first century when this was written, when people were sold away into slavery. And this still goes on. Women in our culture and time are sold into prositution by their pimps, kids are sold into the military as soliders in Uganda and Darfur. The black culture in America lives with a history and identity as a people who were sold.

I don’t think every parallel that we could make from that analogy is intended…but what is intended is that it is bad. The idea is that it is not who we are intended to be. God made us in his image. Beautiful creatures that have bodies and minds that are able to reason and be imaginative and can talk and think and sing and to know God and his glory. But because of sin we all get sold away and lose or forget our identity as children of the great King of the universe.

Now, this side of coming to know Jesus, we experience freedom from our slavery. True joy enters into us. But then we have experiences where we fail and it seems we have been sold back into slavery all over again. Our old life is still there, it didn’t totally disappear magically.

Then look at verse 15 again, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate.” After becoming a Christian, for a season everything is new and exciting and God grants you a period of time in your walk with him when you encounter the gospel and then “sin gets the upper hand.” And you sit down, feeling utterly miserable and you have that quiet conversation with God in your head…”What is wrong with me? Why did I do that? Why do I keep on doing that? I hate this.”

You see, I don’t think when Paul says, “I do not understand my actions” that he is saying that it is just a mystery. That he doesn’t know what is happening or that he is not responsible. No he knows very well. It is sin and the conflict between the desires of the Spirit of Jesus in us as Christians and the desire of the flesh contaminated by Satan that is in us as well as Christians. He knows he blew it and it is his fault. I don’t think he is saying “It is just too confusing and it is hopeless.” I think when he says, “I do not understand” what he is saying is, “This is so frustrating!” “I wish I wasn’t this way.” I think he is saying the same thing he says later in verse 24 when he says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me (from this conflict, from my perpetual failing)?”

So many times I have heard people who have failed in some way spiritually and aftterward they come and talk to me and they say things like, “Man, I just don’t get it. I just keep on doing what I know is wrong and I can’t help it.” That’s not what Paul is saying here. He is not using sin in us as Christians as an excuse. He means I don’t understand as “I don’t like it” not “I can’t help it.” Do you see the difference? Okay, let’s move on.

Verses 16-23 (re-read)

There are just a things I want to point out from these verses. One is the overarching theology of sin in Christians that is here. Notice in verse 17 where it says “it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” And then notice that same phrase again in verse 20, “it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells in me.” And then again in verse 23, “the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

That phrase “sin dwells in me” is key phrase. The Greek word for “dwells” here is oikos which means house. So if we wanted to be super literal we would say “sin that houses in me” or to be a little looser, “sin that has made its home in me.” In the Bible the human person is sometimes compared to that as a house, a place of living. And the theology of sin here is that it has made a home inside of every human.

When we come to know Jesus and that he died for our sin and rose again we are promised that our houses will not eternally go up in flames…and what happens is that the gospel of Jesus comes and lays a new foundation in us and a new house is being built…a gospel house. That is why Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell, or house, in you richly” and why 1 Peter 2:5 says, you “are being built up as a spiritual house…through Jesus.”

So let’s kind of draw out the analogy of indwelling or housing sin in us: our lives become totally corrupt because of sin, houses of sin, but then Jesus happens and at he is so bright and so glorious and so wonderful that when he comes in and lays a new foundation and shows us the architectural plans for what he has in store…that for awhile we don’t even notice that there is still a bunch of rotten wood and walls with chipped paint and whole and broken light bulbs…we just moved so all this is fresh, our old place looked like a train wreck after we moved everything out.

The main point is that there is indwelling sin. Not that we are hopeless. If you rip the parts out that say, “it is no longer I who do it but sin” and “I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out” and detach them from the theology of indwelling sin that is here then yes, what you get it hopelessness.

With “it is no longer I who do it” you get some sort of weird mult-personality disorder where I’m Duane but there is also I “Frank” and “Dave” living in me. And with “I have the desire…but not the ability” you get “oh yeah, that sounds good but I don’t feel like doing it, so I’m can’t do anything.” And neither of those conclusions are right.

Paul is not saying as some have tried to make him say that there are two dogs, one white dog and one black dog living in us and they are fighting and sometimes the white dog wins and sometimes the black dog wins. No. That is not it. What he is saying is that indwelling sin, is foreign to who we really were made to be, it is part of our slavery, of being sold into sin. “It is no longer I who do it” is the I as a Christian, I am not acting out of following Jesus when I sin, I am following the old master of sin.

And when he says, “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” He is not saying we are just stuck and that is that. You have to read what comes before that phrase. He says, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire…” So he already qualified the kind of ability he is talking about…the ability of the flesh.

And as we have talked about before, “flesh” is not just skin and bones but the whole old way of thinking before Jesus, where sin has corrupted all our thoughts and emotions and actions. Of course flesh has no ability, it is corrupt. As he says in the next chapter “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:8).”

We are going to get into ability a ton when we get to Romans 8, so I’m going to stop right here and just say don’t take select phrases out of this chapter like “It is no longer I who do it” and “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” and turn them into excuses for your sin, to say “I can’t help it.” You are doing violence to the Bible if you do that.

I have couple final thoughts from the last few verses but before we finish off with them, what I want to do is talk about the theme of introspection here. Because vereses 18-20 are really the core of where the introspective analysis of inner conflict comes from.

Introspection

Do you guys know what introspection means? I took Amy too see Damien Rice last week for our six year wedding anniversary, we love him, it was an awesome concert. Anyway, he was introducing one of his songs and he said something along the lines of “you have to be a sort of be introspective person, familiarly aquainted with depression to get this song, which none of you here in San Diego may understand since it is sunny here all the time.” He might be right about introspection and depression, but not everybody is happy here in San Diego even though it is sunny a lot of the time huh?

What is introspection? Here is a definition: The contemplation of one’s self including your thoughts, emotions, and actions. Introspection is a self-reflective exercise. And by that definition this passage in the Bible has got to be one of the most introspective portions in all of Scripture.

Now, I think on the whole, our culture or generation seems to be a very introspective culture. Maybe it is just me since I like movies like Eternal Sunshine, Fight Club, and Waking Life and I like musical artists like Damien Rice, Bright Eyes and Ryan Adams. So if you are not a particularly introspective person that’s okay…my wife isn’t. But some you are and some of you are too much and some of you are not and you need to be more so.

So let me talk freely for just a few minutes about introspection because some introspection is necessary to have a real and true faith but introspection can also turn into a deadly trap that can destroy faith.

Let’s begin with the positives and the need for introspection. Here are what I see as the positives. I don’t see how you can live a life that is truly honest with the world we live in or how you can truly grow and have changes take place in your life unless you have periods of introspection. Obviously you can live in this state where you are always thinking about who you are and what you are doing and feeling or you would never get up or move or eat or work or do anything. But at the same time it is so easy just to get caught up in the motion of life and never stop to think about yourself and how you are doing and what’s going on.

So the positive is that through introspection you can come to know who you really are and begin to deal with things. And if you are being truly introspective, as we’ll talk about in a minute, then you’ll end up finding the gospel of Jesus and in it the meaning and purpose and satisfaction worldview and answers and community that we long for. And that is really good because Jesus is really good and there is nothing better than the heart truly finding it’s home in following Jesus.

Here are the negatives. There’s a lot more negatives…perhaps because introspection can often become one of the chief devices that Satan and his demons like to use going all the way back to the garden of Eden. Like anything that is really good it can become really corruptible. Jesus is the best and is ultimate reality but there is more askew, more lies running around about Jesus in our day than anything else.

So some dangers. The biggest danger of introspection is that you can get stuck. It is narcissism at its best, where like the greek god, narcicuss, who began looking at himself through the reflection in a pool of water got stuck doing that forever and ever. Sometimes looking internally can be like getting lost in a maze, where you don’t know which way is up or down or left or right. You can get fixiated on an emotion to the point in which it seems there is no way out.

Introspection run rampad is where you become completely self-absorbed, you are always the victim, the only that matter is what you feel and think and you think you are simply being honest because it is what you feel. The problem is that is not true honesty. Real honesty is not just paying attention to where you are at but it is considering all possibilities of what can be known.

For example, I might say, “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” and say I am simply being honest and I don’t want to do anything I do mean and so I am just stuck. But that is not real honesty, because real honesty would consider the other words around that text and would consider other truthful things that I may not feel but could eventually. Real honesty is not just being honesty with yourself but with reason and truth and the world around you.

This is why introspection often leads to depression because you cannot fix yourself. Only Jesus can take us and truly move us from a point of spiritual inability to a place of spiritual enablement. We can’t think or feel our way out of our problems. The only answer is to follow Christ. That is the difference between gospel introspection and futile and vain introspection. Gospel introspection takes work because you are looking internally to see your sin so that you might follow the savior and be happy. Futile and vain introspection looks internally to lick its wounds vie for attention so that other will lick them with us.

Sorry that is kind of gross. But I mean it. Evil introspection is powerful and deceptive. When I hear a sad song I am drawn in. I want to be sad then because it sounds like in some weird way that such a thing would feel good. But it doesn’t. It is a deceptive lie. What we are wanting is for other to look at us and how sad we are and then feel bad for us. Ah, there is difference. Gospel introspection is not so. We look internally like David and realize that things are not right and then we look to Christ and realize his glory and sufficiency for us. And then we fight for joy.

That where introspection leads…to the themes of the other two weeks where we talked about this passage, to a pursuit of joy and to a fighting for it. And that takes work. Not to earn salvation but to reap the fruit of joy.

Okay, that’s enough I think on introspection. I don’t want to get stuck there. So let’s finish up and look at the last verses and talk about Jesus some more.

Verses 21-25 (re-read)

Notice the result of Paul’s introspection. It did not result in wallowing but in a crying out for deliverance and in a resolute determination to follow Jesus. “Thank be to God for Jesus” and so I will follow Jesus and serve him with my mind, putting my confidence and trust there in the gospel and though my flesh serves sin, it will progressively done away with as my embracing of Christ in my mind sinks down more and more into my emotions and my life decisions and actions. That is the progression all sin as well as all delight begins in the mind. Thought precedes action and affection.

So let’s conclude by looking at Jesus, his introspection. If what I am saying is true then we should find that type of introspection in Jesus, correct. Granted he did not have any sin but we would expect him to display some self-reflective honesty and then out of that a pursuit of God and not a wallow in darkness, right?

Let’s go to Mark 14:32-42. This is the night of Jesus arrest which end up with him getting crucified. Read text. Jesus was God and so he knew all things. He knew all that was about to happen to him. The gospel of Luke when it tells this story says that when this happened Jesus was sweating drops of blood, which medical doctors today say can happen to people in moments of extreme stress. Jesus here looks internally at who he was and what he came to do, and he confesses it to God, and then he rises and goes to be crucified. Why? What brought him through?

Our last verse for today, Hebrews 12:1-2, listen, “Let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely (sound like indwelling sin?), and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the found and perfecter of our faith, (here is the answer for what got Jesus through Gesthamene) who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Did you hear what brought him through? “For the joy that was set before him.” For joy, for the joy of pleasing God and bringing him glory he battled through and laid down his life for us. There is no way that was easy. There has never been anything harder that a human has done. But Jesus fought for joy. He looked internally and then looked to the cross.

That is the answer for us and our lives. Where are you at? Do you feel weighted down? Look to the cross? Do you feel lost and confused? Look to the cross. Do you feel conflicted and frustrated? Look to the cross. Do you feel aimless and numb? Look internally and then look to the cross. Do you feel excited and strong? Build your life on the cross.

Conclusion

That is the conlcusion for today. We are a church plant which means we are on a mission to be driven by God’s glory, to be gospel centered in all things, and to build a city within this city. How do we do that, by giving God glory through recognizing that everything is about him and being honest about our faults and failures before him. By embracing the gospel of Jesus and building our lives upon the foundation of the house he lays inside us. By living lives within this city where we have compassion on those who are lost in the myriad of introspection and in love telling them to repent and embrace Christ.

For the kids…here is what today’s sermon is about. It is about realizing who you are and that realizing who you are can be kind of messy. But you need to know that you are a unique person who God made especially for the purpose of being most happy by loving Jesus. And loving Jesus is not always easy, but if you honest and you trust and follow him you will be okay no matter what.

Let’s pray.

Listen 
.

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:: The Resolved Church :: April 21th, 2007 :: Pastor Duane M. Smets

Inner Confliction and The Gospel – when sin gets the upper hand
Romans 7:13-25 (Part II)

      1. The structure of Romans
      2. The plain reading
      3. 1st century Judaism
      4. Paul’s pre-conversion
      5. Honest self-assessment
      6. The Christian struggle
      7. The new master
      8. A body of death
      9. The law principle
      10. The conclusion 7:25b
      11. The apostle Peter
      12. 1 John 1:8
II. The Gospel Response
      – Theme One: True Hedonism
      – Theme Two: True War

Romans 7:13-25
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Introduction

Alright, good morning everyone. Hopefully today we will be free and clear from crazy microphones, bats and any other weird occurances for the next half-hour. I know its been kind of wild lately. Which maybe kind of fits since we are in the latter half of Romans 7. So let’s read the text and pray.

Father God, this is not the funnest passage to talk about. And it is a text that so easily either becomes an excuse for our own sin or it becomes a pride-filled trophy of how much better we think we are now on the other side of deep spiritual struggle. Help us this morning to honor you in how we deal with your Bible. May we not treat it flippantly. Guard us from solely interpreting it in light of each of our own personal experiences. And most of all would we come to see and understand and know and love the gospel more because of what we learn today. Amen.

So we are in part two of our series in Romans 7:13-25, “Inner Conflict and the Gospel – When Sin Gets the Upper Hand.” Last week we began by looking at the context of this passage so that we could see how this passage is really set up as a personal illustration added on to some arguments that Paul made in order to say that the Law, the inner sense of moral right and wrong or all the demands in the Bible, are not bad in and of themselves but that we all break the law and the result is sin. So the question is how can the Law be good when it is so intimately caught up with us and sin which leads us to hell.

I. Who’s Experience is this?

Because of that question and the way that Paul answers it here with a personal illustration there becomes a lot of debate about what he is really saying here. If it is really a personal illustration or not and if so what time of his life is he talking about, before or after becoming a Christian? And so, rather than to sidestep the debate and just say that it doesn’t matter, we have decided to be honoest and dive deep into it and so last week I gave six reasons (they are in grey on the screen) for why I believe this passage is talking about Paul and/or any and every person at some point after becoming a Christian. Today we go after the next six.

7. the new master

To sort of start things off, we are going to talk about what is probably the strongest objection against the view that I am presenting. We are a church who cares about what is actually true and right and because of that we are not afraid of other viewpoints. That is why we have a doubts box and encourage doubting…the reason is so that you can come to a real and solid faith and we are convinced that Christianity stands the test.

So the seventh reason, the new master. Here is how the objection goes, “Paul says here in Romans 7:14, ‘I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.’ If this person were really a Christian they could not say that. The very essence of being a Christian is being freed from sin and receiving the savior.” And then they refer to several earlier passages in Romans 6, where it says things like, “our old self was crucified…so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin…we were once slaves of sin…(but) now have been set free from sin (Rom 6:6,17,18).”

That is a pretty strong argument. I mean, I quoted three different passages in Romans 6, word for word, verse 6, 17, and 18…no longer enslaved to sin, once slaves of sin, now set free from sin. What do you do with that? If that is true what do you do with Romans 7:14 if it talking about a Christian being “sold into bondage to sin.” Do you get the problem?

Here is what I think the answer is. When I preached from Romans 6 we did two different series with several sermon given to each of them, the two series were “Sin and Union with Christ” and the second was “Master Jesus.” In a huge oversimplification let me summarize those two series. The first series, “Sin and Union with Christ” says that through faith in Jesus we become united to him and thus receive all the benefits of the cross and eternity because we are with Jesus. The second series, “Master Jesus” says we have all been slaves to a master called sin and through united with Jesus our sin gets dealt with and we begin to live under a new master, Jesus, who is the far stronger, kinder, and wiser than our old master sin.

Here is the connection, uniting with Jesus and him becoming our new master is a real, true, spiritual reality that has begun to take place, but is still in process until we either die or the resurrected Jesus comes back on his cloud of glory. That is why we get something like Romans 6:12-13. Listen, “Therefore (because all that is true spiritual reality), let not sin reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their 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.” Did you hear that? It sounds like there is still left over, indwelling sin, where out of it our members can still do unrighteous, sinful things. That sounds kind of like Romans 7, where instead of putting your stock in the spiritual reality, sin gets the upper hand and you do exactly what Romans 6 tells you not to do.

So going to Romans 6 does not help you. We cannot treat the Bible like we are at some sort of fast food restraunt and we only order things off its menu that fit our current desires or theology. You can’t just pick out a verse here and a verse there and then build a theology on that. No, there are verses in-between.

So, here is what I think Romans 7:14 is saying in comparison to Romans 6. I think it is saying that when you give in to the old slave master, what is that but being sold into bondage to sin. Under the old master we were in total bondage to sin and had no freedom or power to do anything else but sin. But now there is struggle. Not going back and forth from being a Christian and then I’m not a Christian and then I’m a Christian again and you get saved like 50 times before you get it right. No, there is struggle and there is moment when sin gets the upper hand and it is an expereince of slavery, and it is dark and sad and hard and horrible and more intensely so because of the fact that you know you are really under the new master Jesus, who loves you and died for all your sin already. So that is reason 7, let’s move on.

8. a body of death

Reason number 8, a body of death. In Romans 7:24b Paul cries out “Who will free me from the body of this death?” Those who say that Rom 7 is pre-Christian say “can a Christian really cry out ‘who will free me from this body of death?’” I mean, that sounds pretty dark. If you are Christian does that mean you really know God and his beauty and glory and how great his creation is, including our bodies, and didn’t Jesus die for us to save our bodies?

The answer is yes, those things are true. I believe that in becoming a Christian your eyes are in a sense opened up to a whole new world around you and you see things with a new wonder and amazement. And yes, we are not into some philosphy that says spirit is good and matter is evil. God is the Lord and redeemer of both.

But my question is, if you really are a follower of Jesus and believe all the things he promises, then how can you not cry out, “who will free me from this body of death?” This body is contaminated and diseased with sin, it is breaking down, as 2 Corinthians 4:16 says, “it is wasting away.” But the goodness of the gospel is that Jesus rose and secured for us a heritage to receive a new, glorified body like his, that will not waste away and that when we receive we will be completely free from the constraints and corruptions of sin.

The gospel is great and real hope for this life. If not what else do we have. That when we die, it is just the end. That we reincarnate? Even if there was a single shred of evidence for that, who wants that? Don’t we long for, as humans, for a new life that is still us living it. That is why the resurrection of Jesus Christ is such a central part to our faith. It is our secure hope with proofs. The cry, “who will free me” is the Christian cry for liberation from the diseased dying body in its dirty bouts with sin and a longing for our new, sin-free, body like Jesus’s.

9. the law principle

Ninth reason, the law principle. Verse 23 says, “but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin.” This is a very interesting verse. It is a crushing verse to those who would try and define the word “law” as only the Jewish law because here, in this one verse, you have three different definitions. But you can see why they would want to define law as Jewish law only. Because then, this struggle of Romans 7 only applies to a Jew who wrestles in trying to keep the strict standards of the law. And then, they would say that in Romans 8:2 when Paul says we are “now free in Jesus from the law” that the struggle of Romans 7 are left behind after conversion.

That is why whenever I have referred to the word “law” in my sermons I have tried to be careful to say something like, law, the internal moral ought within us all or the written demands of the Bible or the Hebrew Torah. It is because of this issue. Many want to say that the law is bad and it’s not. Yes, simply because the law is there we break it (and for a lot of other reasons). But through that, the breaking of law, in those moments afterward of conviction and humility God enables us to see how truly broken we are and need Jesus. So the law’s overall goal and purpose is to lead us to Jesus and on top of it it comes from God (that’s what Paul argued earlier in the chapter).

So notice something with me. Notice how Paul says, “I see in my members another law.” So he already acknowledges in that statement that there is a standard view of law but here he says he “sees” another law. I think he is using “see” here to say that he realizes another principle, another moral code, another law at work and that is this, that sin is a princple or power or rule that works through and the body making it a law of death and it still can be an operative principle or power in the life of a believer.

Here is the point. Simply because Romans 8 highlights that Jesus frees us from the law of sin doesn’t mean that Romans 7 is not a Christian. The point of Romans 8 is to say that the Christian now has the Spirit and thus the power to defeat sin, but the law of sin is still there too, or else Romans 8:13 would say to “put to death the deeds of the body.” The point of Romans 7 is to say that there is still a power, sin that can be at work even in one’s life after becoming a believer.

10. the conclusion 7:25b

Reason number 10, 7:25b. I say b because there are two parts to verse 25, a first part and a second part and that second part 7:25b is a genuine embarassment to an interepretation of this chapter as the experience of someone before they become a Christian.

Let me show you. So Paul is wrestling…I do the things I don’t want to do, I want to do what’s right but then I keep scewing it up and it is evil and sinful…what a wretched man that I am, who will free me. Verse 25, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! You feel this building and building tension in the passage and when you get to verse 25, and you get to Jesus, you are like, yes I knew that couldn’t be right! In fact, if that was all there was in verse 25, I would be strongly persuaded toward the pre-Christian view.

But there is a b, a second part to verse 25, which says “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Just after Paul shouts out thanks to God for the future freeing from the body of death he soberly summarizes the lot of the Christian and sets up the discussion for Romans 8. If he were to end at 7:25b it would be a depressing life but in Romans 8 Paul talks about the possibility and goodness of walking according to the Spirit in spite of this struggle which every Christian will have.

So the 10th and final exegetical reason from our verses here is 7:25b. For Romans 7 to be a pre-Christian experience one really has to just cut verse 25b out of their Bible.

11. the apostle Peter

Now we move on to two final reasons that I get from looking at the Bible as a whole and the characters and stories that are told. Time and time again we read stories in the Bibles about people who are screw-ups that God has mercy on and calls them and enables them to do some incredible things, but even after all those things take place we see them fail and fall in bouts with sin.

Consider the story of the great apostle St. Peter who wrote two books of the Bible, who preached on the first day of the church and 3,000 people became Christians, who when Jesus said he was going to Jersusalem to die, Peter said he was ready to go die with him too. In John 13:37 Peter syas, “Lord, I will lay down my life for you.” And then the night of the next day Jesus is arrested and taken in. Peter is standing by a fire outside the building where they are holding Jesus and a little girl comes up it him and says, “You are one of Jesus disciples huh?” And Peter answers, “What? No, I don’t know him.” Two more people ask him and all three times he denies Jesus.

In the book of Acts, God teaches Peter about how culture itself is not bad but is a filter for the gospel and so things from the Jewish law like not eating meat isn’t a big deal. So Peter is stoked he starts eating steaks and hamburgers and he’s drinking good wine with it and loves it. It is good times, he is wondering why he ever got all caught up in the vegan straight edge thing. J But then in Galatians we hear about how he gets back to Jerusalem and his buddies are asking him, “dude we heard you are eating meat, what is up with that?” And Peter is all, “What! No way man. I didn’t eat no meat are you kidding me.” Again Peter was fearing men and seeking their approval and then lying and deceiving in his behavior.

Peter, a man who knew the gospel, followed Christ, had times when sin got the upper hand. I’m sure Peter too experienced the inner conflict Paul describes in Romans 7 and he went home and with bitter tears cried out “O wretched man that I am! Deliver me Jesus.”

I love the scene in John 21 at the end of the book after Jesus rises from the dead and he takes Peter aside and says to Peter, “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter answers “Yes, Lord you know that I love you.” Then Jesus asks him again “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter answers, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” Then a third time, just as Peter denied Jesus three times, Jesus asks him “Peter, do you love me?” And the Bible says that “Peter was grieved.” With his head hung low, wretched man that he was, Peter says, “Lord, you know all things and you know I love you.”

12. 1 John 1:8

The last and final reason. Reason number 12 why I believe Romans 7 is a post Christian experience, 1 John 1:8. 1 John 1:8 written by another disciples of Jesus from the beginning, the apostle John, in a letter he writes to be distrubuted to all the Christian churches, he says this, 1 John 1:8-9 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

What I am getting at here is theology. How you interpret the Bible will dictate your theology, what you believe about God and his gospel. And here is my point. It is extremely difficult to see how one can interpret Romans 7 as someone who is not yet a Christian, and not end up with a theology called “Christian Perfectionism” or “Entire Santification.” Now I know those are big words, but basically what that means is that the Christian reaches a state where there is no inner battle and no sin in the beliver, they are perfect and entirely sanctified. And such a belief is a direct violation of 1 John 1:8, “if we say we have no sin we are deceived.”

And here is why I bring it up, because I don’t know about you but it seems to me that in a lot of churches or in a lot of Christians that I meet they seem to talk and act as though they don’t have any sin anymore. That somehow because they are following Jesus they have become perfect. And that simply is not true. We are still sinners. We are just sinners who are being saved and who are being opened up more and more to the joy of the gospel and who are on a mission to spread the fame of Jesus across the world.

I think Romans 7 was put in our Bible to humble us. To from ever have anything to boast about except Jesus. We are always in need of him and he alone is the savior who is delivering and who will ultimately and finally deliver us from this body of sin and death one day.

II. The Gospel Response
- theme one: true hedonism
- theme two: true war

Okay. So what do we do? How are we to respond? Where does the gospel fit in all of this? It seems pretty clear to me that Romans 7 is in fact a Christian experience. Where does that leave us?

Last week I focused on the theme of hedonism. I said that this text is a vivid portral of the Christian orientation to long for, look to, and seek after joy in God through Jesus. We are all naturally inclined to want to be happy and that is not bad, that is how God made us. But he made us in a way where the fit thing that satisfies our longing for happiness is him. The gospel is a joyful gospel and so the first theme to focus on in this text is the hedonism, that as Chrisitians our sights are to be set on pleasure in God, that is our orientation and our hope whether we are in the middle of a struggle, or in a season of grace without struggle, it is pleasure. The joyful God is where we have our sights.

This week the theme I want to focus on is true war. A very quick way to divide a room in half or to prick a group of people’s passion is to bring up the current war or whatever it is going on now in the middle east. Legally, we are not allowed to have a stance as a church, so I’ll be careful. I just want to note that war is a big deal. Some of the men who are in our church who are in the military have trained for war or even fought in them. Some of our grandparents or great grandparents know much about war. War is something that has plagued humanity for thousands of years. Do you ever wonder why? Do you really think the reason for wars have been because of politics or nationalism or money or whatever the case? I don’t think so.

Here is where I think wars come from. “I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin (Rom 7:23).” The Bible’s perspective is that wars begin with the law of sin inside individuals.

There is an implicit imperative in this verse that we must fight as Christians. We must learn how to wage war with our souls. Ephesians 6:12 says, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” We must learn how to wage war so that we will not be taken captive by the law of sin. We can’t say we won’t fight, that we are just against violence, for then you have already given in. No, we must fight.

Now there are different kinds of battles. There are big battles and there are small battles. I think Romans 7 is a big battle sort of struggle…but there are also little struggles every day. When our mood swings and you say unkind things to your spouse or when you are hungry and tired at the end of the day and the girl at the drive through at in-n-out can’t get your order right and when she finally does it’s all screwed up, charges you more and forgets your drink, which is probably a good thing so you didn’t throw it at her. J Those are small battles. Like battling to get up in the morning early enough to pray and read the Bible. Then there are bigger battles, battles with addiction and adultery and all kinds of grevious sins that if you give in reap harsh hard consequences that may cause a darkness to descend over you for sometime. Battles, fighting, waging war.

What I want to do to conclude this sermon is to give you some ways that can help you fight for joy. That’s actually the subtitle of one of John Piper’s books, “When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy.” Go read that book, there’s one way.

There are all kinds of means that God has provided for us to fight for and find joy in him. In our theology class that starts this Wednesday, there is one week where we talk about all the “means” there are to choose from in our fight to follow Jesus. By “means” what we are talking about are ways that God in the Bible has shown himself to work through in order to increase our satisfaction in him. There are a ton, I’ll just give you five. Reading the Bible and praying are on the top of the list but those are things you should just be doing everyday anyway, so I’m not going to mention them.

1. Preach to yourself. King David did this. In Psalm 42:5 David says, “Why are you so downcast oh my soul, put your hope in God and praise his name.” Sometimes you have to preach to yourself…you may have to get in the mirror and look at yourself and tell yourself who you are in Jesus in order to get through certain moments or days of temptation.

2. Wait in Silence. Again David says this in Psalm 62:1-2 “My soul waits in silence for God only; He only is my rock and my salvation.” There is so much noise in life…seeeming almost especially when you go to try and pray. Sometimes you just need to physically get on your knees or lay down prostrate with your face toward the floor and lay in silence and wait for God and his Spirit to fill you with his presence and power.

3. Fast from Food. In Luke 5:35 Jesus says that he expects fasting to be part of our normal life and mission as Christians, I’d say once a week a good rule of thumb. Fasting has an interesting effect on you if you are doing it for a spiritual reason and not just to get skinnier. Every time you feel hunger (yes, I mean real fasting not the wanna be kind where you fast from TV or something, fasting in the Bible is from food and drink), you think of God and the gospel and your need and desire for Him.

4. Change your geography. Several times in the gospel accounts we read about Jesus just leaving and going off by himself up on the mountain to pray and occasionally he would stay there the whole night. Sometimes you have to remove yourself from your current situation to be able to see everything from a better perspective and to be in a place where God can speak to you.

5. Talk to someone about Jesus. Philemon 6 says “I pray that you might be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” That is an amazing verse because it says that part of having a full and good life as a Christian is dependent upon us talking about Jesus. Your goal is life is not what job you will end up doing and how much money you will make but in what way you as an individual person will be able to best glorify God with your giftings and share Jesus with the people where you are using them.

Okay, so that is just a few means that you can use, there are a ton more, but those are a few…weapons you can use in the war for your soul.

Conclusion

This has been a sermon about sin, the sin which indwells us as believers making us at times conflicted when sin gets the upper hand. The answer is to seek joy in God and to wage war with our souls.

For the kids, today’s sermon is about how Jesus is so good and how he is what we need but it isn’t always easy to follow Jesus…so sometimes when you know one thing is right and you are thinking about not doing it, you have to fight with yourself…and the best ways to fight with yourself are found in the Bible. So as soon as you can you need to start reading the Bible or having your mom or dad read it to you.

For us bigger kids, I want to close with a quote from John Owen, the great puritan theologian. I have been reading one of the best books I have ever read on this subject. It has an amazing title, is called, “The Nature, Power, Deceipt and Prevalency of the Remainders of Indwelling Sin in Believers; Together with the Ways of Its Working and Means of Prevention, Opened, Encinced, and Applied: with a Resolution of Sundry Cases of Conscience Thereunto Appertaining.”

“There is a constant enemy in every one’s own heart; and what an enemy it is. (Many) live and walk as though they intended to go to heaven hood-winked and asleep, as though they had no enemy to deal withal. Many live in the dark to themselves all their days; whatever else they know, they know not themselves. They know their outward estates, how rich they are, and the condition of their bodies as to health and sickness they are careful to examine; but as to their inward man, and their principles as to God and eternity, they know little or nothing of themselves.

Indeed, few labor to grow wise in this matter, few study themselves as they ought, are acquainted with the evils of their own hearts as they ought; on which yet the whole course of their obedience, and consequently of their eternal condition, doth depend. An acquaintance with these several principles and their actings is the principal part of our wisdom. Next to the free grace of God in our justification by the blood of Christ, they are the only things wherein the glory of God and our own souls are concerned. These are the springs of our holiness and our sins, of our joys and troubles, of our refreshments and sorrows. It is, then, all our concernments to be thoroughly acquainted with these things, who intend to walk with God and to glorify him in this world.”

Let’s pray.

Listen 
.

The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved Church :: April 15th, 2007 :: Pastor Duane M. Smets

Inner Confliction and The Gospel – when sin gets the upper hand
Romans 7:13-25 (Part I)

I. The Law and Gospel Connection
II. Who’s Experience is This?
      1. The structure of Romans
      2. The plain reading
      3. 1st century Judaism
      4. Paul’s pre-conversion
      5. Honest self-assessment
      6. The Christian struggle
      7. The new master
      8. A body of death
      9. The law principle
      10. The conclusion 7:25b
      11. The apostle Peter
      12. 1 John 1:8
II. The Gospel Response
      – Theme One: True Hedonism
      – Theme Two: True War

Romans 7:13-25
13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Introduction

Good morning church. Today we embark in studying one of the most experientially vivid, honest, relevant at the same time both spiritually liberating and spiritually devastating and yet hopeful passages in the whole Bible. We are back to our study of the book Romans, which we as a church are taking a few years to carefully go through. So let’s read the text and pray.

God, without the illuminating gift of your Spirit our minds will be confused as we study this passage. Through your faithful servants you have given us the Bible to tell us about yourself, about Jesus and how he so perfectly fits the great need of our body and soul. Guard us from error today as we study. May we walk away today with a deeper understanding of the gospel and not take this passage as an excuse to let inner conflict run rampad in us and at the same time may we not leave using this passage as a warrant for freedom from struggle. Show us your glory, may your Son Jesus shine with exceeding brightness, allow us to see and be saved despite our sin and corrupt natures. Amen.

Last week was Easter and I preached a sermon about the connection between the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and the mission of Jesus Christ after he rose. I said that mission begins at resurrection and that being a Christian begins at the point where you become strongly persuaded in your mind that Jesus really is and really rose from the dead. Biblical faith begins in the mind, flows then to affections and then plays itself out in your actions, in how you live. That is slope of how God designed faith to be. So here is faith, prepare your minds for action. You are going to have to work the muscle of your mind today.

I. The Law and Gospel Connection

So first let’s catch our minds up with where we were last in Romans because it is really important for this passage. Where we were was in verses 7-12 for a month, four sermons on the connection between law and gospel. Earlier Paul had written some pretty gnarly stuff about law. Things like we need to die to it, that it arouses sinful passions and that it hold us captive. So Paul, one of the fisrt church planters, wrote verses 7-12 to defend the law and show us how it leads us to the Jesus gospel.

Through the course of a month we looked as the six different ways that Paul tries to show that there are some bad effects that result from our intereaction as humans with the law. The law being either the written commandments in the Bible or the unwritten, inner moral sense inside us as humans. So Paul writes to defend the law and to help us put it in a proper persepective. And our first verse of study today, verse 13 is really a recalling or a restatement or a summary of verses 7-12. Let me show you.

Read verse 7 with me, “What 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.” That’s verse 7. Now read verse 13, our first verse of study for today. “Did that which is good (the law), then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good (the law), in order that sin might be known shown to be sin, and the the commandment (the law) might become sinful beyond measure.”

Does it sound similar to you? Is the law sin? By no means! Did the law bring death? By no means! The law makes me know sin and thus my need for a savior. Do you guys see the connection? So Paul is really continuing the same line of thought in our passage today but in verse 14 he takes a turn and dives into this experiential illustration to continue to defend the law, show human sinfulness, and display the greatness and goodness of the gospel that cures it.

If we wanted to we could have just taken verse 13-25 and clumped them down together as a seventh reason in our Law and Gospel series dealing with verse 7-12. But we didn’t do that and here is why. The reason is because once we hit verse 14, we dive into a deep canyon. There are a ton of issues that this section of Scripture brings out. This passage, for some is a very dear passage of comfort, consolation and hope and for others it is a passage they hate and think it has no relation to being a Christian at all. In this passage we dive into a hot bed of controversy that is fueled by emotions and pain and fear and bad theology and all kinds of stuff and it’s a mess.

II. Who’s Experience is This?

So because of all that we are going to do three sermons, maybe four on it, we’ll see. So here is the big question. Here is where the lines get drawn from there things go in almost every direction. Who is this? That is the question. Who is this? All this talk about “I” and the things I want to do and don’t do. Such an intimate look at a divided conflicted person. Can this person really be a Christian and if it is, is this really Paul, the great church planter who wrote two-thirds of the entire New Testament Bible? Is he just speaking hypothetically? If it is a Christian is that what it’s like to be a Christian, when does this conflict occur, is it right before or right after if it is a Christian. You can see why things get pretty thick and intense huh?
So what are we to do? We are a group of “resolved” people who believe in Jesus and want to follow him and read and understand his Bible. What do we do when we come to a passage like this? There are two options.

One is to say, “who cares.” I just love Jesus and isn’t that enough. Controversy is bad and I don’t like getting into fights, so I just stay out of anything where there is disagreement, because how can you ever really know what side is right anyway? I just love everyone. That’s one way.
The other way is to suck it up, dive in and try and figure it out. That’s what we’re going to do. It’s going to be good times. That’s our evangelistic technique here. Invite your friends next week and say, you should come to church with me. My pastor is preaching about the inner confliction of a post-christian from the ancient letter to the romans in the seventh chapter where he defends the nomos with an existential illustration of depravity and hope in the gospel. I’m sure they’ll jump at that oppurtunity. J

So I have 12 arguments that we are going to go through. We are going to try and go through six today. But before we start let me tell you why we are working through the text this way, in the form of looking at arguments. Are all arguments bad?

No. I’ve said it before and we have to learn it. But just because there is controversy over something does not means that one position isn’t right and we cannot afford to let the things that we believe be dictated by what Satan can cause controversy over. Often times the most precious things are the things upon which controversy hovers over. And the real truth is, everything is controversy. That we believe God exists, that the Bible is true, that Jesus is God and rose from the dead, and that Jesus is the one true religion…that’s kind of controversial. J

So arguments are not bad…they are necessary. Though know this that my goal is not to make good you good arguerers. If you think you are a good arguerer your probably a conceded, arrogant jerk and people don’t like you very much. The goal is not to make us a bunch of smart people who are superior to everyone else because we know what we believe and why. No my goal is that we would strive to have an honest faith that is rooted and ground in the truth of Scripture and that some how in the way I preach I would implicitly teach you how to read you Bible. And to do that we have to deal with controversial things.

Okay, hopefully you guys are all excited now. So here we go. I’m not good at concealing what I really think so I just say it out right, actually, I think I already said it. But I am convinced that this passage is talking about a Christian, that it is the experience of Paul and all Christians alike, even sometimes, long after first becoming a Christian.

1. the structure of Romans

First reason, the structure of Romans. What a text means is not whatever it means to me in my own personal experience. The Bible is an amazing, divinely inspired book, but it is not magic. We read it just like we read any other book. And like other books the book of Romans has a beginning, middle, and end. In the first five chapters Paul made a case that all are ungodly both by our actions and our nature and that there is an eternal penalty for that, the wrath of God, but we can be spared from wrath by believing that Jesus was really God who came and as the eternal God suffered eternal wrath in our place on the cross. It’s what we call propitation.

But gospel is an easier word, gospel means good news and it is good news not only because of what it provides for us in the future but also now. So in chapter six Paul talked about the nature of grace and how it works after becoming a Christian (how it has implications for seeing Jesus as our master and as our spouse) and now in chapter seven he has been talking about the nature of the law and how it works after becoming a Christian (how we come to love the law as it protects us and leads us to Jesus).

So structure. Both chapter six and seven fall consequetively and conceptually after chapter 1-5 as part of a tightly fit argument where Paul is systematically and chronologically ordering his book about how God is glorious in saving sinners. Thus, chapter seven must be the experience of a saved believer based upon the general theme, purpose and outline of the book.

2. the plain reading

Second reason, the plain reading of the text. A general rule of thumb when reading any text of any kind is that the right way to understand and interpret it is whatever the most natural, plain, and obvious way of reading it is. I mean listen to some of this again, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am!”

I, I, I, I, me, my…it’s kind of obivious isn’t it. He uses I, me, or my forty times in this passage! In the present tense, to say that he is talking out of his own experience. He doesn’t give us any clues that he is saying anything else. He doesn’t say he is speaking hypothetically, or that he is speaking from the past before he became a Christian. He shares it as a personal illustration and to not see it as that is to reject the straight forward impression and to read a whole bunch of stuff into the grammar and words that seem to work so hard to say, “look, I know what I am talking about, here is my experience.” Now I grant it that sometimes the meaning of a certain passage may not be all that clear from the outset. But is this really one of those passages? I don’t think so. I think it takes enormous amounts of exegetical gymnastics to get anything else out of these words to make them say that this is not the inner struggle of a Christian.

3. 1st century Judaism

Third reason, a first century Jew. Let’s consider the historical and cultural background of this text. Another tool we use for correctly interpreting the Bible. For the sake of argument, let’s say that this is a first century Jew living in Palestine. Is this the way they would talk about their law? “I joyfull concur with the law of God in my inner man”?

Here is what we know about 1st century Judaism and the law. The law was everything…you have three main schools of thought about the law, the pharisees, the sadducees, and the zealots. And all three groups were meticulous in keep every point of the law to a perfect “t.” Would such a person, with a total committment of outward perfection for their righteousness say as verse 21 does “I delight in the law of God in my inner being”? I don’t think so. The law was not an internal issue for them. I think I can show you this.
4. Paul’s pre-conversion

Let’s go to our forth reason and look at passages in the Bible where we get pictures of Paul, as a 1st century Jew, before his conversion. Two passages, Galatians 1 and Philippians 3. You can read along with me if you like.

Galatians 1:13-14 “For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism (so real clear here, we’ve got pre-Chrisitian Paul), how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and treid to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond my countrymen (sound like a little competition, outward perfection), being more extremely zealous for my ancesteral traditions.”

That’s one picture. Here’s the other.

Philippians 3:4-6 “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless.”

So first, does a pre-Chrisitan Jew in the first century “delight in the law of God in their inner man.” I don’t think so…that sounds much more like a joy of a believer in Jesus who sees Christ as the fulfillment of the law and all it’s requirements.

But here is the even bigger issue. In those two passages we read, did you hear the sound of any struggle. Those who say that this passage of Scripture is a person before they become a Christian say it has to be because someone who really knows Jesus shouldn’t talk like this right? So struggle is before. But did you hear struggle? I didn’t. It doesn’t sound like there was any conflict of conscience at all. The law was something Paul boasted about and was proud of. He was the very opposite of this divided and sometimes tormented man we read about in our passage today. So my fourth reason for saying this is a Christian is because before Paul became a follower Christ he had no internal struggle, just competition for perfection, trying to earn favor with God by doing all the right things.

5. honest self-assessment

Fifth reason, an honest self-assessment. It seems to me that Paul here in our passage today, is wrestling with himself, and that the reason he wrestles is because the Holy Spirit has done a huge work in his heart, so that in verse 18 he can honestly admit, “I know nothing good dwells in me, in my flesh.”

People who do not follow Jesus and sadly, and many who claim they do, do not speak like this. Everybody thinks they are a good person. Everyone. No one thinks they are bad and that they have ever really done anything wrong that is deserving of damnation. God is love so he should just sweep it under the rug and hopefully see that though sometimes I do bad things I’m still a good person, right? One who truly knows God and looks into the mirror of God’s law sees how pitiful and depraved they are. That is the confession of a Christian. I am a sinner and I need a savior. I have nothing on my own. There is nothing good in me. How do you see yourself? As good, doing alright? Or daily in desperate need of Christ?

Such a confession is the opposite of a self-confident self-righteous Pharisee that Paul was before he began serving Jesus. It is interesting that he adds this qualifier, “in my flesh.” If you were around when we started chapter seven we talked about this concept, “the flesh.” The flesh is the evil way in us, the contamination and depravity that has effected every part of who we are. But notice he, says “nothing good dwells in me,” and then adds, “that is, in my flesh.” That is because the Bible teaches that when you come to believe in Jesus work on the cross for you that his Spriti comes to reside in you and you get a new nature, the Spirit of God nature. That is where we are going in Romans 8, the new life in the Spirit. So what happens is the Christian ends up with two natures, the flesh and the spirit. And they are in conflict.

6. the Christian struggle

That leads us to the sixth and final reason for today, the Christian struggle. Galatians 5:17 says this, and this is a passage that there is not any debate about, everyone agrees that in Galatians Paul is talking about the experience of a Christian…listen, “The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

Interesting huh? Does that sound familiar? Flesh, oppostion, not doing the things you want to do? He uses a lot of the very same vocabularly and almost some of the same exact phrases there in Galatians that he does here in Romans 7. And there it is clear he is teaching that there is struggle in the life of a believer. So my sixth point here is that it seems very clear that in Paul’s overrall theology that he believes the Christian, after becoming a Christian, will have times when there is intense spiritual struggle.

We know this is true. Yes, sometimes people may feel bad about hurting someone’s feelings, or cheating their work out of time or money, or whatever it may be. But there is not an intense spiritual struggle and conviction and sorry toward God like we have here in Romans 7. A desire to please God and yet willful disobedience. A non-Christian does not struggle like that. They do what they want and do whatever they want and do their best to keep their faults covered up. They do not feel the weight of indwelling sin because they are dead in sin and not yet resurrected to new life in Jesus. Some have said it is having a 1-ton weight fall on a dead body, it feels nothing. But in the life of a Christian…oh how you feel the weight.

III. The Gospel Response
- theme one: true hedonism

Okay, so that is six reasons why I think this passage is talking about Paul’s life and ours as well, after becoming a Chrisitan. And maybe you are like big deal. What is the difference? Sure Duane, you made some good arguments but really does it really matter what I think about this passage. What is the point and if you are right, that kinda sucks, because who wants to be a Christian anyway if it just means signing up for a lot of inner turmoil?

Here is my answer. Actually there are really three answers I think, maybe more. But I am going to give one each week, one for each sermon. My first answer, the one for this week, is true hedonism.

Let me explain. The truth is that I have probably spent more time in my life studying this passage than any other passage of Scripture over the course of years. I have wrestled with this passage a lot. It was hard to dive back into it this week, because I knew what I was getting myself into. Maybe that is part of the reason we detoured for awhile and its taken so long to get here.

But here is the main reason I was not excited about preaching on this text…The main reason is because the picture here is of a very confused, frustrated, and emotionally wrecked person. And I am trying with all my might to try and help bring us as a church to maturity and stability and I’m afraid that you will take what I have said today and what we have studied and think that it is okay and that the normal way of the Christian life is being lost in a myriad of spiritual depression and confliction. And the result is that whenever we get together it is just a big complaining fest where we lick our wounds together and then pray some hopeless prayer.

Here is the thing, that is not the gospel and that is not the point of this text. If you only look at these twelve verses and you don’t look very close, yes that is where you will end up. But there is a whole bunch of other stuff in this book of Romans that surrounds this passage and in the whole rest of the Bible there is a ton of a stuff that says this is not the normal way of the Christian life, that is not what it is about, it is about the kingdom of God where there is peace, joy, and love…that is the gospel. The infinitely great satisfaction in knowing Jesus and walking through life with him.

So let’s think about this text…think about it with me. What is the point? Why is he wrestling so here? What is the goal? What does he want? Is it not joy and happiness? Verse 24-25, who will deliver me? Thank God for Jesus! Do you see that?

The reason why anyone struggles, why anyone is ever confused, why anyone ever feels down and feels inner turmoil is because they want to be happy and they are not and they are trying to figure out a way to get there. That’s why the theme we are focusing on this week is true hedonism. And it’s here in the text too. “I delight in God…but…I am conflicted because of sin.” I want to be happy, how do I get there, what is the pathway, who will deliver? Verse 25 “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

So, I believe this text is a vivid portral of the Christian orientation to long for, look to, and seek after joy in God through Jesus. That is why I say this week’s gospel response is true hedonism. Hedonism is a word that means life is about pleasure, about making yourself happy. And the gospel is something that says putting your faith in Jesus does not mean that you will never struggle, but you will find deep, immense, and true joy because it is fixed in the ever increasing joy of the glory of God. Christianity is a future oriented faith and it is an honest faith. Honest about life and it’s hardships and our human faults and about our desire for true and deep and lasting joy.

If you look at my sermon title for this series, it is “Inner Confliction and the Gospel” but I have a subtitle too, it says, “when sin gets the upper hand.” I have that subtitle because I believe what we are seeing here is the picture of a person’s experience when they recently blown it, have broken God’s law and are either toward the end of coming out of it when they are just starting to deal with it all or they are looking back on the what happened shortly after they have repented and have gotten back up on their feet and are following Christ. I don’t think we are looking at a normal everyday Christian experience, but rather an incident or a season of real, hard, gospel growth in the soul.

Conclusion

Okay, so what does this all mean for us? How do we apply this text? If this text really is relevant to the experience of a person after becoming a Christian what does that mean for us?

One, it means do not be surprised when you fail and it gets hard. If you are a new Christian, God often times will grant a season in the newness of your faith where it is fairly easy to follow Jesus and everything is new, you feel that born againness Jesus talked about, God’s spirit is working in you, and you are perceiving the glory of God shining all around you. That is good. Those are special times. Relish in it. Suck up the joy of the gospel in your soul for all its worth. Treasure this time and document it in your heart. Just know this. A time will come when you will struggle, and so when you struggle, don’t bail. There are categories God has given us for understanding this. It is Romans 7. It is flesh and spirit battle and conflicted wants. And the way out is Jesus.

Second, it means, if you are in the struggle right now. Know you are not alone. Some of the most godly men who have walked the face of this earth have had deep, intense bouts with sin. This is one person right here, the great apostle Paul, broken and at odds with himself. Many of my heroes have walked this path. The great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, often had intense bouts with depression. John Owen, one of the great puritan theologians. For two years he could barely speak he was so weighted with the reality of his sinfulness, and then he came out of it, ever conscious of his depravity but with a new found faith and vigor for the gospel and he became a pastor, a professor, and one of the greatest theologians we have ever known.
Know this too if you are stuggling right now, there are people here in this room that are struggling too. You are not alone. Find someone you can talk to. Whether it is through the mid-week small group, or if it is through inviting someone out to lunch or whatever. We can spur each other on in the faith.

Third, with all the tenderness and love that I can muster, I say this…just repent. Almost every we are struggling and we start talking about it, we start talking about what happened to us. So we deem our struggle not to be our own fault in any way. It was either this person or that person or this circumstance or that. But here is the thing. We rarely see our own fault. We don’t like to. It is a lot easier to be the victim. But every spiritual struggle is a struggle with sin. Humble yourself. Admit to God your failings and your faults. Embrace Christ. Receive his grace. Being a Christian does not mean we are free of our sinfulness it just means that we have a Jesus who is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all our unrighteousness when we confess it to him (1 John 1:9).

Lastly, for the kids. The Bible says here that sometimes you know what you should do because your mom or your dad told you so, then you go ahead and do what you know they don’t want you to anyway. That is because there is something called sin inside you and the only way to be happy and not feel all crudy, like you do after you disobey, is by receiving Jesus. He was punished for you so that your punishment from mom and dad won’t be so bad. Jesus loves you and one day will get rid of the sin inside you forever and ever if you trust and follow him with your whole heart.

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  Listen       Read        Romans 7:7-12  |  Part 1
  Listen       Read        Romans 7:7-12  |  Part 2
  Listen       Read        Romans 7:7-12  |  Part 3
  Listen       Read        Romans 7:7-12  |  Part 4

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:: The Resolved Church :: March 17, 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.

“The (Ten)der Commandments”
Law and Gospel – Part IV
Romans 7:12

Introduction

Good morning. Welcome to The Resolved Church. If you are new with us this is the part of our service where we take this book seriously and together strive to learn it and live by it. Last week my friend Philip was her and he preached an amazing sermon about the prodigal son and the love of The Father, the God we worship. It worked out kind of well because we have been in this series studying this little chunk of Scripture, Romans 7:7-12, which is all about law and gospel. And why it works out good is because we have one last verse, verse 12 to deal with, which is all about God the Father (I’ll show you how in a minute).

Paul, the author of Romans presents it as his 7th reason why the law isn’t bad. And as we have learned in our other three sermons, “law” here can mean either the internal moral law, that inner sense of right and wrong in all humans, or it can mean more specifically the 10 Jewish commandments which is core of their sacred Jewish Torah. The really striking thing is that these 10 commandments almost identically line up with the commandments we find inside ourselves in this inner sense of right and wrong.

So today I have a few goals or things I want to do. The first thing is to show you why I think verse 12 is really talking about the being of God. The second thing is to run through these 10 commandments and see how they reflect God. And then the third thing is to show how they lead us to the gospel of Jesus Christ…which is what this is really all about, that law leads us to Christ. That was the main point of my sermon two weeks ago, law is our schoolmaster to teach us Christ. The main point of Philip’s sermon last week was that the Father loves us. And the main point of this sermon today is that these two things are the same, the Father loves us by giving us the law so that we will find the great joy of knowing and living for Christ.

Verse 12 is About God

Let’s read our text so that we know the thought flow going on here and to remind ourselves that it is Scripture driving us and not just clever sermons. (Read vs.7-12 and re-read vs.12 at the end) It is interesting that verse 12 at least from the outset doesn’t even look like a reason. It just sort of looks like a statement. If the charge is that the law is bad and Paul is saying no its good and here’s why…simply just saying the law is good isn’t a reason, that’s the question that’s on the table, whether it is good or not because a whole lot of bad seems to come from it…if there was no law then people wouldn’t break it and there wouldn’t be sin and we wouldn’t be so confused and miserable, so why have the law, it seems bad.

But verse 12 is a reason if we recognize Paul’s literary geniusness. I think the thing that will help us best see it is by going to a passage in the gospel of Luke (18-18-22), where this young, loaded, corporate exec. in an Armani suit, driving his M3 rolls up to Jesus and says, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus, rather than answering his question right aways says something interesting…he says, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Interesting. So first Jesus recognizes God as the source of all goodness, what is right and true and just. Then Jesus says this, “You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not (lie), Honor your father and mother.” And the guy responds…“All these I have kept from my youth.” Cocky jerk know it all. J Then Jesus, probably with a half smirking and half with a sad face says, “One thing you still lock. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.”

You see the guy got the letter of the law and thought he could earn his way by doing everything just right, the same way he got ahead in every other part of his life. But he missed the heart of the law…treasuring God. He missed that the law is about the being of God, about his pure and utter goodness…about God’s holy righteousness.

I think Paul is saying the same thing in Romans 7:12. I think he is saying that the law is not bad because it is a reflection of who God is…that it emanates out of God’s very being. “The law is holy, and righteous and good” because it comes from God! Goodness is not some abrstract reality that God ascribes to or follows. If it was then wherever that came from is God and is what we should be worshipping.

But maybe that isn’t super clear to us right from the outset. And on top of it all…we’ve reference the law a lot as we’ve been studying this passage over the last few weeks but we haven’t really talked much about each of the specific commandments. So what I want to do is go back into the Old Testament, into the Hebrew Bible and look at the Ten Commandments one by one in hopes that by doing so we will better see how they reflect God and his love for us and how great a treasure the gospel of Jesus is.

The Ten Commandments Reflect God

Let’s begin in Exodus 19. Exodus 19 is the chapter right before God gives the ten commandments. Before he gives them he gives this speech. I’m not going to read the whole thing but I’ll read just the beginning starting in verse 4. “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians (that’s where Israel was in slavery against their will for 430 years), and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mind and you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex. 19:4-6).” What happens after that is some narrative description about how Moses goes up on Mt. Sinai and how God envelopes the mountain in fire and inscribes the ten commandments on tablets of stone and then beginning with Ex.20 we read the commandments.

But before we read them, I just want us to notice the context we just overviewed…because the context is a very fatherly context. Did you hear it in those words I read a second ago? “How I bore you on eagles wings and brought you to myself…you will be my treasured possession.” Do you hear the voice of a tender and loving heavenly father? God swoops down, like an eagle to rescue us and then says “look father knows best” and gives some commandments. We have to recognize that because a lot of us may have had horrible earthly fathers and on top of that we don’t even like the word “commandment.” It just tastes bad and you want to spit it out. But that is not what these ten commandments are. Rather than rigid rules they are compassion and concern, rather than rejection and refusal they acceptance and affection.

I titled my sermon “The Ten(der) Commandments” to emphasize the goodness of God, our heavenly father, that we see reflected in his instructions. I have to give credit to a man named Ron Mehl for the title and for much of the content of this sermon. I knew Ron Mehl since I was a young boy, he was a Pastor of a church in Oregon and was friends with my parents and he actually paid for a good portion of my second theology degree. He died 2003 of Luekemia and five years before his death he wrote a book titled, “The Ten(der) Commandments.” So a lot of today’s content comes from some things I’ve gleaned from him and that book.

Now we could spend the next 3 months if we wanted to studying each of these ten commandments in depth but we’re not going to do that, we’re just going to run through each of them today and hopefully catch a glimmer of God’s beauty and wonder and glory that is woven through their eternal character.

So, first commandment. “You shall have no other gods before me.” Is this the harsh statement of some insecure being trying to convince us that he is better than the next guy? I don’t think so. Remember the context, who God has shown himself to be. He is the all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing, everywhere present Creator who brings life and beauty and meaning to everything. When God says, “have no other gods before me” he is telling us not to put any person, object, tast, duty, pleasure, priority, or affection in front of him because nothing else can satisfy because He is the all-satisifying being of the universe.

Just as in a marriage, the beginning point is a covenant between two people that they will be devoted to each other only. When I married Amy I was making a commitment that I would have no other women before her but would devote my life to putting her first.

When it comes to God, this first commandment is the hardest thing about being a Christian…staying close to Christ and keeping him first. Recognizing that needing him and living for him is what builds a happy satisfied life…keeping him first and not letting anything else get in the way. We know this in our hearts deep down…that there is only one true God and that we should worship him and him only.

Second Commandment. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them for I the LORD your God am a jealous God.” Now is this just some archaic and outdated directive that only applied for people back then or people in various eastern and animistic cultures since we in America don’t carve images and worship them?

I don’t think so. Images matter a lot. In every culture and especially in our culture. This show on TV “America’s Next Top Model” is amazing. There’s like 12 girls or something. None of them have eaten for like months and they all have boob jobs. They’ve got long hair, short hair, red hair, fro hair, or extensions. They are truly artists with their make-up, boots, shirts, jeans, ear rings, every article of clothing carefully accentuated…I mean it, they are super talented in how they are able to make themselves look and pose and everything, it’s incredible. J Now I’m not trying to bag on it. I think they’re all incredible hot, though none of them are as beautiful as my wife. J

I’m not so sure that it is terribly bad to want to express yourself in some way by how you dress.
But you can’t tell me that image doesn’t matter to us. And it matters to God to because he is Spirit and is the most beautiful being that we can ever conceive. That’s why we’re to worship him. You see we become like what we worship, what we value most. You can try other things but in time will discover they are worthless and make you feel drained of value. That is because the image of God is where all worth and value lies. What he thinks of you and not anyone else.

In Romans chapter 8, which we’ll begin studying in a couple months says that the point of the gospel is to mold us to the image of Christ. Jesus is the exact representation of God and we have all effaced his image in us and Christ restores beauty and meaning and life to us who have become unwanted, lost and confused.

Third Commandment. “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.” Names matter a lot huh? If I say Kanye West…you get a picture in your mind and a whole slew of things about him that come along with that picture right? Like hip hop, money, music…that are all connected to his name. Or if I say Angelina Jolie…same thing, you get a picture in your mind along with all these things you know about her right? She’s a movie star, hooked up with Brad Pitt, adopts kids from Vietnam. So names matter right because they represent who a person is.

And God is a person. So what do you think of when you hear his name? God. What comes to mind? If God is the most meaningful person in all of existence and is the source of everything that is good, true and right and loving then that name is a pretty holy name. We should rightly feel a sense of reverence and fear and respect at the name of God and not use it lightly. That makes sense if there really is a God…that we shouldn’t take his name in vain, especially when he expresses such tender loving care for us…constantly enabling the world to go around and providing food and rain and sunshine.

I find it interesting that God and Jesus Christ are the only ones who ever get cursed. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Ah Buddha!” “Mohommed Damnit!” “Hare Krishna!” I think that is because God, the one true God is fixed in our hearts and we know he is real deep down and we know he hears and we want him to know when we are mad, hurt, or frustrated. But there is a better way to do that then cursing him, it’s called prayer.

Acts 4:12 says that Jesus is “the only name given under heaven whereby a man can be saved” and Philippians 2:9-10 says that “God has exalted (Jesus) and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father.”

Fourth Commandment. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.” God, our good heavenly Father, knows what we need…he knows we need rest…he knows we need rest in him.

Everything in God’s creation needs rest, even dirt. Ron Mehl in his book talks about dirt, he says, “Farmers don’t plant the same things in the same fields year after year. They may plant corn one year, but the next year they’ll plant beans on the same parcel of ground. Why? Because the corn will take certain nutrients out of the soil, and the beans whill put ‘em back in. If a farmer can afford it, he will let whole tracts of ground lie fallow for a year or more and not plant anything because the land benefits from rest. After a year or two of lying easy under win and rain, snow and sun, it yields a greater, more bountiful crop.”

If dirt needs rest, how much more do we. God knows that he is the source of true rest. He knows we need a day to go and seek him and worship him…a holy day. A sunday. A day to enjoy his creation and a day to enjoy the study of His Word together with his people. Rest comes in two forms, as play and as worship. We need a chance to get away from our everyday life and we need a chance once a week to go worship God with his people. That’s why Hebrews 4:9 & 10:25 after talking about the eternal rest Christ provided for on the cross says that “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God…(so) let us not neglect[ing] to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encourage[ing] one another…”

Rest is us knowing that God is working for us…that it isn’t luck, how much we are determined or how hard we work but it is God, who works in us to will and to do his good pleasure. I’ll just throw this in here too…there’s an implied command here also for the lazy ones, who are all play and no work. You’re just “resting” all the time, working on your beer belly and video game skills. The command here is get a job dummy.

Fifth commandment. “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” This is a tough one. Right in the middle of the ten commands. And this command has a promise in it, a desire of the loving heavenly father for us…that our life will be well and long.

Last week Philip talked about how our picture of God the Father often has a lot to do with what kind of earthly father we have had in life. And it is a hard question to answer if we ask, why should I honor my father or my mother, especially if they were not there or if they mistreated us in some way, which has left us hurt, dejected, and angry? We long for loving parents. We long for a perfect father, like God.

But there is no exceptions in this commandment is there? It doesn’t say that we only honor good parents does it? I believe the reason is because God knows that how we respond to our family history has a big effect on our life, either good or bad and God wants to protect us from destructive attitudes, patterns and behaviors and the way that happens is by honoring our father and mother, regardless of whether or not they were there and were loving.

That is hard, especially hard for some. How do you even begin to do that? By coming to know the heavenly Father and finding his forgiveness for the ones who have wronged us and by coming to know his love for us which we extend toward them. That’s not easy. The innocent party always pays more emotionally and volitionally. But that creates a better life. And how do we come to know the heavenly Father? By embracing Christ in your life.

Jesus prayers a long prayer right before he goes to be arrested and crucified and he at the end of his prayer he says this, “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them (John 17:25-26).”

Sixth commandment. “You shall not murder.” It is amazing how easy it is to become numb to murder. It is everywhere all around us but we are mostly unaffected. Every single time the news is on there is a report of some new killing and every other TV reality show or day show seems to be people getting angry and violent toward each other. Killing has become cool and even fun. Microsoft is coming out with Halo 3 soon which is going to be the most expensive video game ever sold. It will cost $130 to buy so that you can go around shooting other people while you talk to them live over the internet.

This commandment gets at the heart of God which is love because the murder comes from anger which breeds hate and if it is not dealt with, it results in violence. Why do we get angry? Usually because we have been hurt and we want to hurt back.

God teaches us the hardest lesson of all when Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe, hung on a cross…murdered and chose not to retaliate, though he said he could call a whole legion of angels to his side to strike back. God is a long-suffering God. Not an unjust God but a God who wants us to learn that His lovingkindness is better.

Seventh commandment. “You shall not commit adultery.” This commandment is about sex but it is also about more than sex. God is all about sex. He made sex. God designed human to enjoy having sex in all kinds of ways, he enabled us to make babies through it, and to protect each other spiritually with it. It reflects the intimacy God intends for there to be in a covenant relationship between two persons.

And sex doesn’t work when it is not within marriage, period. Whether your having sex with with a TV screen, a picture in your mind, or someone physically in your bed who is not your husband or wife…it will not turn out well for you. Sex is not bad…some couples are having sex enough. And some of you may be having sex and you shouldn’t and that is because you are immature and you need to grow up. Immaturity always wants what it wants when it wants it and will not wait. And God knows that if we do not follow his plan and his design in this area it will mess us up good.

There would never be any divorce or any single parents if we as a people got a hold of the huge significance of this command and what is best for us as humans. Adultery is not compatibliity and marriage does not end when love does. There is something eternal going on with sex and the relationship of a husband and a wife.

Now that’s intense. I know. I mean to be…because there perhaps nothing so flagerantly a foul in our cutlure right now than this…and I am on a mission to try and make some people happy. You guys don’t know how much my heart breaks when I hear about you guys sleeping with people you’re not married to. I hate it…it is so gut wrenching.

But praise God for the gospel, because in Jesus there is forgiveness and there is acceptance and love. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” So embrace Christ, be loved by the heavenly father, and make a change about how you are going to live your life and who you are going to live it for…Christ or for someone who cannot and will not really love you because they don’t know or live for him.

Eighth commandment. “You shall not steal.” I’ve never played it but for awhile I kept hearing all this stuff about this video game called “Grand Theft Auto” where the goal is to go around and steal cars, money, and women. I’ve got to be honest…the idea of stealing a car sounds so fun. It’s right up there with my dream of robbing a bank just for the fun of it. To steal a car and then get runned down by the cops trying to get away. It just looks so fun.

I tried to steal a Nirvana CD when I was in high school. All my friends were stealing stuff all the time, so my first time I tried steal this Nirvana CD from Walmart. Back then they had these huge plastic things on the CD’s with things in them that set off the detectors you walk through when you go out the store. So I thought I was smart and took the CD to the hardware department and cut the thing off with some big ole’ metal snips. I put the CD in my pocket and just to be sure I went throught the check out line and bought a snickers. As I was about to walk out the door this guy grabs my arm, he has the plastic CD case in his hand, he asks for the CD and tells me to leave and never come back. J

So what is up with stealing. I think we mainly have a desire to steal for a few reasons…because we don’t have what we think we need or want, we want instant happiness, and we want status or to impress other people. And this relates to God in a big way because he is our provider…he has made the earth in such a way that we can grow and make and obtain food and clothes…and knowing Him is what makes a person happy long-term. God knows that possession cannot give us peace. That money cannot buy the measure of satisfaction we long for.

That’s why I worry sometimes about some of you college kids, because you just want to get your degree so you can get a job that is going to make you a lot of money so that you can buy a lot of things, thinking that hen you will be happy. And it simply isn’t true. The most important thing for you to do is to figure out what God wants you to do because only when you are doing that will you be happy.

Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Because life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.” Why do we get anxious or worried about these things? I think the reason is we are afraid we will loose some pleasures, some praise from people, or we are afraid about the well-being of our physical life.

John Piper says this, “We ought not to be anxious about food and clothing because food and clothing cannot provide the great things of life – the enjoyment of God, the pursuit of his gracious favor, the hope of eternity in his presence. We get anxious about food and clothing to the same degree that we lose sight of the great purposes of a God-centered life.” Jesus said, “I have come that (you) may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).”

Ninth commandment. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” That means don’t lie. Words are so powerful. Dishonesty breeds discontent. Words cut deep. Words shape lives. From a husband to a spouse, from a parent to a child, from a teacher to a student, from a friend to a friend. Words can either build up or tear down and can in an instant bring a whole house crashing down. It is something we know too well, lies make more lies which make more lies. And in the end there is nothing good.

This commandment reflects the truth of God in an amazing way. There is so much out there today when it comes to God and religion. Everybody seems to have there own idea. And into this world of confusion and doubt God speaks and gives us His Word. God doesn’t intend for us to be broken and hurt and misunderstood and baffled by him. God is source of all truth and commands for us to tell the truth because he is not a God of deception but of perfection. And knowing him and his word of truth is what brings confidence and assurance into ones life. Without truth there will always be fear and hesistation.

In regards to this commandment Jesus comes to us and says “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me (John 14:6).” And for those struggling to find what is true he says, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free (John 8:31-32).”

Lastly, the tenth commandment. “You shall not covet.” We talked about this a bunch when we first started this series on “Law and Gospel” because Paul referenced this commandment as his first reason for why the law isn’t bad back in verse 7 of Romans 7. The heart of this commandment is desire, our affections. Coveting is to have a strong desire to posses something that belongs to somebody else. Coveting is a an affection, a want, a desire…and so this command deals with the desire of our hearts as oppossed to exterenal behavior.

This concludes and connects all the other commandments because they all assume desires behind them. You steal because you desire to have something that you can’t afford. You commit adultery because you desire to have sex with someone who is not your wife or because you don’t want to wait for marriage. Coveting relates directly to the desires and is behind every one of the commandments.

And on top of it all coveting brings everything back to the issue of God because coveting says my desires, not God’s, my desires are the measure of right and wrong, what is good and bad and true and false. Coveting says says my will and desires are the standard, what I want things to be. And what is that but the desire to be our own God. It is the root of rebellion and the commitment to be our own god to ourself, where we are the final authority in our life. Where what we decide is what happens. Where i am god. And is nothing other than a violation of the first commandment starts out by God saying “You shall have no other gods before me (Ex. 20:3).” That is why Jesus said all the commandments are summed up in this one phrase, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Mt 10:37).”

The Commandments to the Gospel

That’s the ten commandments driving by them at about 80 miles an hour. Maybe you feel a little drained after that. It’s a lot. It’s heavy. And as heavy as it is it is also hopeful. These commandments are truly the tender loving care of our heavenly father who knows us best and knows what we need. And these commandments lead us to the glory of Christ. They make him shine because as these commandments are a reflection of God himself, they are a reflection of Christ.

Colossions 1:15-20 says “(Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of the cross.”

This is the conclusion of Romans 7:7-12 on “Law and Gospel.” The law leads us to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is that Jesus, the God-man, came to earth, died an eternal death to God’s wrath in our place because we have all broken these commandments time and time again and it’s a great offense to the love of our heavenly father. So Jesus died for us and rose again and lives today as the victorious king over all and is spreading the message of his kingdom through us until the day he returns in all his power and might.

And that is what we are about here at The Resolved Church…spreading the message of the kingdom of Christ. I was careful as I went through each of the commandents to show you how each of them reflected the character of God, and how each commandment is something that is discernable in our own hearts regardless of whether we read it in this book or not, and then I was also careful to show you how each commandment pointed to Christ and how Jesus fulfills each commandment.

But there was one thing I left out and that was any reference to community. Yes, these commands are for us individually but they are also for us together. They are given so that we might create a way of life together that reflects God as our treasure as we grow and build in love. You see you can’t live life together with people if you are lying to each other, sleeping around, and being angry with each other all the time. It doesn’t work and one of the many beautiful facets of the gospel is that it changes us into being a certain type of people…the kind that really and truly care for eachother.

That’s what I want The Resolved Church to be. A movement in this city which lives a different way of life because of who we treasure, Christ together. We are trying to build a city within this city, so that others will see our joy and satisfaction and truth by how we live and love and then be drawn in through the gates in that we build through all kinds of creative means. Our heart is to beat with mission because we know that this city’s heart is dying because it does not have Christ as its treasure. So join in as we join Christ and His (ten)der commandments. Let’s pray.

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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.

Listen 
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:: The Resolved Church :: February 25, 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 II”
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

Let’s begin in prayer: God, trying to navigate this life seems like a terrible mess, especially when we try to add religion into all that. And God I am asking that we would not only be able to really figure some things out about you for ourselves, which seems like an impossible task in itself, but I am also asking that you would fill us with passion and creativity to figure out how to spread the true message of your Son Jesus in a place that is filled with misunderstandings, mistreatments, and misuses of your Word. May how we deal with your Bible today be pleasing to you, may the attitude of our hearts be pleasing as we seek you in these moments, may today count for your kingdom and your glory I pray. Amen

The Charge: Law is Bad

The charge: law is bad. Same first point as last week, this is week 2 of a three part sermons series dealing with law and gospel from Romans 7:7-12. First let me bring us to speed, which means reminding us where we’re at and catcing some other up.

Paul is on a mission to show us the glory of Christ. The glorious thing he showed us in the first five chapters is the God is beautiful and His world is beautiful and that we as human beings have made a mess of it and are really messed up inside and Christ died and rose and that changes everything and now through faith, belief in Christ alone, things can change for us, really change…we can know God, be declared not guilty on the basis of Christ work on the cross, and we can be part of his coming kingdom when all the rest of the world will be re-born. That was the first five chapters.

But that message, that gospel, creates some problems. And so in chapter six he dealt with the problem of grace, how if we really believe all that stuff we have a tendency to just do whatever we want because God loves us so much and saves us no matter what we do. Now in chapter 7 he’s dealing with another side of that coin, the law…What God demands from us. Paul told us that law can’t save us or fix us and that because there is law, we break it and our sinful passion runs wild, we can’t escape it, we just seem to perpetually screw up, it’s like we’re held “captive” to it and so what we need is a whole new way of life and that is life in the Spirit following Jesus.

So here is where we are at, because Paul said all that, he anticipates a response. He’s writing to Jews and Greeks who both love their laws, and he said all this gnarly stuff about law and so he knows what his readers are going to say, what they are probably thinking…”Dude, are you saying the law is bad? Are you crazy? Lay off the drugs Paul.” And so Paul answers. Let’s read the text (read text).

The charge is that law is bad and Paul gives seven reasons why it’s not. Last week we looked at the first three. He said, no law just uncovers or exposes this bad thing inside of us called sin, then he used coveting as an example for how sin takes a law, like “don’t covet” and rather than being happy or satisfied in God, rather than love God and his creation, we want all kinds of other things, which leads to outward actions where we end up breaking more and more laws. That was the second reason, and the third reason was that word, “opportunity” which means a military base of operation. And we talked about how sin either takes the law as an opportunity for us to be self-indulgent, where we say “hell with it, I can’t keep all these commandments so screw it I might as well just live my life and have fun.” Or, if it doesn’t do that, sin takes the law as opportunity to be self-righteous where we say “I can do it, if I just work really hard.” And then you think you are great for doing it and you love to let everyone know it.

So that was his first three reasons or defenses and that bring us up to speed to this moring where we’re looking at the next reason which has three parts to it. Sorry, if that felt like a lot of review. That’s one of the reasons why we all need to be here each week, because God intends for us to study His word together and when you study it right each week builds on the week before. I’m not trying to be lame in mentioning it…I’m just trying to jab at you a little. J

It’s okay to miss every once in awhile, especially if you are sick or have to be out town or something…that why we record these sermons and put them on itunes, so you can download them and listen so you’re ready for the next week. Don’t worry, we don’t take attendance and I don’t keep some sort of checklist in my head if you are here or not. I’m not that OCD. J But I am driven, I am after this thing in this city, I’m giving my life to it and I need you guys, and right now at the size we’re at, this Sunday morning service is the main regular thing we got going on.

Okay, enough of that, now that I made everyone mad at me again. Let’s look at these next three reasons.

Sin’s Life and Our Death
a. a metaphor and wordplay

Reason number four, sin’s life and our death. Look at verse 8, in the middle of it…For sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an oppurtunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.” Sin came alive, I died, life proved death to me, and it killed me. Death, death, and killing. Fun stuff.

So check it out…what we got going on is a word play and a metaphor here. Sin came alive…so he almost gives sin this sort of personality…like it is this sleeping dog or something lying dormant or dead inside each one us, until it is awakened by law, by commands. But here is the word play, sin comes alive in his life, by either that self-indugent or self-righteous abuse of the law, and what happens is that he dies. So he’s not talking about physical death here…a different kind of death. He’s using death as a metaphor for what happens to him spiritually…because of the law, sin springs to life and it kills him. Inside, death and darkness fills him and his spirit is crushed.

Do you see it? Do you follow what he is saying? Maybe, you are like…“well, yeah, I get the logic of it but what does that mean experientially? How does that happen? What does that look like in a person’s life to die spiritually when sin comes alive?

Keep that thought, that question in your head…We’ll talk about it a little more directly in a moment but first maybe we can get some clues from Paul’s life, because he uses the words “I” and “me” here a bunch right? “I died.” “Death to me.” “Deceived me.” Now this is going to become a really big deal when get to verse 13-25 and I’ll preach a whole sermon asking who the “I” is in those verses. So I don’t want to get ahead of myself here because it is really better to talk about that then because of what is in those verses. But it does have some bearing on how we understand what it means for us to die spiritually when sin comes alive from hearing the law. Here’e the deal, some people say it doesn’t refer to Paul’s life at all, and then of those people who say it does refer to Paul’s life argue about when or what part of his life.

Sin’s Life and Our Death
b. Paul’s Story

Maybe Paul is doing something weird with his use of “I” and “me.” We’ll talk about what that could be but first, let’s just assume he is talking about his own personal life, I mean we have to at least consider it right…because it sure sound like he is talking about himself and there would have to be a lot of overwhelming evidence to show us that he isn’t. So let’s consider his life and see if it fits at all (story taken from Philippians 3:4-7, Acts 7, 9).

Paul, his name wasn’t always Paul, it used to be Saul…that’s what his parents named him. His family was of the tribe of Benjamin. Saul, was the name of the first king of Israel, he was from the tribe of Benjamin too. His family was devoted. They made sure Saul was circumcised on the 8th day and from that day on began to groom him in Judaism…training him up as a Jewish lawyer, a Pharisee. There is no doubt, Saul had the first five books of the Bible memorized in Hebrew, word for word by the time he was thirteen. He was an expert. He studied under the well known rabbi Gamaliel and was a prize student. And not only that, he wasn’t a stuffed up academic, but he was passionate…he was one who they said had zeal. He loved the Jewish law, and the Jewish system…he followed it perfectly, blameless.

On the sabbath day, they were not supposed to take more than one-hundred steps. Saul always counted. And he was passionate about the Jewish law taking back its rightful place in the political government and didn’t want anything to stand in the way of that. So he hears about this guy Jesus and this new religion called Christianity, so he sets out to destroy it. In the passionate dedication to the law, he stands by and has a guy named Stephen killed for saying Jesus fulfilled the law. After that he’s on a trip to Damascus, to go snuff out more of this Christian crap and have some people arrested but then something happens.

On his way to Damascus, all of the sudden there is this bright light that shines down out of heaven, leaving him blind for three days…and in that moment when this blinding light falls down all around him and he goes blind, he hears a voice saying, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And Saul’s like “What the F!? Who the hell are you?” And the voice answers and says, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” And from that moment on Saul was a changed man. He saw the glory of Christ, he was cut to the heart, he changes his name to Paul and makes the mission of his life to bring glory to Christ, so he ends up planting all these churches in a bunch of different cities and then writes half the New Testament.

It’s a pretty great story. It tells you about the kind of stuff that happens when a person’s heart gets gripped with the glory of God and His gospel. It makes me wonder about the gospel in our day and time and in this city and what could happen if our hearts where that gripped with glory.

Okay, so you might think that story is whack and didn’t happen. That’s fine…you don’t have to believe that happened. But either way we do know there was this huge change in Paul’s life where he went from being a self-righteous religious rabbinic snob (sound familiar, like a lot of christians today?), to a broken, glory driven, Christ exalting, gospel lovin’ dude and now he’s got some things say about the law he spent 25-30 years studying before he completely flip-flopped and became convinced that Jesus is the Lord of Glory.

So, let’s go back to our text. Paul says, he was alive apart from the law but when the commandment came, sin came alive and he died. He says the commandment promised life but proved to be death. And he says that the commandment deceived him. Now, when we consider Paul’s life, what do you think? Do you think it fits? It sure sounds like it to me. Then there is this question, “Well okay, is he talking about his experience before or after a Christian?” Interesting. What do you guys think? He’s talking past tense so, it sounds like he could be talking about the law before he was a Christian…but…he’s talking about the law in a way that he would have only talked about it after becoming a Christian, huh. Because before he was a Christian he loved the law and thought he was blameless in regards to it.

So here is what I think. I think he is talking about both. I don’t think our experience with the law, when we hear a commandment, do this or don’t do that, whether it is in our conscience or when it is something somebody tells or whatever…I don’t think that changes a whole lot after we become a Christian. It’s still there. I think Paul is looking back on his life from the time he was a little kid and he is re-interpreting his experience to align it more with his current experience and beliefs.

You know you can do that right? You can become convinced of some new truth, or some significant experience can happen, and you can start to look at your life story and everything that has happened and re-interpret it. That’s a good thing. You can re-write the autobiography of your life. Some of you need to do that. You need a paradigm change and need to start thinking about some things differently and you need to look at your past differently.

Sin’s Life and Our Death
c. Spiritual Death

Alright. So I said we would talk about this experience a little more in depth. How our person hears “law” and sin comes alive and we die and experience spirtual death. I think this happens in one of two ways. We talked about it last week in terms of self-indulgence and self-righteousness. Today I want to probe a little bit deeper and talk about it in terms of the effects as crisis and ignorance.

First let’s talk about crisis. Crisis is the effect of self-indulgence. Sin lying dormant, hears the law and it gets discouraged, frustrated, or even mad after trying a little and failing, and so it says forget it…I can’t do it and so you go on just living life however you want to. You become your own God, the captain of your own soul, following your own religion and you do whatever seems right to you. What this looks like might be diffferent depending on the person. But it’s late nights with random people who only look good after your 5th gin and tonic. Or maybe it’s your sole devotion to that one person who you think will solve all your problems if he would just love your or treat you right…And you’re willing become a unic or shave your head if that will help. Or maybe it’s having it all and being able to buy whatever you want or maybe it’s having nothing and hating your job and never having enough…the American dream. Kill yourself working until you got it all or forget working because that means I have to get up before 12 in the morning and can’t play video games until 3 at night.

There’s ton of things it could be and I’m not clever enough to name them all. But here is what happens…you can only do that so long, before you realize you are dead inside. That’s crisis. It’s that moment when you’re by yourself and you finally stop for a second and you starting thinking and questing and saddness and regret overcomes you and you realize you have made a mess because you stopped caring. Crisis that hits because of your self-indulgence. Some of you need to have a crisis. Or some of you have them and you swear that things are going to change but you just enter the whole self-indulgent cycle all over again.

That’s one way. I think that one experience where the commandment comes, we know it and hear it, but it kills us. Here’s the other way, ignorance. Ignorance is the result of self-righteousness. Sin lying dormant, hears the law and it gets all riled up and excited and charges after the law giving it’s all, trying to do everything just right, and after a little success you start to feel pretty good about yourself…and before you know it you are just cruisin and everything is good and everyone else is just stupid because they’re not living like you. You become your own God, the law becomes yours and you wear it well, following it perfectly. It’s refusing to even think or talk about God, like he’s some coffee refill you don’t need because you’re all good. You got it down. Or it’s waving your Jesus flag like he’s some sort of brand to put on your t-shirts and jeans. Jesus wore a robe. So unless you’re gonna make Christian leisure suits for Playboy mansion, I think you’re out of luck. I’m sorry…it’s just that putting a metal fish or a “My boss is a Jewish Carpenter” bumper sticker on your BMW just makes it look trashy.

Sin is raging in your self-righteousness and you don’t even realize it. That’s Ignroance. Where you don’t even realize what a mess you are making for yourself and those around you and nobody can tell you and you won’t listen and if anyone says anything to you, you either tell them to leave you alone or to shut up or you just tell them they’re wrong. Ignorance is not listening to good advice and it’s like you’re a brainwashed zombie walking through life just eating everyone up and sapping the life out of them. You’ve gotta wake up. You’re a burden and nobody likes you and you’re giving Jesus a bad name if you’re the ignorant sort who claims him and if you’re not the kind who claims him then you’re surely the one who bags on him all the time and you just don’t know what you’re talking about.

I can’t tell you what it’s like for you. But I think everyone one of us falls into that. I’ve got my wounds. I’ve been been to both parties and both of them suck. And maybe this whole sermon sounds repetitive. It’s just that more than ever I really believe that this city needs the gospel, the real gospel. I hadn’t realized how deep the clutches of the self-righteous gospel and the self-indulgent gospel were in this city. And if that’s you, don’t think I’m coming down on you and trying to scare you off. We need you and you need us. But I also realize now more than ever that a weak willed, low morals, wishy washy Christianity isn’t going to win the city either.

And my goal isn’t to try and make perfect people. Yeah, I think getting drunk, having sex of any kind with people you’re not married to, using illegal drugs, or absuing legal ones, spending your money on all kinds of junk…yeah, I think that stuff is bad for you and isn’t going to make you happy. But I’m not just trying to make you look better and stop doing those things. Those things are just cosmetic and are easy to pick on as examples. But what I’m really trying to do is open up the glory of Christ to your soul. That’s my main goal. Those things are not the problem…they’re just symptoms of not seeing and savoring Christ. And sometimes you got a hit a few crisis first, you got to walk through some times of ignorance, I wish we didn’t…but its true that after you become a Christian you are not impervious to crisis and ignorance.

The Jesus

But here is why the gospel is good, Jesus. I said last week that the end of every one of these sermon in Romans 7 is Jesus because the whole chapter is building until this great climax at the end where Paul looks back on everything he just said about the law and sin and says, “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:24-25).”

So let’s conclude today by just talking about Jesus for a couple minutes. Jesus delivers. How? This sermon has been about how because of sin, every human ends up taking the law and misusing it one way or another and regardless of which way it kills us inside. Spiritual death.

How does Jesus deliver us from crisis and ignorance? Last week I talked about how Jesus fulfilled the law for us. This week here’s how I want to answer that question, 2 Corinthians chapter 4. 2 Corinthians 4:4,6 “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we proclaim…for Jesus sake…God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

If you are in crisis, you feel the death and the meaninglessness of everything around you and it is dark…behold Christ. Infinite glory, incomparable excellency, who with the lowest humility possible suffered evil on a cross for you, so that you might know joy. He is compassionate and forgiving and he doesn’t just invite you to himself…he demands it. All else pales in comparison and it destroys us. Jesus says behold my glory, give up meaningless things, come and enter my rest and my joy by following me.

If you are in ignorance, you have thought you were fine, doing things right, when all along you’ve just been trying to convince yourself that you have it all together and that things are okay…behold Christ. Complete and true perfection of the one and only Son of God, who accomplished all things for you, his work for your joy. Christ came so that you wouldn’t have to bear the burden of trying to keep it all together. Jesus says, let the knowledge of my glory shine. Embrace unflinching trust in Christ alone and walk in humility and love for others who have yet to see.

I love the Paul’s story. He is a determined guy. He knows what he thinks about things. He is confident and passionate about his disbelief in Christ and about his own righteousness. But then he literally sees the light of God’s glory and hears the tender and powerful voice of Christ and he is changed. That is such a wonderful picture of the gospel. Where ignorance hits crisis and the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus shines into a person’s heart.

conclusion

Here is the conclusion for today. Christ is everything. Yes the law shows us the darkness of our sin and it kills us. But God has given us Christ who is shone in our hearts. And when that happens we trade self-indulgence for Christ indulgence and self-righteousness for Christ’s righteousness. Being a Christian is everything being about Christ because he is the most supreme knowledge, joy, and life.

So for application…indulge in Christ. Give up things that you know keep you from him. Let Christ be your righteousness and not your own ability to do things right or not. Trust and follow him.

Kids, follow Jesus. He is everything you could ever need and want. He is better than any toy, any game, or any ice cream. Rely on him to help you live the way your mom dad tell you that you should, because Jesus is perfect and does everything right.

Listen 
.

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:: The Resolved Church :: February 18, 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 I”
I. The Charge: “Law is Bad”
II. The Defense
     1. Law Uncovers Sin
     2. The Example of Coveting
     3. Sin and Opportunity
III. The Jesus

introduction

Good morning. Good to see you all. Hopefully you got a chance to enjoy our nice hot summer day in the middle of February yesterday…if you didn’t go to the beach today because it is amazing outside here in San Diego while the rest of the nation east of California is covered in 10 feet of snow. Actually, I’d probably rather be there because snow is fun and you’ll never see it in San Diego because the last time it snowed here was 1967 and I don’t think any of it even started to stick.

So welcome to church. Today we are starting the first of a few sermons on law and gospel from Romans 7:7-12. Which is really exciting because there is nothing funner to talk about than law and sin and death right? It sounds about as fun as reading the dictionary or doing laundry or digging ditches or something. Sorry if those are things you do for fun…I didn’t mean to offend you. J

Here is what is going on. We’re studying this book, Romans, which is about how God is glorious and that is shown to be most glorious not only because he created everything but because he saves people who don’t love and adore Him for making such beautiful things for us to enjoy. The First five chapters of this book talk about how we are in a terrible mess because of this because we have offended God and there is rightly hell to pay for it but the good news is that Jesus came and died and rose again so that we can get a clean bill of health on his account and start new or fresh through believing in him…that means having faith that he died in our place paying the hell we owe. He can do that because he is God and we can believe in that because there is good reason to think Jesus is real, that He is really God, that He really died, and He really rose again, and that this kind of viewpoint really makes a lot sense with what we know about ourselves and what we know about this world.

What’s happened in the book is that presenting this gospel has kind of upset some people because then does that mean that since Jesus takes care of our problem for us does that mean that we can just live however we want and do whatever we feel like? So in chapter six, Paul addressed this issue and told us, no, that is abusing grace. He said that is like being given a brand new life and then shooting yourself to death right away, it is like being a slave that is freed but just going back to your old abusive slave master, and he said it is like cheating on your brand new spouse.

So in chapter six he dealt with this issue of abusing grace. Now in chapter seven he has another problem to deal with and that is this thing called “law.” And that is where we are today. So let’s read the text and pray.

God, I thank you for these people here today. I pray that these words of your Bible would make sense to us and would help us to understand and know and love the gospel. May your law makes sense to us, may we know our depravity and the way it messes with us, and most of all would we know our great need for your Son Jesus. Amen

I. The Charge: “Law is Bad”

Paul, the human author (God’s the author behind the author), starts this new line of thought with these words, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin?” He’s a smart dude and he anticipates the reactions of the people reading or listening to him. So he writes in this sort of dialogue or conversational manner and he brings up this question. Is the law sin? Based on all that stuff I’ve said already, what do you think? Is the law sin? What do you think? In the verses we’ve been studying for the last month, verse 4-6, he said some pretty harsh stuff about the law…that we need to die to it, that it arouses sinful passions, that it held us captive, and that it is old and now instead there is new life in the Spirit. That’s pretty intense. It seems like the natural answer is yes. Well, I guess so, the law sucks and is bad. It sure sounds like it. Right?

But then the lawyer in Paul, he was trained as a professional lawyer from the time he was a little kid, and so the lawyer kicks in right away and makes us feel real stupid because he cries NO! By no means! And then he gives us seven reasons why the law is not bad. And that is too much for us to cover in one sermon. It’s bad enough that I gotta try and make stuff like law and sin and death sound interesting to you J and so I can do justice and honor to God’s Bible and not preach for the next 3 hours straight I’m going to break these verses up into 3 weeks. And it is going to be good. I joke about law, sin and death but the truth is that this is really good stuff for us as Christians…because the more we understand these things the more we will understand the why we feel and act the way we do and the more we will come to love and adore Christ our savior.

So first off, what does law mean here? When I hear the word “law” I almost immediately want to start cussing and shouting and throwing things because I hate those stupid street sweeping parking tickets, I hate getting pulled over for speeding or not wearing my seatbelt or whatever. And most of all since I was in high school I’ve been hassled for skateboarding and have been kicked out of a hundred million skate spots always by some jerk cop who is overwhelmed with his sense of authority and can’t find anything better to do than bother kids who are trying to do something useful and positive with their time. J That’s why whenever I watch “Cops” on TV I’m always rooting for the bad guy. I just want him to sock the cop in the face and then run and get away or something. J

Now, Romans was written almost 2000 years ago and the church in Rome that it was written to had a mixed audience, some Jews and some native Greco-Romans. The Jews loved “law” because it was what made them special. They were the people who were given God’s supernaturally inscribed law on tablets of stone called the ten commandments. Jewish children at age five began to be taught how to read and write by writing the law in honey so that they would know that God’s law was sweet and good. So if you are a Jew and you’re hearing what Paul is saying, you are pissed.

Greco-Romans had their own pride for their law. They were the most powerful nation on the planet at the time, and stayed so for over 1500 years. Any country they encountered they would easily defeat because they were so powerful. They had a the biggest and strongest army. They had the most affluential philosophers, artists, and religion. They would come in and immediately impose their law and structure after taking over a city, demanding alligience and taxes to Ceasar, the emperor, and all who opposed it were crushed.

In the book of Romans, Paul has taught us that law is not only what God physically wrote in the ten commandments and the rest of the Jewish Torah but is also the inner sense of right and wrong that is written upon the heart of every human being throughout time. That sense of “ought” and sense inside of us where we all know that it is wrong to steal cars, murder babies, and have sex with strippers and pictures of them and other people we are not married to.

So here is the charge or the question, is law bad? Apparently it has some pretty bad effects on us as human beings apparently and so Paul is going to try and help us understand that and how that works. There are seven reasons he gives why the law is not bad and today we’re just going to look at the first three.

II. The Defense
1. Law Uncovers Sin

After crying out, “NO!” the law itself isnt’ bad, he says, “…if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” This is the theme of this paragraph that continues throughout the whole thing. The argument is that the law is not the problem but it is us, that we are the problem, it’s us, we are bad…the law just shows us that, it uncovers or exposes what is really going on inside us, sin.

So, Paul’s proposition is that the reason we need to die to law, the reason law arouses sin, the reason law holds us captive…is because we are sinful, not the law. The law just functions to show us that we are sinful, that we have a condition, that there is something wrong with us.

It is an experiential question about the depth of who we are as human beings. And not just before we become Christians. Everything after chapter five includes the post-christian. After you become a Christian or sometimes ways down the road after becoming a Christian is when you really start to realize how messed up you and how much you really do need Christ.

I started studying Romans about nine years ago now. And when I first started studying it I listened to a whole class on Romans being taught by an old professor named Dr. Eno and I remember he said before you are a Christian you are like this dead body and if you drop a one ton weight on the dead body it doesn’t feel anything, but once you begin that new life in the Spirit that’s when you begin to feel the weight of your sin. That’s when the real struggle begins.

I’ll tell you what, after following Christ for a while now…now I know what I am capable of. I had no idea how deeply depraved I was when I first became a Christian. I knew I needed Jesus but I had no idea how much. We are capable of such horrendous evils…yes, even after you become a Christian.

But we don’t like that do we? To be told that we are sinners. It violates this supposed universal law of niceness right? Where you never say anything negative to someone. Of course, unless it’s behind their back. But it is true. And we need to know it. And that is what the law does for us.

This is the way the law works…for everyone. The picture here is sort of like the catscan machine they use at the hospital. You lay on it and your head goes in under this coffin like thing filled with light and somehow it can look inside your body and find out what is going on underneath your skin. We all have this disease, sin, and the law uncovers and exposes that disease laying dormant in us and shows us that it is there and that it needs a remedy.

2. The Example of Coveting

In order to help us understand, Paul gives us this example of coveting. He says, “I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” What does it mean to covet? Here is a definition: To have a strong desire to posses something that belongs to somebody else. Here is another definition: Living in America. Houses, cars, boats, surfboards, guitars, shoes, pants, jackets, tattoos, cd’s, books, cell phones, computers, plasma tv’s, money to buy more stuff, and especially that new iphone that’s coming out. I want it. J Christmas here is ridiculous. We make our wish lists while kids in Africa cry because their hungry. It’s crazy. We are coveting gone rampad and I’m guilty. There’s no question.

“You shall not covet.” What’s he mean when he says we wouldn’t know what it is to covet if the law didn’t say it. Does he mean, Jewish law, the ten commandments or does he mean the moral law written on our hearts? Does it matter? They both come from God and they both say the same thing, right? We know there is something wrong with always wanting. Our lack of satisifcation. That immediate thing inside us that springs up when we see something new that someone has and we want it. And it only seems to get worse the older you get.

But his point is clear. If God never wrote that in our hearts or made it one of the ten commandments it wouldn’t know it was wrong. Our sinfulness would not be uncovered…the sin beneath the sin.

It is interesting that he picks out coveting, the last of the ten commandments, as his example. It is interesting because it is the clearest commandment that deals with the desire of our hearts as oppossed to exterenal behavior. Coveting is an affection…a want, a desire. The other commandments assume desires behind them. You steal because you desire to have something that you can’t afford. You commit adultery because you desire to have sex with someone who is not your wife or because you don’t want to wait for marriage. Coveting relates directly to the desires and is behind every one of the commandments.

And on top of it all coveting brings everything back to the issue of God because coveting says my desires, not God’s, my desires are the measure of right and wrong, what is good and bad and true and false. Coveting says says my will and desires are the standard, what I want things to be. And what is that but the desire to be our own God. It is the root of rebellion and the commitment to be our own god to ourself, where we are the final authority in our life. Where what we decide is what happens. Where i am god. And is nothing other than a violation of the first commandment starts out by God saying “You shall have no other gods before me (Ex. 20:3).” That is why Jesus said all the commandments are summed up in this one phrase, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (Mt 10:37).”

Do you get it? Law shows us that we don’t love God but that our hearts are naturally disposed toward rebellion against him. Nothing is ever enough for us, we are never satisfied, because what we really want is to worship ourselves rather than God. The law isn’t the problem. We are. We have a sin problem and we need a savior. We need Jesus.

II. The Defense
3. Sin and Opportunity

Coveting is a strong example of our natural inward disposition toward rebellion. But Paul adds even more to it with this word “opportunity.” The word “opportunity” in Greek is the word, aphorme, which means a military base of operations for an attack. So an opportunity would be an outpost where a camp is set up not too far from the front lines and from there it sends out soliders to attack and seize their unsuspecting victims.

So get the picture. Sin is this thing in us, it’s part of us, and it is lying dormant like a sleeping dog…but the moment it hears law it springs up, roars to life, and grabs law and turns it into a military base of operations to kill and destroy.

How does sin do this? How does it work? Know yourself. It works one of two ways, it either says “you could never keep all the commandments perfectly so why even try, just do what you want and have fun, that is all that matters. Or it says, “you can do do this, just work really hard and be really disciplined and have strong willpower and you can beat this, you are better than everyone else, so just do good and when judgment comes you will be fine.” Do you get it? Sin kills both ways, it takes the law and makes it a base to either make you self-indulgent or self-righteous.

It’s Anna Nicole Smith tweaked out on the floor and it’s Ted Haggard saying he’s better because he’s not gay. It’s crack babies and the prozac life and it’s church kids who think they’re better because they go to “christian” school. It’s dancing and drinking till you puke and it’s refusing to ever let alcohol touch your lips because you say your body’s a temple. It’s spending every dime you’ve got on anything you want and it’s never spending anything because your above materialism and greed. It’s no desire left unfufilled and all restraints cast off and it’s only desiring perfection and thinking you’ve got what it takes. Sin takes coveting and hits both marks by either letting desire run wild or by letting you think you are good because you don’t covet, which is really just another form of coveting…it’s just coveting a pat on the back.

The Jesus

Alright. So that’s all a pretty big downer and we only got through three of Paul’s seven reasons. We’ll do another three next week and talk about his Paul’s personal life that’s wrapped up in his use of the word “I” and we’ll talk about how decption works and how this all relates to death and the promise of life. And then in two weeks we’ll spend a whole sermon on chapter twelve on how the law is holy, righteous, and good.

But we did three reasons and I don’t want you all to go home depressed and have to shoot up or something so let’s talk about Jesus for a few minutes. The point of the passage isn’t to get all sad bastard anyway, it’s to help us love and appreciate and long for and adore Christ and his grace. Romans 7 is a deep chapter. It’s not a long chapter, only 25 verses. The longest chapter in the Bible has 176 verses. But Romans 7 goes deep into the psychology of how sin works in us. It takes a hold of any and every thing and corrupts it.

Romans 7 is like this song that builds and builds and builds and then climaxes with this great release at the end in verse 24-25 where it cries out in frustration saying, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” and then answers “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!.”

So here is where Jesus fits in this whole deal. The charge or question has been that law is bad. It sure seems to cause a lot of problems. But Paul’s point has been that the law isn’t the issue it’s us. We have something wrong with us called sin and what law does is it uncovers this reality, it expresses itself in coveting and takes every opportunity to kill us whenever we encounter law. So how does Jesus change things?

Jesus changes things because when the law hits him it uncovers nothing evil. 1 Peter 2:22 says, “He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.” The scalpel of the law cuts Christ open and exposes nothing but purity and genuine love of God flowing from his heart. Never coveting, always satisfied with the glory of God, nothing but a desire for the perfect will of His Father. The law finds nothing in Christ but complete fulfillment. That’s why Jesus said, “I did not come to abolish the law…but to fulfill [it] (Mt 5:17).” And yet our faultless and flawless Christ was led to the slaughter to die a lawbreakers death as our substitute.

That’s the gospel. That’s why Christ is so good. We get his excellence in exchange for our infirmity. We get his lawfulness for our lawlessness. His fulfillment for our failure. His comfort for our coveting. His consolation for our contempt. His joy for our anguish. If you are a Jew you love this Jesus because He is the perfect depiction of the law you love so much. If you are a Greco-Roman you love this Jesus because he is the most magnificent emperor or Lord you have ever served.

In chapter six of Romans Paul showed us that Christ is great because he is the resurrected King and the worthy Master. Here in chapter seven, Paul has shown us that Christ is the perfect spouse and how he is the perfect Lord and Lawkeeper.

This is the message today, Jesus Christ is glorious. And we need him…desperately. Because the law shows us our sin and we need a savior and Jesus is sufficient!

conclusion

Let’s conclude this morning with some application. Knowing what we now know about the law and how it works in us, how should we then live? I think the answer must go like this: When we hear the law, whether it is the prick of our conscience in our hearts or when we read it in this book or hear it from the preacher…rather than allowing our sin to seize an opportunity for ruin we need to seize the opportunity for redemption in Christ.

So when the command do not covet is heard, what we do is realize our sinful desire to covet and then turn to Christ and cry, Lord save me. You do not covet. Make me satisfied with you and you alone. Help me to trust you for my needs. Help me to make wise decisions with my money that will honor you and your kingdom. Help not to be jealous of others prosperity but rejoice that you died for me. Help me not make my own desires the ground of what is right and wrong for me but humbly submit to your law and your fulfillment of it in my place. Help me to neither be self-indulgent or self-righteous. Help me not to rush your will and bring about what I think I want and need but provide for me in your time and in your way. Christ, you are my treasure. You are my sole source of hope for salvation from my sin. Jesus you are good and you are everything. May I love you with my whole heart, soul, mind and strength.

I think that is how we do it. We recognize our inability and accept Christ ability and accomplishment on our behalf. And this has a real practical outplay for us as well. Have you ever wondered how you are supposed to read or understand all those laws you read in the Old Testament? If the Bible is sort of new to you, I’m talking about the rest of the 637 commandments that are in there in books like Leviticus and Numbers. How is some of that crazy stuff like sacrificing three tenths of an ephah of fine flour once a month (Num 28:12) supposed to make any sense to us? What do you do with that? Go outside and start throwing flour into the wind? J

No. When you read that be thankful for Christ who fulfilled all the law perfectly for us. Think of him, who was the last sacrifice, given up to God on the cross on our behalf. And now we get to be part of the new covenant provided for by his blood.

And lastly, spread the news of the goodness of Christ. The gopsel really is good. Jesus really is amazing and people are not going to know about it unless you tell them. Don’t be afraid to tell people that they are jacked up lawbreakers, if they’re your friends and you’ve earned their respect they’ll listen to you. They know it’s true about themselves. They just don’t know about Jesus other than him being some sort white bearded dude in a robe that wierdos like and want you to come to their church so he can take their money. J

For the kids here, this is what God wants you to learn from His Bible today: when mom or dad tell you to do something and you don’t want to do it, that’s because you are a sinner and you need Jesus to save you. Jesus always loves to do what His Father tells him and if you love Jesus he will help you love to do what you know you should. So believe in Jesus and he will always take care of you.

  Listen         Read      Romans 7:4-6   |   Part I
  Listen         Read      Romans 7:4-6   |   Part II
  Listen         Read      Romans 7:4-6   |   Part III

Listen 
.

The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

duane matthew smets
(pastor/overseer/evangelist)

“Bearing Gospel Fruit”

Romans 7:4-6
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

introduction

Good morning everyone. We are in Romans chapter 7 this morning and no that is not a mistake verses 4-6 are the verses again for this morning for the fourth week in a row. I kind of feel like the high school girl tease when I keep telling you there are other verses in Romans coming up…but we’ll get there I promise.

So here is what is going on. I got to have lunch this week with Mark Driscoll and then I listened to a sermon online that he preached on mission and I kind of got stirred up. I noticed that in the last few weeks in our working with this text we missed something. And we can’t have that…so here is sermon number 4 on Romans 7:4-6. Here is what we missed…bearing gospel fruit. In the last few weeks we have talked about a lot of thinks…but all of them have been primarily inward, personal spirituality type things. And there is something here about the outward mission. Let me show you.

Last week we learned that we are all trees, we have a spiritual family heritage that we will either take from and carry certain things on and/or discontinue some other things that were bad. We learned that as trees, we all bear fruit whether it is good or bad but bearing bad fruit leads to death and so it is better to bear good fruit and know Jesus and be happy. And then we learned that we must fight for fruit. That there is an internal spiritual struggle in the Christian and that you must wrestle against your flesh as a Christian if you are serious about being happy and knowing God. But notice all of those things are primarily internal personal things. There is something more.

There is mission and you hear it in the air of hope in these words. There is this underlying message that says this is to be spread because it is so good. We are no longer stuck bearing bad fruit, and no longer bound by the law…but through Jesus there is the new life in His Spirit which gives us freedom and passion and heaven. The underlying message is, “people need to know this.”

Paul said at the beginning of Romans that he longed to, listen, “reap some harvest among you…I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome (Rom 1:13,15).” So what do you reap when you harvest? Well maybe grain or maybe fruit? Sound familiar? And what is fruit there in that passage from the beginning of Romans (re-read it)? It is people. It is souls. Fruit is people who respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ and become Christians.

So that is what the sermon is on today…”Bearing gospel fruit.” And we are there are three aspects to bearing gospel fruit we are going to look at today: contending for the gospel, contextualizing the gospel, and being changed by the gospel. Now, I didn’t come up with them. My outline today is a complete rip-off from Mark Driscoll’s sermon, so thank you Mark. I think that is the first time I’ve ever done that because always think I can do everything better than everyone else…but this is a good outline as it hits on some key things we need to hear.

Contending for the Gospel

What is the gospel? Gospel means good news. When Paul began the book of Romans he opened it saying it was about the gospel and this is what he said it was, “The gospel of God…(is what) he promised…concer-
ning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ (Romans 1:1-6).” That is the gospel. The gospel is Jesus, who was a God-man who died and rose again so that you and me might belong to him by grace through faith.

It is the same thing we have in verse 4 that we have been studying of Romans 7. Listen, “You died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.” So the gospel is that Jesus is real, that he is God, that he lived and died and rose again for our sins so that we might belong to him. To belong to him…Notice that word, “belong.” It’s both here in verse 4 and at the beginning of Romans… “belong to Jesus Christ.” And by belonging to Jesus we escape sin, death and hell. That’s good. That’s good news.

And that is what we are doing in San Diego, we are here to give San Diego the gospel…It is our gift to the city. Because San Diego is a beautiful city but it is a beautiful city full of bad people who need Jesus because he is good, and he loves them, and he died for them, and they don’t know that or believe it.

Let me tell you a little bit about San Diego. Contrary to the opinion of Ron Burgundy, San Diego does not mean the whale’s vagina. But it is a named after Saint Diego, or Didacus of Alcala, who was a Franciscan monk turned saint because he apparently healed paralyzed guy and a guy with a broken arm and then when he died of an abscess his body emitted a pleasant smell from the infection rather than a foul odor. Great story huh? Well here is what happened. The Kumeyaay native Americans used to live here until November of 1602 when a guy named Sebastian Vizcaino arrived on ship named after Saint Diego and held a church service here dedicated to his fame and this place has been called San Diego ever since.

Now San Diego is the 8th largest city in the U.S, over 1.3 million people living here within the city limits and 2.9 million living in the greater San Diego area. We’re a melting pot racially…50% white, 25% Hispanic, and 10% African American, and 15% Asian and other races. We have some of the world’s nicest beaches, parks, and museum. Our whether is perfect 364 days of the year. We have a huge navy, marine, and coast guard military presence. We’ve got the Chargers and the Padres. Four big colleges. Over 900 hundred bars and over 200 strip clubs. 50% of us are married with kids making over $50,000 a year and the other 50% live in Hillcrest because nobody can have kids there. J Just kidding. I love Hillcrest a ton.

So we’re a rich city that likes to watch sports, drink, fight, surf, go to school and then get freaky at the clubs at night and have promiscuous sex later. Good times. And we’re not only the 8th biggest city but we’re the 8th fastest growing city, so I guess that looks like fun to everyone and they all want in on the action. Probably at least half of your moved here huh? Welcome to the party. We’re glad you’re here. Really.

It’s important for us to know our city. I’ll tell you why…cities are important. Cities are strategic to God’s mission of spreading the gospel of Jesus. Here is what He says in Jeremiah 29, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile…build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and prayer to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Now obviously we are not in exile here in San Diego…but God has placed us here in San Diego intentionally that we might bring good to the city…as Acts 17:26-27 says, “God made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place (the cities they live in) that they should seek God in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.” Cities are important because God places a lot of people there and Jesus weeps for cities like he did Jerusalem and He puts Christians in the cities to spread the news of what He did for them on the cross.

And San Diego is a city that needs Jesus. About only 6% of San Diego are Bible believing Christians. That means there are a lot people left out there who don’t know Jesus. It’s not like all the potential Christians have not been gobbled up in this town. There is vast need for the gospel in our city, there are a ton of people who are not being reached.

People are lost. San Diego is a very spiritual city. Our beautiful sunsets and our exotic animals and our picturesque bays intoxicate us so that from the creation we feel the handiwork of the creator and we think that us just feeling spiritual makes us fine. We think whatever way you want to think is fine and that you don’t really need Jesus unless you but if you are superstitious then fine, get a Jesus bobble head for your car and be on your way.

And so yes, there are things we need to contend for. Christians are ones who eyes have been opened up to something that is beautiful and true and anything that is good people will try and ruin because people are bad. Besides your basic meal of pluralism, San Diego is a hotbed for open theism, new school Gnosticism, and a whole bunch of other isms that will screw with our heads. And so yes, we must protect and contend for the gospel, demolishing arguments and caring about what is really true and not just following whatever sounds nice, because what sounds nice cannot feed the great need of our souls. Yes, there are things that we will not compromise about. Yes, Jesus died and rose again and yes I believe He is our only hope.

But here is the problem…the other reason why San Diego needs this church. Because Christians are jerks. Yes, we’ve got the gospel and yes it is a treasure but some of you or at least some of the people in this city or some churches in this city who bear the name “Christ” take that to mean that they have a black belt in Karate or something and they are ready to fight with any and everyone who comes around.

There was this reality TV show about boxing on for a little while called “The Contender” hosted by Sylvester Stallone from the Rocky movies. I think the show failed because everybody knows now that UFC is way better. But contending for the gospel doesn’t mean we are always picking fights with everyone we come across to prove to them how wrong they are and how right we are. Evangelism isn’t holding a gun to someone’s head and walking them down the aisle until they repent and get saved. It’s not shoving a flyer for church in someone’s hand because they look like they could use it while they are waiting to get inside the club. When you do that it’s like holding a sign in one hand that says “Jesus saves” and a gun in the other with the hammer cocked. Yeah, I hope he saves me from you. (If I were still cussing in my sermons I’d do it here.)

But that’s not the gospel, that’s just law and Jesus died to free us from the law…thinking that you have to earn him by your performance. No, Jesus gives himself freely and kindly and as divine royalty invites us into his court of friendship. He died so that we might belong to him. Not fighting for him but hold firm onto him. That’s contending for the gospel. On one hand it’s knowing what you believe and why and holding firm to it and on the other it’s not being a jerk and picking fights with people thinking that will make them want to become a Christian. We are supposed to love our city not fight with it.

Contextualizing the Gospel

Let’s talk about contextualizing the gospel and to do that we are going to look at 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. You can turn in your Bible’s there and I think once we read it you’ll see the connection to today’s verses in Romans. 19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings (1 Corinthians 9:19-23).

First, see the connections: For though I am free…how? Romans 7:5, he was “released from the law.” he got free. And then he relates to different cultural groups, Jews and non-Jews, all people, how? Romans 7:6 by being led through the “new life of the Spirit.” Why does he do this? So that some might be saved or Romans 7:4 “belong to (Jesus).”

Contextualizing the gospel…what does that mean? It means taking the unchanging message, the one that we contend for and hold firm to, the truthful tenants of the faith that have been passed down to us…and then changing the methods that we share that unchanging message depending on the culture that we are trying to reach. (repeat) It means changing the way you present or share the message depending on the context you are in…that is what contextualizing is.

What this is telling us is that we are all missionaries. If I said I was going to go to Croatia and go tell them about Jesus that I would move there to go live, I’d learn the language, I’d learn the customs and traditions, the religions, what food they eat, and I’d learn what they like to do for fun, and then I would take all of those things and use them to talk about Jesus. And all of you would be like duh? You would have to do that.

But what about next door? What about our culture? The one we live in or the one across the street? Don’t we have to contextualize the gospel here too? Not only do a quarter of the people in San Diego only speak Spanish but among the other 75% there are a number of different hybrids of English that you have to know if they were ever going to listen to you talk about Jesus.

The kids I work with never cease to amaze me. I took a few of them to Mission Valley Mall the other day…which is always awesome because I’m this rock-n-roll kid hanging out with three gansters, that’s ganster with an n, and we head straight for the “House a Flava” and they want to show me the grill they have there and see what bling they have in. I’m like sweet. So I start trying on all these jackets that are so big the bottom zipper is half-way past my knees and they’re all like, “you look good dog.” It’s great I love it. But it is a whole different culture, that I really know nothing about.

You see culture is not something bad as a whole it’s just the filter through which the sweet water of the gospel is poured. It’s hard to define exact boundaries of what makes up a culture. But there are different cultural groups that use their own language and have their own identities and need to be introduced to Jesus because almost always what they have heard of him is something really weird.

For example, in OB you are so stoked dude because Jesus is someone you get high with. At the dance clubs downtown or in PB Hesus is the name of the bouncer at the door. Once inside “Jesus!” is something you shout after taking shots at the bar. And at the Casbah Jesus is someone everyone hates because apparently he doesn’t like rock-n-roll. But that’s not the Jesus we’re talking about. That’s not the gospel Jesus.

The disciples of Jesus, the gospel Jesus, understood this that why they wrote four different gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And they all have different cultural groups they were written to. Matthew was written primarily to Jews to prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah. So you have a ton of Hebraisms and quotes from the Old Testament and he traces Jesus family line back to Abraham, the first Jew. Mark is short, sweet, and to the point. It is, Jesus is a man of action where you see the word “immediately” more than anything, and he is healing people and casting out demons and walking on water and calming storm and going here and there all the time. In Luke Jesus is for everyone…especially the outcasts. It’s the longest gospel and in it you see Jesus caring for the rich, poor, Jew, Gentile, prostitute, thief, crooked cop, and straight edge Pharisee. And then there’s John’s gospel, which is really different than the other three. He takes on a whole different approach because he’s really smart and in good with the Greeks and the philosophers so he systematically shows that Jesus is God with 7 main proofs. He starts it off saying that Jesus was the logos, and if you had ever read Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle, who all lived before Jesus…then you would know that the logos was thought of as the divine glue that held the universe together.

The disciples got it. They understood that the gospel had to be contextualized. That why they were able to turn the world upside-down. You see this everywhere. Whether it is TV, where you have 4 or 5 different major networks, CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. Or whether it’s in food service where you have four different approaches to hamburger: In-n-out, McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s. Or take cell phones, you’ve got Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile, and now Cricket. Different approaches to the same thing. Contextualization. Trying to meet a certain people group or culture with the same thing but in a different way.

That’s why we are all missionaries to this city but it seems we’re having such trouble reaching it. The conservatives love our theology because if you look at our doctrine online or if you even came to a single service they would find that we’re old school Bible reading, Jesus lovin’ Christians that believe in sin, death, & hell and we’re not afraid to say so. But they can’t stand us because we drink beer. We don’t drink beer, we just don’t drink light beer unless it’s Pabst. J

I found out just last week that apparently we have the reputation as being the new emergent church in town. I’ve never talked with one of these pastors but they’re out there warning their people about us like we are some kind of cult because we have someone spinning records before and after service, and because we use candles and because people smoke outside.

But the liberals can’t stand us either. They think we’re cool because we support art benefits and environmental causes and because we don’t get all bent out of shape if people about things like alcohol. But they wish we really wouldn’t talk so much about Jesus and wish we could just be more open and accepting of all ways and not ever talk about things like the wrath and justice of God.

It’s about contextualizing the gospel. We don’t want to take San Diego back for Jesus. We’re not here to fight. We are here to love. Like it says here 1 Corinthians 9:23, “(we) do this for the sake of the gospel, that (we) might share in its blessings.” The gospel is our gift to the city, Jesus is a great blessing. But the gospel must be contextualized according to the various cultures that are here in the melting pot that is San Diego. We must “become all things to all men so that by all possible means (we) might save some (1 Cor 9:22).” Just like Paul, we must be willing to join with culture and identify with the people of those various cultures so that we can most effectively introduce them to the love of Jesus.

Who knows what that looks like? “Becoming all things to all men that by all possible means we might save some (1 Cor 9:22).” What’s that look like for the indie rocker, the underground hip hop kid, the computer techs over at Qualcomm, the suburban family who just bought their first house which is a two bedroom condo costing $400,000. We’ve got to figure it out because tons and tons of people are not being reached and I want to reach as many as possible. That is the beat of my heart. We’re not trying to build the perfect church. There is no such thing. I gave up on that a long time ago. But I do want to bring people to Jesus. And to do that we have to go through the filter of culture.

Now I said that culture is not bad earlier. Culture is amoral. It’s not good or bad…but it expresses itself in different forms. Here is the thing though, not all aspects of culture are compatible with Christian living. Jesus was the king of entering culture. He is God and he came into our world, into the culture of 1st century middle east, and entered into relationships with people. But he did it without participating in sin. So there are three ways things we have to keep in mind about culture: rejecting it, receiving it, and redeeming it.

rejecting aspects of culture

Some things about various cultures must be rejected because they are sinful and destroy lives and make people unhappy and keep them away from Jesus. Things like drunkenness, orgies, and illegal drug use. You know becoming all things to all men does mean we start ministries called “strippers for Jesus” where we send out our girls with Bible verses on their G-string. No, that is stupid. That’s ridiculous. That’s not what Paul is saying. There are simply some expressions of culture that go too far…past the point of gospel pleasure and purpose. Where it is no longer contextualization but becomes fornication and intoxication. And we must simply reject them because of what it will do for us personally in our own spiritual lives and what it will do for the name and reputation of Christ. There are certain things we must be tight fisted about because our morality matters a lot. It matters whether or not you cheat on your wife. And when you look at porn that is what you are doing…inviting someone else into the bedroom. And if you’re like oh, well I’m not married that doesn’t help you because then you’re just having sex with someone who’s not your wife or your husband. That’s not the gospel Jesus. Jesus isn’t some pimp who was good with ladies you know. Jesus is the one who loves us and cares for us and knows what is best for us.

receiving aspects of culture

So there are some things we must reject. But there are aspects of culture that are good. That we should receive. Things like food shelters, and care for the homeless. San Diego has one of the highest homeless populations in the city. And there are some things that people are doing downtown that are good and we should support them. I love Saint Vincent De Paul downtown. If you want something to do sometime, go hang out with the people in line for food and talk to them. Or like the do-good foundation that helped out a few weekends ago to get skateboard for kids who couldn’t afford them. That’s cool. Or what about the environments. With Sea World and the Scripps Institute of Technology San Diego is a mecca of care for the environment. That’s good. We like God’s creation too. On Thursdays and Fridays I work at a group home for abused or abandoned kids. The company isn’t Christian but what they do is good. These are aspects of culture that we can receive and partner with and make meaningful relationship among.

redeeming aspects of culture

Lastly, there are some things about culture that need to be redeemed. They are morally neutral things. Things that can be used for evil but can be redeemed for good. Things like the internet, money, alcohol and sex. Yes people can use the internet to scam people or spread false gospels or to objectify women but the internet can also be used to support one another, to get the gospel out there whether it is through sermons, art, or email. The internet is not bad. Yes people can use money for their cravings of power and greed but money can also be used to take care of your family, to give away and bless people or to support and spread the gospel through Christ’s church. Money is not bad. Yes, people can use alcohol to get drunk and wasted and to try and take away the pain of their problems. But that doesn’t make alcohol bad…just abused. And that can be redeemed. We can drink like Jesus did, who though he was accused of being a drunkard never drank enough to put him over the edge but instead enjoyed it and the people he was with. Yes, people can use sex as something that you with whoever and whenever you feel like it…But we’re not against sex. Sex isn’t bad. We love sex in the marriage relationship of man and woman. You see, our answer to people’s abuses of these aspects of culture is not to reject them out of fear of what they could lead us into but rather to redeem them because of how they may be used for God’s glory in a way that shows people Jesus and demonstrates his love.

Changed by the Gospel

Last point for the day…to be changed by the gospel. Back to Romans 7. Three Sundays ago…my sermon was titled “Jesus Changes Everything.” Jesus died and rose again so that we could bear fruit for God. There is a change from the old, flesh-filled sinful passion, law appeasing way of life to the new covenant where life in God’s spirit makes us free all that so that we really come to hate sin, love Jesus and love people and be continually sanctified by his Holy Spirit.

The Gospel of Jesus changes things and it can change this city. I love this city. The happiest times of my childhood were spent here, I became a Christian here, I met my wife here…I love this city. But it is a sinful city that needs Jesus. It needs to hear who He is and what he has done. That might be you some of you. You may not be a Christian and that is why you’re here to become one. And that’s why we’re here to love you and accept you into the family. Here is the gospel: Jesus loves you and forgives you for all your sin, he bled and died on the cross to cover it and he rose again and is alive today to receive you into His kingdom.

Others of you might think you’re a Christian but you’re not because you know a different Jesus than the one of the gospel and you’re here because you know you need the real Jesus. That’s good. We love you. Sometimes it takes a while to figure things out. That’s okay, we got time. We’re here for you.

Then there are some who Jesus is changing. In our passage, Paul is telling us to live in the new life of the Spirit because the old life of the flesh continues to try and mess us up. Some of you get stuck in this cycle of getting all passionate and determined from meeting Jesus and you’re like, “alright, I’m really going to do it this time” and you go all out and try really hard but you just get tired, lose heart and give up and just go back to doing what you we’re doing before. That’s not good, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Being a Christian isn’t about going in spiritual circles. It’s about follow a person day by day. It’s not about doing everything and doing it all perfect. It’s just about following Jesus and letting him lead you.

There is a whole slew of things God want to do in us. Some of us are all about contending for the gospel and we’re always read for a fight. We need to repent of that. It’s good to know what we believe and why and to protect it…but it’s not good to be a jerk. You’re a great contender but you suck at contextualizing.

Some of us are really good at contextualizing the gospel. We know the right clothes to wear and know the right bands to listen to but do you ever talk to anyone about Jesus? It’s good to be in tune with culture and contextualize the gospel…but it’s not good to be more cool than Christian. You need to say something. Yes, I understand that we earn the right to speak…but we do have to speak eventually. Sin is real. Hell is hot. Forever is a long time. You don’t want to go there. And we’ve got to get over being afraid of offending people. There’s a way to tell people about the gospel without being a judgmental jerk.

Some of us really got to adjust our way of thinking about mission. Mission begins with us and we need Jesus to live it and do it right. So that we can drink with out friends without getting drunk and so we can going on dates with people without having sex with them. We need to learn how to reach out without selling out. Mark said this, “It’s a sin to change the message and it’s a sin not to change the method. Some love methods and lose sight of the message, some love the message but won’t let anyone else see it.” We’re on a mission here at The Resolved Church. We’re on a mission to love the city of San Diego by giving Jesus to it by all means possible in order that we might save as many as possible.

conclusion

Let’s conclude. We don’t have it all figured out. But I’m giving my life to this city. I’m trying with all I got to bring the gospel to this place and to glorify my God to cherish my savior. Jesus is everything. He is what it is all about. His gospel is the greatest thing that ever has been. From the time I was a little boy and I would got to these meetings where my Dad was preached and at the end people would walk forward to become a Christian…it would bring tears to my eyes. My heart still beats with that passion. To see souls come to Christ. The world and its cultures change, but Jesus doesn’t. Jesus is glorious beyond all descriptions. And he is what we need.

We are missionaries and we are in this together. To invite people to come on mission with us. Here is my application: Don’t think of this, right here, what is here now on this Sunday, as The Resolved. The Resolved is what isn’t yet. It is all the things that we could do to contend for the gospel and to contextualize in this city as we are being changed together. Dream some dreams. Partner with us and do something with your gifts that count. Get on mission. Reject the things from culture you know will just corrupt you. Receive the things from culture that good and can be used for the kingdom of God. And Redeem the things from culture that are used for evil but can be turned and used for the good of the gospel.

Kids. Love Jesus. Stay close to Jesus always, love him with your whole heart. But don’t be mean to other kids who don’t know Jesus yet. Instead be really nice to them and tell them how much Jesus loves them even though they’re bad. If someone is playing a game you don’t really like to play, go ahead and play it with them because then maybe they’ll see that you care about them and that Jesus cares about them too.

Let’s make a commitment to contend for the gospel and to contextualize the gospel and to always be changed by the gospel. Let’s pray.

Listen 
.

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Sunday, February 4, 2007

duane matthew smets
(pastor/overseer/evangelist)

“Bearing Fruit for God”

Romans 7:4-6
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

introduction

On Monday morning I spent a good four or five hours studying the verses that come after verse 6 to the end of this chapter. I was looking at the Greek text, asking a bunch of questions, trying to figure out how many sermons we would take to tackle it…and the whole day I had this really unsettling feeling about it. But I didn’t know why.

On Tuesday morning I woke up and I was taking a shower and I was praying while in the shower and getting mentally prepared for a day of study and meetings with people and all of a sudden I realized what was bothering me. And it is something I said last week in my sermon. I said, “if we hadn’t taken so much time away from Romans during Christmas and all that I would probably stop here and preach a sermon on bearing fruit. But we need to keep moving.” And all I really did to address this bearing fruit issue is to read Psalm 1. That was really stupid.

There is no goal or prize for us finishing our study of the book of Romans sooner rather than later. We are not in a hurry or a race but instead are attempting to with the utmost integrity deal with the words that are here. It is wrong for us to just pass over parts of the Bible because we want to keep moving. I’ve always been this really impatient person… When I was little I could wait until I was old enough to ride a bike, then I could wait until I was old enough to have a girlfriend, then I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to drive, then I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to drink, then I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to get married, and now I can’t wait until I am old enough to have a kid. J I always seem to want to be older. Like there is some hurry to life. I don’t know how much else is left. I’m not quite to the stage where I can’t wait to get all old and grey…although it would be really cool to be all wise like old people are. J

So today I am preaching on bearing fruit because I am a sinful pastor and did not rightly handle God’s word last week. Let’s look at Romans 7:4-6. The two phrases I am concerned with today is the phrase at the end of verse 4 and the phrase at the end of verse 5. In verse 4, it says that Jesus died on the cross and rose again so that, “we may bear fruit for God.” So I guess that is kind of important huh, if Jesus died for it and all? Then In verse 5, we get a contrast, the opposite of that, where instead of bearing fruit for God we “bear fruit for death.”

I. We are Trees

First, let’s talk a little bit about trees. At my grandma’s house in Canada she has this big, framed, professional drawing of a tree and it has all these different names on it that show though relational connections of our family…I think at the top it says, “our family tree.”

I don’t know if any of your families have anything like that but whether you do or not we all have a family that we have come from. You may not like them or get along with them or you may be the only one left…or you may love your family and they are very dear to you. Either way we all a family. Fathers and mothers and grandparents and great grandparents and so on. And the thing is you can’t change who your family is.

We seem to hate things that we can’t change. But you can’t change who your family is and your family has a lot to do with who you are and who you become whether you like it or not. Whether it is the color of your skin, or the country you are from, or the language that you speak, or how tall or how short you are…or even sometimes the sins that you are born into that you have proclivities (whether they be spritual or physical) toward things like alcoholism, or obesity, or sexual promiscuity or racism or homosexuality or even things like perfectionism, materialism, or fits of rage-ism. We all have our blots.

So first, knowing that we are part of a family tree is important. This treeness thing, really is a big deal. It is one of the main metaphors that the Bible gives of what our life is like and trees are really important throughout the whole Bible.

In the very beginning of time, the Bible starts off with a tree. Genesis 2:9 says, “Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Physical and Spritiual things caught up with trees as something vital to life. When God appears to Abraham it is by an oak tree (Gen 18:1), and then later on in his life he meets God again and Abraham plants a tamarask tree (Gen 21:33). Saul, the first king of Israel is discovered under a pomegranate tree (1 Sam 22:6) and then is buried under a tamarask tree (1 Sam 31:13). Elijah, the great prophet in the Bible despairs of life and God comes to him while under a juniper tree (1 Ki 19:5). David, the greatest king of Israels talks about being like an olive tree who trusts in God (Ps 52:8), or being righteous like a flourishing palm tree (Ps 92:12), or being strong like a cedar from Lebanon (Ps 92:12), or being careful with your tongue not to spit out coals like the broom tree does (Ps120:4). Solomon, David’s son uses almond trees, fig trees, and apple trees in his descriptions of love and wisdom. Jesus comes on the scene, calls a disciple who is sitting under a tree, preaches a sermon about being a good tree and bearing good fruit, says all we need is faith like the seed of mustard tree and then we can uproot mulberry trees (Lk17:6). Jesus makes friends with a theif who was spying on him from up in a sycamore tree (Lk 19:4) and then ends up getting hung on a tree shaped into a cross. And then in the end, the last book of the Bible, Revelation, ends with all those tree who have Jesus as their root returning to the tree of life to drink and to dine with increasing joy (Rev 22:14,16).

So trees are kind of a big deal in the Bible. Whether we look at our personal family trees, that’s what those long list of names you sometimes come across when reading the Bible…they are family trees or geneologies. Or whether we look at the story of God in the Bible from the first tree in the garden of Eden until the last in the garden of Heaven. Trees are important. Especially when it comes to our own individual tree and whether or not we are a Psalm 1 type of tree…one that is planted by streams of water and bears fruit in due season.

II. We Bear Fruit

Here is the thing…we all bear fruit. We all bear fruit, it is just a question of whether we bear good fruit or bad fruit. Like in our passage from Romans, whether we bear fruit for death or whether we bear fruit for God.

Listen to Jesus words in Luke 6, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Lk. 6:43-45).” And like every parable, the stinging part you get at the end is that everyone of us have spoken evil with our mouths, whether gossip, or lies, or hurtful things said to others…and so Jesus cuts us with his words telling us we need a new heart so that we can treasure him and begin to bear good fruit.

Notice the assumption that we all bear fruit. So the question is what kind of fruit that we bring forth? And the scary part is bearing fruit for death. Let’s go back to Romans 7 and look at how that happens…verse 5, “while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” Let’s go backwards through this. We bear fruit for death when we live according a law, that arouses our sinful passions that are part of a flesh way of viewing this world. That’s what we learned last week, that flesh means the way of the world in all its corruption that plays itself out in our physical bodies and spiritual lives.

Here is the tension I think. Two points of tension. One, because we can bear fruit for God and have life and joy or we can bear fruit for death and thus experience eternal pain and destruction…I think it is a quick step to where we automatically begin to think that we earn our salvation and that Chrisitianity is really no different than any other religion…it just has a different set of rules to follow if you want it’s fruit. So that is one point of tension I think.

The other point of tension is with the issue of the past. Because we are part of a family history, and not even just a physical family history, but a spiritual family history like we learned in Romans of us all ultimately being connected to Adam, the first man who sinned at that tree in the garden of Eden. We have all inherited sinfulness, it is our natural disposition as humans. Our natural fruit is bad showing that our natural treasure is evil. That is our inclination, our proclivity, our nature…whatever you want to call it…it’s not good, it’s evil. And here is the tension, it goes like this: because our past, our history, our family is this way…then we will turn out that same way. Whether it be because of genetics, social construction, psychological birthright…whatever. It is the idea that there is no chance of change.

Notice earlier I said that our family tree is very important and that you can’t change who your family is. That’s true. But what I didn’t say is that you cannot change who you become. I said family has a lot to do with who you are and who you become but not that it is the only thing that will determine you. I didn’t say change wasn’t possible. Why?

Here is the answer, verse 4 of Romans 7, we “died to the law through the body of Christ, so that (we) may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.” Did you hear it? Do you see it? Bearing fruit for God is possible because Jesus died and rose again. That changes things big time.

I’ve come a long way in regards to psychology, it and sociology really…I used to hate them both. Now I can see the merit in those studies. It is good to know where we have come from and the things that have contributed to who we are. But the thing that bugs me about both those disciplines is that there is no hope in them. They usually say you are this way because of this, super matter of fact, and you are not morally responsible in any way, we are all just victims, and now we are just stuck because of it and should either see a counselor for the rest of our life or just hook up with a good psychiatrist and get some good drugs and get high for the rest of our lives to deal with the pain. Sorry. That gospel sucks.

Listen to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Unite to him…marry Jesus. He died and so in uniting to him all the stuff that is bad from the past that wields power and control and influence over you to make things bad for you…all that stuff it dies. In uniting to him it gets nailed to his cross and since Jesus rose, you rise too, in new life, with a new heart and bearing good fruit for God becomes possible. That’s a good gospel.

And because it is Jesus doing the work I think that is what saves us from the tension of thinking that the bearing fruit deal is a works issue of us doing things to earn our salvation. We are not following some rules religion with that gospel we are following a person, Jesus. And we don’t do anything but he does it all. So our joy comes when we stop doing and start living in that new life of the Spirit where he is always active and leading us through things like prayer in the shower and wrestling with the Word of God. J

III. We are for God

I pray that helps. Jesus is amazing and if we could just catch a glimpse of how amazing he is it is enough to carry us for weeks and months on end. That is what we need as his followers…to see his glory over and over again. To see and to savor Christ…

I think there is something else that may help us in that. Roman numeral III, “We are for God.” It is really important and can easily just be passed over. Notice the end of verse four that it doesn’t say, “bear fruit for life” but instead says, “bear fruit for God.” The counter part at the end of verse five is “bear fruit for death,” so you would expect verse four to say “bear fruit for life.” But it doesn’t say that, it says, “bear fruit for God.”

So what is up here? What is going on? Two things: one, I think this is another thing that protects Paul, our author here, to slip into a works religion. Yes, our work earns us death. Our bad fruit and bad tree and evil treasure surely earns and deserves to be burned up forever and ever. There is no question about that…if that doesn’t happen then God or whoever else any justice comes from is not a good God. But since the counter part is “bear fruit for God” I think Paul has something different in mind than earning eternal life. I don’t think he was schitzophrenic and would go back on everything else he has already said in Romans about no one, not one, ever being able to be righteous enough to earn eternal life (Rom 3:10-18).”

So here is what I think is up with this phrase, “bear fruit for God.” I think the fruit is our joy. Listen to Jesus, I think he unlocks it for us. Apparently Jesus hadn’t eaten for awhile and the discples come to him saying,
“Rabbi, eat. But he said to them I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another, ‘has anyone brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say there are yet four month, then comes the harvest? Look I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for the harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered their labor (Jn. 4:31-38)’”
The key phrase in that passage is, “the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together.” The key word there is “rejoice.” Who is the sower in this story Jesus told? It is him, Jesus himself is the sower, the work is his. Who are we in the story? We are the ones reaping…the ones who go around and gather up all the fruit Jesus has brought forth. So how does it work? It works like this…God does the work and we get the joy. So bearing fruit for God is being happy in God. Delighting in his work. Gathering up all the joy that he has labored for. I love it. Such an awesome picture.

And there is a greater theological isssue here. Theological. Every time I say that word I kind of sense everyone cringe like I just said something really dirty and gross. Get it out of your heads. Big words are awesome. Theology is awesome. So here is the theological issue. God delights in himself above all things. So the only way we can ever have joy or delight is if we delight in him. He is the source of all joy.

This is opposite of how we think. If I told you, “Okay look…everybody delight in me. I am the best thing that has ever existed. No one is cooler than me and you should all adore me because I am awesome and you will get a lot of joy out of just being around me. So you should do that.” If me or anyone else said that what is our automatic response? “Self-centered bastard!” Right? Why? Because we know that it is not true. We know that no human being is that great.

No here is the theology part…so think hard. If you are the greatest being ever then the most right thing for you to do is to command everyone to worship you. If the only way anyone would every find any true joy or lasting peace is for them to make a big fuss about you all the time, then it would be wrong, you would be robbing people if you did not tell them to worship you and find their joy in you. Do you get it? Oh, how I hope you do. I think that is what bearing fruit for God is. Making much of Him. Pursuing his glory with all our might because that is our greatest joy in this life and in the life to come.

IV. We Must Fight for Fruit

Okay, last point, “We Must Fight for Fruit.” This is the face of reality. I’ve seen it so many times, where that glimpse of the glory of Christ is opened up to someone and they begin following Christ, or start following him again after a period of not, and when that glimpse happens…there is initial excitement and joy and everything is great and wonderful. You begin to experience the newness of the Spirit versus the old letter of the law and there is great freedom and freshness to your faith. But then time settles in. Whether it is a few weeks or a few months or even a few years later and you find out what you are really made of. If that was really anything at all.

Paul is going to go deep into this experience in the latter half of Romans 7 but I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. I need something to preach on when we get there. J So what I want to do is go to Galatians. Galatians, like Romans is another book written by Paul. He trumpets many of the same things in it, like in chapter 2 he says straight out, “a person is not justified (that’s made right or just before God to receive eternal life) by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 2:16).” Then Paul comes toward the end of his letter to the church in Galatia, hence Galatians, and he picks us the tree and fruit analogy along with the discussion of the flesh and the spirit that we have been learning about in Romans.

And in chapter 5, verse 16, he says this to Christians, “the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do (Gal 5:16).” So that is what we talked about last week about being in the new covenant now in the new life of the Spriit but the old covenant of the law and of the flesh still being around causing internal struggle and turmoil. And if none of that makes sense, that’s okay, it’s a lot.

Here is what we need to get. There can and will be struggle as a Christian. You will not always be happy. That is what this passage from Galatians says…that there is an internal spiritual struggle inside every person who makes a resolve to follow Christ. Thus, we will not always be happy. But we must not give up pursuing the fruit of joy, when we are not happy. Listen to what Paul says in the last chapter of Galatians, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows that will he also reap. For the one who sows ot his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will form the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not become weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up (Gal 6:7-9).” My summary, WE MUST FIGHT FOR JOY. We must not give up. We must fight and fight and fight for eternal joy.

This is what I usually see in myself and in your lives. When we are not happy…when we are not doing good spiritually. The first thing that happens is we quit pursuing joy in God because it is not giving us the immediate satisfaction that we want. Whether it is praying or reading the Bible or going to church or being involved with his people…Those things one by one start getting clipped away. So that is the first thing. Stuff gets hard and we start quitting. Second thing, then we start looking for joy in other people or things. Whether it is cheap sex, fake love, liquor stores, dirty coke, staying late at work, a credit card shopping spree, or looking at stupid videos on UTUBE for an hour instead of working on my sermon. It doesn’t work. And we are left way off, farther then we ever intended to be. And Jesus. He just gets lost in it all.

This is what I know. Life with Christ and His church is the hardest thing ever. Talking about your own personal spirituality. That’s hard. I don’t even know or understand what is going on in me half the time. Usually I can look back after time and sort of see some things and figure it out and it makes sense. But in the moment? I don’t know. And you want to talk about church? That’s crazy. It’s easy to rally people to a one time event. But every week. Week after week. And then trying to build a church that not all just about Sunday morning but actually sees each other during the week and really loves each other and serves one another. That’s intense.

Here is what drives me and I pray that we catch a hold of. The glory of God. The truth of God’s Word and his gospel pierces us to the deepest place of who we are. This stuff I’m preaching on today is real about our experience and being trees and fighting for fruit and pursuing joy in God. That is all real. But none of that is what drives me. Sure, I don’t want this church to fail because I don’t know if I could ever go to church anywhere else again because I love this so much. And sure, I want to be happy and I believe that is in God. But those are not the things that drive me…what drives me is the glory of God.

I am entranced with this being. The immensness of our God and his exceeding wonder grabs hold of me and I will never be satisfied with enough of it. I want more. I want to see more glory. The one and only true God who dwells in inapproachable light. The one from whom all power and wisdom and goodness just emanate out of his being. Yahweh, the great I AM who fashioned the universe with a whisper of His lips.

His son Jesus Christ and His Kingdom is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. I want to see Christ seated upon his throne. I want to see His Kingdom expand. The world is not like him. People are not like Him. He is better, Christ is better than all that I can ever lay my thoughts upon. He is the sum of every perfect quality. I want to find myself lost in the cross over and over and over again because it is my favorite place to be.

The Spirit of God is the softest and the sweetest thing I have ever felt. His compassion astounds me. The way I see him work, arcing across history and time and reaching down in specific moments and filling peoples bones with comfort. The way he ministers in the darkest and hardest of situations. The way God’s spirit comes like a wind and rushes in and fills me with strength and confidence and excitement. It is something no human energy can emulate.

I long to see the glory of God. I long to have others see it too and I am on a mission to build and to grow up a church that pursues the glory of God above all things as our chief treasure and delight. A thousand songs couldn’t contain it. A perfect sermon couldn’t describe it. But the beauty and wonder of the glory of God is above all things and worth all things.

That is the harvest, the fruit we reap, if we do not give up. That is how we fight for joy. We realize it is a fight and then we set our eyes on the prize and we pursue it with all our might.

conclusion

Let’s conclude this sermon. Four points today: we are trees, we bear fruit, we are for God, and we must fight for joy. Somehow I feel like application has been all over this sermon, so you might be far ahead of me and that’s good. Here’s some things you can take:

First, Think of your family tree, what you have come from. Your family, your history or heritage…your roots. Think about what things from that are good, that you want to continue and cherish and pass on. Then think of the things that are not good that you do not want to carry on and continue and make a determination for things to change in your family beginning with you. And how do you do that? Embrace Christ. He is the only way that real, deep heart change, is going to take place.

Second, Think of your life as tree. You are a spiritual tree that will bear fruit. What kind of fruit will you bear? Don’t bear the fruit of death. Continuing in a life apart from God, apart from trusting wholly in Christ, will leave you dead and dry. Think of what kind of tree you want to be, what kind of character you will form, what kind of legacy you will leave. We’ve got to begin to start thinking long term. Realizing that we are a person who is becoming and then taking care of what kind of person we become. Be a tree that bears spiritual fruit rather than rotten growth. You will bear fruit either way and it will either be good or bad. Make it good. Look for friendships that will help you do that, look for a partner in life who will help you do that, if you are married use your mate to help you do that, if you have kids, use them to help you do that. Just bear good fruit, think eternally about your life.

Third, when you bear fruit…bear it with a God-centeredness, bear fruit with God being the end in mind. That is the deal. The way to bear fruit spiritually is by making much of God in your life, not the other way around. God is not something you use to serve yourself along with everything else we use to make much of ourselves. No, we realize that He is the end of all things. He is what we have in view when we strive to bear fruit. And when we make much of Him, then that is how we are satisfied.

I was talking about this with our leaders the other night at our leaders meeting and I said that this is the difference between not being guilt driven or grace abused driven but instead glory driven. In a guilt driven life you serve God out of a fear of disappointing him or other people. In a grace abused life you serve God only when you feel like it or when it is comfortable because you know He has grace for you. Both of those ways are bad. Instead we need to be glory driven, where God is the end and the goal of all things. Where our desire and passion and wonder of His very being and the way He does thing is the thing that drives us. Where we see it as a great privilege to live for and serve him.

Let me give you a practical way of how this plays out. Let’s talk about church because it is the most readily available illustration for us to see. There are a lot of things that go on here on Sunday morning. A lot of ways to serve and to be a part of things. There are also a few things during the week that happen. And there are all the things that haven’t even begun to happen that could. Now if it is just one event or one week that is easy. But church isn’t like that. It is week after week. It’s a lifestyle. That’s a lot harder. And so you can either slip into being guilt driven…where you serve people and God out of a fear of disappointment (that serving law by the way). Or you slip into being grace abused driven…where you don’t really contribute or if you do it is sort of half-hazard, and you serve only when you are feeling good or when you need a quick spiritual fix.

Both of those things suck. I want this church to grow but I want to grow and build in love as I preached on the first Sunday of this year. And the way that happens is by being glory driven. Where God and the gospel are a treasure and a delight and we pursue that with all our might week after week and we see it as being a great privilege to be an intricate part of His church. He doesn’t need us. But He knows that what makes us most happy is Him and pursuing His glory as the end of all things. And I’m not saying these things just because I am a pastor and I’m trying to get you guys to perform. Honestly, I’m saying it because I truly believe that being part of God’s mission in the church for His glory is a huge part of what a satisfied life looks like. I don’t think we can feel complete or whole or happy in Christ unless we are using are giftings or trying to discover them without being actively involved in His church.

Okay, last point of application on fighting for fruit. A simple application, make the hard decisions. Just do it. There is struggle and that is real and there are those moments when you decide what you will do. I’ve been trying to eat better and try and get back the six pack I had when I got married almost 6 years ago and the other night Nate Whitsell here challenged me, I don’t know what we bet, but to see who could get one first. And my problem is in that split second moment when I want a hamburger and fries so bad. I don’t want a stupid salad. And that is a hard hard decision. J

But there are spiritual decisions like that. The decision to set your alarm a little earlier so you can get up and read the Bible and pray. The decision to go ahead and come to church when it is the last thing you feel like doing. The decision to go to a mid-week bible study group when the last thing you feel like doing is talking about how you are doing spiritually. The decision to talk to or hang out with who you really don’t like or is a lot difffernt than you. The decision to pray with someone who is hurting when suggesting prayer and doing it feels so awkward and weird. The decision not to date someone who you know is not going to be good for you. The decision not to have another beer because that might be the one that puts you over the edge. There are all kinds of split moment spiritual decisions and we must fight for fruit knowing that in the end…we will reap. Maybe not the moment after that decision is made but we will reap.

Lastly, for the kids or the kids at heart if all this stuff sounds just too complicated. This is for you. Trees are beautiful things that God has created. And like a tree you are a beautiful thing God has created. And he has made you to bear fruit like a tree and bearing fruit for Him is what makes you the most happy. So bear fruit for God. And the way you do that is by making decisions that you know will make Him happy. By loving Jesus and by loving His church.

Let’s pray.

God you are glorious beyond all our conceptions. You are the author of all life…every tree we have ever laid eyes on. And just as many trees that you have made grow in all their different kinds you have made all different kinds of people…and it is a beautiful thing. Thank you for the cross. The tree of all trees that was cut down and fashioned in order for your Son to hang on it and die so that we might come to know your glory and be fruit bearing trees. Thank you for enabling us to be fruit bearing vessels. There is so much joy in bearing fruit for you God. It is a joy and a privilegee to see you and your glory. As we come to the table to partake of your body and blood in the form of bread and wine, would you minister to us I pray. Pour out your Spirit upon us. We are trees that need a lot of watering…and there is nothing like your tender loving care. Christ you are most magnificent. We worship you. Amen.

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January 28, 2007

Romans 7:4-6
4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Intro: “while we were” and “but now” indicate a change
I. the change: a new conversion
II. the change: a new covenant
III. the change: four experiential evidences – flesh, passion, law, fruit
Conclusion: we need change

intro

Good morning church. Sometimes i have these clever bridges to sort of introduce a text and ease you into it, clever in my mind at least…but today i don’t have that so i’m just going to read the text and pray and we’ll get right into it. (read text)

God, you are real. This book is amazing and true. Our spirituality is both confusing and complex and simple and deep at the same time. Help us today I pray. Help us understand ourselves and may the words we study today give us great insight in that pursuit. And Father God I pray most of all that your Spirit would brighten our eyes to see the wonderous glory of Christ our Savior. Amen.

Our text today starts out with the words, “for while we were.” Four simple, seemingly insignificant words…but they are so significant. We are looking at two verses this morning. These four words start out our first verse and our second verse starts out with the words, “But now we are.” Four more, simple, seemingly insignificant words, that are so significant. “For while we were” and “But now we are.” “For while we were” and “But now we are.” “Were” & “are,” “While” & “now.” Do you hear the change? Were, are, while, now.

This is what Paul has been trumpeting ever since he introduced us to Jesus in this book. Jesus changes everything. First he told us we were in Adam and now we, believers, are in Christ. Then he told us we were dead and buried in sin, but now we, believers, are baptized and risen with life in Christ. Then we found out we were forced slaves to our ruinous master called sin, but now we, believers, are free servants to a loving master called Christ. Then most recently, last week, we learned we were married to the law, a performance driven marriage, and now we are married to Christ in a grace filled marriage. “Were” and “are.” “While” and “now.” Change.

And there are a couple of changes that this text reflects in a few things it says that are sort of like these big flags pointing to an overrall view of God and the gospel that Paul, our author has. And then there are specific evidences he gives here of how we experience these big overall things. So there are general references to this big umbrella stuff he is saying and their are specific, very dynamic and powerful word choices he uses to illustrate to us how these big general things play out in our lives. So we’re going to look at the big general things first and then look at the specific things.

I. the change: a new conversion

The first thing about this change is a conversion. Now, i know that converting people has become totally taboo these days. You are not supposed to push your beliefs on anyone or try and change what they think about anything. And if someone does convert from one belief system to another its usually seen as this thing that they did either because they were weak and needed some sort of spiritual crutch or because they were pressured into it by some social network they got involved with. Does that sound familiar?

Many churches and pastor’s answer to that these days is to just accept that and say, no we are not trying to change anyone, there is no point in which you are either a christian or not a christian. We are all just learning and growing and emerging and becoming and that is a process and a journey. What do you guys think?

What we think is important. But more important than what we think is what the Bible says. And sometimes maybe those two things don’t quite line up. And that’s okay. That why we study books of the Bible like Romans, and preach through them the way we do, to try and figure that stuff out.

So let’s talk about Romans first and what it has to say about this. Maybe some of your minds have already starting thinking about what we have been learning or studying? In Adam, now in Christ. Dead, now baptized and alive in Christ. Forced slave to master sin, now free servant of master Jesus. Married to the law now married to Christ. Or we could go back to chapter four of Romans where we learned that Abraham, the first Jew, believed God and at that moment his belief or faith was counted to him as righteousness. Its hard to get away from the distinct change presented in the Bible. Conversion is everywhere.

If we go to the stories of Jesus and the gospels, we read how Jesus shows up on the scene and the first thing he says is “repent” which means to turn around and change, “repent, for the Kingdom of God is near.” And then he starts going up to fisherman and tax collectors and tells them to quit their jobs and follow him wandering around the middle east doing weird things like miracles until he gets hung up on a cross and dies for saying he was God and that he was going to start a church. Its hard to get away from conversion.

But what about our lives? I’m not sure when, but sometime a few years back I stopped growing. Well at least my bones, my beer belly doesn’t seem to stop growing. Amy and I started this thing last week on the door of our fridge on this little dry erase board where everyday we don’t exercise we write “bad, bad, fat kids.” J

Anyway, my point is that we are always growing in life in our person, in who we are becoming. Our lives are really are this process of learning and maturing. It is like a journey. I don’t know how many times I have thought one thing and then later in changed what I thought because I experienced something I hadn’t before or met someone who totally had a big efffect on me or because I learned some new piece of information I hadn’t known. Life has these ups and downs and these things and how you respond to them really have a way of shaping who you are and who you become. And if that is true, then isn’t Jesus, if you do become a Christian, really just part of this whole process and there is no real point of beginning?

I don’t think so. This what I think. Yes, life is a journey for sure. That sounds so lame. But whatever, life is a journey… “don’t stop believing” starts playing in my mind immedietally. I need a different word. Life is a process. But I think there is the process before Christ and the process after Christ. There is the process that leads you up to the point where you start following Jesus and then there is life after that point when you walk through it with him. For those who like the big words, it is the difference between justifcation and sanctification.

I really believe there is a specific moment in space and time when we, as individuals, somehow, someway, deep inside make a heart decision and decide that Jesus is what we need and we devote ourselves to him. And that may be a big step or a small step. If you are older it is probably a pretty big step. If you are kid, it may not feel so big but it is a step that will stay with you your whole life.

So there is a change, a new conversion that happens in the gospel…a decisive turning point in the story of our lives. But there is more to this change and that is how it is related to the story of God and a decisive change he made in his unfolding of history. So let’s look at the second reference to another big unbrella issue that is reflected in our text, and that is what I have as “new covenant” in my outline.

II. the change: a new covenant

My first point came from the words, “while” and “now” and “were” and “are” in our text. My next point comes from the last phrase in verse 6, “we serve not in the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” “old written code” and “new life of the Spirit.” What is that?

If you were here about a year and half ago, just after we moved into this building, you may remember a sermon I preached called “Circumcision of the Heart” from the verses at the end of Romans 2. Listen to the last verse of Romans 2, “a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.” Did you hear those words, “letter” and “spirit?” He says a similar thing in his second letter to the Corinthians when he says we are “servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills but the Spirit gives life.”

So Paul assumes we already know what he is talking about when he refers to “letter” and to the “spirit” because he already explained it to us earlier in Romans. But that was a long time ago for us, so let me just refresh our memories a bit because this is huge to understandinf our text for today.

What we learned back then was that our heart has a lot to do with who we are. As Proverbs 4:31 says, “out of the heart flow the issues of life.” Our problem is that we all have bad hearts, everyone. We mess up our lives because we don’t thank and honor God as we ought to for everything and so we are miserable because of the consequences of that.

Now, “letter” is a reference to law, and that’s what the old covenant is all about. Covenant means pact or agreement, in the Bible it is the way that God has chosen to work with mankind…through covenant. You can listen or read all about that in that “Circumcision of the Heart” sermon.

But what is significant for us this morning is understanding our text and what this “old written code” or “old covenant” and this “new life of the Spirit” or “new covenant” is all about. So what I want to do is go back to the promise in the Old Testament to find out.

Listen to God’s promise spoken through the prophet Jeremiah about 600 years before Jesus came on the scene. Jeremiah says, “Behold days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant…not like the covenant which I made with (Israel) when I took them…out of Egypt [so not like the 10 commandments, the heart of that covenant]. …But this is the covenant which I will make…I will put my law within them and on their heart I will write it and I will be their God and they shall be my people…(and they) will all know me from the least of them to the greatest of them…for I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more (Jer 31:31-34).”

Ezekiel, another prophet, who shows up after Jeremiah comes saying the same thing. Listen to his words, the Lord declares, “I will give you a new heart and put a new Spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (Ez 36:26).”

So God promises that a performance driven life of law and religion will not always be the only way to relate to him, that covenant will end and a new one will come. About six hundred years go by and then Jesus shows up, preaching, teaching, and healing and then the night before he goes to die on the cross he has one last meal with the closest of his followers and he takes a glass of wine and says this, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” And after that dinner he goes outside into a garden to pray and is arrested and within 24 hours is bleeding to death on a cross so that he might heal our biggest ailment, our hearts.

Now, that is kind of gory, and I know I just threw a ton of information at you if you have never heard any of this before. So let me try and make it a little easier. We talked earlier about our story. Think journey, rock n roll, our lives… What all this covenant stuff is saying is that there is one big story happening throughout history and all of our lives are connected to it. And that big story is the story of God showing himself to us and teaching us how wonderful and beautiful he is and how he is the best thing ever. And that story has one big climax, one big central part to it, one point when God most shows himself as God and that is the point when Jesus died on the cross. When that happened there was significant, monumental change in the way that God made himself available to men. A new covenant was initiated.

No longer would faith express itself through meeting requirements or laws or rules in order to relate to God, but now an internal desire and communion from the heart could be possible, a new covenant because of Christ.

So the biggest and most significant part of our lives is when our story intersects with the highest point of God’s story, the cross. When Christ becomes ours. When we accept his human death as being in our place and receive his divine payment as an eternal gift of life to us. And when we realize what that means, nothing but love fills the heart. There is conversion and a new internal desire to please God and not just appease him.

Okay, so now that we got something of conversion and something of covenant in our heads, I think we may be ready to look at these four internal evidences we discover inside ourselves. Let’s just re-read our two verses again to get re-acquainted with these things Paul describes. (re-read vs.5-6)

III. the change: four experiential evidences – flesh, passion, law, fruit

Verse 5 is what is of the old covenant, verse 6 is what is of the new covenant. Now, I’ve said in past weeks that from chapter 6 through 8 is about helping us deal with what to do with why we still sin and struggle in life after you become a Christian. And the way that Paul is trying to help us with that is to teach about these spiritual realities that happen when that conversion takes place.

So the more that we come to know and believe these things the more we will be empowered to live a happy life in our struggle. But there is still struggle, we are going to hear the worst of it in the latter half of this chapter in a couple weeks. But this struggle is present within us because we live in the time between the new covenants. All that stuff about the old covenant is true but so is all the stuff about the new covenant and it is sandwiched inside us. That is why many theologians and commentators in looking at the big picture of God’s story have described the time of these two covenants as two different ages. And we could say a lot about that but the main reason why I even briefly bring it up is so that we will know that we, as Christians, can find ourselves in both verse 5 and verse 6. There is an inherent imperative in Paul’s voice telling us not to live in verse 5 but to live in verse 6.

Okay, enough set-up. Four evidences inside us from changing and entering into the new covenant of Christ: the flesh, our passion, the work of the law, and our fruit…flesh, passion, law, and fruit. These are super practical.

First flesh, if you have an NIV translation, it says “sinful nature” which sucks because the NIV is interpreting there for you instead of translating. Which is why you really should get a different translation, so you can read the actual words God inspired. so flesh, it can be bones and skin like you see on all those myspace ads every time you sign out or like you see when you are alone with your wife. We’ll talk a ton about flesh once we get to chapter 8 in Romans. But here is a brief explanation.

In Romans flesh is the whole person, physical and spiritual that is tied to this world with its sin and corruption. Flesh is a power that exercises control over people. It is part of the old age of the old covenant that attempts to wield influence over the Christian and completely dominates the non-Christian.

It is interesting because all these Bible commentators have all these things to say about what flesh is. But of the 15 or so that I read, the best by far was John Calvin. I know I quote him a lot here, but it is amazing to me that with all the knowledge of scholars and what not these days that the exegetical work someone who lived around 500 years ago is consistently so superior. So here is what Calvin says, he says it is the dominion where the “ears are struck with (an) external sound (but there is) no fruit or effect because of (being) inwardly destitute of the Spirit of God.” it is “power…no other than the power of casting evil emotions as darts into all the faculties of the soul.”

Such picturesque description and an acutely accurate explanation. The flesh is a dominion where we operate with no ability to find any true soul satisfaction but only self-destruct in vain attempts because we are disconnected from God. In that state we are utterly numb to any sounds of the grace and love of God. For you mini-theologians out there it is what it means to be unregenerate, yet unchanged by God.

And Paul’s description here gets increasingly painful…calling this flesh domination one of “sinful passions.” Passion. James Montgomery Boice gives us a good definition of passion. He says it is “natural appetites, impulses or emotions, that can be enacted for good or for bad.” So passion is that which is receptive to what we experience. It is how we feel about things and greatly effects how we think about things. It is what Jonathan Edwards describes in “Religious Affections” when he speaks about us always acting according to our greatest desire. And Calvin, again, amazes us and calls it “the boiling up of lust.” I get this funny picture in my head of one of those big black bowls with the witch stirring up her evil stew with a broomstick. But that is probably not that far off.

Sometimes my passions seem utterly uncontrollable, like they act on their own without me. In the worst moments they are most evident when we are consumed with anger and rage against a person or when our sexual natures rule and will do whatever they must to be satisfied. It is the rapist and the murderer inside us. Our “sinful passions.” Passion gone bad. Totally corrupt.

And notice in Boice’s definition, it isn’t the actions that we take out of passion but passion is the potential itself. He says, passion can be “enacted for good or bad.” So passion is like this receptor, or this can of gasoline that at the slightest spark can be ignited into an unholy flame of desire.

Then notice the next lines…how the Bible is ingeniously written to prick our hearts, “sinful passions aroused by the law.” “Aroused” is a good translation here. You don’t have to stretch your imagination very far when the Bible uses words like passion aroused at work in our members. I’m pretty sure that sexual imagery was not far from Paul’s mind. Especially, when the sanctity of marriage was pissed on in his day by temples built to sex goddesses who would have professional prostitutes who worked there available for an orgy whenever you wanted it. Not too far off from where we are today, with our strip clubs and our general acceptance of people living together before they get married to see if they are sexually and familialy compatible.

But how does this work? Because it says that “our sinful passions are aroused by the law.” How does law stir up sinful passion? I think this is that ancient story of the garden of Eden, that continually replays itself out in each and every individual’s life. So I think it is like this… The essence of sin is self-deification…my desire to want to be my own god. I don’t like to be told what to do. That is why one of the ways the Bible defines sin is knowing the good you ought to do and not doing it (Js 4:19). Another way it defines is breaking God’s law, what God tells you to do. And there is something in us that just does not want to do what we are told to do.

Like in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve are told they can eat of all the trees except one, I’m sure there was nothing special about the tree. There were probably thousands of other trees, but just because there was this one they were not supposed to eat, they had to eat it. It’s like a kid, when you tell them not to do something, they just have to do it to see what happens. Curiosity is far too nice of a word…sinful passion. It is rebellion, where we hate God and submission and prefer our own wisdom to the wisdom of the almighty God and we break and hate His law by nature.

Lastly is “bearing fruit for death.” This is a personification of death in all its dimensions…physical, spiritual, mental. There is a sense of death here being the great culmination at the end of our lives and until that point we die a slow death where our capacities are slowly eaten away…dying spiritually and becoming increasingly miserable, our minds dying, not being able to think straight about things, and at the end our physical bodies breaking down and our soul going on to forever be tortured in a dark depressing experience of death. That is what the life of the old age, the old covenant is: living in the flesh, with sinful passion, being aroused by the law…death.

But Jesus changes things…everything. So let’s look at how those four elements or evidences inside ourselves change in verse six when we convert and our lives intersect with the person and work of Jesus Christ. But now…such good words after that dark description. But now, it doesn’t have to be that way. But now, “we are released from the law.” That was last week…how we all marry the law but Jesus died for us and by uniting to him our marriage to the law dies and frees us to marry Him.

Last week there was one part of our verse I didn’t talk about and that was the very last thing it said and that was the phrase, “in order that we may bear fruit for God.” So here is where that fits…in verse six of being released from the law. It is the corresponding part to bearing fruit for death…now after Jesus we have an ability to bear fruit for God. And bearing fruit for God is one of the best things about being a Christian. Its where you naturally want to do the things that please God because you love him so much and the fruit part is that the joy we receive when that happens. It doesn’t happen all the time and sometimes you have to work hard for fruit…but it happens.

Its this beautiful metaphor of a tree. If we hadn’t spent so much time away from Romans last month, I’d stop here and preach a whole sermon on bearing fruit from Psalm 1. But we need to keep moving on, so I’ll just read part of Psalm 1 for you. “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers but his delight is in the law of the LORD and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither in all that he does, he prospers.”

You see, what changes is the passion, the delight. Law becomes not a command or something that you perform or appease but what God says becomes a delight. That is why John Piper in the book the girls were studying, Desiring God, that is why he says, “Conversion is what happens to the heart when Christ becomes for us a treasure chest of holy joy. Saving faith is the heartfelt conviction that Christ is both solidly reliable and supremely desirable. The newness of a Christian convert is a new spiritual taste for the glory of Christ.” Bearing fruit for God is joy and it is a storing of eternal treasure, eternal fruit that has a neverending effect.

Lastly let’s look at the last part of our verse, “so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” So he brings back the slave, master, analogy and further describes the change from duty to delight. Now we serve in a different way. Out of love and appreciation and devotion…like in a marriage. We enter the new covenant, God gives us the Holy Spirit, writes his law on our heart…and serving him is no longer a burden but a blessing.

Oh, how we need to get ahold of that. The new life of the Spirit guarantees that our serving will pay off in joy. I hate Christianity that is guilt driven…where you try and appease your conscience by spiritually performing for God. Jesus died and performed everything for us…so now we can simply walk through life with him and know that we will be okay. Yes, there is a place for responsibility and commitment. But it is no longer a required responsibility and commitment it is a desired one because we know that is what will make us most happy.

In the next couple weeks Romans is going to go in depth talking about law and its role in the life of the believer and this tension that exists inside of us in being between two ages, two covenants…so I’m just going to conclude our working with the text here by saying, the new life is far better, so much more freeing, where you discover that Jesus is what you need and what pleases you. The old way just ruins us.

Conclusion

So let’s conclude our sermon with some application. I’m sure there are some things that may have already come to some of your minds. This chapter of Romans is deep psychology. Psychology is always this popular major in college…looking into trying to figure out how the human mind and heart works. Here it is. This is some of the best psychology you will ever get, Romans 7. I’m not saying don’t be a psych major. J Just that the Bible here has a lot very insightful things to say about our passion, why we do what we do, law, and how that can change, and when it does the conflict we encounter inside us.

But let me try and provide us with some application. First, conversion. There is such a thing. If you know that you have never made that deep life turn to devote yourself to Christ. I plead with you, do that. It will be the most significant and important thing that ever happens to you. For those who know that has taken place. Ponder that, never wander to far away from the cross. That’s one of the reasons why we take communion every week here. So that our story would always be about the climax of all of history at the cross. Cherish Christ. Love Him. Receive his marvelous grace.

Second, covenant. The new age has begun. But the old age and power still linger about. Live in the new covenant of Christ’s blood. That means Jesus is everything. Jesus is life is the foundation for our lives and his death is the end of our lives and everything that sucks about them. Jesus rose again and secured for us something new. And it is far better.

Three, how that plays out…living in verse 6 instead of verse 5. Let’s bear fruit for God and enjoy doing so. Don’t slip into coming to church and reading your Bible and befriending non-Christians and giving your money and praying to God…don’t slip into doing those things because “that is what you are supposed to do.” No, no, no, no. Know that God loves you despite your flesh filled, sinful passion, law hating nature and that is why he gave you Christ so that things can change. There is in inexhaustible portion of joy for us to be had by following after Christ. All those things, church, the Bible, friendships, prayer…are all good things but they can become death to us if happiness from our heart is not the motive behind them.

Let’s just take church for example, which is just one aspect of a life of worship… I don’t want anyone here who doesn’t want to be here. I don’t want to make people do something that they don’t want to do. I don’t pastor anyone here because it is my duty. Just the same as my marriage, I don’t care for my wife because it is my duty. I love my wife and I love this church. What we need is to see what an awesome privilege it is to partake in the glory of God and to be able to partake without any feelings of guilt and forced labor. That stuff is the old covenant. Now Christ has come and all things have changed.

Lastly, kids… We may talk about some things that are hard to understand here at church. But there is something simply behind every sermon, and that is Jesus. Today’s sermon is about how the Bible tells us that everybody always needs Jesus or they will never be happy. Because of Jesus your life can be like a tree with all kinds of good fruit that will last forever. So when you mom or your dad or when Jesus tells you to do something, don’t do it because you are afraid of disappointing them but instead do it because you love them so much. And that love, is God’s gift to you of His Spirit.

Let’s pray.

God we love you. Thank you for Jesus. Thank you for the new covenant. Thank you for the Holy Spirit. Thank you for releasing us from the dark power of the law. Thank you for giving us joyful passion in exchange for sinful passion. Thank you for enabling us to bear fruit for your glory instead of fruit of our death. Thank you Jesus for dying on the cross and rising again. What happened in history when you did that changes my life. Continue to change me and change these people here today I pray. We continually need the new freshness of your Spirit to come into our lives and shows us the wonder of the gospel again and again. As we come to the table, may we see the greatness of the cross receive your grace into our hearts. Jesus, pastor your people. Take out the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Write your love on their hearts. Fill them with a passion for your glory. Fill them with a passion to build and to grow your church. A passion to love this city, the people in it who have been rejected by the church and the people who think they are better than everyone else. Give us friendships that are meaningful for your kingdom. May the gifts of our money be used wisely to sustain and progress your kingdom. Thank you for the Bible and the gospel. Christ, we adore thee. Amen.