Sunday Sermon: Sin Awakened Through the Law (Romans 7:7-12)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 7 and the Christian’s Struggle With Sin

Well good morning all. If you would open your Bible please to Romans chapter 7. As we continue our series this morning in the book of Romans, Romans chapter 7, appreciate Pastor Chris filling in last week.

It's always convenient to have a judge preach about the law, I think. And that's what we have here in chapter 7. In fact, we'll be spending the month of September in this particular chapter. As we were going through chapters 5 and 6, I had a lot of questions that were asked of me regarding the gospel.

Okay, I believe the gospel, I understand the forgiveness of sins that I've been given in Christ Jesus, but now what about this sin issue that I'm still dealing with? I still am constantly battling against sin.

Am I failing in the gospel because of this struggle that I have with sin? And that's what chapter 7 answers for us as the Apostle Paul talks about the role that the law now plays in the life of a Christian, in the life of a believer.

That we are guided in God's truth continuing through the law. In chapter 6 we read we're no longer under the law but under grace. So we will not be judged by the law for the grace of God covers us. But yet the law continues to expose sin and the way that we should walk as Christians even in obedience to God.

So we read here today, last week we looked at 6 verses, this week we look at 6 more. Verses 7 -12 is the passage that we're going to be looking at. Thomas Tuke, who was an English preacher in a 17th century Puritan, he said the following, Where Christ is loved, there Christ loves.

Where Christ loves, there He lives. And where He lives, the flesh and its lusts die. So let us desire in obedience to the Lord to follow His word as we read this morning from Romans 7, 7 -12. In honor of the word of the King, would you please stand.

Romans chapter 7 and I'm reading from verse 7. Hear the word of the Lord. 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.

But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we read this morning from your word, I pray that what is awakened in us is a desire to obey and follow God. There are certainly many things in your word that are difficult for us to do.

But as Jesus said to his own disciples in Mark 10, what is impossible with man is possible with God. For nothing will be impossible for God. So now, with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within us, we have an ability to hear your word and keep it.

With the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, we have an ability to resist sin by the power of God and walk in a way that is holy and upright and pleasing before you. Some of these things that we read about are difficult and complicated.

And it is not always as obvious to us how they may apply, how we now live in light of what it is that we have read. But I pray that we just simply see a call to holiness and the strength and the power that has been given to us to fulfill it in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray, Amen. As Brother Allen had read for us this morning from 2 Kings chapter 22, when the law of God had been discovered and had been read aloud in the presence of King Josiah, he tore his garments because he realized in the hearing of the law, we have not obeyed this.

What happened then in Judah from that point on was the greatest legal revival that had ever happened in the history of Judah. They tore down all the high places that had been raised up to false gods. Even those priests that had been encouraging the people to sacrifice sons and daughters to Molech, they themselves were killed and their bones were burned on the altars that had been raised up to those false gods.

There had never been a legal revival in Judah like the one that Josiah had overseen. Unfortunately, the hearts of the people were not turned. Though there was revival in the law, there was not revival in their hearts.

And once Josiah died, the people went back to doing what they had been doing before. And the judgment of God came upon Judah that was promised to them because they had rebelled against the Lord and they worshipped false gods instead of the true God.

There can be great legal revival in a land. There can be great legal revival in a church. We could decide the ways that we're doing things in the church have not been in keeping with God's Word and there would be a great transformation that would occur in that body.

But unless there is a transformation of the heart, whatever is going on externally does not have the power to change the person. The law does not have the power to save. As Paul illustrates here, and we'll continue to unpack and unfold as we go through chapter 7, the law cannot save us.

But the law is still righteous and good, Paul says, as we've read here in verse 12. So we should not look at that way like the law can't save us. And if, as we've read in chapter 6, we're no longer under the law but under grace, then what purpose and function does the law have?

Remember the question that Paul presupposed back in chapter 3 and he answered. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

By no means.

On the contrary, we uphold the law. But how do we do that? How do we as believers uphold the law? Especially when the law had revealed in us all kinds of sin and covetousness. We consider those applications as we come to this text this morning.

And I've divided up this passage, these six verses, into three parts, two verses each. First of all, we read of sin's seduction in verses 7 through 8. And most of what I talk about this morning will be in those two verses.

Secondly, we see the law's limitation, and that's in verses 9 through 10. And thirdly, we read of death's deception in verses 11 and 12. So sin's seduction, the law's limitation, and then death's deception.

And ultimately what we want to be able to see in this is that God has given a command to us that is right and good. And the power to uphold it and be able to do it is in the power of the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

So let's look at sin's seduction as we come back to verse 7. Paul says, what then shall we say? Now we've seen this manner of apologetics that he has been exercising over the course of the book of Romans, where he presupposes a question and then he answers it.

And sometimes the response to that question is by no means. In Greek, it's mygenoita. It is the harshest expression of opposition that he can possibly give. As I heard one preacher summarize this in an Americanized English way, no, no, a thousand times no.

That's what by no means means. So when we see here that question, verse 7, what then shall we say? That the law is sin? And remember this in light of what Brother Chris had preached to us last week. Go back to 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. Sins that were aroused by the law that bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we may serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Just like what was given to us in the New Covenant, as was prophesied in Jeremiah 31 and is said in the book of Hebrews to have been given us in Christ. In this New Covenant, God has written His law upon our hearts, not on stone tablets that are outside of us, but our hearts have been transformed by the Holy Spirit within us.

That we would no longer walk in the sins and passions in which we were once held captive, but having been set free, we now walk in the righteousness of Christ. Convicted of our heart over our sin that we would not return to it, we have turned from it, that we may do that which is right and pleasing in the eyes of God.

The law continues to awaken in us a realization of that sin, because when we hear in the law not to do a certain thing, our wicked hearts want to do the opposite. And so the law had awakened sin, sinful passions that were aroused by the law.

So then Paul presupposes that question then. Is the law sin? If it had awakened in us sin, does that make the law sin?

No!

And you see the bookends on this passage of answering that question there in verse 7, and then saying in verse 12, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good, lest there be any confusion.

The law is good. It's God's Word. It doesn't have the power to save us, but it is still God's Word for a particular purpose and function. And so Paul said, 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.

So Paul draws an example from the law to say, I wouldn't have known that this was wrong unless the law had said that it was wrong. And the commandment that Paul singles out is actually the 10th one. It's the last one in the Decalogue, which is the picture of God's moral law that he has given to us.

It's kind of the summary of that law. And he focuses on that 10th commandment, which is the commandment of the heart, of all the laws that are given in the 10 commandments. You shall not murder. You shall not steal.

You shall not commit adultery. You shall not bear false witness. None of those are things that are necessarily hidden. Like you can see a person commit murder. You can see a person commit adultery. But covening is not a thing that you can look at a person and know that they're covening.

Like right now, Bill's covening. I don't think Bill is covening, but it's not that I can look at Bill and say that about Bill. That's the commandment that has to do with the heart issue. It focuses on the heart.

And then also through the rest of the commandments, we can see that there's heart issues that have been built into that as well. It's like the 10th commandment exposes that. Jesus draws that out in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, where it says, you've heard that it is said, do not murder, but if you have even hated your brother in your heart, and you have called him names, you are guilty of the fire of hell.

It's the same as if you have murdered your brother in your heart. So through that commandment, you shall not covet, confronting the heart issue, Jesus even exposes, well, every one of these commandments confronts a heart issue.

But Paul singles out that one that is specifically a matter of the heart. You shall not covet. You can't see on the outside that a person is breaking that commandment, but they break it with the heart, desiring those things that they don't have, thinking my life is incomplete unless I have this.

God, you have given me all, but not this thing, and I have to have this in order to be happy. And isn't that at the heart of all the sin that we commit? As we talked about in Sunday school this morning even, when Adam and Eve are in the garden, and they've been given paradise, and everything is perfect there before them, and yet they aren't satisfied enough so that the tempter is able to come in and say to Eve, if you eat this fruit that God told you not to eat, you won't die.

Because God knows that if you eat it, you'll become like God. And Eve is looking at it going, you know, we've got everything, but that, and I kind of want that. And so she's convinced by the serpent and eats it, passes on the fruit to Adam, and he eats it, and their eyes are opened, the Scripture says in Genesis 3, and they realized that they were naked.

Even through the law in that sense, they came to realize their own shame, and that they had broken God's perfect standard. And so Paul says, I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, do not covet.

Now this goes back to something that he had said previously in chapter 3. Before he gets to a presentation of the gospel, we had spent chapter 1 .18 through chapter 3 .20 reading about how all men are under condemnation, Jew or Gentile.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, was the summation that Paul gave in Romans 3 .23. But it's in verses 19 and 20 that Paul said this about the law. We know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. So he said this before. And it's as if he's unpacking the idea now in chapter 7, especially as it pertains to the believer as Christians.

This is talking about a Christian here. How is it that we then understand the law in light of the grace of God that has been shown to us? The law continues to have that working purpose of revealing. The law is not sinful, but it reveals sin's nature.

And the commandment intended to guide becomes an opportunity for sin to manifest, stirring up our sinful desires. Because we still have hearts needing to be sanctified and made into the image of Christ, which is a work that continues and will continue until that day that we are with Christ in glory.

Now, I've done this with you before, but just as a refresher. I've also taught this to my students in the Bible class that I teach over at the Christian school. But we've talked before about the threefold use of the law.

This was written by John Calvin when he was examining what is the purpose and the function of the law now. We read here in Romans chapter 7. It's down in verse 14. It says, we know that the law is spiritual.

We've read here in verse 12 that the law is holy and it is good. And Paul says in 1 Timothy 1 .8, when we were in 1 Timothy last year, he said that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. So what does that mean?

To use the word lawfully. And Calvin expounded on what has been called the threefold use of the law. The law is useful to reflect, to restrain, and to reveal. So what does that mean? First of all, to reflect.

The law works as a mirror. So that when we look into the law, essentially we see ourselves. We see reflected back to us a person who has not kept this law. And when we hear the good commandments of God, we examine those things and we say,.

I've not kept that.

You've heard this method of evangelism before. That which Ray Comfort has called the way of the master. In sharing the gospel with somebody else. First, bringing them to an understanding of their sin by exposing their hearts.

Using the ten commandments. Asking questions. Like, have you ever told a lie before? Have you ever stolen anything before? Have you ever committed adultery or lusted after someone? Jesus says that's adultery in Matthew chapter 5.

Have you ever murdered anybody? No, I've never killed anyone. But have you ever hated them? Just as I had illustrated a moment ago. If you hate a person, it's as if you've killed them in your heart. And Jesus has said it's the same as breaking that commandment.

And so in using those commandments, you expose to a person they're really not as good as they think they are. And if that's God's standard, and you have to stand before God in judgment, and He's going to judge you based on that standard, do you think that you deserve heaven or hell based on your works?

And so the law in this usage reflects back to the person their heart. Just as Paul is saying here, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said do not covet. And that made me aware that I was a covetor.

And it also awakened, as if in my heart, a desire to disobey it. To then covet. So the law, first of all, is a reflection.

It reflects.

The second use of the law is that it restrains. So it keeps us from doing stupider stuff than we would probably do. And when I was in college, when I was out from under the guide of my parents, and now I'm on my own, I'm picking my own church or whatever else, which I didn't do well.

I didn't go faithfully. But I also discovered, hey, I can kind of do some things that I couldn't do before. Because I don't have my parents there to punish me if I do something dumb. So I went out and explored sins.

Passions of my flesh I didn't even know that I had. And I enjoyed those passions, and so I went and found some more. But even while I was doing these stupid things and chasing the passions of my flesh, it was never too far away from me the word of God that my parents taught me.

And that conviction was always there. And it kept me from doing dumber stuff than I was already doing. I had to face the consequences of bad decisions that I made. But praise God, I didn't make worse decisions with worse consequences.

And so in that way, the law works to restrain. We remember God's law that prevents us from doing worse than we could. It may even awaken in you a desire to do something, but then at the same time restrain you from then doing it.

So you may have a sinful, covetous desire in your heart for sin, but you know at the same time, if I do that, it's going to be bad. And so you sin in the desire, and dwelling on that desire, but thankfully not going as far in that desire in indulging in the thing that you want.

So the law restrains. As said in Psalm 119, 109,. Though I take my own life in my hands continually, I will not forget your law. So God's law prevents us from doing dumber stuff, praise God. And the third use of the law is that it reveals.

Specifically, what does it reveal? It reveals God's will. So what does it mean then to obey God? How do we live in a way that is pleasing to God? We see that in the commandments. By doing these things, we live our lives in such a way that is pleasing to the Lord.

When we get to Romans chapter 13, Paul will say the summation of the law is love your neighbor. If you're loving your neighbor, you're not murdering your neighbor. If you love your neighbor, you're not committing adultery with your neighbor, right?

You're not coveting their stuff, you're not stealing their things. So love is the fulfilling of the law. If you love, then you're not doing these things that the commandment tells you not to do. And so the commandment is good for us.

It reveals to us what is pleasing to God. How do we live in a way that is pleasing to the Lord? But at the same time, we still have this wickedness in us. That it's as if, what do I do with this? And when the law comes in, it just awakens sin.

It's like that wicked man that still exists there. Though it's been put to death because of Christ. It's like that guy still trying to get up out of the grave. And when we hear a commandment from God, that sinful tendency that exists in us still wants to wake up and disobey it.

Matthew Henry said this about the law, There is no way of coming to that knowledge of sin which is necessary to repentance, and therefore to peace and pardon, but by trying our hearts and lives by the law.

So though there may be some nuisances about the law sometimes in our lives, it is necessary and good to guide us in the right way that we are to go. The law makes us aware of our sin and need for a Savior.

It made us aware of that before we became Christians, and it still makes us aware of that even now that we are Christians. I still, every day, need to put the passions of my flesh to death, and cling to Christ every day.

And the commandment of God continues to reveal that need to me. You know, every once in a while, there are events that will take place that serve as a wake-up call for a lot of people. And we're seeing that happen in the news right now.

Over a series of a couple of weeks, we saw a succession of various news stories that probably didn't begin with this, but this is where I'm starting, at least for the purpose of this illustration. Two weeks ago, there was a school shooting in Minnesota, where a trans shooter went into a Catholic school and killed people.

And that was right before the public eye. And then a little over a week ago, there was a woman on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, who was killed by a monstrous man sitting beside her. And that video went public and circulated around the world.

And we're seeing that play out in front of our eyes and going, man, it's bad out there. And then all of a sudden, just a few days ago, Charlie Kirk, one of the most vocal conservatives in the country, was assassinated while just talking on a college campus in Utah.

And the awareness of these events has awakened the American conscience to something going on. Now, I said this in the chat on our telegram, that in the days following Kirk's assassination, I am seeing the gospel shared on social media more than I've ever seen it before.

And it's because this is what Kirk's life was all about. He was all about sharing his faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ with people. And the video clips that you're seeing, even when he's talking about certain political issues, he's still punctuating it with the gospel.

My faith is the most important thing. This is because God has saved me. He's forgiven me of my sins. And he'll forgive you of yours, too. And those clips are being seen by the millions. And just the fact that a man who loved God and wanted to guide people into truth, so much so that he dedicated himself to traveling college campuses around the country just to have a dialogue, just to have a conversation, and he was killed for it, has opened the eyes of people to realize something bad is going on and I need something else.

J .C. Ryle said, The man who is content to sit ignorantly and has no public eye for what is going on in the church and the world is a miserable patriot and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.

And so as we're seeing this happen now in our times, what sort of opportunity is there for the church to be out there with the gospel? The way that the times are going are convicting the hearts, are awakening people to the knowledge of sin.

Like they're becoming aware of natural law, the way that God has established things, even if they don't know that's what's going on. This man got killed just for talking. What is the response to this?

I came across a woman's testimony who said the following, Charlie Kirk's death made me pick up a Bible for the first time in my life. I never opened a Bible before. In fact, I know nothing about Christianity or Jesus.

But yesterday, she was writing this on a Thursday. Yesterday, after witnessing the assassination of Charlie Kirk on the Internet, for the very first time yesterday, I grabbed my husband's Bible, and the page that I opened up to was the verse John 8, 32.

And it said, Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. I feel like Charlie's death, Charlie Kirk's death, woke me up spiritually, and now I can't unsee the truth. So God will use these things to wake us up, to bring us to an understanding and a knowledge of the truth.

And I pray for people like that. I mean, she can read John 8, 32. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. I hope she keeps reading. Because I've heard that quote in an X-Men movie. So that doesn't automatically save you.

But through these different events, God is using these things to wake people up. Now, we've had even greater tragedies happen in our country than just what we've observed over the course of the past week.

9 -11 was a bigger tragedy. And I don't know if you remember this, but after 9 -11 happened, surely you're familiar with what is called See You at the Pole. It was a movement of students across grade schools and high schools in the country to gather at their school flagpole and pray, and they do that.

I think it's the last Wednesday of September. I worked at a Christian radio station at the time, and after 9 -11 happened, we would keep track of the See You at the Pole numbers every year as much as we could, with the schools that were around in the area that our Christian radio station reached.

And the year of 9 -11, there was an explosion of students that were coming to the flagpole at See You at the Pole. Three to four times more than we had ever seen in any previous year. It was an explosive number.

And it might have had the appearance of some great revival that was going on in the country. What's been the state of the United States of America since 9 -11? Was there some great revival that had taken place in the U .S. since then?

There was a sudden spark of attitude. But then the depravity just came right back in again. Just like we saw with Josiah in 2 Kings 22, there was a great legal revival that had taken place, but the hearts weren't really transformed.

So it was just a season in which our opinions had shifted a different direction for a little while, but then eventually went right back to doing what we had been doing before. And the same thing can happen here.

God is using a moment to awaken people to a knowledge of sin and how bad things are. And I pray that we will utilize it in the right way to be able to share the gospel with people. But unless hearts are truly changed, then this may not result in anything fruitful at all.

We need to pray. We need to be diligent. We need to be faithful in the work. And know that God in His good time will do what is good and pleasing to the Lord. So Paul again explores here sin's seduction in chapter 7, verses 7 and 8.

In verse 8 he says, Sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. And that doesn't mean, I was never a sinner until the law came about, and now suddenly I'm a sinner.

So if we just get the law out of there, maybe I won't be a sinner anymore. No, what the Paul, the point that Paul is making, is that now that I heard the law, now I'm suddenly aware of my sin. And furthermore, there's that desire in my heart to want to disobey the law.

And so let's keep going here. We consider the law's limitation in verses 9 through 10. In verse 9 Paul says the following,. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

Verse 10, the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. So we see here that the law, though holy, cannot save or produce life. And before understanding the law, Paul was alive, but its demands brought awareness of sin leading to a spiritual death.

I've used this illustration with you before, and this kind of exploring or revealing the sin nature that exists within man. Our tendency to want to disobey anything that anyone tells us not to do. Like it's inherent within us.

Somebody tells you not to do this, and so you do that. I see my children do this all the time.

Don't do that.

And then they instantly do it.

Why?

And then I remember, oh yeah, because they're my kids and I'm a sinner and I brought forth sinners that I now have to train in an understanding and in the discipline of the Lord. But you know this, you've experienced this before.

Wet paint, don't touch. What do you want to do? You want to touch it. Keep off the grass. I think I found a new shortcut. The big one for me when I was younger was the signs on the piano that would say, do not play.

Oh, I'm going to go play it. I'm going to find a way that I can sit down and play. I'm going to impress everybody with my skill, and they're going to go, oh, we shouldn't have had that sign on that piano.

What were we thinking? I got in trouble every time. These are just kind of natural examples of the fact that we just have that sinful way in us that wants to go against whatever is commanded. And it doesn't even have to be God's law.

It can be any kind of law, any kind of command. So you might be able to use reverse psychology on your children and tell them to not do the thing you actually want them to do, and then they'll disobey you and do the right thing.

Unfortunately, that Hosanna, did somebody say Hosanna? Yeah. Unfortunately, you're still teaching your kids to disobey. So that doesn't work as well as you wish, as much as you wish it would. But Paul's saying here, again, I was alive apart from the law.

The commandment came, and sin came alive, and I died. I became aware of my sinful way. And that old Adam, the old guy that was in there, the one that I thought was dead because I was now a new creature and I was alive in Christ, he still keeps wanting to come back to the surface and have his way.

And those sins keep trying to pop up again. The very commandment that promised life proved to be dead to me. What does Paul mean by that? The commandment promised life? Well, remember what God said when He gave the first commandments to Adam.

If you do this, you will what? You'll live. But if you don't do this, you will what? You will die. That's in the very first covenant that God lays down at the very beginning of Scripture. Do these things and you will live, disobey and you will die.

And here's the consequences. So under the old covenant, the instruction is do this and you will live. Under the new covenant, which we are now in in Christ, it's live and do this. We're alive in Christ because by faith in Him we've been forgiven our sins.

All those things that we did that were contrary to the law, for which we deserve death, God has forgiven those sins and He's raised us to new life. Now we are alive. That spiritual death has been made alive in Christ.

By grace you have been saved, as we read about in Ephesians 2. And now alive in Christ, we live in a certain way. We live according to those instructions and those commands. So at first the command was do this and you will live.

I couldn't fulfill that. But now alive in Christ, I live and I may do this. I'm actually giving my application early here because this is an application we'll get to in a moment. But this according to or contrary to Paul's statement, that the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.

But the gospel that promises life proves to be life to us. And so we continue to that third point where we read of death's deception in verses 11 and 12. Remember the deception that the serpent in the Garden of Eden leads Eve into.

You won't surely die. God knows that if you eat this fruit, you'll become like Him. And that deception was enough to convince Eve, I'm missing out on something here. And she did the thing that was contrary to what God had commanded for the first man and woman.

Sin seized an opportunity through the commandment, and we were deceived, and it killed us. Every time that we give in to sin, we're looking at a sin that we think this looks pretty good. And I've even had this sin before.

Didn't bother me before. And so I can just do it again. And it becomes deception. And you do the sin and then you feel guilty over it. And that becomes the pattern again and again and again. But beware, brothers and sisters, that you don't continue indulging in that sin to the point that God eventually just gives you over to your own depravity, as we read about in Romans 1.