Romans 7:7-13

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Let me add a prayer request there.
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Pray for those folks in Belmont and at all of the elevation branches that they would indeed question.
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They would just check what is said against the Scriptures. We're in Romans, in chapter 7, verses 7 through 13 this week.
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We're halfway there, almost, almost halfway, getting closer, two years left, two years left in Romans.
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We'll have it, we'll have it in the bag. So I'm going to do something a little,
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I keep trying to touch the screen. I'm going to do something a little bit different this week and going forth.
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I'm going to read through the entire chapter and then hone in on 7 through 13, so that way we're getting the full context of what's being said.
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Starting in verse 1. Or do you not know, brothers, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives?
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For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
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Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.
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But if her husband dies, she is free from the law. And if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. What then shall we say?
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That the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law,
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I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said,
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You shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.
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For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law.
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But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
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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.
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So the law is holy, the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good. Did that which is good then bring death to me?
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By no means. It was sin, producing death in me through what is good.
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In order that sin might be shown to be sin, and that through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
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For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
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For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not know, for I do not do what
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I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what
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I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good.
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So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
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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.
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For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, is what
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I keep doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer
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I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law, that when
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I want to do right, evil lies close at hand, for I delight in the law of God, in my inner being.
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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.
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Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?
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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
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I serve the law of sin. Moving back to verse 7 here, what then shall we say?
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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 know what it is to covet if the law had not said covet.
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So firstly, we're talking about coveting. There's a difference between envy and covetousness.
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To envy someone is to want the same things that they have. Your neighbor has a red sports car, and you would like a red sports car too.
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You want a wonderful lawn like your neighbor has. To covet is to want their thing.
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I want that sports car that belongs to my neighbor. I want that.
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I want his wife. I want his ox. It's not a matter of wanting the same thing.
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It's a matter of wanting their things. The covetousness leads to all manner of sin, adultery, theft, murder.
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It is a thought crime, much like the others that Christ elevated.
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Paul here in this verse is asking a rhetorical question that he gives an answer to, much like he has many times before.
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What shall we say then? That the law is sin? By no means. Or God forbid.
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What he is expressing is the idea in the question that the law causes.
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It is the root cause of sin. When you read the law, it itself produces sin in you.
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And he's saying, God forbid. That is not the case. He goes on to say, if it had not been for the law,
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I would not have known sin at all. He explains that he would not know sin if the law had not shown it to him.
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This is why we refer to the law as a mirror. The relevatory power of the law is to allow us to see ourselves as we truly are, as God sees us.
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Romans 3 .20, if you remember, was a long time ago. But it says,
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For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
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Let's consider for just a moment a hypothetical scenario, which
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I'm sure has actually been an actual scenario many, many times. But let's say we take ten people and put them in a room.
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And their only objective is to chat about how good they are. And we put one
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Christian, one true saint among them. The only person in that room who truly knows who they are is the saint, is the
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Christian. Because they've had the law given to them. They know truly the depth of their depravity and how far the
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Holy Spirit has brought them out of it. The true question that you ask when you evangelize, one of the better questions to ask someone, especially if they're in the church or they claim to be a
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Christian, they claim Christianity is, as a starter, would you say that you're a good person?
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Because the person who's been convicted by the law knows that they're not.
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So when they answer, yes, I do charity and I do this and I do that, that's a more lengthy conversation that you need to have with that person, is it not?
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Very often the church makes the mistake of, as I've said before, stating that Jesus saves and He does.
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But very often they do not tell them from what. That is an essential part of the gospel, the law.
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But when our sin is made known to us, we realize that if you steal one time, you're a thief.
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If you lie one time, you're a liar. If you hate with malice one time, you're a murderer.
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I preface that with malice. Maybe preface isn't the correct word. But I say hate with malice because there is such a thing as righteous hate.
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Hate sin, right? God hates sinners, right?
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There's another thing that the church says wrong is God hates to sin but not to sinner. And I can't remember where I heard it, but one person said, then why does
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He send the person to hell? God obviously hates sinners or He wouldn't condemn them.
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It is by grace that we are saved, right? That's why it's grace and mercy.
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But another thing, just for a moment, back to covetousness that people seem to not be told about a lot is the fact that once we get there, it's appointed once to man, death and then the judgment, is that you will not only be judged on the basis of the things that you've done, but you also be judged on the basis of the thoughts that you've had.
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To us as Americans, that is a foreign concept, especially if you've never heard it before.
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If you've never grown up in the church, you've never heard of that.
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Nowadays, most people have the concept of thought crime because of the things that we're battling in our culture, but you will.
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We will all stand before God and answer for the things that we've done and the thoughts that we've had because those are just as much sins as the actions.
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But once you get into the idea of thought crimes, sins in your thoughts, that's a completely different can of worms.
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Even as saints, everyone has things in that room that you'd rather not have exposed.
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But this is why the law is given to us, so that we will know our sin more deeply than especially general revelation allows.
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In Galatians 3 .24, he says,
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Now, I enjoy the
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ESV. That's what I write most of these messages on, is the
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ESV. But I think that the King James Version says it a little bit better, at least in a more understandable way.
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It says, It says, The purpose of the law is to point us to Christ.
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Its purpose was never to save us.
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There was never a way in which people were going to be able to keep it.
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Only one human could keep the law. The God -man, Christ.
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It is there to show us that we are imperfect, but He is, and that we would be justified by our faith in His work.
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Verse 8 says, For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
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I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
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Paul here is expressing a time in his life that all saints share.
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The beginning of his witness, when the law took hold of him. Paul was a
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Pharisee. He knew the law from childhood. He knew the law better than most
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Jews, but that understanding wasn't there of it until the Holy Spirit gave it to him.
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But he also says that hearing the law gives sin a special opportunity to rear its head.
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To show its influence in our lives. R .C.
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Sproul has a great quote about this. He says, We are not sinners because we sin.
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We sin because we are sinners. Our nature is that of sin.
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Our desires are chained to that sin. As we have discussed a plethora of times before, natural man is in a state of non -pose non -pocare.
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We can't not sin. That is our nature. So when natural man is confronted by the law, this includes saints because we are born into that nature, we have generally one reaction to it.
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Rebellion. It is our rebellious nature as human beings that cause us to do this.
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When God says, don't covet, don't hate, don't murder, don't steal, don't be an adulterer, don't fornicate, don't do this, don't do that.
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We, in our sinfulness, see that as an opportunity to assert our will.
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As if, for an instant, that a human being could assert his will over that of God's. But we still try.
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Even as saints, our flesh, this is what Paul is talking about later on.
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Even as saints, our flesh still continue that. We want to do what
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God wants, and yet our flesh fights against it. The biggest thing that people refuse to concede is control.
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The illusion of control that we give ourselves. How much anxiety and how many tears and how many marriages have been ruined over control.
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Control over one's life. You get money in, right?
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You get some check. You didn't know where the check was coming from, and then all of a sudden you get a bill from the tax man.
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That is a blessing, but what do you do? You get mad that you have to give it to the tax man, right?
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I can't control the money. It's irritating. When things happen outside of our control, what is our reaction to it?
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Irritation, rebellion. This also comes into play into the church at large.
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Why do you think that a large part of the disagreement that we have in the church with brothers and sisters is over God's sovereignty and human will?
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Because as human beings, we would rather not. We want to keep at least some semblance of iota of free will that we can.
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Paul says, but for apart from the law, sin lies dead. What does Paul mean by this?
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He can't mean that the law is sin. He's already addressed that in verse 7. So what does he mean?
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He means that without the knowledge of the law of sin, the influence of it that is so heavy is dormant.
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Not that sin doesn't occur in your life. Not that you don't sin. But the power that it has over your desires and your will isn't flexed until it has to be.
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Sin, the deceiver, is more than happy to allow you to go about your life as a normal human being in your nature and never bother you, never push you to do something because you're doing all of it on your own.
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But with the hearing of the law, when he talks about that special opportunity, because of our rebellious nature and our first reaction is to rebel and assert our will and our sin boils up to the surface, and for some, we are convicted of it.
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We see it. Why am I doing that thing that I just learned
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I shouldn't do? We're convicted. We're given a godly sorrow. We're given that by the
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Holy Spirit. Others are overwhelmed by it.
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A perfect example of this, perfect example, is when a person is confronted with a sin like fornication, adultery, and their reaction to being confronted by that is to dive absolutely headfirst into it.
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I reject your law and substitute my own. Paul says that once he was alive apart from the law, meaning that he lived his life as most do, not knowing sin, not understanding the law, going about his day doing this and that, doing his best to keep what he could understand and sacrificing for those slip -ups, but living day after day as most people in his culture did.
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But when he understood the law, when it was shown to him and he realized the depth of his sin, he realizes that he is in fact dead.
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He goes on to say in verse 10, The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
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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.
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The law was shown to him to condemn rather than to save because sin deceives.
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It promises pleasure and knowledge, understanding.
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Sound familiar? You will not certainly die, but you will know good and evil.
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It's like when the serpent deceived Adam and Eve. This brings up a good point.
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The reason that we sin, why do we sin? Because it promises pleasure, promises happiness.
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It never tells us that it leads to death, but this is what
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Paul is talking about. The fact that natural man chases for his entire life small insignificant moments of insufficient pleasure, whether it is coveting his neighbor's things that leads people to steal or whether it is lustful thoughts that lead to adultery or hatred that leads to murder.
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Inevitably, it is all for pleasure. It is all to satisfy some desire because we are all this way naturally, those that never come to know or understand the law and the salvation that Christ offers, gives rather.
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Our culture promotes this behavior. I dare you to watch a single
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TV show where some sort of sin is not promoted. Something. It's going to be something.
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Guaranteed. And it drives you almost to the point of, oh, I'm just not watching any more
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TV. I'm done. I'm going to listen to the radio. You turn the radio on. You're like, well, that's country music for me.
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Can't do that no more, right? But the culture establishes itself with a highest pursuit, especially in America.
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It's enshrined. The highest pursuit that natural man can achieve is happiness.
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That's what he chases all his life. The car, the family, the house, the career, all of that, everything that is promoted is for happiness.
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People remembering you after you're gone makes you happy. I'm glad I won't be forgotten.
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But it's all just a chase.
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Like an addict chases a high. We are, as Paul says, promised one thing and gain another.
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Through sin we gain only death. That is the ultimate goal, the ultimate end.
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The law of God is just and holy and righteous and good because it requires perfection.
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It is, what's the correct word?
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Apologize. It is God's character. They're not just things that God said, do this.
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It is God's character in words. God doesn't murder.
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He doesn't steal. He doesn't lie. And because God is perfect,
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His law is perfect. And the requirement to keep it is perfection. If you evangelize for only a few hours, you will inevitably come across many false justifications for sin as to why this person can't keep the law.
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Well, everyone tells lies. Everyone does it.
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That must justify it in some way. Here's one you may have heard, especially over the past couple of years.
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It's my body, my choice.
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As a justification for murder, let me assert my will, what
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I want. Put my wants above another human being.
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Even as saints, we sometimes have, as I said before, we have negative reactions to the hearing of the law still.
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And we will for the rest of our lives when our sin is shown to us, when it's brought to the light. When brothers and sisters point things out to us, we get irritated.
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That's our first reaction to it, is irritation. But it's not the fault of the law.
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It's not the fault of God. God's law is perfect, as I said, because He is perfect.
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There's a wonderful quote by Matthew Henry on this section. It describes the relationship between the law and those that are justified and those that are not.
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It says, Next, Paul summarizes in verse 13.
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He said, As I said before, for some, the law hardens them.
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But for those that God is saving, the law is a blessing.
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It is there so that we can truly know ourselves, truly know the offense that we have taken part in against the thrice holy
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God. Our sin is brought into the light and illuminated so that we might see it as it truly is and for what it is really doing.
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We grow in the spirit and are sanctified more and more. And those sins that were once things that we did, even without thinking, they grow uglier and uglier.
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I'm sure everyone here can think of something that you used to do as a regular part of your day or a regular part of your week that now you see as it truly was a sin, something that was offensive, whether it was singing a song that was blasphemous or writing a book full of heresy.
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It could be anything. I'll close with this quote from Spurgeon on this particular passage.
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And then we shall see the perfection of divine holiness. We shall understand how black a thing was sin.
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Men who lived, I'm sorry, men who have lived underground all their lives do not know how dark the mine is, nor can they know it until they stand in a blaze, in the blaze of the summer sun.