April 23, 2017 Who Will Rescue Me by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Romans 7 and the Law’s Power to Expose Sin

I'll turn, please, to Romans chapter 7. Our text will be verses 13 through 25, which was the subject of Sunday school this morning. We're not able to conclude it in Sunday school, as I had hoped initially when I set it out.

So just so you know, we are going to come back to this in more of a teaching context next Sunday, and Lord willing, come to a more satisfactory conclusion of matters than we did this morning, but it was still a good and lively discussion.

But this morning, I'll read from chapter 7 verse 12 to chapter 8 verse 1, but the text will be 13 through 25. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. 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. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

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. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, 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.

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? 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.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The picture here in Romans 7, 13 to 25, the picture we have here is one of unrelenting frustration and failure. The man depicted here in Romans 7, 13 to 25 is living this life of defeat, failure, and to reuse the word frustration, this man or woman is striving after the righteousness of God by means of the law and finds only grief.

Now perhaps this person is responding to the law of God written on the heart or maybe what may be known of God by looking at the created order as the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows forth His handiwork.

Perhaps, going back to Romans 1, it is the conscience with which God has imbued all mankind. Whatever the case, what we have here is striving and trying and straining and failure and defeat. This one wanting to do through whatever means he knows to be right and unable to do it.

Wanting and unable and trying and stumbling constantly. Now the Apostle Paul here is still focused upon the law of God. He writes especially at this point in Romans to those who know the law. It's primarily the Jewish audience, but it's also Gentiles who have been taught about the law of Moses and know it.

The law of God is received from Paul, you will recall, the staunchest of defenses, which is why I began with chapter 7 verse 12 just before our text begins for this morning. That the law is holy and righteous and good.

There's nothing wrong with the law. There's nothing wrong with any aspect of God's revelation of Himself anywhere. Whether it's the conscience on the heart, the law of God written on the heart, the conscience that He's given us, His revelation in nature, or the law of God in detail from Sinai.

Nothing wrong with any part of God's revelation. Paul has defended it vociferously. If the goal of his attaining to this righteousness of God revealed from any of these sources, any or all of these sources, and that goal is met only with despair that comes from a complete lack of success, then we have to ask, what is the problem?

Well, the scripture here this morning answers the question plainly. The problem is not the law. The problem is you. The problem is me. The problem is with anyone who looks to the law as the path to the righteousness of God.

See what the law does, what the law does is to expose our sin. After it exposes your sin. After it shows you God's standard, and then reflects back to us our accomplishment against that standard, which is what?

Sin. Once it shows this to us, its power has ended. The law can do nothing about it. The law does show forth the righteousness of God, rightly read, it brings to the fore in a way that cannot be denied or suppressed our own failings against it, because it is holy and righteous and good in all that it purports.

So at the very end of this, this anguished cry, who will deliver me from this body of death? That's from everyone who's engaged in this struggle, and you cannot win this. The standards are too high. Sin within is too powerful.

When you reach out your hand to do what your mind has agreed is good, because you agree with the law of God, you agree with his revelation of what is right to do. What did we learn earlier? Two weeks ago in the preaching, sin awakens and reminds our members of the pleasures of sin and leads us back into it.

You see, this is what the law does. This is Paul's point here. The law convicts you of your sin, and this is a holy and a righteous and a good thing that it does that. Nothing wrong with the law, but here its power comes to an end.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, says Paul to the Corinthians. The law cannot deliver you from the power of sin. It can only tell you that you are a sinner. To understand what Paul is saying to us here, we need to go back to some questions that Paul has presented and then answered for us.

I'm going to do them very quickly so we can get more in depth in our text, but turn back to chapter six, verse one, if you would, if you have your Bibles open. Chapter six, verse one, what shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? This is a question, it's an implication that some may have from what Paul had previously said. You're not under law, but under grace, and if our sin makes grace abound, well then let's sin, let's continue in sin, let's get more grace coming.

We've dealt with that a couple of weeks ago. He says, no, no, you've died to sin. If you're in Christ Jesus, then in him you have died to that old life. Look ahead to chapter six, verse 15, and this imaginary dialogue partner, something like, okay, I get it.

Okay, no, we've died to sin, we don't continue in sin, okay, so he isn't really asking if we should live a life to sin, rather what he's saying is, are we to sin because we're not under the law but under grace, he's concerned that grace is not confining enough to keep us or anyone else from sinning, that grace hasn't the power to keep us from that, from iniquity.

No, says Paul, you are, if you are in Christ Jesus, no longer a slave to such things. Jesus is Lord, his righteousness is your rule. You are a slave to that, you are a slave to his righteousness. Chapter seven, verses seven through 12, Paul demonstrates how sin lies in wait and then uses God's good and holy and righteous law to arouse in us the desire to do whatever it says not to do.

And someone might say, okay, Paul, now I get it, now I really get it. Chapter seven, verse seven, what shall we say then, that the law is sin? No, the law is not sin. What is sin? Sin is sin. The law is holy and righteous and good.

Sin is sin. All that the law is, the sin is the opposite. Is the law sin? Of course it's not sin. Sin is profane, sin is monstrous, sin is bad. And now in verse 13, there arises one more question about the law's role in regards to our sin.

Did that which is good, which refers of course to the law, did that which is good become death to me? The answer he gives is that emphatic negation that we've had before, by no means. Other translations say, may it never be.

We might say today, of course not. The law comes from a God who is by nature holy and righteous and good. As the psalmist says, it is forever cast in the heavens. It is a true reflection of him, of God who gave it.

It can no more change than can God. It can no more not be what God is than God can. Now Paul goes on to locate the cause of our misery. This failure, this frustration, this Romans 7, 13 to 25 man trying to do what is right but unable to do it.

What is the cause of all this? Not the law. We cannot blame it on God who has revealed this to us that we might know our true condition. Not the law. It is sin. Sin produces death by using what is good, which is the law, in order that the sinfulness of sin, here's Paul's purpose for it, why does God work things out this way?

That the sinfulness of sin will be sinful beyond measure. You wonder why the apostle does not use a thesaurus and come up with other words for sin. I think because he means exactly what he says. The law shows us our sin.

Why does it show us our sin? So that the sinfulness of sin shall become sinful beyond all measure. And then in verses 15 to 22 of Romans 7, this life of futility, this desperate man, the man or woman who's looking to the law, seeing its demand, trying to do it, failing, confronting the sin that led to the failure, then looking back to the law, seeing its demands, trying to do it, failing, and confronting the sin that led to the failure, then looking back to the law, seeing its demands, and you get the point.

And on and on and on it goes. Paul's addressing here our self-empowered work to establish the righteousness of God by the works of the law. He is writing to you who say you've got to get yourself in order before you come to Christ.

There are people in this room who say that. He is writing to you who standing before God is thought to be because of your obedience. To you who have believed you can obey your way into God's favor, or that you must obey your way into keeping God's favor.

I knew a man at our previous church who became and still is a pretty dear friend, a brother in the Lord, serving Christ in the same capacity I do. I remember one time, it was about a year before I was saved, when he was coming out of church and I was going in.

He hadn't gone to the earlier service, and I go into the mid-morning service. We had a moment to talk and ask him how he's doing. I didn't know him real well at the time. Like I said, I was about a year from being saved myself.

I said, how are you doing, and he said, I'm trying hard but failing miserably. That's a quote. Trying hard, failing miserably. I remember thinking to myself, wow, this sounds great. No wonder my wife talked me into letting her bring our son to church again.

No wonder she's so interested in coming back to her Christian roots. She had been saved before we even started dating so that we can live this life, to work and work and work and work and fail and fail and fail and fail, trying hard but failing miserably.

Well, now some 25 years later, I know and I appreciate what he meant. He meant that he was striving to be like Jesus Christ, to identify and to mortify and to abandon his sin, as the Holy Spirit pointed it out to him, and he couldn't.

No matter how much progress he made, no matter how much more of Christ he saw as he studied the scripture, as he prayed, his breakthroughs became like these teeny little baby steps, and then his failings became these huge strides backwards, the wrong way.

The point of all that is that we do struggle with sin. If we're Christians, then the battle against the temptations of the world, and some of us are easier victims of temptation to sin than others, but this battle, this struggle is never ending.

We will be at it as long as we are in Christ, because the more we are in Christ, the more we desire to be like him. As we see him in the scripture, as we see him as we pray, as we look to the prize that is Christ and we want to be like him, we will see our sin more and more highlighted within, and we will never fully overcome it in this life.

The battle, the struggle is never ending. But dear ones, this man, the one in Romans 7, 15 -22, he seems to me defeated. His opening premise in verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.

The contrast between law and flesh has to do with their natures. The one, the law, is spiritual, and that's to be expected. It emanates from God, who is spirit, and more than that, the law as a spiritual entity must be approached from that same vantage, from a spiritual aspect or condition.

The problem he encounters, whether he knows it or not, is that he is starting out all wrong. He's approaching a spiritual law, but he is of the flesh. He's like someone setting out to climb El Capitan in ballet slippers.

He's got all the wrong equipment. He's preparing for a marathon by studying calculus. He's coming at it all wrong. The two have nothing to do with each other. The law, which is spiritual, but he is of the flesh.

You see, our troubled man of 7, 15 -22 is looking to the law, spiritual, and trying to achieve it by the flesh. This is just what Paul is going to address in the next two chapters. Chapter 9, verse 31 -32, Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law, meaning reaching the righteousness that the law reveals.

He goes on. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as it were, based on works. We do no harm to that. We actually, it's an accurate way to say it, if we filled in and said, because they did not pursue it by faith, but as it were, based on the flesh, the works of the flesh, my own efforts.

This one is sold under sin. The word for sold translates well from the original language. It means to execute a transaction, to buy or to sell something, to sell or surrender your rights, or to purchase and obtain the rights.

In Romans 7 -14, it harkens back to the language of 6 .15 -22, I'm not going to read all that right now, but there Paul argues that we are slaves to the one we obey, either sin leading to death or righteousness leading to life, excuse me, either sin leading to death or righteousness leading to life.

He's of the flesh. He's sold under sin. I need to stop for just a moment. When we had Sunday school here this morning, I was asked some very good questions on that very verse that at the time, trying to think on my feet, which is not my strong point, I couldn't answer.

Lord willing, we'll catch next week. So for you who were in Sunday school, I don't mean to just bludgeon on with this thing because I now have a microphone in a little bit higher position, I do acknowledge that in Sunday school some good questions were posed and I remember them.

We're going to cover it again next week and make that what was going to be a one part Sunday school into two parts. So for you who were there, I do acknowledge that yes, there were some good questions asked me on this verse that I couldn't at the time answer.

I just want to acknowledge that to you. But this man here is going at this all wrong. The law is spiritual. He is of the flesh. He's ill-equipped. Here's a wartime analogy for you. Think of the Russian soldiers in World War II trying to defend Stalingrad.

There were times where they were sent rushing into fortified German positions, those positions having excellent visions and field of fire, bristling with machine guns, and they were sent in, over half of them unarmed, just rushing at these positions.

Well the idea was when somebody in front of you fell, you pick up their gun and kept running at this fortified position. But this is like the battle waged against sin from the flesh. You're unarmed, you're under-equipped, you're doomed to failure.

And Paul goes on to describe the dilemma that this puts us in. Again at verse 15, I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now what I do, now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.

It is no longer I, but sin that dwells in me that does this thing. I know that nothing good dwells in me, in my flesh. I have the desire, but not the ability to carry out what is right. I do not do the good I want, the evil I do not want.

I keep on doing, no longer I, but sin that dwells in me. I know I'm going kind of fast through these, but we read them in full a moment ago. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand, for I delight in the law of God in my inner being, 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.

Now the law is spiritual, and if it is read and understood at its plainest, then this is what it does. It forces the reader to acknowledge what? Their sin. It forces us to agree that what it presents is holy and righteous and good, and it makes us want to do it.

Paul argued back in chapter one that God imbued man with a conscience, an innate sense of right and wrong, so when we read or hear God's word, there is some level at which it has to resonate. I would argue that people who so violently oppose God's word and are so against it, part of it is because of this, because it pricks something within, something that God has put within all man.

He's planted eternity in the heart. For most of mankind, this conviction that the law brings, this exposure of sin causes only rebellion. They suppress the truth. They choke down the conviction. They sear their conscience.

They cauterize it with a scar that will prevent any more conviction from ever gaining a foothold. Others, as did Israel, agree that it is good, and they do all they can to fulfill it in vain, because they are the flesh in a spiritual endeavor, because they do not enter the fray by faith, ill-equipped, unarmed, unprepared.

The law shows the conflict, but it does nothing to equip those who enter into the fray to succeed. Soul under sin, and again, I acknowledge this is hanging there, got to catch it next week in Sunday school.

Soul under sin, though, describes everyone who is outside of Christ. Chapter 5 of Romans tells how sin is just our nature by natural birth, because you're in Adam when he sinned, and by sin came death, and we're all in him, and therefore born with that nature.

Chapter 6 of Romans says that outside of faith in Christ, we're all slaves of this, of sin. Chapter 7 says that justification and ongoing victory over sin is impossible by the efforts of the flesh, that is, by the natural man to satisfy the holy and righteous and good demands of God's thoroughly spiritual law.

Now we don't hold here to the idea of the victorious Christian life, not the way it's commonly expressed, because too often what that means is something like, don't worry, be happy. It's too often taught and followed with no mention of sin or repentance or of our utter inability of our own strength and accord to do anything in any way pleasing to God.

But neither do we preach the defeated Christian. It's the endless frustration of Romans 7, 15 -22 that evokes this cry at the end, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? What did God, more would scream this one out, what did God that you who have heard me preach week by week but have left nonchalant about your sin or even ignoring your sin as if mine are the ravings of a madman, would that God by his spirit would crush your pride and all your false hope of achievement, which is what you have if you think you're going to see God because you're good enough to see him, to be saved, what did God, all your false hope of achievement of which you have none, by grace alone you could be saved, not of works so that no one may boast, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.

What did God, that you would see your desperate state for what it is, wretched, and that you would cry out to God? Too many come here week in and week out. We dress up nice for Sunday, we say nice things, we say the right words, and the idea that we are sinners just goes right over our head.

You are in a body of death, the wages of sin is death. You think you're free but you're like the overly proud and wildly optimistic Laodiceans to whom Jesus said, you say, I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing, not realizing that you're wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

Oh, if you've been here and have not fallen victim to Jesus Christ and his gospel, have not seen the desperation of this struggle to in any way make yourself right before God, other than by the way the apostle Paul tells us, therefore having been justified by faith, by faith, believing in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice, by having been in Christ when he suffered for our sins.

As Paul said earlier in this book, it's a great cry here, who will rescue me from this body of death? If you're in Christ, I would argue you have been rescued. It is not a body of death because it's a body that's going to follow him in the resurrection.

Oh, death will have its way with us. I think that's really a different subject. We have here the anguished sob of someone who needs to give up, who needs to say that Christ is my righteousness. He is my salvation.

I will strive as long as the Lord gives me breath to do and to will for his good pleasure. I will mortify the deeds of my members and seek after holiness. I will daily, even moment by moment, put on the new man, the one that God created in true righteousness and holiness, and as much as I put him on, put off the old, the one who's growing corrupt, the old one who was sold under sin.

It is the new who has been redeemed from all that, never arriving, never fully achieving, never able to sit back on my laurels. The new man in humility confesses that he or she will never measure up to the stature of Christ, and yet as we sing in that great hymn, the one worthy Christ in love redeemed me for his own.

The Law Is Holy, but It Cannot Save

The law is holy and righteous and good, though it tears our souls apart. It does so with the good intentions of the God who gave it to us. His precepts prove that he is holy. If we followed them, we too would be.

His commandments are righteous, as God is. If only we did them, we would walk in paths of righteousness. The precepts it places on us are good if only we would follow them. But once it forces all this on us, its work is done.

This is as far as the law can go. There is an answer. There is an answer to this dilemma. There is an answer to this body of death, to this constant striving, to the constant failure. Praise God, there is a way out of it.

It's verse 25. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He asks, who will rescue me from this body of death? The answer is immediate. God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. To beg rescue is to admit something.

To admit at least two things. First that you need to be rescued and you're impotent to do it yourself. I might think of Peter when he walked on the water a little bit to Jesus. He took his eyes off Christ and looked at the storm and the waves and he sank.

And there was Christ's hand when he called out for help. To beg rescue is to admit that you need to be rescued and you're impotent to do it. And second, that you have sinned against God. Because this is what he's calling for rescue from.

Who will save me? Who will rescue me? Who will deliver me from this body of death? Are you there? Can you relate, for example, to the psalmist in Psalm 51 .3, my sin is always before me? Well, there is that answer.

That answer that is Jesus Christ. That answer that is faith in him and the redemption that he bought on the cross. That answer that says that he is my justification. Because of him and his obedience and my faith and my repentance for my sins.

I come before God in Christ's name and not on my own. The law must leave us desperate because of the good and holy and righteous God that it reveals to us. But understand that God is not some imperious king.

He's not some cruel ruler who looks down upon us with his arms folded and has a frown on his face, grimacing at us and only accusing and constantly accusing. He shows your sin because he is good. But he doesn't leave you wallowing in it.

He's not like one of those capricious Greek gods back in Paul's day that he argued against so many times. Who would just do these capricious things. And that would be a God who would say, you see how bad you are?

And we say yes. You see what my law? You see that it's good? And we say yes. And it's righteous? And we say yes. And it's holy? Yes. Lord, I see all that. And you can't do it, can you? No. No. I cannot do it.

Who will rescue me from this body of death? And he says, not me. I just wanted to show you how bad you are. No, that's not the God we serve. Who will rescue you? If you will cry out, if you will confess that you are imbued in a body of death and unable to satisfy God's righteousness, Jesus Christ our Lord.

He died for your violations of the holiness and the righteousness and the goodness of God. Thank God for sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh because he lived under the same demands that you and I live under.

He lived under the same demands of the same God that we do. He was tempted at all points as we are yet without sin. Thank God for Jesus Christ and plead with him to grant you faith to repent and know the Father's forgiveness.

Be rescued from this body of death and the futility of striving in your own strength. God does not just show how bad we are. The law is holy and righteous and good in showing us just that. But he doesn't stop there.

Dear ones, he doesn't stop there. Who will rescue me? When God by his spirit has opened me up to this and shown me all this and I say, yes, I agree, rescue me. There's Jesus Christ, his cross, his suffering for your sins.

Be rescued from your body of death and the futility of striving in your own strength. Repent of your sins and flee to Christ. He finishes, he says, so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

I myself as a single person who seems to stand with a foot in two worlds. He's saying this is just me, this is totally me. On the one hand, he has been made to see his sin. On the other hand, he has no solution.

He gives mental assent to the law but continues to follow the yearnings of the flesh. We do still sin. We need to go to God for forgiveness. We need to put on the new man daily, even moment by moment.

You see, I think the Romans 7 man struggles with the same things we do. He just doesn't have an answer. This man in Romans 7, he looked beyond the simple dos and don'ts of the law to see what they portray, a righteous God who can be approached only by those whose personal righteousness is equal to his own, to God's own.

Sort of back to Romans 1 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God to salvation to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed. Notice in the gospel, the righteousness of God is finally revealed.

The Romans 7 man, I don't believe, is looking at the gospel. He's looking at the law. He might say the righteousness of God is the goal and in all humility he knows he can't get there but he hasn't the answer to how.

He's wretched. He isn't depending on faith. He's in the flesh trying to reach a spiritual goal. So he's depending on himself ultimately. Romans 4 24 says righteousness will be counted or imputed, will be reckoned.

Righteousness will be counted to us who believe in him, God the father who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord. This is the answer. This is the rescue. God's righteousness counted to you by faith in his son Jesus.

Paul writes in Philippians 3 9 how we must be found not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

Titus 3 5 speaks of a total work of God. Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing and regeneration of the Holy Spirit. The inner man remade.

Did he do this or not? We still sin for any number of reasons, mainly because we like it. We still sin because our new heart remains embedded in a fleshly host. Our members still remember what the old guy did and enjoyed.

That's just not how we're described. Philippians 2 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure. The man in Romans 7 is trapped but Galatians 5 1 says for freedom Christ has set us free.

Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 3 21 is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not for if a law had been given that could give life then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

Not by the law which sends us back to Romans 7 15 to 22 but by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for him. Amen. Heavenly Father we do thank you again for this word you have given us, for the day you've given us to come together and worship you Father.

We just pray your blessing be upon us even now as we have heard, as we continue in worship even later. We thank you for all things, for Jesus Christ and the redemption we have in him most especially. Pray in Jesus name.

Amen.