Romans 7:7-25 What's that Smell?

to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches his series in the

Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here and I'm really glad that you're here. I hope that by the end, you're glad that you were here as well.

We are a church that is seeking to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service. And I hope that the text that we're gonna be looking at this morning in the

Book of Romans challenges you and encourages you, encourages really all of us to trust

God more and more with our lives. And that's what we mean when we say growing in faith, that we take in God's word, we hear it, we listen to it, we believe that it's true, and then we go out and we live according to it.

And so, in honesty, I believe that anything that places an increasing trust in ourselves is detrimental.

I think it's unhelpful in our spiritual life. Any teaching, any advice, any experience that makes us think that we have what it takes to please

God is leading us away from the place that we need to be in our walk with God, away from the gospel that trust in what

God has done as the primary movement of salvation in our history. We are a people who are forgiven of our sins by grace through faith alone.

We have a hope for a future, a future that will be without sin by grace through faith alone.

And we live a life that is pleasing to God in the here and now by grace through faith alone.

In other words, our relationship with God is a gift from him from beginning to end.

And that's part of this section of the book of Romans that we're looking at, particularly this text, but really the big movement as we're talking about sanctification, the big word that means the process by which

God is making us more and more like him over the course of our lives after we have accepted him by faith.

And Paul has been working overtime to try to release us from what I would say is a pesky notion in humanity, probably in all of us, in our thoughts and in our hearts, the pesky notion that we're saved by grace and we now live by law, we now live according to rules, we now live according to that and trying to keep that Old Testament law to make him happy that the reason

God might smile at me today is because I obey him really good or I'm super better than other people or you can kind of fill in the blank for yourself.

I do this and therefore God likes me more. When in fact he loves you so much that he sent his son to die on the cross for you and you can do nothing more to earn that, it is simply by grace through faith.

And our text last week used phrases like we are dead to the law, we are released from the law, we no longer serve

God in the way of the written code that is that Old Testament law. When I mentioned the word law during this message this morning and here

I'm introducing it but it might be helpful for you to think 10 Commandments when you hear law just to kind of clarify or to give you something to grab a hold of in your mind every time

I say law. We are talking about the huge collection of laws, more than just the 10 Commandments but certainly those. The collection of laws in the

Old Testament that express the will of God toward his Old Testament people. A law that we are no longer bound to, a law that we are released from.

But now in our text we're gonna see that, I mean how many of you are thinking wait a second, I'm free from the 10 Commandments, I don't have to obey those anymore, that's a little bit like what do

I obey then and is it okay for me to murder, is it okay for me to lie, is it okay for me to commit adultery, what's going on here?

Don you better correct yourself really quick. But now Paul here in the text is gonna, in our text this week is gonna demonstrate that he's afraid that we're gonna go too far and cut out the

Old Testament from our Bibles. There was actually a guy who did this in the early church, his name was

Marcion, he was labeled a heretic, he actually got rid of the Old Testament from his Bible and said this is worthless now, but he must have ignored this passage that we're gonna look at here today.

The bottom line for our text this morning is that something kinda stinks in here. Now we all know it, we live our lives with this ongoing cloud of reality that our lives don't match up quite to what they ought to be, we don't live up to God's standards even after we have been saved by his grace.

And so after last week, some might be tempted to think that the stench is coming from the law because he talked down the law so much.

Take out the law, then we'll be okay. But Paul's gonna identify that the law is just fine, it isn't the law that is spoiled and is producing that funk in our lives.

So what is it? Where is the smell of rot coming from? And so let's open our

Bibles to Romans chapter seven verses seven through 25 and see if you can identify what it is in this text that's producing that smell.

Romans seven, seven through 25. By the way, it smells kinda delicious in here like coffee, but it's just an illustration, folks.

Romans seven, seven through the end of the chapter, open up your scripture journals or your device, navigate over there, grab the

Bible that's under the seat in front of you if you didn't bring a Bible with you. If you don't have a Bible at home, take that one with you, we want everybody to have a copy of God's word so you can read it.

Give you a second to turn over there, but Romans seven, seven through the end of the chapter. God's precious, glorious, majestic, amazing revelation to us here we cast.

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. 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, for 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 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 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.

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

Through Christ Jesus our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh

I serve the law of sin. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the reality check of this text, where we know that we are no longer slaves to sin, we are set free by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, we are no longer slaves to law, but we also recognize that to a person there's something wrong with us.

We still don't follow your laws, we're still not capable of keeping up with all those Old Testament commands and rules and regulations, and there's still something in us that pulls us towards sin, there's still something in us that seems to be a friend of the world, seems to be a friend of sin, and seems to be a friend of evil, and seems to even tempt ourselves at times, and so Father, I pray that you would make sense of that struggle that we all wrestle with through this text.

I thank you that in your grace you've revealed this, so that those who are here and are just kind of at wit's end, not really knowing what to do with their faulty struggles and their frailty,

Father, that they might begin to recognize some of the pathways to victory, that we still have this old, sinful nature within us that is raging and waging war, and Father, I pray that we would learn the patterns of our own lives and where we are feeding that flesh, where we are feeding that sin nature, and to learn to begin the process of starving it, to consider it dead, and to consider ourselves alive to you.

Father, I thank you that in the midst of this battle, we can rejoice because the battle is indeed won for those who belong to you, and even the sign of life, this war that wages within us, is in itself a sign that we belong to you, and that in the end, you will complete what you have started in us, this process of wrestling and moving towards your sanctification, your really

Christ -likeness. And so, Father, as people who are going to be set free from sin, I pray that you would help us to lift our voices in praise and worship to you this morning, and that would motivate us, the salvation that we have in Christ, and we might have fervor, enthusiasm, excitement, that we would be moved in our spirits as we have an opportunity to sing these songs before you in Jesus' name, amen.

Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated, but like I say at the start of every message, if you need to get up and get more coffee, juice, or donuts, you can take advantage of that in the back there, and if you need to get up and use the restrooms, they're out the barn doors, down the hallway on the left -hand side.

So our goal is to really keep our focus on Romans 7, 7 through 25, for the remainder of our time together, and so if you could turn your

Bibles on your device back over to that text in case you lost your spot, just so you can reference that as I'm gonna walk us through that text and really see what

God has to communicate to us here in Matawan in 2019 from this really ancient text.

And I wanna start off just by asking, have you ever stated the truth so hard that you feared people were gonna take what you said and run with it even further?

Do you know what I'm talking about? You overstated your case, or you said it so strongly that you were worried. You stated so strongly that you love 80s music that you're now afraid someone is gonna go out and buy you a copy of Cyndi Lauper's Greatest Hits or something like that, right?

You're kind of a little afraid. So you feel the need to head it off at the pass, and no, that's not what

I meant. So you wanna clarify, not that kind of 80s music or whatever. So Paul has made a strong case in the text last week against the law as the means of our sanctification.

He's not against the law. He's not against the Old Testament law, those commands and rules and regulations that God had given to regulate that old covenant with his people

Israel, but he's not against that. But he says this is not the tool that God uses to bring us closer to himself in this life.

That's a faulty understanding of the law. That's the wrong use of the law. That's like trying to use a hammer to put a screw in a wall.

It doesn't work very well. You can do it, but it's not gonna function correctly, and it's not gonna hold any weight, and it's not gonna be good.

And so it's not the tool that God has given us to primarily draw close to him in this life.

We are not living this Christian life as self -sufficient law keepers. Instead, we are meant to be

God lovers. We are brought into a loving relationship with God through Christ, and we are now those who, if we are saved, if we are redeemed, if we are bought by the blood of Christ, and we are those who, understanding that great sacrifice, want to please him with our hearts.

We are now those who want to find what makes him smile, what gives him joy, and then to go do those things.

And Paul will use this text at the end of chapter seven here, this text we're looking at this morning, to carefully share the reasons that the law cannot sanctify us.

It cannot make us holy. It cannot fix the problem. And he does this by explaining where the smell is coming from in four main movements here in the text.

So in verses seven through 12, here's kind of the outline for those of you that like to take notes and outline.

Verses seven through 12, it isn't the law. The smell isn't coming from the law. Second, 13 through 20, it is sin.

There, I gave you the answer. It is sin. Sin is where that smell is coming from. And then the third movement, 21 through 24,

I am the problem. And the fourth part, only one verse, verse 25 to sum up.

As I said, I am the problem. Christ is the solution. So it isn't the law.

It is sin. I am the problem. Christ is the solution.

And so let's start with where that smell is coming from. First and foremost, he says, it isn't the law's problem.

It's not coming from the law. I do not believe that a single person in this room has asked the question Paul proposes in verse seven.

I don't believe you've formulated the question that way because I think our problem rests in a little bit of a different direction, but he's saying to those who were kind of religious in the first century, he's saying, so does all this bad talk about the law and saying that it doesn't sanctify us, it doesn't draw us closer to God, it can't fix our problem, does that mean that the law is sinful?

Does that mean that the law is sin? Well, our problem is more likely that we have given the law a greater role than it deserves, if anything, in our modern society.

It might be that we've thought that obeying certain things or going to church on Sunday or giving to the poor or giving to the church or all of these actions and behaviors, law -keeping, law -abiding, tithing, doing good to other people is what is gonna make us better and so we often tend to err on the other side.

So that's why I say it's not likely that any of us have literally asked the question, is the Old Testament law, is keeping the

Ten Commandments sinful? But you see, he has made such a strong case about the law and it's what it can't do that he's afraid that people are gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater.

In honesty, it's a reasonable question. In light of how thoroughly and completely he pushed the law out as a possible sanctifying influence in the life of a believer, he made it clear that we have died to the law, we are released from bondage to the law and he now fears that we're gonna take it a step further than what he stated.

Well, then the law is stupid, the law is terrible. The law, if it increases sinfulness, it must be unhelpful at best and unholy at worst, right?

Maybe the law in itself is unholy. But he answers this question with, of course, a strong no way, by no means.

He kind of likes that phrase throughout the book of Romans, he asks a question and then negates it right away and then explains why it isn't the case.

And he clarifies that the law is the way that sin is made clear to us as an affront to God.

He uses an example of coveting as a great example here in the text.

Sin lets us know what is and isn't against God. There are some sins that the world doesn't see as sin, have you noticed that?

There are some things that we hold to and we believe are sinful that the world doesn't and some of those are really internal things like an example of that would be pride.

Now, does the world actually hate pride? Think about that for a second. I think the world almost kind of champions pride to some degree, it's a good thing, it's a value and in some cases, it's actually a virtue to be proud, it's a virtue to be strong, it's a virtue to win and keep winning.

Coveting would be another of those sins that I think is an internal sin that is a little bit more internal and less easy to see and the world doesn't quite know what to do with it,

I don't really see the world out there battling with covetousness, do you see what I'm saying? In a culture that defines morality in terms of harm to others, by the way, did you know that that's the way the world is beginning to define right from wrong?

It's just simply whether it hurts somebody or not. Well, does coveting hurt anybody in the end?

Kind of not, right? Like, I mean, it might hurt you but that's up to you, that's your business, that's nobody else's and so you can kind of see how coveting works as a really good illustration of this here in the text.

What could possibly be wrong with coveting? It's an internal sin, it's an appetite word, it's a hunger word and our commercials are centered on making you want something you don't have, right, materialism, our economy is based on you wanting something you don't have and all that and that's not to denigrate our economy, it's just to simply say that's kind of the way that our culture and society works, it takes for granted that we're sinful and we want more stuff.

But Paul is saying that once he saw that the Lord told him to not covet, it says it in the text, once he saw that the

Lord said not to covet, he came to know that it's against God to covet.

It's not, you see, the primary issue with sin is not whether it hurts somebody, now a lot of sins do hurt others and it hurts ourselves as well but not everything that's sin hurts somebody else.

What it is is ultimately what is that behavior, that action, that thought in relationship to God, right?

Isn't that the real question that sin addresses is whether or not what we're doing is against God? It has very,

I mean, at the end of the day, like David commits adultery, murders the wife and tries to cover it up and all this stuff, and at the end, you kind of go, he says, against God and God alone have

I sinned. You kind of go, well, what about Uriah? What about the wife? What about all of the other things that you did in there?

Well, certainly it was against others but primarily sin at its core is an affront against God.

And so apart from the law, sin, he says in the text, sin is not as active.

Without knowing what is and isn't right and what is and isn't wrong, sin is not as active and powerful in our lives.

But in verse 80 says what we all know to be true. The law gives life and breath to sin.

The law is like an open window to a fire. And twice in this text in verse eight and verse 11, he says sin is shown to be eager to seize, the quote, seize an opportunity.

Sin is opportunistic in your life. Sin is, he personifies it here, like as if sin is a person, as if it's a living, moving being and it's got a will and its will is to look for a chance, seize an opportunity to bring you down.

How many of you can relate to that? You've seen it in your life. You've seen sin grab something in your life and beat you with it.

Sin will grab whatever it has at its disposal and bludgeon us to death.

And it will even grab the law is what Paul was saying here. It's not the law's fault, but it is sin that will grab this law and beat us.

So as I read about coveting, what he's getting at here, as you hear the word coveting, as you think about what coveting means, as you let that roll over your mind, you might even find your minds right here and right now wandering off into things that you cannot have.

The very notion of thinking about coveting often brings it into our minds.

For me, it turns out to be nice houses. That's where my mind goes when I hear this. For you, it might be nice cars, it might be other things, but your mind begins to wander off into the things that you want that you cannot have.

And in a similar way, a person waging war with alcohol or waging war with pornography cannot readily fight it with a law set up in their life that says,

I will not look at pornography, I will not drink alcohol. How does that work for you? The more you think about it, the more you are enticed to it so that as the law mentions specific sins, he's saying, those very sins cause an unholy curiosity, as I talked about last week, and even a temptation to the very thing that the law is prohibiting.

How many of you know what I'm talking about, that I don't even need to go on about this anymore because you know, you've seen it, you've experienced it in your own life, that there's a nature in you that is drawn and attracted to sin.

Raise your hand if you can just identify that. That's good, that's the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right?

All of us know it, we know it in our hearts, we know that there's this wrestling and this war and there's something in us that has a hook to sin, that it entices and it draws us in.

So in verse nine, Paul speaks of some general time in his past when he lived without the knowledge of the law.

We don't know exactly when that was. It may be that he's imagining and remembering his childhood before he had formal teaching and training in the law or even a time where in his studies he was studying a specific law that he was not aware of at the time and it became known to him.

But all of us can relate to knowing that something is against the rules and you come to know it, like however that is, by reading it or by somebody sharing it with you or by a parent telling you or whatever it is, but you suddenly know and it comes to mind, this is wrong.

But he says, when the law was made known to his mind, sin coaxed to life that area of his thoughts.

And he says quite directly, I died. My soul died at the point where the law was made known to me and in that area,

I was corrupted, I was broken and I had an unholy curiosity that developed in that area where it became known to me that certain behavior was sin.

Therefore, the very command, he says, that promised life to all who keep it proved to be death to us.

You see, the law does indeed promise eternal life to anybody who can keep it, but Paul has gone on and on, chapter after chapter in the book of Romans, especially those first three chapters, to draw us all to the conclusion that we cannot keep it.

It'd be great if we could, but we can't and we cannot because of sin in our lives and in our hearts.

This is a fact, by the way, of the religious life. And despite some of the difficult phrases he uses here in the text, the bottom line is that the law brings about a death through an enticement to break it.

Nothing highlights our own fallen condition more than the reality that when we hear a law, we become curious about breaking it.

Sin in us seizes the opportunity through the law and tricks us unto death.

Of course, he's going on and on, explaining that this is not the law's fault. The law isn't the problem.

The law is not responsible for the funk in our lives. In verse 12, Paul clarifies the law itself.

He states emphatically and directly, the law is holy. The individual commandments are holy, righteous, and good.

There's a goodness that surrounds the law. So that all of those Old Testament psalms where Psalm 19 or even

Psalm 119 that's singing and extolling the glories and the beauty of the law, they all stand. It's not like we disagree with those.

Paul isn't pushing those aside and disagreeing with those. They are indeed good because they accurately reflect God himself.

So what Paul has sought to establish for us is a reinstating of the glory and holiness of God's law.

Despite the fact that he's already told us, it is not the tool that has been given to us to draw closer in obedience to God in the

Christian life. It's good, it's very capable of showing God's character. It's very capable of showing us our failure and our inability.

It's a great diagnostic tool, but just like a doctor would say, okay, we're gonna fix this, this x -ray machine is gonna take care of it.

We're gonna just put your arm, your broken arm, we're gonna put it in this x -ray machine, and voila, it's gonna be all, how many of you would be looking for a new doctor if the doctor told you that the x -ray machine was gonna fix your broken bone?

Only two of you, okay. Smart ones. The rest of you, I'm concerned.

Either you're not, no. But that's not the way that it works. It's great at diagnosing.

It's great at revealing. It's great at showing. So the law, in a sense, is like an x -ray machine.

It doesn't solve the problem, but what it does is it reveals the problem. It shows, yes, you got a broken bone here.

It needs to, then here's the solution. Does anybody have a name that might present itself as the solution to your sin problem?

Jesus, right? He's the remedy. The law is the diagnostic tool that does a great job at diagnosing, but when you put it in the place of Jesus to try to fix your life or try to draw close to God, oh my goodness, you're in for a world of hurt.

You're in a world, into a world, he keeps using the word death here. That's a pretty severe word.

That's a pretty severe picture of what the law will yield in your lives if you lean on it, if you trust in it for the solution, if you trust in it to help you.

So if that smell in our lives isn't coming from the law, then where's the rot? And I've gotten this far into the message without establishing very clearly that you all recognize the smell of rot in your life.

If you're a follower of Christ, I'm convinced that you smell it. I'm convinced you see it. I'm convinced you live with it. I'm convinced that you woke up with it this morning and it's in some either low -key, low -burn kind of effect in your life at all times.

You know you're in a battle. You know you're in a war. You know you are doing things you don't want to do. You know you are not measuring up to God's standard.

You know something is off. You know you do not do the very law that your heart wishes you could keep.

You do not love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you don't love your neighbor as yourself.

So what gives? Then what is it in our lives that's producing the stench? What is it that's causing the smell?

And that's the second part. It is sin that is the problem, says Paul in verses 13 through 20.

It isn't the law that is responsible for the death in us, but it's sin that's responsible for this ongoing, waging war that we have.

In verse 13, it's proven to be even more grotesque. Sin is proven to be even more grotesque through the law.

I mean, ask yourself, how can sin become more sinful? Look at verse 13 with me. Go ahead and put your eyes on it. 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, so that it's revealed, so you know what it is, and here it is, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Sin becoming even more sinful. That's kind of a strange phrase. How can that be? Well, it's one thing.

Think of it this way. It's one thing to commit sin in ignorance without the knowledge of the law, but it takes the knowledge of the law to be a high -handed transgressor against the

Almighty God. To know who has issued the command and then sin.

How many of you know that that's a big deal? That's a huge deal, because you now know in the law, what the law does is it reveals the will of God so that you can diagnose your problem and say,

I'm not just a sinner. I'm not just a person who fails once in a while or lets myself down or lets my wife down or lets my husband down or lets my employer down.

That's not my problem. My problem is rebellion against the Almighty God, my creator.

Do you see the difference? Are those two different things? So very different diagnoses, but getting the diagnosis right is what the law does for us.

It shows us our inability and our ineffectiveness in keeping the law and obeying the Almighty God.

That's the kicker in this. Sin becomes more sinful as you see and you read the law and you read the word and you say, this is

God's standard? Holy cow, I'm in trouble. I can't do this. And Paul shifts now in verse 14 to present tense verbs.

This is important because as he's sinning, you gotta put yourself, when you're reading scripture, you gotta put yourself in the shoes of the guy sitting there at his desk with a quill pen in hand and a scroll of parchment that he keeps unrolling as he's writing.

And he's been writing in past tense verbs up to verse 14. And now Paul, sitting there at his desk, begins to write in present tense verbs.

So what we would assume, rightly, is that he's now writing about himself in the present tense, where he is living, where he is at right then and there.

And as he's writing the remainder of this text, I'm convinced that he's speaking of his present experience as an apostle and Christian.

There's a lot of debates. And the reason I'm not gonna get into all of this because I read so much this week. I read,

I read, and I read. And there are many debates back and forth. And I read four large commentaries on this and two of them agreed and two of them disagreed with what

I'm about to share with you. But I'm pretty confident about where I stand on this. And that's whether or not this is

Paul talking about his experience before he came to faith in Christ. There's some reasons that people wanna say that.

Or is this the Christian experience? Do you expect to have a war inside as a Christian or is he just writing about the war that he had before he came to faith in Christ?

And I believe that Paul here in the remainder of this text is telling us what we experience.

He's saying this is the way that the Christian life looks. And it is a struggle and it is a war and it is a battle.

And how many of you would testify right now, you'd raise your hand and say, the battle for me began when I came to faith in Christ. That's when the war with sin began.

I didn't fight a whole lot with sin before that, but man, once I became a follower of Christ, that's when the war, that's when the battle began in here.

And I believe that that's what Paul is getting at is he's helping us all to actually take comfort and solace, not to be okay with sin, not to be settled into it, but to say this is a,

I mean, if you're having a knock down, drag out battle, welcome to the club. This is what life looks like in Christ. This is the nature of it.

You're gonna hate sin now. You're gonna love God now. And you're gonna be able to do some things that please him because you're now alive to him in your spirit.

But there's a battle that you need to be aware of. And you need to fight well this battle and have some tools, and by the end,

I hope we have some tools to be able to fight this battle. And particularly next week, we're gonna see the number one tool that we have in the battle against this sin.

But again, there have been debates back and forth about this text. And verse 14 is one of the hardest, from my perspective, to deal with in terms of my position, that this is a

Christian Paul writing about his Christian life because Paul here tackles head on the reality that we are simultaneously justified by God.

He's already declared that back in chapter five and six. No longer enslaved to sin, chapter six.

Now alive to God in our spirits, but in our flesh. By the way, when you see the word flesh in Paul, this is where we can really get off on a rabbit trail of wrong thinking because flesh sounds like our bodies, right?

Sounds like he's making a, you'll see the word spiritual later and you'll see the word flesh. And so we're thinking, oh, he's talking about my soul, the immaterial part, and then he's gonna talk about my body, my flesh, this outer thing that you can see.

And that's not the case at all. Flesh, by flesh he means an immaterial part of you that can be won over by sin, that is still receptive to sin.

In other places in scripture, he'll refer back and forth between flesh and sin nature. And some people actually translate that way.

But it's the part of you that has fallen, that is drawn easily into sin. So don't, when you hear the word flesh throughout this message, think body.

The body is not evil. Substance isn't evil. This is not an evil Kleenex box or an evil table. Stuff can't be evil.

It can be used for evil means. It takes a human soul to be evil, to do evil, to process evil, because we're fallen.

Is that making sense? So don't hear that this is like a dualism between what we really want is we wanna escape this body and get to heaven someday.

Well, bad news if that's your hope, because he's gonna resurrect your body and bring you to a new heaven and a new earth where you are going to sit down at tables and eat real meals with real people and talk with them and farm and develop technology and produce art and learn instruments and play sports and do all of that stuff.

And yes, I really do believe that. I believe that's what scripture is indicating when it talks about a new heaven and a new earth.

This body is not sinful. It's not evil. He created us originally to occupy a real earth.

Did you notice that? The Garden of Eden was on the earth. And he gave them a task before the fall.

And I'm getting, this is way off on a side trot. That's another sermon. Yeah, we'll get there.

But in our flesh, he's saying here, in our sinful nature, in that part of us that's still responsive to our old master, we are sold under sin, he says in verse 14.

What he is seeking to answer in these seven verses is why can't I just obey the law now?

Now that I'm in Christ, why am I not a law abider? Why do I find myself doing things that I don't wanna do?

And I think all of us would testify that at times we do things that we are like, where did that come from? Raise your hand if you've done that before. You'd be like, where in the world did that behavior come from?

It's like, bam, out of nowhere and you're like doing something stupid. I don't think I'm stupid.

Maybe I am, right? But we all do that and so he's answering that question. Why do

I find myself as a follower of Christ still struggling with sin? Why is that still going on in here?

And the answer is that there's still a sin nature what Paul calls here the flesh. And it's alive and well and eager to obey sin.

There's a part of every one of us in this room that's eager to obey sin. In my spirit

I've been transferred legitimately from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light in Christ.

I can heed the voice of my new master. I am now, I do now have the ability to obey

God in Christ. An ability I didn't have before the regenerating work of Christ in my life. I couldn't obey him before but now

I can. But there's a part of me that still wants to respond to the old master. And he goes on to say the law is spiritual, it is godly, it reflects the nature of the divine will, the divine spirit in our lives.

But I am of flesh. He says I am ungodly, I am weak, I am fallen is what he's saying.

And going on to explain his sinful state that prevents the law from being fruitful in our lives, Paul gives us a testimony of his own personal struggles.

He's gonna open his heart a little bit to us. The apostle Paul, buckle your seatbelts because he's about to explain his own personal struggle with sin.

And he says this, which I think all of us can relate to. By the end of this text, by the way, this is a bit of a downer.

I had to preach the whole thing in a chunk because if you don't get to verse 25, this is an imminently discouraging text, by the way.

So hold on just for a second, because we're gonna get there. But he says I can't understand my own actions.

I don't even get it. At times I find myself doing things I don't even know why. There's no logic to it, there's no reason for it, there's no way to rationally get to the behaviors and the things that I've done, says

Paul. I think he's talking to many of us in the room who can relate to exactly what he's saying.

He's beside himself here in this text. And he can give no reasonable justification for what he sees in his own behavior and his actions.

And he proves that he's a divided man just like each and every one of us. He's divided between what he wants to do, that is desire.

By the way, he's actually saying the desire is for good. The desire, the want, the will, the hope, the things that he wants to do in his heart are actually good.

And that's different than what he actually does, his ability.

He's saying I do the things that I hate, the things that I desire to do that are good, I find not happening in my life.

He says that in his heart is now a desire to do the good. In his heart is the desire to honor

God, to love him, to love his people. But he finds himself doing the very things that he hates.

One other strong evidence that Paul is speaking about his life as a follower of Christ is the fact of the struggle.

The world without Christ does not have a heart that wants to obey God. He's saying he has that.

He says the I that is talking in this text says I have the desire to do the good. But you see, the world without Christ doesn't have a heart that wants to do the good in obedience to God.

The struggle that Paul is talking about here is not consistent with the attitude of the world toward God, the world toward his law, or the world toward themselves.

Paul is saying that his struggle proves the goodness of the law. It is indeed a good standard, but one that he cannot keep.

And the fundamental reason is found in verse 17. Sin is still alive in us.

I wanna keep my distance from anybody who disagrees with that statement. If you're here and you're going, sin, not an issue for me,

I have no struggles with that, no issues in my life, I wanna keep you at arm's length, I'm just being honest. Anyone who would deny that they still have sin dwelling within them is just not being honest.

I tell you that I'm very capable of tempting myself, and sin is still an operating principle in my own heart, one that needs to be, a principle in my heart that needs to be starved and killed daily.

My old self needs to constantly be put to death. And look at verse 18 for further clarification.

Paul makes a very strong and radical statement. Nothing good, he says, dwells in me.

He has to modify it, and I think that this, again, this modifier is very helpful for us. Nothing good, there's nothing good that dwells in me, that is in my flesh, that is in my sin nature, in my own strength, the part of me that would be apart from God, that part that would be very responsive to the old master, there's nothing good in there.

Paul knows that his ongoing relationship with God is in trouble if it depends on his strength from the flesh.

This is not, by the way, a false humility on the part of Paul, oh, I'm just a terrible person, but it's a theological statement that is very important.

Even as a Christian, you have nothing good in your flesh. God has not given your flesh a shot of steroids so that you can now do the heavy lifting.

He has given you something, but that's coming in the next, yeah, that guy, it's coming in the next text.

He has been saving his thunder, he's been building an argument, and in the first half of the first few verses of chapter eight, he's gonna reveal to us what that is for next week.

Yes, that is a shameless plug, be back here next week to hear an explanation of what that is. So as we climb this section on sanctification, next week we reach the summit, and that's when the most important thing that God has done for us in making us like Christ will be revealed.

But it is not the removal of or strengthening of our flesh that is the key to the

Christian life. Not giving you rules and some capability and then go out and do it yourself kind of thing.

It's not do -it -yourself life. It is not any form of self -dependency that we live by as faithful Christians.

Like Paul, we have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability, the ability, the ability to carry it out.

To say that Paul is speaking of an unbeliever would require us to believe that the world out there has the desire to please

God, but only lacks the ability to do so. But I think he made a case earlier, a very clear case earlier, that the world lacks both desire and ability.

In Christ, we now have the desire, but in our flesh, we still lack that ability.

We need more than our own moral renovation. We need the spirit to come in with power and authority and ability.

And again in verses 19 through 20, Paul summarizes our problem. That rotten funk is coming from the sin that is still here in us.

Evil is close at hand, he says. Even still, living in our hearts where it needs to be daily put to death and starved of affection and starved of attention.

And that leads to the third section. I am the problem. Verses 21 through 24.

It's not enough to point a finger and say, sin made me do it, because sin is not really a personal being.

He's personifying it here, but it's not. Sin is merely our actions and our thoughts in opposition to the character of God.

Paul only ever uses the phrase inner being for Christians, and here he refers to the inner being. In Christ, we've been granted an inner being, and that inner being desires to be obedient to God from the heart.

That inner being longs for a newness of life that was mentioned last week. And I believe that it's this inner being within me that clings to the phrase, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

I cling to this verse because I know full well in my inner being that I do indeed hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I want it. I want to be made right. I want to be made whole. I want to be able to worship God with a pure heart and stand before him in righteousness, or really bow before him in righteousness.

I long for that day. Do you long for that day? Do you look forward to the day when your sin and the war is over and the war is completely washed up in the victory of the

Lamb of God who washes away our sins? You look forward to that day? Then that's a sign of life in you, folks.

Let that be a sign of life. Paul sees a war going on inside of every true believer, and that war, the war, the want, the desire, the hunger for that which is righteous, the want for the good, the want to even be able to follow the law is a sign of life in you, that you would love to see a smile on the face of your

Savior. The world doesn't wrestle in the way that we do. We have a new law of the mind, a principle that desires to love

God and others, but in the members of our body, there's a principle of sin that is still at work in us, says

Paul. The principle of sin at work within us is constantly calling us back to captivity to our old masters of sin and death.

We no longer obey him, but he calls, and he finds a friend in our old flesh.

And so Paul cries out here in the end of the text, he cries out with a desperate cry, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Do you see the desperation that's built through this text? A hunger and a desire and an internal civil war going on inside the heart of Paul, and yes,

I think you can relate to it because it's going on inside of you as well. Once again, this is the cry of a

Christian who is longing for an ultimate and final deliverance. His present state, as he's writing present tense verbs, his present state is the acknowledgement that he is not what he is meant to be, and he therefore says,

I am wretched. I'm torn, I'm twisted. But his hope is that there's a future deliverance for him.

Who will, future tense, who will deliver me? Paul identifies himself, his flesh, as the problem.

He is the one who is weak to sin. But sandwiched in the darkness of this text is here the most brilliant light of glory.

He answers his own question. He says, yes, I am indeed the problem, but the last point in the text is the last verse.

Who will deliver us from this body of death where sin still dwells? Christ is the victor.

Paul blurts out, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He can't leave us in that place of misery.

He can't leave us alone in this struggle and in this battle and in this civil war without highlighting where the victory is going to come from.

Where does all of this war end? In victory in Christ. Where do you place your trust?

In the law? In your ability to keep it, in your ability to be better than everybody else around you? Your ability to be the best

Christian possible, the one who's just the sin killer in your life? Who is the sin killer in your life?

It's Christ or no one. It's Christ or no one. There is no hope in anyone else, including yourself, to overcome your sin.

It is him and him alone who is the hope. He is the one who will finish this. He will be the one to clean out the rot.

He is the one who has bought us back from sin's domain and he will finish the work of faith that he has already begun in us.

Do you feel it, church? Do you feel some victory? Do you feel the foretaste of some glory? Do you feel the opportunities that you have to bring a smile to his face?

Do you see some of that in you? Raise your hand if you see that. If you've seen some signs of life there. You've seen just little things here and there that you're like, oh, thank you,

God. You're giving me a little victory here and there. I hope you're seeing that.

You see, here in the text, his point, the law is good and holy and righteous, but I'm not.

With my mind, I serve the law of God, he ends with. With my mind, I serve the law of God. I have a new desire

I could never have without Christ. I desire to obey him from the heart, but in my flesh,

I still can be enticed to serve the principle of sin within. So what do we do with this text?

Well, first, please acknowledge that Paul is not done with his argument. Maybe this afternoon, you're gonna wanna go home and read chapter eight to kinda get to where is this going?

What is the thing that he gives to us? Come back next week and see that. He's building an argument without spoiling the ending.

We are to consider ourselves, here's kinda the flow of argument from chapter, really the end of chapter five through where we're at right now.

We are to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. We are to live like we are now slaves of righteousness.

We are to see ourselves being obedient from the heart. Not just merely as servants, not merely duty -bound, but at the end of the day, he had purchased our love and our affections there at the cross, and therefore, we have a heart of love for the one who loved us and died for us.

We are no longer slaves to the law, but we obey by the spirit. There is nothing good in our flesh.

Thanks belongs to Christ alone here in verse 25, and we will summit the climb of our sanctification next week with the most mind -blowing, game -changing revelation about our life with Christ.

What has he given us? But for now, really two applications. Consider if you have this war inside.

Just kinda zero in in your heart and just think, is there a battle going on in here? If you don't have that battle going on inside of you, it is not likely that you belong to Christ.

It's not likely that you belong to Christ if you do not have a battle going on in there. He will be faithful to bring about in you a desire to do good that your flesh cannot do.

If you do not find that internal battle, then let me encourage you to come to Christ so that you can come alive to the desire to please him and honor him.

And if you don't even know what that means, they say, come to Christ, come and talk with me, and I would love to walk you through what it means.

You could come to one of the elders. You could come to Greg, who's the elder on duty, and talk with him. You could certainly come to Dave and talk with him if you'd feel comfortable with that.

He would love to walk through that or any of the elders that you know or any of the leadership. We would love to talk with you about what it means to enter into this, this new life with Christ, where the end goal is that that battle is done.

The war is over and Christ has victory in your life over sin and death.

But if you find yourself in the internal battle like Paul, a good starting point is to begin with this, maybe even this afternoon, to cry out.

Go ahead and cry out if you find yourself kind of hitting your head against the wall and you're going, I don't, I just feel just worn and weary of, and there are times and seasons where you just feel worn and weary of this battle with sin.

Cry out, who will deliver me? And then answer your own question.

Let scripture answer your question. Let God answer your question. Who will deliver you? Who's gonna deliver you?

Who's gonna deliver you? Who's gonna deliver us? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our

Lord. But also let me encourage you to ask some tough questions of yourself today. It doesn't end there.

The fact of the matter is you have this flesh, you have this sin nature in you. And so ask yourself, am

I feeding the spirit in my life or am I feeding the flesh?

Both have an appetite. Both are hungry for fuel. Both are hungry to be fed and to be given attention.

And the fact of the matter is, I think this would be a really good discussion to carry out from this place and maybe over lunch with your family or maybe in your community groups this week or maybe just grab somebody on your way out the door that you trust that you could have this conversation with, but a great conversation to really seek to talk through and work through what kinds of behaviors are you engaging in that are self -enticing, that are feeding the flesh?

What shows are you watching that are certainly not feeding your spiritual life but instead are feeding your fleshly life, your sinful life?

Where are you going that is impacting your relationship with God? Who are you hanging out with that is impacting your relationship with God?

What behaviors are you doing that you know for sure are flesh -feeding kind of behaviors?

I'm not gonna, this isn't the point in the message. Some places, this would be the point where I begin to list out behaviors.

I begin to list out movies, prohibited TV shows, and prohibited music, and all that.

I'm gonna let the spirit work in your life on that. I'm not gonna let you off the hook by me listing out things that I think are inappropriate so that you can say, mine wasn't on the list.

Phew. Let the spirit work on you in that regard. But it's a significant question for us to ask.

Am I feeding this flesh? Am I doing things that are, of course, like, duh, enticing myself and leading me more and more into the depth of the cycle of sin?

We're gonna come to communion this week to remember his sacrifice that has bought us back and brought us back from the brink of destruction.

So if you belong to Christ, come to one of the tables in the back during this next song and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us.

And let's leave here rejoicing that we have hope in the battle. Who will deliver us from this body of death?

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that you paint an accurate picture of our lives.

You show that there is indeed this war and this battle that we all are waging internally and that we're all fighting within ourselves.

But Father, I thank you that you don't leave us to our own devices, but even at the end of this text, you wrap it up by declaring to us hope in Jesus Christ our

Lord. That he is the victor, he is the one who has completed the law. He is the one who, at the end of the day, will fix us, renovate us, clean out the crud, and bring us into your presence with great joy and celebration.

And so Father, I pray that from that place you would give us a desire to please you and allow that desire to begin to become overwhelming that as we feed that with your word, we feed that with prayer, we feed that with fellowship with others, and we begin to see the things that we're doing that are feeding the flesh.

I pray that you would help us to push those things out and put to death those deeds that do indeed inflame us and cause us to think thoughts and do behaviors and actions that are against you.

Father, I pray that each one here who is in that battle and engaged in that battle would keep in that battle for your honor and for your glory, and that you would give us signs of life, you would give us those glimpses of victory by your spirit in us, in Jesus' name, amen.