Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Romans 7, and reading for
our text the last two verses, verses 24 and 25. O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord, so then with the mind I myself serve
the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. Romans 7 and verses 24 and 25. The Apostle here is speaking
of his own felt experience of sin. It's one thing to know the
doctrines of the Fall, and of sin, and of salvation. It's another
thing to actually experience what it is to have sin within
us, and to deal with it all the days of our life, and to have
a way of deliverance from it. And this is what the Apostle
is speaking of here. He's feeling the depths of the
fall, but looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. I just want to
mention a few things before we come to some points. Firstly, the Apostles lead up
to these verses and this chapter. The Apostle is very methodical
in his teaching through the Romans, and he makes it very clear in
chapter 5, summing up, being justified by faith and not by
works. And he establishes it very clearly
that we are not saved by our works but by faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, best summed up how he puts it to the Ephesians,
by grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God. But then having established that,
he then meets in Chapter 6 with the thought or the suggestion,
the question, how shall we respond to that? If it is not our works,
if it's not what we do, whether it's good or it is bad, how does
that affect our lives? How do we put that into practice? And he's suggesting here, what
if the question is put, if we are saved by grace, then does
it matter how we live at all? Shall we just sin that grace
might abound? And he answers this question
right through chapter six, making it very, very clear that for
a child of God, he does not willfully walk in ways of sin, resting
upon that God will forgive him so he doesn't really matter,
he doesn't need to resist it, doesn't need to fight against
it, he can just go along with it and even enjoy it as it were
because it will be put away and it has been put away by our Lord
Jesus Christ. And he uses many very, very strong
arguments and you get to the end of that chapter and you've
got a very clear picture of the Apostle in no way making any
excuse for sin. He has put all of the arguments
as to why with his whole being, his whole desire, his whole life
should be real hatred against sin and not wanting to walk in
a way contrary to the Lord Jesus Christ. But having set that forth
in Chapter 6, then he goes to how it actually is felt in the
life of a believer. You perhaps could be left again. The Apostle is like this. Very
often he anticipates questions. He does this many other times
in Chapters 9, Chapter 11. He anticipates objections or
questions, And then he answers them, and so with here, it is
not actually an expressed thought, but really it's very evident
here that one might be left to think, well, for to be a real
Christian, I must be perfect, I must never sin, I must never
give way, never fall under sin, never have the thought of it,
the desire for it, the longing for it in my members at all. It must be so completely extinguished
and put away that I be almost as it were a saint upon the earth
as perfect as we would be in heaven. And so then he brings
this chapter and he speaks of that conflict within and how
real that is that when he would do good then evil is present
with him. And from the chapters that we
have read in Galatians as well, again it's very evident that
he is kept mostly from outward sin. The hymn writer takes it
up and says of a Christian that though his outside be kept clean,
He feels the filth within, and certainly there are falls outwardly
as well, as David and others have testified, with the consequences
foreign. So we have the Apostle then here
with the actual personal warfare and conflict with sin. This then stems right back to
the fall of man. It has been said that the doctrine
of the fall is a foundational doctrine in the Church of God. To err, to be in error in that,
It brings error in everything else. If there are those that
say, well, the fall was not really so deep, it left man with still
some spiritual life and still some ability to respond, then
that then affects every other doctrine in the preaching of
the Gospel, in response to the Gospel, and yet the Word of God
is very clear that the fall of man is a complete fall. It is bringing one to be dead
in trespasses and in sins. The sentence that was upon the
transgression of sin was in the day that thou eatest thereof,
thou shalt surely die. And that death, in due time,
is to be a literal death, but immediately it was a spiritual
death. So man is not capable of knowing
the things of God. Paul says he's not subject to
the law of God, neither indeed can be. because the heart is
enmity against God, is completely alienated from God. The first doctrine of the Calvinistic
faith is the total depravity of man. The apostle says, in
me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. And though we
have been left still with that semblance of being in God's image,
we are created in God's image. in that we have an intellect,
a reasoning that animals do not have, we have a conscience that
still is, though it is marred, the conscience not governed by
the word of God, but as the Gentiles have said, Paul says, excusing
themselves or accusing themselves by their own standards instead
of The Word of God covers that in the early chapters of Romans.
And man is still over the animal kingdom. He is still a spiritual
being. He still does have a soul. And
he is accountable to God. And he is responsible for his
actions and for his sins and all that he does. and one day
must stand before God's judgment throne and give an account to
the deeds done in the body, whether they are good or bad. But the
fall renders man incapable of any act towards God whatsoever. He is dead, and he needs the
Lord to pass by him when he is in his sin and bid him live. It needs the Lord to give him
spiritual life. It needs the Lord to make a way
that he can live. And in our Lord Jesus Christ
at Calvary, the Lord has paid the debt for his people's sins,
suffered in their place, and made a way that he can pass by
the transgression of the remnant of his heritage, that he can
give them eternal life and be just and righteous. and in that
gift of life, then for the first time they really know what sin
is. There's always been a debate
through the ages over this passage. Was the apostle converted or
awakened when he wrote this? Is he referring to his unregeneracy
or is he referring to when he is quickened? Well, we would
say that One that is dead in sins does never feel the warfare
and conflict that The Apostle speaks of here. This is only
a regenerated soul knows what is set forth here. The dead,
they know in the intellect what sin is, but they can never know
what it is. The Apostle is very clear, saying
here that he was alive without the law once, but when the commandment
came, sin revived and I died. And it was through the commandment
of God, by the law is the knowledge of sin, and the gift of life
on that Damascus road, that the Apostle then first started to
have that conflict with sin. Otherwise, he was like the Pharisee
our Lord spoke of in the temple, that had nothing to confess,
nothing to beat upon his breast in, and just his good works to
pray before God. And so with the Apostle here,
he now is not looking at being justified before God, not his
standing before God, but in his walk, his daily walk, and how
to reconcile being one that is saved one that is a believer,
one that is going to heaven, and one that still is in a body
of death. O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? And he says, I
thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind
I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of
sin. We are saved because the Lord
Jesus Christ saves his people from their sins. His blood that
is shed and that is what puts away sin and it's his righteousness
that fits us for heaven and that is done without us. Salvation
is of the Lord. But then the Lord Jesus Christ
also saves his people from their sins in this life. And this is
what the apostle is dealing with specifically here. And really it is the evidence,
the evidence of a justified soul, or in chapter 8, the evidence
of having no condemnation as to how it is actually walked
out. Perhaps to put it to the extreme,
If one was to say that they are a child of God and that they
have believed and God has justified them and they hope for heaven,
but when their life is looked at, that very openly they are
walking not after the word of God and the way of the Lord,
the way of the Spirit, but they are walking after the deeds and
ways of the flesh, the apostle says, that such a soul, and we
read that in Galatians, that they shall not inherit the kingdom
of God. And that's on the extreme, as
it were, in that way. We have in chapter eight, there
is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus,
who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. And so
he is pointing to our walk, our walk beside of the grave, our
walk as sinners, our walk as those who have sin within us,
that desires to have its expression in our lives and in all that
we do. So I want to look at three points.
Firstly, and to consider really three things. Firstly, the experience
of the effects of the fall. And then secondly, the question
of who shall deliver me. And then thirdly, the answer
through Jesus Christ. But firstly, the experience of
the fall. experience of sin working within
us. And what I want to really convey
is the strength of sin that is within. It's one of those things
that only becomes apparent when it is resisted in any way at
all. I think I've said before here,
the children of Israel, before Moses came to them in Egypt,
if you'd have asked them, are you really captives in Egypt? They might have said, well, we
do think so, but we think we could just walk out of Egypt. But the more and more the Lord
brought the judgments on the land, it was very evident that
they were captives there. if we were under house arrest.
We'd say, well, we've got a nice lot of freedom, we can walk round
our house, we can go to our bedrooms and go to our kitchen and we're
free, we're free. And you walk out the front door
and the law says, no, back in your house, you're not free.
And it's only by that way you realise the condition that you're
in. And so with sin, as soon as a
quickened child of God starts to resist and go against sin,
then they'll find how strong sin is and how much it resists
against us and against being dealt with. And sometimes we
can be quite amazed with ourselves. Sometimes I have been wanting, my own carnal mind
wanting to do something, and I've resisted it. And then as
a subconscious thing, I realise my heart is going round this,
trying to seek a way that it can do it, and going that way,
almost deceiving myself and deceiving God. And it's subconscious. That
is my old nature, is doing that. I know what it is to think I'm
gonna deal, deal with sins, things that are coming before me. I'm
gonna put a block on this internet and a block on that and a block
on that and I'm gonna stop doing that. And you do those things
and before you know it, sin is coming in from, you're looking
at it somewhere else. You stop one way and it comes
up another way. And it comes as a shock sometimes
at how fallen we are, how depraved, how deceitful, how intent on
sin, how intent on going on our own way. The psalmist says in
Psalm 119, I hate vain thoughts, but thy law do I love. And what
child of God? doesn't know what vain thoughts
are that keep coming in. Verse 113 in Psalm 119. And Paul, he deals with this
in the Philippines, his letter to them, those things that we
should think on and directing our thoughts and in another place
to gird up the loins of our minds. And you think of those that are
running a race perhaps, and they've got long flowing garments, and
tripping over them, flowing here, flowing there, to gird them up,
to rope them in so that they're not going every which way. And that is something of what
is the fallenness of our nature. Jeremiah says, the heart is deceitful
above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Not
those dead in sin, but God's children. The more and more pure
or holy we would be, the more and more we hate sin. And just
a thought on that. You think of the, if we could
find the most godly, spiritually minded and holy person, and you
put them in a den of iniquity and sin, how wounded they would
be, how out of place they would be, how every swear word, blasphemy,
curse would register immediately and read them and wound them.
And you think of the Lord Jesus Christ. here below, perfect,
spotless, sinless. We often think of just his sufferings
as on Calvary, but what he endured was the contradiction of sinners
against himself. If you and I were to go into
some of the places in London, I hope we'd be grieved. We'd
want to run out of the places. But we think of our Lord here
below. How long shall I be with you?
How long shall I suffer you? And what he saw, and what he
heard, and it was against that which is absolutely perfect.
Now I've heard say there are those that are pitch perfect. They hear some music and they
can point exactly the right pitch, but they don't enjoy listening
to music because they register everything that is wrong. everything
that is out. But if we are what the Lord would have us to
be in tender fear of the Lord, then we will realize and we'll
feel more and more the propensity of us to fall into snares. David
fell into the snare with Bathsheba. But how easy it is to fall into
this snare or that snare, one trap, to be held by it. The snares
of death. Those that have been escaped,
the corruption that is in the world through lust. Peter speaks
of it. Then there's the love of the
world and the things of the world. John speaks of it. Paul in Hebrews,
he speaks of the besetting sin, the sin that does so easily beset
us. We have the disciples, and they
were having a talk by the way, contention, who would be the
greatest amongst them? Pride, unbelief, a chief sin. The children of Israel, going
through the wilderness, limited the Holy One of Israel. They
did not believe His word. Unbelief. And it rises up within,
unasked, unlooked for. It is just there. And sometimes it staggers us
at how it will raise its fist in rebellion against the Lord
and be no better than the children of Israel. Hypocrisy, how easy
it is that we have one standard that we say to others, another
for ourselves. Open to Satan's suggestions at
every hand. Do you know what it is to be
staggered? at what we see in ourselves and
see in the depth of the fall. In Ezekiel it says, turn again,
thou son of man, thou shalt see greater abominations than these. Now the Lord deals with his children
in different ways. Some have greater opening up
of their sin and evil than others. In every case, it should bring
to that same feeling, whether it is in a great measure or lesser,
to feel as the Apostle says, under thee fall, O wretched man
that I am. To feel what he is by nature
as a sinner, a sinner before a holy God, and to have in us
a law He says in verse 21, I find then a law that when I would
do good, evil is present with me. He says, I see another law
in my members, warring, actively warring against the law of my
mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in
my members. And it's a very personal experience
of sin. Is that our experience in some
measure? Our grief, our sorrow, our conflict
is with sin. The Lord Jesus Christ was given
that name of Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. And Paul brings in an aspect
that applies right through our lives. I want to then consider
the question of who shall deliver me? Who shall deliver me? There's two thoughts under this
heading. First, who are the contenders? Who is he going to be looking
for? We might say, well, it's a question
that's so easy answered and so immediately answered we don't
even have to think about it. But he says, who shall deliver
me from the body of this death? Myself? Shall I deliver myself? Shall I make myself rules and
efforts And shall I deliver myself in
that way? Leave the Lord out of this. Make
the warfare my warfare. And then at the end I'll come
before the Lord and say, look, look how well I've done. Another
man? Someone else? Quite often our
first thought when we have something difficult, we go and see what
that man says. We go and see what he says, or
we read that commentary, or we take advice from someone who's
very expert in this. We go to a minister. Is that one of the contenders
that shall deliver me personally? The answer that is given here
is God shall deliver, but it's through Jesus Christ, our Lord. God shall deliver Paul from his
body of death through Jesus Christ and every one of his children. And we need to be clear on that.
Who we are to look to for deliverance. The second thought here is, what
kind of deliverance are we seeking? What is our expectation? Are we thinking that we'll get
to a point that we don't register about sin anymore? Well, that
is what we were in unregeneracy. We were so hardened that we didn't
register. We're all liable to that, to
become hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. And we're warned against
that in the Word of God. We want the opposite. You want
to be more tender, want to more realise of sin and what it is
and register it more, not be hardened and not be dead to it
in that way. We don't want to be delivered
from it like someone would have a fatal disease and you give
them enough medicine and you give them enough morphine and
they're delivered from it, they've got no more pain and they're
quite alright now. But are they? All it is is just
masks. It's not dealt with at all. Is
that what deliverance is? Is it a deliverance to be taken
out of this world? Our Lord in John 17, he prays
on one occasion, Father, I pray not that thou shouldst take them
out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil.
Later on, indeed, he does pray, Father, I will that they whom
thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold
my glory. But while they're in their world,
the Lord's will is that they be kept from the evil, from entering
into it. James says that a man is tempted
when he is led away of his own lust, when he walks in it. when
he takes up with it, when he goes along with it, when he doesn't
resist it. Is the deliverance then to be
sinless, to be perfect? Some will teach that. Sinless
perfection in this life. One of our hymns says, sinless
perfection, we deny the chief of Satan's lines. Man by nature
does not, will never attain to sinless Perfection, in the end
he shall die. In the end he's still, his body
must be laid in the grave. And the apostle is very, very
clear in his epistles in John, 1 John, if we say we have no
sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we
say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word
is not in us. It's very clear that God's children
those that have passed from death unto life those that have been
delivered from all that is in the world the lust of the flesh
and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life that is not
of the father but is of the world but they are still in the flesh
and they still are sinners and so the expectation is that we
are not in a deliverance going to somehow cease to be sinners,
cease to know the depths of the fall and the working that is
going on in the apostle in this chapter. I believe that what
he describes here is what goes on constantly with a child of
God. Or is it a deliverance as to
teach us how we are to live with this body of death as carrying
it about from its influence, from its power, from its dominion,
from its servitude. That is the deliverance. The
Apostle desires that he should not serve sin, but serve the
Lord. And he covered that also in chapter
6, in verse 16. Know ye not that to whom ye yield
yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye
obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God, be thanked that ye were
the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form
of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from
sin, ye became the servants of righteousness, that is, free
from being the servant of sin. or being a willing participant
in sin. So it is a deliverance that brings
one to have a right attitude towards sin and a right walk
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the answer is in our third
point, through Jesus Christ. I thank God through Jesus Christ,
our Lord. The blessing, the help, it comes
through the Lord. The gift of eternal life comes
through the Lord. The putting away of our sin comes
through the Lord. But then there comes many other
things that are specifically needed for a child of God, not
beyond the grave, but here below. By grace, you're saved. How the apostle, in the matter
of the thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, my grace
is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in
weakness. That which is conveyed from the
Lord to his people freely, graciously help from the Lord. He giveth more grace. He giveth
grace for grace. It is the idea of that communicated
life and power and help from the Lord. He will not suffer
you to be tempted above that which ye are able, but will with
the temptation make a way of escape that ye be able to bear
it. Call upon me in the day of trouble,
I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. Faith. Faith in Galatians 5 verse 6,
chapter we read earlier on. A faith which works by love and
faith which comes by the word. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing
by the word of God. And what the Lord gives his people
at conversion is a hearing ear, is a teachableness, is an understanding,
is a willingness, a willingness to walk in the Lord's ways, a
willingness to listen, a willingness to bow before His chastening
and correcting hand. Those things the world that lies
in sin and wickedness do not have. The unregenerate do not
have. They do not have eternal life. They do not have the grace of
God. They do not have faith. All men
do not have faith. They do not have the love of
God shed abroad in their heart. The love of Christ constraineth
us. My people shall be willing when,
in the day of my power, they do not have the power of God
put forth in them. These things are set before us
as being not in us, and how often we look for them in us, but outside
of us. And was the last time you prayed
and cried, and I did, to the Lord, and asked for fresh life,
and willingness, and power, and grace, and faith, and love. And
there is the other side of it. Ye that love the Lord hate evil. The two sides of it. The friendship
of the world is enmity to God. And these things are what the
Lord gives. So often we, we look at these
things and then we try and do them ourselves. Instead of crying
to the Lord, asking the Lord for help. I want to just briefly set before
you some of the action words, as it were, that are through
the word as to how we deal with sin. In Hebrews 12, and we've
spoken of this recently, in verse 4, resistance. You have not yet
resisted unto death, striving against sin. How easy it is to
be tempted and think, well, if I was a child of God, I wouldn't
have sin. I wouldn't really have the propensity
for it. I don't need to strive day by
day against it. But that is how it is set forth
in the Word of God. You say, but I can't prevail
against it. Now if you had a young lady and
a man went and attacked them in the street and tried to drag
them away and abuse them. If that lady just went along
with it, my bystander was looking and thinking, oh, she's not fighting,
she's not kicking, she's not resisting. She must be willing. It must be a friend, perhaps.
And she's not frightened of what's going to happen. But if you saw
her kicking and screaming and wrestling and fighting, and she
was still carried away, she was still taken away, she's still
overpowered, you'd be left in no doubt. that that woman was
not going of her own accord. She didn't want that. She hated
that. She still was overcome. But it
was not for lack of the hatred or resistance of it. And how
is it that God sees us? What picture do we give? What
does he see with us? It is said that With the salmon
going up the stream, they go against it. The dead fish, they
go with it. Then we have in Romans 8 and
verse 13. If ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die, but if ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds
of the body, ye shall live. And it's so vital, through the
spirit. Not just, but if ye mortify the
deeds of the body, ye shall live. It is through the spirit. Now
the difference is, instead of fighting against that sin and
spending time and energy against it, because it will brush it
aside, and you go in positively in the ways that are good and
right, not the other way. They all know what it is to be
mortified sometimes. Two children, if there were two
children in the family and one wanted to go to the zoo and one
wanted to go to the beach, it's obvious the family couldn't go
both places at once. And the parent decided, well,
we're going to go to the beach today. The one that wanted to
go to the zoo would be mortified. Why wasn't my will done? Why
didn't I get my way? Why have I got to go to this
place when I wanted to go to that place? And so with our old
nature, why do I have to go to the house of God when I'd rather
go in ways of sin? Why do I have to bend down and
pray when I'd rather look at this and that? And it doesn't
leave an empty voice. It is actually positively walking
in the spirit, after the things of the spirit, instead of the
things of the flesh. You can be sure that if we just
try to modify our strength, then something else from the flesh
will take its place, not something from the spirit. If we were to have a jar full
of water, you want to get that water out, we could tip it out. But then if you poured sand in
that jar, as the sand went in, all the water would then come
out and you'd have a jar full of sand instead of water. And
however much you tried, you couldn't fill that, you'd have wet sand,
but you couldn't fill it up with water anymore because it'd been
replaced. And that's what's set before
us, that which replaces and sets something better and more blessed
in the place of that which is evil. And the flesh dislikes
it, it kicks against it, rebels it, it's mortified. And so it
is a walking in the spirit. And Romans 8 verse 1, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the spirit. In Galatians 5, again,
the passage we read speaks of crucifixion. In the end of that chapter, they
that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections
and lusts. Crucifixion is a long, slow,
painful, lingering death. And that's what it is when sin
is dealt with. It's a painful thing. We mentioned
about the love, the constraining love of God, that which the Lord
draws us after himself, makes sin to be bitter, takes away
its attraction, and makes us to love and to choose willingly
the ways of the Lord. I must emphasize in this, though
the Word of God, it puts many things, many duties, many right
ways, many exhortations for a child of God that all deal with sin
in our members. Yet we must never overlook that
we need the power and blessing of God. In one sense, we should
fight and resist against sin as if the whole of the battle
did depend upon us, but remembering and looking to the Lord for that
strength and power and help, having no confidence in our own
efforts. But where those efforts are according
to the word of God, to know that we have the Lord on our side,
his strength on our side, his word on our side, what a difference
it made. In Queen Esther's day, they had
the sentence of death upon them. Haman had brought it. The king's
seal was on it, he couldn't be changed, he couldn't be taken
away, the same as you and I must die and that we are sinners and
that cannot be changed. But what made the difference
and turned their sadness into joy, they had authority from
the king to fight and to resist. And that's what the Church of
God and a poor child of God has as well, the authority to resist
the devil with the promise he shall flee from you and to fight
the good fight of faith. We have that authority from the
Lord and it's not in our own strength or power but the Lord's
work. The Lord said with Gideon and
why he reduced his army down so small was that the glory would
be the Lord's and not man's. He had about 300 men, and not
guns and arrows and arms or whatever they could have, but just a pitchers
and a lamp and trumpets. The victory is the Lord's for
his people. There shall be never a child
of God that will be able to say the victory was mine. They will
say with the apostle, I thank God through Jesus Christ. It
is through him that giveth us the victory. And he sums up then
with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the
flesh, the law of sin, a constant battle. The Puritans used to
say, impress upon a young believer that he is called to a daily
battle with the corruptions of his own heart. And it is a privilege
of a child of God. But we need a right view of what
is the aim and what victory the Lord gives us, hour by hour,
day by day, when we fall. Then shall we arise again, and
fall many, many times, and rise again. May the Lord help us, though
we may feel so painfully like the Apostle, to see so clearly
where our deliverance is. O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord, So then with the mind I myself serve
the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. How precious will heaven be!
No more conflict, no more sin, and perfect with the Lord. May
the Lord bring us there, but while we're here, help us to
fight that good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life. Amen.