Exodus chapter 34, and we'll
read from verse one. And the Lord said unto Moses,
Hew thee two tables of stone, like unto the first, and I will
write upon these tables the words which were in the first tables
which thou breakest. And be ready in the morning,
and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai, and present thyself
there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come
up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the
mount, neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. And he hewed two tables of stone,
like unto the first. And Moses rose up early in the
morning, and went up unto Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded
him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. And the
Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and
proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before
him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy
for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and
that will by no means clear the guilty. visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children
unto the third and to the fourth generation. And Moses made haste
and bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped. And he
said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Lord, let my
Lord, I pray thee, go among us. for it is a stiff-necked people,
and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.'
And he said, Behold, I make a covenant before all thy people, I will
do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth, nor in
any nation, and all the people among which thou art shall see
the work of the Lord, for it is a terrible thing that I will
do with thee. Observe thou that which I command
thee this day. Behold, I drive out before thee
the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite,
and the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou
make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest,
lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee. But ye shall destroy
their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves. For
thou shalt worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous,
is a jealous god. Lest thou make a covenant with
the inhabitants of the land, and they go a-whoring after their
gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods. And one call thee, and
thou eat of his sacrifice. And thou take of their daughters
unto thy sons, and their daughters go a-whoring after their gods,
and make thy sons go a-whoring after their gods. Thou shalt
make thee no molten gods. The feast of unleavened bread
shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened
bread, as I commanded thee in the time of the month Abib, for
in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt. All that openeth
the matrix is mine, and every firstling among thy cattle, whether
ox or sheep, that is male. But the firstling of an ass thou
shalt redeem with a lamb, and if thou redeem him not, then
shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons
thou shalt redeem, and none shall appear before me empty. Six days
thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest. In earing
time and in harvest thou shalt rest. And thou shalt observe
the feast of weeks, of the first fruits of wheat harvest, and
the feast of ingathering at the year's end. Thrice in the year
shall all your men children appear before the Lord God, the God
of Israel. For I will cast out the nations
before thee, and enlarge thy borders. Neither shall any man
desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord
thy God thrice in the year. Thou shalt not offer the blood
of my sacrifice with leaven, neither shall the sacrifice of
the feast of the Passover be left unto the morning. The first
of the first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house
of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not see the kid in
his mother's milk.' And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these
words, for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant
with thee and with Israel. And he was there with the Lord
forty days and forty nights. He did neither eat bread nor
drink water, and he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant,
the Ten Commandments. And it came to pass, when Moses
came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tables of testimony in
Moses' hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist
not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him.
And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold,
the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come nigh
him. And Moses called unto them, and Aaron and all the rulers
of the congregation returned unto him, and Moses talked with
them. And afterward, all the children
of Israel came nigh, and he gave them in commandment all that
the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai. Until Moses had
done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. But when
Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he took the
veil off until he came out. And he came out and spake unto
the children of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children
of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses' face
shone. And Moses put the veil upon his
face again, until he went in to speak with him. Amen. May God bless to us this reading.
Turn now, if you will, to Romans chapter 7. Romans chapter 7. And I want to read there from
verse 13. Romans chapter 7 and verse 13. Let's read from verse 12. Wherefore
the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was then that which is good made
death unto me? God forbid. But sin that it might
appear sin, working death in me by that which is good, that
sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. For
we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow
not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would
not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then, it is no
more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that
in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For to
will is present with me, but how to perform that which is
good I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that
I would not, it is no more. It is no more I that do it, but
sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when
I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the
law of God, after the inward man. But I see another law in
my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members.
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. I hope it doesn't surprise anyone
if I say that in this church, we preach and maintain a position
on the law and particularly the role of the law in the life of
a believer which differs generally from what most other churches
would teach. And consequently because we endeavour
to take that position whether we're called it personally or
whether we just fall into the category that most people would
identify us as, there will be those who will call us antinomian. That is a word which means that
we are against the law, anti nomos, the law of God. And the suggestion is that if
people say we are no longer under the law as our rule of life,
or that we emphasise the liberty that we have from the law and
state as the New Testament does that we are free from the law,
then that brings us into a category which says we are opposed to
the law of God. Well, that is an epithet we reject. We won't accept that label on
ourselves. We don't accept that that is
legitimate, that people should call us that. It's a position
that we repudiate and we rather suggest that it is levelled against
us in ignorance. that people don't understand
the position that we take, rather than think about it, they will
just throw these accusations against us. And there is an inappropriateness
about them doing that, but that's just the way things are. In this
chapter of Romans, Romans chapter 7, the Apostle Paul, in the verses
that we've read together this evening, uses two phrases with
which I want to wholeheartedly agree and publicly attest in
your presence here today. In verse 12, the first verse
that we read, the apostle says, wherefore the law is holy and
the commandment holy and just and good. I believe that. I believe that when Paul says
this, he is speaking the truth. I believe that this is the Word
of God, the inspired Word of God, and that what the Apostle
here declares is true. I wholeheartedly agree with that
statement. Therefore, I don't accept the
legitimacy of anyone who says that I am opposed to or I am
against the law of God. Rather, I attest that it is holy,
just and good. The whole of the law it appears
to me in the opening part of that verse 12, is in the Apostle's
view when he writes that the law is holy. He is attesting
here that the whole law of God is holy. And then he goes on
to say, and the commandment by which I understand all of the
individual commandments that God has revealed. They equally
are holy. They are just and they are good. So whether we look at the law
in its entirety, the apostle says it's holy. Whether we look
at any individual law, any individual revelation of God's will and
purpose, that equally in its individuality, in its isolation,
is holy, just, and good. The whole law in its essence,
and its individual parts are perfect. holy, just and good. And it is not acceptable nor
appropriate to pick and choose any individual bits and pieces
out of the wholeness of the law or from that list of individual
commands that in any way can be set aside or left behind. The entirety is what is in view
here in this passage. So we see that the apostle declares
that the law of God is holy and the commandment is holy just
and good. Holy because it is from God and
everything that comes from God is holy. God is holy and all
that God does is holy and all that God says is holy and all
that God wills is holy. All that God desires is holy. There is a perfection, there
is a holiness that attaches to the person and the ways of God,
which mean that we must stand in awe and reverence of the absoluteness
of the perfection of God. And everything that God says
and everything that he does is holy, just, and good. God is holy and all that comes
from him. And as the law was given by God,
so that law is holy. It seeks out holiness. The law requires holiness. It commands holiness. And it forbids unholiness. Such is the nature of the law
of God. It is just because it is righteous,
It is impartial. There's no partiality. The law
doesn't compromise. It doesn't allow for one bit
to be emphasised at the expense of another. It doesn't push one
part and leave another behind. It is impartial and it deals
with all men impartially. It doesn't deal with one person
because he's rich and mighty and famous and another person
differently because he's poor. There is a justness about the
law. It looks at all men, wherever
they are, in exactly the same way. It is thorough. It searches out. It doesn't simply
look on the externals. It doesn't look on the actions. It looks also more deeply. It turns over the rocks. It looks
behind the shields. It sees in and probes and it
is thorough in its examination of all that we do and all that
we say and all that we think. It judges and it condemns. and it is fair in everything
that it does. And it's good because it reflects
and represents the good will of God. And it achieves a good
end, that end to which it was sent and purposed. That's one of the sayings that
the Apostle Paul makes with which we agree. He says that the law
is holy and the commandment holy and just and good. In verse 14
we find the other verse that I want to personally attest and
attest on your behalf this evening. And that is, for we know that
the law is spiritual. So here is another statement.
The law is spiritual. Holy, just, good, and spiritual
is the law of God. Both of these statements are
true. And it reminds us that the law is beyond merely obeying
the letter of the written statement. because the law looks in the
heart and it looks in the motivation. But beyond that also, not only
does it look on the works and then on the motivation, but it
also looks for spiritual qualities in the soul of a man. It looks
for purity. It looks for holiness in that
individual. It looks for love. It looks for
genuine worship. It looks for true, warm, lively,
yearning after God. This is the spiritual dimension
of the law. And it is always going about
seeking these qualities, seeking these aspects in the individuals
against whom it is laid. Now, I'm indebted to a friend
of mine, a man called George Ella, for pointing out something
to me that we read together in Exodus chapter 34. We read there
about the second time that the prophet Moses, the leader of
the children of Israel at that time, was given the law. We read
about it back in Exodus chapter 20, and we get there, the Ten
Commandments all listed out, and God wrote those Ten Commandments,
gave them into the care of Moses. Moses came back down the mountain
from spending time with God, discovered that the people had
gone to sin and riotous behaviour, and he smashed the stones. A few things happen in between,
but then we discover that the Lord gives a second set of these
10 commandments to Moses, and that's what we read together
in Exodus chapter 34. But in verse 27 of that, where
he is talking about the words of the law which he had given
to Moses, He says something that I hadn't noticed before, and
I just, I find it interesting. He says this, And the Lord said
unto Moses, Write thou these words, for after the tenor of
these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. And I didn't notice that that
little word there, the tenor, was in that verse. I've just
read that verse before and never thought about it. But it says,
it could say, write thou these words for after these words,
I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. But what it
does say is that after the tenor of these words, not just the words themselves,
not just as it were the bare laws that were given, but the
tenor of those words, the spirit of those words. The essence of
those words, to see beyond the words, to the source from which
the words came, from the heart from which the words came. The
divinely breathed out words. Because that's what the word
there, tenor, means. It's not a word that is used
very often at all in scripture. And it has to do with the mouth
and the air and the breath that comes from the mouth, the tenor. And it is a breathed out word.
It is an inspired essence that is in the words that were given. And from that reference to the
tenor, I take it to mean that there Moses and the people of
God were being taught that the law was never merely about obeying
a codified set of rules on the two tablets of stone as they
were given. but it was always seeking for a spirituality, for
a righteousness, for the motive that was behind the rules, the
tenor of the words that were spoken by God, a true holiness
and a righteousness that the law was seeking. Abraham, knew
about that, as did Moses and David and Isaiah. Indeed, all
the prophets knew about it. So the Lord Jesus Christ knew
that the law was spiritual. Yes, the law was holy, just and
good, but it was also spiritual. And that's what the Apostle Paul
is telling us here in Romans chapter seven. The law is spiritual
and the Old Testament Patriarchs, the Old Testament prophets, they
knew that there was a spirituality in the law. That you couldn't
obey the law simply by looking at the words and saying, I can
do that. I can do that. Okay, I don't steal. There you
are, it's satisfied. I haven't borne false witness
against my neighbour. There we are, it's satisfied.
I rest on the Sabbath day. There we are, it's satisfied.
I don't commit adultery. There we are, it's satisfied.
That's never going to satisfy it because the law always, in
its tenor, had a spiritual dimension. This I think is what the Lord
Jesus Christ was speaking about when you remember how the doctor,
the lawyer came and said, which is the greatest commandment?
Which is the greatest commandment? I wonder which one he expected.
And the Lord said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy
strength. That was the greatest commandment.
And the second, that you love your neighbour as yourself. But you see, it was love. It
was love, it was worship, it was honour to God. That was the
real motivation. All the other commandments were
bound up in that. That was the tenor of the words
that were spoken to Moses. So when you think about the Ten
Commandments, when you think about the Exodus 20, when you
think about the Levitical laws and the Deuteronomy laws and
all of the laws that were given this second edition, as it were,
on the tablets of stone here in Exodus 34, all of those were
designed to this, that they should learn to love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength. So when the Lord
Jesus Christ was going through his ministry, he was also invited
to make other comments about the Mosaic system and the pattern
of life that the Jews were living at that time. And he says this
in Matthew 9, verse 13. Go ye and learn what that meaneth. I will have mercy and not sacrifice. For I am not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance. He drew that from Hosea 6, verse
6, where the prophet writes, Now, sacrifice and burnt offerings
had their place. They were pictures. They had
to be followed. It was the pattern of the day.
It was the extent of the revelation of the time. But you could get
two men and they would bring their sacrifices in exactly the
same way and go through exactly the same pattern and sacrifice
exactly and offer exactly the same thing. And one would be
accepted and one would be not because one was given by faith
and the other one was given by ritual and ceremony and practice.
And what the Lord is teaching here is that he's looking not
for the sacrifice. He doesn't delight in the death
of the animal. It's what that prefigures. And that was only ever understood
by those who had grasped the spirituality of the law. And those were the ones who came
with an understanding of the massiveness, the extensiveness,
the comprehensiveness of the law of God. And they realised
they could never keep it and they came seeking mercy. And
that's what the Lord was telling to these men. That's what Hosea
was telling to his people way back in the Old Testament. So
this understanding has always been there. I desired mercy and
not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.
So when Paul says in verse 9 of Romans chapter 7. For I was
alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin
revived and I died. What is he saying? What does
he mean he was alive without the law? The law has been there
since Moses. He was never, the apostle Paul,
the Saul of Tarsus, was never without the law. They probably
read it over his crib when he was born. And he learned at the
feet of Gamaliel all of those years. He was a Pharisee of the
Pharisees. What does he mean that he was
alive without the law? Let me paraphrase that if I may. Paul is saying, I used to believe
that I was righteous and that I was obedient before God. But that was because I had no
real understanding of the true nature of the law. I had no real
knowledge of the law and consequently I had no real knowledge of sin. And that is a picture of every
natural man. Every natural man thinks that
he's more or less okay. He knows that there's areas in
his life where he's a little bit sensitive and if it gets
poked too much then he's gonna have to apologize for that and
repent of that. But pretty much he's okay. And
certainly he's okay if he compares the guy next door. Because that's
what the natural man thinks. That's how we rationalise in
our nature. We think we're alive. We think
that we've got something to say to God. We've got something to
deal with God about. Because we don't understand the
true dimensions of the law of God. And therefore, it is only
those who are spiritually quickened, it is only those who have been
made alive, only those who have been born again, only those who
have been given the gift of faith, who truly know the depth, the
extent, and the all-pervading nature of sin. It is only they who have been
spiritually awakened, who understand the spiritual nature of the law,
who understand just how deeply it probes and how massive is
the demands and the requirements of it. It is only they who appreciate
that there is no justification in their sacrifices. and who
are therefore driven to seek mercy from the Lord. And that is an act of faith. That's what Hosea was saying
to his generation. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ
was saying to his generation. That's what Paul was saying here
to the Romans in his epistle. And that's what we preach also
today. Such is the hugeness of the law. Such is the extent and the nature
and the demands of the law. that there is a foolishness in
ever imagining that we can satisfy it to any degree. Indeed, the
law is spiritual as well as being holy, just, and good, and we
have to have a spiritual response to it. So the Apostle Paul is showing
us in these verses from Romans 7, first of all this, that I
didn't know sin until the commandment came and sin became exceedingly
sinful. That's what he says in verse
13. That sin by the commandment might
become exceeding sinful. I didn't know sin until the commandment
came. And secondly, that the law shows
the spiritual man what true sin is and exposes his complete subjection
to it, his complete subjection to sin. And the Apostle Paul,
very graciously, gives us a personal testimony at this stage. He opens up his own life's experience. The Apostle Paul had been a believer. He had trusted in the Lord Jesus
Christ for a long time, maybe decades by the time he wrote
this letter to the Romans. He was a man of spiritual insight,
understanding, and maturity. He had experienced many things
in his life. He had trusted the Lord and proved
the Lord in many, many ways. If we were trying, and it's probably
a futile thing to do, but if we were trying to stack individual
believers in a line of where they stood in the extent of their
understanding of spiritual things, Paul would have been right at
the head. because he had experienced the Lord intimately, personally. He had spoken of him publicly. He had been sent by him, anointed
by him to carry the gospel to the Gentiles. The Apostle Paul
was foremost amongst those who taught the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And yet here he is speaking of
himself. Look at verse 25. He says there
at the end of verse 25, I myself. He's speaking of himself. Now
there are those people who say that the Apostle Paul is simply
using an example here of somebody else. But he's speaking of himself. He testifies that. And unless
words don't mean what we think they mean, then we have to take
it at face value. The Apostle here is saying that
he, as a believer struggles with his flesh, with that carnal element
of himself. And so he is speaking as a believer
of this old man, new man struggle that goes on. Even after all
these years, even in a man who has seen so much and tasted so
much and proved so much, of the Lord Jesus Christ in his own
personal testimony. And I think that these words
of the Apostle will resonate with the believer who sees his
sin properly. I think that if we have a grasp
of the law, If we see ourselves under its light, if we begin
to grasp something of the extent of sin and the weakness of our
flesh and that carnality which is part of our being, then we'll
be able to say with the Apostle Paul, I know what you're talking
about. I know what you mean. I realise
that when you're describing yourself, Paul, you're talking about me
as well. So in verses 15 through to the
end of the chapter, the apostle is contrasting these two opposite
natures. And he's speaking about a carnal
man, and he speaks about an inward man. He speaks about flesh and
he speaks about spirit. He speaks about my fleshy body
in which dwells no good thing, verse 18, and my renewed mind,
which he even goes so far as to say is the real me. Because
when my flesh does these things, it's not me that's doing them,
but sin that's in me, sin that's working in me. The real me is
the renewed man. The real me is the inward man. The real me is the man of the
Spirit, what the Apostle Peter calls the secret man of the heart,
the new man, the new creation. Because that, in the renewed
mind has a desire to serve God. And so he says, I hate the sin
that I do. I hate it. I see it for what
it is. I see it in the light of God's
holiness. I see it in the light of God's
justice. I see it in the light of that
probing law that gets into every aspect of my nature, every aspect
of my motivation. I see how horrendous this sin
is. And someone would say, that's
nothing. That's nothing. You haven't murdered
anybody. But we see that, we feel that,
we feel that thought, we feel the anger rising in our hearts
and so sensitive are we to it that we immediately recoil from
it. And yet we find that there's
a rule in our flesh that seems to pursue the things that we
don't want to do. He sees sins for what it really
is and he recoils from it. and he has this dilemma in his
own person of seeing this battle, this fight going on in his mind
and in his heart. He knows his own nature and he
knows the deceptiveness of his own nature and he knows the appetite
that his nature has for evil. He knows what's good And he desires
to do that good. We've met good before already
this evening, haven't we? Paul says, I know what's good. And he desires to do it. He says,
the law is holy, just and good. You see, a believer, one who
has been quickened, one who has been made spiritually alive,
one who has this ongoing battle in their soul, they know the
true nature of the law. They know the spiritual requirements
of that law, they know the demands of it and they feel themselves
falling far, far short of what that law can do. So he says in
verse 22 that he delights in the law the law of God after
the inward man, after the new creation, after that born again
individual. But there is a warring at the
same time, a warring between this law and the principle of
law in his soul and the principle of sin that captivates his fleshy
tendencies and his members. And we find that, don't we? That's
where this lust comes in, the lust of the heart, the lust of
the eyes, the passions that we see and the temptations around
about us. And it's almost as if it's the
members, it's the bits of us that pursue and desire these
things. And yet in the inward, man, we
know this isn't right, this is wrong. This is sin, this is evil,
this is opposed to God and yet we find that our flesh is so
susceptible, such is the carnal nature of the body and flesh. And it's a battle that the Word
of God, the New Testament speaks of, a battle that is furious,
a battle that's deadly and grievous and hurtful and shameful in our
life's experience. And surely the Apostle Paul's
exclamation here at this point, at verse 24, is not a surprise
to the child of God. O wretched man that I am. You see, that's what it means
to be sensitive to sin. That's what it means to understand
the law. And not only it's written laws,
it's chiseled out tablets of stone, but in its spiritual probing
and examination. That's what it is to be a sensible
sinner. The old writers used to talk
about the sensible sinner. People like John Gill and John
Bunyan, they would talk about a sensible sinner. And of course,
in the modern evangelical Christian churches, they don't like the
idea of a sensible sinner. But that's what a believer is. He's a sensible sinner because
he senses, he's sensitive to the sin that's in his life. We see the weakness of our flesh. We see the law principle and
the sin and the evil that rises up and surprises us and strikes
at us when we're least expecting it, strikes at our spiritual
comfort. strikes at our peace, strikes
at the new man in Christ, and endeavours to overthrow him.
O wretched man that I am! I live in a body of death. I sojourn in Messick. I dwell in the tents of Kedar. Kedar was the second son of Ishmael,
I think, and the desert peoples at the time, but
they lived in black tents. They lived in tents that were
made from the hairs of camels and they were dark tents. It's
like the Shulamite in the Song of Solomon. She says, I'm black. I live in the tents of Kedar. This is the flesh that is part
of my experience. The new man dwells in these black
tents. If you want to read that verse,
you can, and it's one of the psalms, Psalm 120. It's a lovely
psalm, just a short one. The Lord's people, they know about this wickedness,
this struggle that goes on in their person. And consequently,
we discover that often there is a challenge that is brought against
them right at the very heart of their faith. And they are
made to wonder whether they are truly believers or not. And this is the way in which
Satan attacks the Lord's people, employing the law to do so. He comes at us with the very
law that exposes to the inner man the nature of our need, and
he says, you've fallen short. You who are afraid of dying, It's the death of this body,
this body of sin that will be our liberty. It will be the death,
and not until this body of sin goes. These days in the world
may be full of things that we enjoy and experiences that we
long for, but we've not to fear. the Lord taking us into the fullness
of the blessedness of the experience that he has for us. It will be
our deliverance from the wretchedness of the warfare that Satan embroils
us in constantly. So don't be afraid. The Apostle
Paul says, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? You will be delivered from the
body of this death at the time when you are taken into glory. But there's a blessing here for
us in time also, in this life also, because this is the thrust
of the apostles' teaching on our liberty from the law. Because it is the Lord Jesus
Christ who delivers us from the body of this death by faith. because he has paid for every
debt. He has satisfied every requirement. He has stood before God as our
representative. He who was the perfect one, who
fulfilled all things gloriously under the law, who, when he was
examined by the law, was found to be absolutely spotless, not
only in his obedience to the 10, or his conformity to the
much larger revelation of God's law. Moses, when he came down from
the mountain from Mount Sinai, he'd spent 40 days and 40 nights
and he didn't eat and drink anything up there. spent that time with
the Lord, comes down with these two tablets of stone with the
commandments written on them. And then he goes in and out to
the presence of God and comes back out and tells the people,
let us not imagine that the law of God is restricted to these
10 moral statements that people hold up before us and say, oh,
you've got to be obedient to the 10 commandments. No, the
believer knows how sinful he is. He doesn't need these 10
commandments to tell him that. But the believer also knows that
the spirituality of the law finds its satisfaction in our substitute
and in the Lord Jesus Christ who stood for us. So who will
deliver me from the body of this death, O wretched man that I
am? I thank God. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to
God for the deliverance that he has secured, for the way of
escape that he has provided. Thanks be to God. I shall be
delivered through Jesus Christ, our Lord. How lovely is that? I think I started off last week
by saying I'm going to get there. Well, here we are. The Lord Jesus
Christ. And Paul lifts up the Lord. This
is still a personal testimony. The Apostle Paul gave his testimony
multiple times in the New Testament. In his letters before kings,
he told us what it was that the Lord had done for him. And here's
another example. Maybe it's a summarised example
here, but it enters into the depth of the experience of every
child of God. The Lord Jesus Christ, will deliver
me from the body of this death. Because Satan is going to use
that law against me as long as he is able to try and undermine,
to try and make me feel bad, to try and make me feel unworthy,
to try and make me feel incompatible with a believer, with one who
trusts in God, with one that the Bible says is holy. It's
as holy, just, and good as the law of God itself. And we don't
feel that, do we? Not in the flesh, not in the
flesh, not in the flesh. We say, oh, that we desire the
law of God after the inward man. I delight in the law of God after
the inward man. But I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin, which is in my members. but the Lord Jesus
Christ has delivered me from that. And Paul's speaking it
all in the present tense. Do you see that? That he feels
wretched and yet at the same time he's thanking God for his
mercy because the Lord Jesus Christ has delivered him. And
this is what we always have to do. There will constantly be
allegations being leveled against us. And you know, don't expect
this to come. Oh, I get these emails. I don't
know whether you've seen any of them. Some of them are pretty
horrendous. We've been watching what you're watching on the internet.
And unless you pay us 50,000 pounds, we're going to send emails
to all your friends because we're in your address book as well. That's the allegations. These
are the things that the law is going to bring things against
us. And it won't be upfront stupid things that we know is not true
because we can easily back those away. but it's the subtle things. It's the things that are justifiable. It's the things that get right
down deep into our hearts. It's the ways that we know we're
falling short. The areas of our life where we
know this is legitimate. This is verifiable. I do feel
embarrassed. I do feel ashamed. I see this
in my life. And it's those areas where the
devil will come and he will probe and he will prod and he will
exploit and he'll open it up and he will take away our comfort
and he will take away our joy and he will leave us saying,
O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body
of this death? But after he does, and as he
does, we are enjoined to repeat with the Apostle Paul, I thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. We can see in this a beautiful
climax to the Apostle's testimony, a glorious testimony, a personal
witness to the power of faith over the power of sin and death
in our flesh. In the flesh dwells no good thing,
but faith has power over the flesh. Here the Apostle Paul is directing
us to remember Christ's mediatorial role for us. I thank God through
the Lord Jesus Christ I will be delivered from the body of
this death. There is God in all of his holiness. There is his law, holy, just,
and good, reflecting the character and the nature of God. And here
is the Lord Jesus Christ between God and man. mediating on our
behalf to allow us into the presence of God, to allow us to the very
footstool, to the throne of God. And what do we see? Like Esther
and Ahasuerus, the scepter is extended and we are accepted
in the presence of the King. The cross, the blood, The sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ is the ground of our hope. I thank God. Who will deliver me? I thank
God through the Lord Jesus Christ's cross, through the Lord Jesus
Christ's blood, through the Lord Jesus Christ's sacrifice. I am free from the body of this
death. And that's the reason the Apostle
Paul stresses so much our freedom from the law. The law cannot
come against us. with these condemning accusations,
with any legitimacy that will endure, because we take them
constantly, frequently, regularly. As one comes as an accusation,
we take it immediately to the Lord. And we say, the Lord Jesus
Christ died for that. The Lord Jesus Christ shed his
blood for that. The Lord Jesus Christ has carried
that away. That is gone. I'm free from that. And if you don't feel it, well
you tell yourself that anyway, because that's where your faith
leads you to. Not your feelings, the feelings
are of the flesh, but this knowledge of truth is of the spirit. It's of faith. This is our Jesus. Jesus the
Saviour. Call his name Jesus for he shall
save his people from their sins. Save us. Not just when he died
on the cross but it is an ongoing experience. We are saved from
our sins. This is the Christ, the Anointed
One. I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord, Jesus the Saviour, Christ the Anointed One, the
representative of God, our Lord, our Master, our King, our Leader,
our Head. This is what it is to have faith
in Him. This is what it is to trust Him.
This is what it is to cleave to Him. This is what it is to
lay hold upon Him and not to let Him go. In this section of Romans, The
Apostle Paul has shown us the proper role of the law, its lawful
purpose of entering in and exposing sin and condemning sin, judging
and condemning it. And that is the right use of
the law. And that right use of the law
brings us to Christ. because we see our own unworthiness,
our own inadequacies, the fact that we cannot do anything for
ourselves. Therefore it throws us onto Christ.
That's what the spiritual work of the Holy Ghost in our hearts
does. Throws us onto Christ as the
only saviour and as the only deliverer from the curse of these
things. But he has also shown us, I believe,
that the law can be used by Satan, unlawfully, to our heart. It's used to hurt the child of
God because we continue to dwell in this fleshy weakness. It's an ongoing battle. And as
long as we're in this flesh, it will continue to be attended
with failure with doubts, with regrets, with a lack of assurance. But our solution to this is not
to try and fulfil the law's demands anew, again, but to confess our
failures, day by day, our faults. Confess it honestly and return
to Christ. because that is where grace will
be found, strength will be found, mercy will be found, and the
resources and encouragement to face the challenges of our life
and our day. We are in the world. We possess
this flesh. and we have a devil like a roaring
lion going around seeking whom he may devour. This is our lot
until the Lord takes us into his presence, but he has not
left us without recourse by faith to the Lord Jesus Christ, our
mediator. May we who often feel like Paul,
oh wretched man that I am, thank God like Paul, for the mercy
that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ and the grace of his mediatorship
on our behalf. Amen.