Let's look at Romans chapter
7. Romans chapter 7. Let's read verse 6. Romans chapter
7 verse 6. But now we are delivered from the law. that being dead wherein we were
held, that we should serve in newness
of spirit and not in the oldness of the
letter. Newness of spirit. How do we get newness of spirit? Where does it come from? How
do we get from this old letter that he's talking about, serving
in the old, oldness of the letter, how do we get from that to this
newness of spirit? What is that? How do we walk
in newness of spirit? Well, it starts out and it says,
but now. So that means that something
was different before. Something was different before.
Something wasn't like our text says before. What was it like
before? Well, before you and I came into
this world, and we came into this world born the first time
under the law. That's how we came. Born under
the law. We came with a natural conscience of right and wrong. We had it
when we came from our mother's womb. It didn't take very long
at all for a child to learn when they had done something wrong
to try to cover it up. That didn't take long at all.
And you don't have to teach them that. They just know it. You
have the law written on your heart. You know right and wrong
written on your heart. That's there. It's there. And
our text says here to us in verse 1, there it says, as long as
a man lives, The law has dominion over him. The law has dominion
over a man as long as he lives. So that that law, you're married
to that law. And that law is your husband.
And that law is telling you, you have it there. And it's telling
you what's wrong and what's right. And you know in your conscience
when something's wrong. You know when it's wrong in your
conscience. Even if you have the letter of the law, you don't
have the letter of the law. In your flesh, you know that.
Paul said to the Romans, writing here Romans 2, he said those
Gentiles who don't even have the law, they're law unto themselves. They have the law written on
their conscience. They know when they've stolen a chicken and
it's wrong. So you have that on your conscience. And so how
did you serve when that was the case? When you were in that oldness
of the flesh, when you were in the oldness of the flesh, how
did you serve? Well, it tells us there in verse
6, I mean in verse 5, when we were in the flesh, the motions
of sins which were by the law did work in our members to bring
forth fruit unto death. Here's what the law did. Here's
what the law did. we're going to talk about the
letter of the law because because that's what we're dealing with
here. But even if you don't have the letter of the law, this is
the case. This is the case. But here's what happens. There's
a there's a stack of money sitting on a table right there. And somebody
tells you they say, don't take any of that money. You're not
to take any of that money must not take any of it and I get
up walk out of the room. Immediately. Awakened in you
in your heart is a desire to take some of that money. That's
true of me and you and everybody else. Somebody tells you, I've
put something in this drawer right here and I've shut it and
I don't want anybody looking in here in this drawer because
it's secret and you can't know what it is. And they leave the
room and you're in your heart thinking, I wonder what it is.
I'd like to open that drawer and find out what it is. That's
breaking the law. That's our sin. Our sin's not
in these hands and in these eyes and in these arms and legs and
feet as much as it is in our heart. It comes from the fountain.
It is in our hands and our feet, but it comes from the fountain
in here. Well, here's the other thing sin does. It says there
in verse 6 that that was the motions of sin. You were moved
by sin. You were moved by what your nature
is. You were moved by it. You were motivated by it. Moved
by sin, which were by the law. If the law hadn't have been there
and said, don't do that, It wouldn't have stirred it up in you, but
it stirred it up in you. The law's not to blame. The law's
good. It's our sin deceiving us that's doing it. Emotions
of sin made you want to do what the law forbids. And so it works
in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. It starts in
the heart, and then it comes out to the members, and then
when sin has come forth, then it brings forth death. It says
it brought forth fruit unto death. But here's the other thing that
sin does. you even if it's just isolated
incidents or even if it's or if it's eventually you you get
religion and you turn over a new leaf. What happens is you start
looking at the law and hearing what it says and you fall under
this legal convention conviction because the things you've done
outwardly because you know you've did something 20 years ago and
it's been on your conscience bothered by it. And so you decide,
I want to fix that, I want to fix it. And so you look at the
law, and you look at the law, and those motions of sins, those
motivatings of sins in the heart, that law says to you, I was given
so that your mouth would be shut, and you'd be declared guilty
before me, because by the laws of knowledge of sin, And that
motions of sin does just what it did before when we were forbidden
by the law. That motion of sin comes up in
us and it says, but I want to open my mouth and I want to talk
about how I've kept the law. And I want to talk about how
I've made myself righteous by the law. and those motions of
sins come forth into your members, and you start trying to keep
the letter of the law. You start trying to keep it in
letter. Paul said when he was in that state, in his unregenerate
state, he said, as touching the righteousness which is in the
law, that's blameless. That's what he thought about
himself. That was his true thought of himself. He thought he was
blameless because he had done so many good things. He'd done
so many right things. That's what sin deceives us with.
Look down the page there at Romans 7. Romans 7. He said, verse 8,
But sin, taken occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all
manner of concupiscence. For without the law, sin was
dead. You see, the concupiscence, the lust that works in us is
not only just those lusts to do what's forbidden by the law,
but it's that lust to have the glory that belongs to Christ
alone as the only one who ever kept and fulfilled the law of
God perfectly for His people. We want that glory. And so, sin
deceives us by the commandment, takes occasion using the very
commandment. And we and our members, we get
all dressed up in the law and what we've done. You know what
Adam did? First thing he did, Lotgor said,
don't eat that tree. And the motions of sin stirred
him up. And he said, I'm eating it. And he ate it. And as soon
as he did that, he said, I'm going to fix it." And he started
trying to fix himself. The motions of sin were stirring
him up then, and all he was doing was trying to put on a new dress
and dress himself up so he'd look good. And Paul said, and
I was doing that, because before the commandment, before it came,
before the Spirit of God came and taught me in my heart, I
didn't know what it was saying. I just saw it in the letter.
I just saw what it said there, and I was doing it. But you still
had in your conscience, you still had in your heart, in your inner
being, you still had that conscience guilty and worrying you and plaguing
you that, that, oh, I haven't, I've broken it today. I've broken
it today. And so you go on and you say,
now I need to, I got to fix it today. I got to fix it today.
And so you constantly back and forth and finally, sometimes
it just bursts out of you and you say, just the hell with it. That's what you say. I'm going
to break it. And you break it. And you go
back in, you get real religious then. You go back, boy, and you
do everything then to fix it again. Start being the best saint. Just somebody sit in a room with
you and talk about somebody that's fell into some sin, and you sit
there and just talk with them and say, I just don't know how
they could do that. Yesterday, you's doing it. Today, though,
you're a saint because now you're keeping the law. That's the oldness
of the letter. It's just that old, just that
striving to break it and then to fix it, to break it and to
fix it. And sin not only makes us think
that we're righteous, sin makes us think we've put our sin away.
That's what he said there. Without the law, sin was dead.
I was alive without the law once. He really thought he had put
his sin away by what he had done. Now, that's all oldness of letter.
How are we going to be delivered from that? How are we going to
have this newness of spirit? The first thing that has to happen
is the spirit has to come. that new Spirit has to come,
that Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God's Holy Spirit. He's a
Holy Spirit. That means when the Holy Spirit
of God enters, there's going to be a separation. There's going
to be some dividing going on. There's going to be some dividing
of light from darkness, of flesh from Spirit, of the old man from
the new man. There's going to be a division
take place. And He enters into the heart, and when He enters
into the heart, there's life. Wherever God is, there's life,
because He's life. He's life. And when he enters
in, there's life. And this life that comes into
us, the first thing it does is it's got to deal with us and
all our goofy... law keeping. And so first thing
it does is slay us. It just slays us from that. It
shows us we're dead, nothing we've done. Everything we've
been doing has been done in the realm of flesh. We've been doing
it in flesh. All the deeds that we did may
have been really good deeds, and the people around us may
have commended us for it, and we may have looked like a pillar
in the community for what we did. But it was all done from
a mercenary It was all done from a legal spirit. We were either
doing what we were doing and fearing that God was going to
punish us because we were breaking the law, or we were doing what
we were doing and thinking God should give me a payment for
what I'm doing. I deserve for Him to give me
something for what I'm doing. It was a mercenary spirit, a
legal spirit. That's the flesh. That's the
onus of the letter. That's the onus of the letter.
Let's just stop a minute and you think about it yourselves.
You think, you young people here sitting here, older people too,
think about this. What happens with you? You go
out and you do something and for somebody, do you think they
owe you something because you did something good for them? What if somebody's done something
bad to you? Do we feel like that we shouldn't do anything good
for them because they did something bad to us? That's that old sinful
spirit. That's what it is. That's the
flesh that's in us. Still in the believer, and that's
all that's in the unbeliever. It's that, all right, let's get
back to where we are now. Let's get back. Okay, so he gives
this spirit to us in our heart. He gives this new spirit in our
heart, and he kills us. He shows us we're sin. He shows
us we got nothing good in us. And so then he shows us Christ. He
shows us Christ. He begins to show us something
new. And Paul said in the Corinthian
letter, he wrote, he said, whenever a man is born of the Spirit of
God, he's made a new creature. And old things pass away, and
behold, all things become new. This newness of spirit. We start
serving in newness of spirit because we've seen these new
things. What are these new things we see? Well, that's what Art
just read to you. We see here in Romans 8, we see
that verse 3, What the law could not do, in that it was weak through
the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us, for us. Well, what does He do? He shows
us, and I want to just talk about this from newness of spirit.
I don't want to get into the mechanics of it as much as talking
about the spirit of it. God the Father didn't do anything
because of law. I know we talk a lot about law
because we sin and we broke the law and God is just and we have
to be justified from the law. So our sin has to be put away.
Christ had to shed His blood to put away our sin. But God
does nothing from a legal standpoint, motivated by legal reasons. He
doesn't do anything motivated by mercenary spirits, what I'm
saying. He does it because of love and grace. This is what
the Spirit of God shows you. He shows you that God didn't
set His affection on you because there was any good in you. That's
why you've got to be shown your violence first. And he shows
you God didn't set His affection on you. He's not dealing with
you because there was any goodness in you or because you've done
anything pleasing to Him. He shows us God set His affection
on us because He loved us. Because He would be gracious
to us. Even though the whole time, He knew the end from the
beginning. He knew we would fall. He knew we would rebel. He knew
we would come forth doing it. He knew we'd live our whole life.
He sees the end from the beginning and He knew exactly what we'd
be when we come forth. and that we would be screaming
against him and enmity against him and hatred against him. Not
just enmity against him, but very hatred, enmity itself against
him. He knew that's what we would
be, and yet he loved us with an infinite love. He loved his
people so unchangeably and with such a holy love. that he couldn't
be turned. And he set his grace upon us
to give us everything freely. There was no merit in us. And
he said, I'm giving it all to you freely. And the spirit makes
us begin to see, see this love and this grace, this new spirit
we'd never seen before. Because all we ever knew was
just this old spirit, this mercenary spirit. That's all we saw in
ourselves, knew of ourselves. And that's all we knew in other
people. We didn't know what to call it. We just knew that's
how we dealt with one another. And God starts showing us for
the first time with new eyes. He starts showing us love. He
starts showing us grace. And He does it in the context
of me being the one who's horrible and evil and unloving and ungracious
and somebody that doesn't deserve anything whatsoever. And He shows
me yet, God did this for me. And then He shows me this, and
He gave me to His Son. He gave me to His Son because
it was His purpose that He would exalt His Son. He would raise
His Son to the highest level that could be raised because
He loved His Son so infinitely, so infinitely, that He would
have Him exalted before all and have all preeminence and have
all bowing down and praising Him and glorying in Him because
He loved His Son that much. And he makes to see, and he loved
me that much. You mean me? I could see him
loving his son. I could see him loving one who's
holy as he is and one with him and perfect just like he is and
of the same nature as he is, but one who's altogether a different
nature than him, one that's altogether just Just filth and dung and
abomination and I stink and I'm just, I'm just a, he can't even
look upon me. I'm so un, so vile and he's so
holy. but he gave me to his son. And
his son now, his son because it was his purpose, it was God's
purpose to gather together all these he chose that are so divided
in sin and so separated by their sin because they've just been
living under that old dead letter spirit of flesh. And he chose
to gather them out over here and over here and over here and
bring them together in these little flocks that he's got.
and gather another little flock over here, and eventually start
gathering them all together in glory, all together in one, and
this one who is his own son. Because that was how he determined,
I'm going to exalt my son, and I'm going to manifest the perfections
of all my wisdom, and my justice, and my long-suffering, and my
righteousness, and my holiness, and my lovingness, and everything
about me. And he said, and I'm going to show it's all manifest
in this one, in a body, so they can see him and say, this is
one, this is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And he said,
the way I'm going to exalt Him and the way I'm going to do that
is I'm going to put these people in Him and I'm going to send
Him down there to serve me perfectly and to manifest what true love
is right there in their midst and to manifest what true grace
is right there in their midst. And then I'm going to exalt Him
and give Him everything I promised Him because He finished everything
I gave Him to do. And in doing that, I'm going
to exalt these other ones I love too, to the same place in holiness
and perfect, so blameless that I can receive them and walk with
them. And they can look me face to
face in the face of Christ Jesus. And I could say, this is my people.
And so he sent his son forth, and his son came forth, and his
son came to magnify and honor the law. Yes, he taught the law.
In the Sermon on the Mount, he taught the true meaning of the
law. He taught that it's not just saying you've committed
adultery if you do the act. It's if you look at somebody.
It's in the heart. It's if you wanted to. It's not
just stealing if you go and steal it. It's if you wanted to do
it. if you thought about it, you're guilty. And he taught
that, he did, but he honored and magnified the law by showing
us the spirit of the law. He walked in newness of spirit
that we had never seen. I mean, not new to him, he's
holy from the foundation of the world, but new to us, something
we had never seen. We had never seen somebody that
would come forth and would speak words so true. when he knew the
person he was speaking to was going to get mad as a wet hornet
and start trying to throw every kind of punch he could with his
tongue and everything and his fist and everything else. And
yet he came forth and he spoke the truth to us. He spoke it
in love. He didn't try to put anybody
in their place. He wasn't trying to make a vindictive
point to anybody. He just spoke the truth. And
he declared, my father chose the people, and he gave them
to me. And he sent me to redeem them. He sent me to do everything
to fulfill the law for them and make them holy and righteous
in me. And he went about this earth
doing good. He went about healing sick people
and feeding the poor and doing everything for people that were
poor and couldn't help themselves and do anything for themselves.
And just in the physical act of that, he was showing us what
he was doing for his people in spirit. We were the ones who
couldn't clothe ourselves. We were the ones who were broken
down and couldn't come up to God because we had nothing to
pay. We were broke, bankrupt, had
nothing. We had no bread. We had no righteousness. We had nothing. We had no life.
And He came forth to feed us. And what He came forth to feed
us with, and what He came forth to clothe us with, and what He
came forth to strengthen us with was Himself. Himself. And so He, having been proven
fully righteous and fully, fully no guilt in Him, no blame in
Him whatsoever. Then He honors and magnifies
the law. He goes to the cross and He honors
and magnifies the law by showing us that the spirit of the law
is love. That's the spirit of the law.
It's love. It's mercy. It's grace. It's kindness. It's longsuffering. That's the
spirit of the law. And he went to the cross, and
the way he showed us the spirit of the law was, this is what
he's gonna have to do, brethren. The law, we're guilty, and the
law just plainly states, we gotta die. We gotta die. That's, to
be justified, we gotta die. Because the law has dominion
over a man as long as he lives, and as long as he lives, the
law says, he has broken my law, he's condemned, and I want my
payment now. He needs to die. So he comes
forth, he's going to do that, but he's showing us how he's
the fullness and the honoring and the magnifying of the law
in what he did to accomplish that, in the spirit in which
he accomplished that. He goes to the cross and he has
to take the sin of his people upon himself. He has to be made
something that he hates and made something and looked upon by
his God as horribly the opposite of the way he really was. And
however God sees it is how it is. And he had to be looked upon
by God so much so that God wouldn't look on him. He didn't turn his
back from him. Listen to me, brethren. When
he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, as if didn't make him sweat blood.
As if he was made sin and he was going to be treated as if
he was sin. That didn't make him, that didn't make him, his
soul be in agony. That didn't make him sweat drops
of blood out of the pores of his skin because he was looking
at what he was fixing to have to be made. It was the shame
of the cross. It was the ignominious death
he was about to die. You see, we want to make everything
the oldness of the letter. We want to reduce it to a legal
matter and say, well, see, it's a legal matter. It's a letter
matter. It's a letter matter. That's it. I want to know the
spirit of it. I want to know the newness of
it. I want to see what it was that drove Him to go to that
cross, what it was that made Him suffer to be in agony and
to sweat blood. What was it? He loved His Father. He loved his father. He believed
his father. He wanted to honor his father.
He wanted to magnify his father. I've been watching these documentaries
lately on the presidents. And I've gone through every one
of them. And I'm now up to Jimmy Carter.
And Jimmy Carter was too nice a guy to be a president. And
that's just a plain problem he had. But he went home when his dad
died. He went home. And he was a naval
officer. He had accomplished a lot. He
had some things he was going to pursue in his life and everything.
And his dad died, and he had this giant peanut farm and had
about five or six families that lived on it that was dependent
upon him to survive by this farm being in operation. He dropped
everything he was doing. and totally laid down his life
completely and went home and took over that farm for his dad
and for those families. Christ came and He laid down
everything. He laid down His presence with
the Father. He laid down Him being there
in perfect harmony with His Father. And He came here and He was fixing
the face going there and being made this guilty one for His
people so that the Father didn't look up on Him like He did before.
In fact, he didn't look upon him. He turned his back on him.
And this was the spirit within him was love so much for his
father and wanting to please his father so much that the thought
of going there and being made sin for his people made him sweat
blood. It made him almost die thinking
about it. But he knew, too, that this had
to be done. This was the will of his father.
It had to be done in order for their sins to be put away, in
order for God Himself to remain just, in order for God Himself
to be the justifier, in order for His people to have all their
sins removed off of them. And so, what I'm trying to say
is this agony comes from him being in this place to where,
on one hand, he don't want to be made sin and don't want the
smile of his father to turn from him. But on the other hand, He
knows this is what's going to please His Father. This is what
He sent Him to do. This is the will. This is the
hour for which He came. This is what He was sent for.
And out of love in both places is why He was torn apart inside. That's why He was bearing the
cross within in His Spirit before He ever even went on that piece
of wood. And then He goes to the cross. And when He goes to
that cross, people are beating Him. They're whipping him. They're
doing all these things outwardly to him. And he's bearing all
of this. And there's people doing that
to him that don't know that he was sent to do this for them.
There's people in that crowd cussing his name and saying,
ah, he's getting what he deserved. You think you're something. You
said you could save others. Save yourself. But He couldn't. If He was going to save others,
He couldn't save Himself. He couldn't come down off the
cross and save others and glorify His Father. And this kingdom
be realized where He would come into this kingdom with all His
children that the Father had given Him and present them to
the Father. It would never happen if He didn't go to that cross.
And so He went. It was love that made Him go.
If He had not gone to that cross, He would have looked to another
God. there's a commandment he would
have broken. He would have set himself up as an idol. If he
didn't go to that cross, he would have coveted the glory that belongs
to God, his Father. If he didn't go to that cross,
he would have committed adultery in that he played the harlot
and wasn't faithful to the One who sent him and loved him. You
see what I'm saying? He would have stolen from the
Father. But the spirit of that law is
this. By loving Him, He fulfilled it. By believing Him, He fulfilled
it. That's the fulfillment of the law. And so He goes to the
cross and He is made to sin of His people and God turns His
back on Him. And it's dark and He had to bear this judgment.
He had to die that second death that His people were bound to
die, that living death and that agony in order to satisfy divine
justice. And yet, and I keep saying this
to you, yet while He did that, brethren, This is the mystery
to me. He is made guilty, and he's made
so that his father has to, in justice, turn his back on him.
And yet, in him, he never wavered from trusting his father. He
never wavered from that holy love he had for his father, and
that trust that his father, when it's all was done, I mean, think
about this, brethren. You're going to give up your
life. You're going to lay down your
life and die. And you got to trust that the
one who has power to raise you up will raise you up. And so he did. He trusted him
all the way to the last point where he said, Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit. And he trusted it to him. And this newness started, this
new day, this symbol that a new day was on the horizon began
when they laid him in a new tomb that never a man had laid. And three days later, he came
out of that tomb. And he walked for 40 days on
this earth. And he walked, and he walked, he came to his people.
And there they are. There's Peter, who said, denied
him three times. There's all His disciples who
forsook Him, and just that fast, that fast, manifest the total
opposite extreme of faithfulness and love that He exhibited on
the cross. That fast. They just said, well, it's over.
We thought that was something going to be, but it's over. And
they just went back fishing. Said, let's go back fishing.
Let's take up our life again. Go back doing what we're doing.
And yet He didn't come to them, and He didn't come to them, With
a rod of anger and wrath, He came to them in meekness and
love. And He came to them and called them in to come and eat
with Him. And He told them, cast their
net out. He gave them a bunch of fish, directed fish right
into their net. And they came in there and they
ate with Him and dined with Him. And then He instructed them,
you love Me? Peter, do you love Me? He said. And He said, Lord,
you know. Lord, you've instructed me. You've
taught me not to be so quick to answer and say, oh Lord, I
love you. I won't ever forsake you. The rest of them might,
but I won't. You've taught me, Lord. Lord, you know. You know. I'll leave it in your
hands. And he said, then feed my sheep.
Feed my sheep. Lay down your life now. Lay down
your life now, and you go forth. And you love me. And you believe
me. You trust me, you trust that
I'm gonna bless the word that I've given you to speak. You
trust me that I'm gonna bless you as you go forth and as you
preach this gospel for me. And you trust me that I'm gonna
provide everything for you and for those that assemble with
you and those churches you gather in, I'm gonna provide everything
for every one of you so that you can continue glorifying my
name in this earth. If you love me, lay down your
life and follow me. And Peter had newness of spirit.
He had a spirit within him that didn't try to splice and dice
doctrine and get into the mechanics of it until all the spirit of
it was gone. He followed the Lord. He loved
Him. He followed the Lord because
he loved Him. He laid down his life because he believed Him.
And by the very righteousness that Christ had fulfilled on
the cross, by the very righteousness that Christ is, that righteousness
that was imputed to Him, He was as righteous as God is righteous
in Christ. And He had given him a new spirit,
though, so that everything had passed away, all the old things
had passed away. The old way of trying to come
to God by His works, the old way of trying to fulfill the
law Himself, the old way of trying to look at the letter of the
law and figure out what He should do and what He shouldn't do,
all that was gone. Because his first husband, that
law that he was married to, He died to that first husband. And
that first husband said, you don't owe me anything else, you
died. And not only that, but Christ so fulfilled that law,
and he gave him such a new spirit that that first husband was dead
to him. The law was dead to him. He didn't
need the letter of the law anymore. Those that are led of the Spirit,
they're the sons of God. He's not given us the spirit
of bondage again to fear. He hasn't given us the spirit
again to bring us into a tormenting fear that if we don't do this,
we're not going to be saved. He gives us the understanding
that He's done it all. So that now this faith that He
gives us to lay hold of Him, and this love that He's shown
us that He's done for us, it fills our heart. It constrains
us now to do for Him. Not because we're looking for
a reward. We got our reward. We've been
made one with Him, and we'll be one with Him for all eternity.
Not because we expect we're going to be punished. Our sin's been
put away. We can't ever be punished. The
wrath of God can't ever be poured out upon us. We could be chastened,
we could be corrected as a loving Father, but we can't be. We can't
be punished, so we're not doing anything. The law has nothing
else to say to us. The law is not going to make
me righteous. The law is not going to make me unrighteous.
The law is not going to give me a reward. The law is not going
to take anything from me and give me any kind of punishment.
I'm dead to it, and it's dead to me. And I have the Spirit
of my God within me, and I can walk after Him and follow Him.
What's the difference? I made this illustration to you
before, but Paul uses marriage. What's the difference between
when you're at your job, and you're getting a paycheck, and
you're working, and you're doing a job for somebody? What's the
difference in your spirit when you're there and when you're
home with somebody that's your husband, that you love, your
bride that you love, and you're doing everything there? You're
not getting paid. He's just doing it more than
what you would have done at your other job because you love Him.
Because you love Him. That's the newness of spirit
He gives. That's the newness of spirit He gives. Look over
here. What about when we get in trouble and all these things?
What about when we sin and we still have that old man of flesh
with us, don't we? What about when all this sin
we see in ourselves? Yes, we do. We have that old
man of flesh in us, but we're not in the flesh anymore. We're
not. We're doing everything now in
the, I don't know how to say it better, but in the realm of
the Holy Spirit. We're in the Spirit. We're not
serving anymore in the outer court, in our flesh, under the
law, trying to do things from that motive. By God's grace,
by His Spirit dwelling in us and by Him making us one in Him
at the right hand of the Father, now we're serving God in the
holiest of holies. We're serving God right in His
very presence. We have something better than
Him just taking away the old covenant dispensation. We've
got something better than that. There was still that garden.
We've got something better than that. He's taken that away. We
have one-on-one present communion with God our Father in His throne
in glory right now. We have boldness to enter in.
How so? Because Christ is entered in.
It's by His flesh. His flesh is that veil now that
we can enter in through. And we can go into that presence
of Him. In our heart, in this spirit,
through prayer, through... Do you talk to God? Make Christ your confidant. Tell
Him everything. You know how when you love somebody,
you want them to, as soon as something good happens, you want
them to know about it. You want to call them and tell them. As
soon as something bad happens, you want to call them and tell
them. As soon as, you know, whatever, you want them to know everything
that's going on with you because you love them. Well, Christ knows
everything, but go to Him and tell Him. Go to Him and express
your joy and thankfulness for the good things. And go to Him
and express your sorrow and your pain and your need in the things
that make you suffer. There's a door of grace open
to us. There's a fountain of never-ending
supply of grace for us. who believe Him, who have this
newness of spirit, and He says, come, whatever you need, come
get it. Just come and ask Him. Just come
and say, Lord, I need grace. There's a never-ending supply
of grace. He's the author of it. He's the supplier of it.
He's the fulfiller of it. He's the one from whom it never
ceases. He says, you need grace, here's
grace. He gives grace for grace. He gives more grace. But here's
the fact of the matter. Look here at what Art read. Verse 9, You're not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit. If so, be that the Spirit of
God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he's none of His. But he says, if Christ be in
you, the body's dead because of sin, but the spirit's alive
because of righteousness. But he's going to raise that
mortal body in the end one day, he says. But look down at verse
13, or verse 12. Therefore, brethren, we're debtors
not to the flesh. You see this? We don't owe the
flesh anything. This one that is with us, this
old man that's still with us, that wants all the things that
we don't need, that wants, you know, that you deserve this,
You've worked hard enough now. You deserve this. You've done
enough. Let someone else do the rest.
You deserve to take a break. You deserve rest. That old man
right there, we don't owe him anything. He hasn't done anything
for us but make us sin and make us rebel and make us try to do
everything ourselves and bring us sorrow and suffering all our
life. We don't owe him anything. We're not debtors to the flesh
to live after the flesh, but why do we keep wanting to live
after the flesh? Do you see how it says, live after the flesh?
That means we're following after the flesh. If we're living after
the flesh, why do we keep wanting to follow after our flesh and
be led around like a pig with a hook in his nose? Look at verse
13. For if you live after the flesh,
you shall die. But if ye through the Spirit,
To mortify the deeds of the body you shall live. How am I going
to mortify the deeds of the body? Well, through the Spirit, this
newness of Spirit, this new man, this inner man, this man that's
strengthened by Christ, this man that has Christ dwelling
in me, and this man that has the Spirit of God dwelling in
me, this man being in constant communion with Him, and this
man continually following after Him, and depending upon Him,
and trusting Him, and going to Him for more grace. That's how
this body of flesh is going to be mortified. I don't know how
many people are being taught this morning. I know a host of
them are being taught this morning the way you modify the deeds
of your flesh is you go back to the law. That's not how you're
going to modify it. That's how you're going to go
on in some lewd, outlaw, law-breaking, harlotry-making sin that is worse
than any of the vilest, vilest lewd corruption going on in the
alleyways of New York City. The only way you're going to
mortify the deeds of the flesh is through the Spirit going to
Christ, going to Christ. Look, for as many as are led
by the Spirit of God, you see there, we're led by Him too.
You're going to be led by somebody. You're going to be led by the
flesh or led by the Spirit of God. But as many as are led by
the Spirit of God, they're the sons of God. For you've not received
the spirit of bondage again to fear, you've received the spirit
of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. He said to you, Don't
fear to come to Him. He knows you're weak. He knows
you're dust. He knows you're flesh. And He
knows it's going to raise up and try to put you down. He knows
we dwell in a world of evil. He said, I pray not that you
take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil.
And He did that, so He keeps us coming to Him and applying
to Him for more grace. And He tells us here now, but
don't fear coming to Me. You're My son, so come on. Come
on. And He says, in your heirs, your
joint heirs with Me, everything I own that belongs to Christ
belongs to you. And the Spirit helps us. The
Spirit helps us with our infirmities because we don't even know what
to pray as we ought to. Even if we have to have Him to lead
us to His throne of grace, then we have to have Him help us to
pray what we ought to pray. But He helps us the whole way.
This is what it is to walk in newness of spirit, brethren.
Newness of spirit. You just imagine, we get all
bent out of shape and we get all nervous and thinking that
everything's just gonna come undone and we're not gonna be,
we're gonna lose our livelihood and our house and everything
like that. And we get all beside ourselves and so scared, and
we start looking at all kinds of crazy ways to save ourselves. We get stingy towards our brethren,
and we don't want to help our brethren, because we can't. We
just can't. Everything's depending on us, getting all we can, canning
all we can, sitting on the can. We can't help anybody. You just
imagine this. Imagine if Scott was out in a
faraway country somewhere working. And somebody called him. One of you called him, and you
said, Scott, William, has got the doors to the house locked,
and Christine and Robert and Sarah and John are all on the
outside in the cold and can't get in the house because William
won't let them in the house. Because William's saying, he's
telling everybody that He'd like to help, but he can't help because
he needs a roof on his head, and he needs clothes on his back,
and he needs food on his table, and he can't let them in. He's
got to keep that house locked so he can be sure he has all
these things. And Scott, he gives a message
to me, and he says, Clay, go over there and give him this
message for me. So I go over there to William and I say, William,
there's Christine, the family outside cold. I go over there
and I, William comes to the door and he's behind the door looking
through and I say, William, your father sent me here to tell you
you're his son. And that you have nothing to
worry about. He's going to keep a roof on
your head. He's going to keep food on your table. He's going
to keep clothes on your back. honor him and glorify him. That's
what he sent me to tell you. And he sent me to tell you this
too. He sent me to tell you that the house that you're in and
everything in that house and the ground that house is sitting
on and you included belong to him. And so do those ones that
you're withholding everything from. And he says, open that
door and give it to them, and don't worry about you being provided
for. Well, that's the message that
your Heavenly Father sent me to tell you. You can open the
door, and don't worry. He's going to provide for you.
You're his son. You're his daughter. Serve him
in newness of spirit, not in the oldness of the letter. He's
providing everything. Amen.