Alright brethren, let's turn
together to Romans chapter 7. Friday night I preached from
this text, but I ended up speaking a great deal on some other things
and not really looking at my notes very much. So I'd like
to preach what I had from my notes, because I want you to
see these Scriptures. Now our text is going to be in
Romans 7 in verse 9. Paul said, I was alive without
the law once. That'll be our first point. I
was alive without the law once. Here's the second thing we'll
look at. But when the commandment came, sin revived. And then here's
the third thing. And I died. And I died. Let's go back up now, and I want
to work our way down to that and say a few things and have
you turn to a few Scriptures before we begin. Romans 7.1,
Paul says, Know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know
the law? And of course, the first question is, Do you know the
law? Do you know what is meant by the law? Well, I want you
to be turning with me over to Exodus chapter 20. There were over 600 precepts
given by God through Moses. The law came by Moses. And over
600 precepts were given. And they included moral law,
ceremonial law, and civil law. And in all of them, we see pictures
of Christ, especially in the ceremonial law. The high priest
was a picture of Christ. The Passover lamb was a picture
of Christ. The lamb of atonement was a picture
of Christ. That ark and that mercy seat
was a picture of Christ. That tabernacle was a picture
of Christ. Everything about that ceremonial
law pictured Christ. And then you had the civil law
and there's pictures of Christ all in the civil law. that we
see. He is the one who is our kinsman
redeemer. He's the one who redeems us from
all our debts and takes away all the debt that his people
owe. But the one that you're probably the most familiar with
is the moral law. And I want you to look there
at the moral law. Exodus 20 verse 3. We know this
as the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me. That's what God commands of His
people. No other gods before me. If there's something that you
really in your heart of hearts would rather be doing than being
right here today, hearing from God, it's because that other
thing is your God. So you broke this law. You broke
it. Verse 4, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any
kind of image whatsoever of anything in heaven or in earth. And I
think this applies here, and I thought of this before I said
it. You know, down south, a lot of
country boys have a lot of bass mounted and a lot of deer mounted.
He said don't make an image of anything in heaven or in earth.
You say, well surely they're not bowing down and worshiping
those. But they're proud of them. Showing, boasting about them.
Boasting about them. But it does include anything
in worship. We don't need any visual things to worship God
by. Verse 7, thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God
in vain. You write OMG. Broke it. Broke this law. Broke this law. Thought it. Just thought it.
Broke this law. It says, verse 8, remember the
Sabbath day to keep it holy. Christ is the picture of the
Sabbath. He's the one in whom we rest. He's the one who's fulfilled
this law. He's our rest. Our rest. And Sabbath day was on a Saturday.
You worked six days on Saturday, Friday evening, you stopped working
and you didn't work anymore. And Saturday morning came, you
didn't go out and gather wood, build a fire, do anything at
all. You rested. You did absolutely nothing. Your
cattle rested. Your crops rested. Your people,
servants rested. Everybody rested. Because the
picture there is that when Christ, I mean, when God made the heavens
and the earth in six days, on the seventh day, He stopped working.
And he didn't stop working because he was tired. He didn't stop
working because he needed to be refreshed. He stopped working
because there was nothing else for him to do. And that's the
picture of the Sabbath. There's just nothing else to
do. We're in Christ. We have nothing else to do to
make ourselves accepted with God. Verse 12, honor thy father
and thy mother that the days may be long upon the land which
the Lord thy God giveth thee. Whenever you sash your mom and
dad or roll your eyes or think it in your heart, broken this
law. Broken it. Thou shalt not kill. Anger. Just anger in the heart. Broken it. Thou shalt not commit
adultery. The Lord said to look upon a
woman is adultery. To lust after. Thou shalt not
steal. Just to think about it. Think
how you ever thought about how easy it would be to walk out
of a store with something, or any thought like that ever come
to your mind, you stole it. That's how God sees it. Listen
now, thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
You ever repeated anything that you heard about somebody that
wasn't true, that's bearing false witness against them. Even though
it wasn't, you say, well I didn't mean it mean, still bearing false
witness against them. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's
house, his wife, nor anything that is thy neighbor's." Ever
seen anybody drive down the road and have a real nice new car
and think, man, I'd like to have something like that? Hell's our
reward for that. We broke God's law. Now every
one of these laws, if you want to be under the law, you've got
to remember the wages of sin is death. There was a penalty
to this law too. So if we want to be under the
law, that means, now listen, for you, anybody here who wants
to be under the law, this is what it means. Anytime any one
of your brethren breaks one of these laws, here's what you've
got to do. To keep this law, you've got
to take up some stones and kill them. And if you don't, you haven't
kept this law. I don't want to be under it,
do you? I don't want to be under it. I do not want to be under
it. Well, let's go back now, Romans
7.1. And he says, No ye not, brethren,
for I speak to them that know the law. How that the law hath
dominion over a man as long as he lives. Long as he lives. And he gives an example here
of a husband and a wife. He says, now get this, this is
an illustration he's using to show how the law has dominion
over a man as long as he lives. Okay? Listen to this now and
hear this. Don't do what most people do
and go running to marriage laws and start running folks down
and setting yourself up in your own heart over somebody that's
married and divorced or what have you. Don't do that. This
is an illustration to show us how that we're dead to the law
through Christ. The woman which hath a husband
is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth. But if
the husband be dead, she's loosed from the law of her husband.
So then if while her husband is alive and she's married to
another man, she's an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she's
free from that law. So that she's no adulteress though
she be married to another man. Now, you can't be married to
Christ and I can't be married to Christ till our first husband's
dead and we're dead to that husband. Till we're completely out from
under the law. We've got to be completely removed
from it or we can't be married to Christ. It's unlawful marriage
if that hadn't happened. Now watch this. Wherefore my
brethren, ye also, he's talking to believers here. This is true
of believers. This is true of those called
by God's grace to rest in Christ through faith. Wherefore my brethren,
ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ. by
the body of Christ, that you should be married to another,
even to him who's raised from the dead, that we should bring
forth fruit unto God. Married folks get married and
they have children. They bring forth fruit. Well,
when you're married to Christ, that'll be the first time you
ever start bearing fruit, because there is no fruit but by Jesus
Christ, by His Spirit. by the incorruptible seed. It
can't bear fruit while we're married to that other husband,
the law. It just won't happen. That's what he says next. For
when we were in the flesh, that is when we were dead in sins,
trying to come to God in the law, the motions of sins which
were by the law did work in our members to bring forth fruit
unto death. All we brought forth was dead
fruit. That's all. But now we are delivered from
the law. that being dead wherein we were
held. This time he says the law's dead
to us. He said before we were dead to
the law, but now he says here that being dead wherein we were
held, the law's dead to us. In other words, we got nothing
else to do with it, believer. Nothing else to do with it. You
know that man up there that shot his former co-worker outside
Empire State Building this week? When he killed that man, he became
guilty before civil law. But when he went around the corner
and the police killed him, the law had nothing else to say to
him. Done. Done. That's what happened here. When Christ died, the law has
nothing else to say to God's people. All right? That we should
serve now in newness of spirit. Not in the oldness of the latter.
I'd have a real hard time if my wife went Went to work, come
home from work, she told me, you know, I almost committed
adultery today, but here's why I didn't. I got the Bible out,
and I looked up the Ten Commandments, and I looked down, and I found
it where it said, thou should not commit adultery, and that's
why I didn't do it. I'd have a tough time with that,
a real tough time with that. But now if she said, I didn't
have to go back to the law because I love you, I love you, and don't
want to. You see the difference? You see
the difference? When we're led of the Spirit, we follow after
Christ, and we look to Him, and we're taught of Him, and we're
in love with Him. We don't have to go back to...
Now, I've preached a bunch of messages from the law, but I've
preached them to do two things. To shut you up to know you can't
come to God in the law, and secondly, to shut you up to Christ, to
see that He's the fulfillment of it. To show you His beauty
and what He's done for us. Now, let's go on here. Verse
7. What shall we say then? Is the
law sin? Is the law bad? God forbid. No, the law's not bad. Nothing's
wrong with the law. The problem's us. That's where
the problem is. No, I had not known sin, but
by the law. If God had given the law, I wouldn't
have known sin. That's why he gave it. That's
why he gave it. I'm going to show you that in
a minute. For I had not known lust, except the law had said,
thou shalt not covet. And then I found out what real
lust is. That it's a heart matter, that
it's a nature matter, that it's a matter of what's inside me
and what comes forth for me because of what I am by nature. Now he
says, but sin, taking occasion by the commandment, sin in me
coupled with, looked at that commandment and said, well, I
can keep that because I was dead. I didn't know. And it wrought
in me all manner of concupiscence, all kind of evil. Now we'll show
you what that evil was here in just a minute. For without the
law, sin was dead. Sin was dead. Now, let's go to
our text, verse 9. For I was alive without the law
once. You see, when he was alive, sin
was dead. Sin was dead to him. What does
that mean when he says, I was alive? Now, the law was given
to show us that we died, to show us we're sinners, to show us
we need Christ, to shut us up to Christ. That's what the law
was given for. Look back at Romans 3, 19. Romans 3.19. Now we know that what thing soever
the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law. That's
who it's speaking to. Now, you're under the law if
you are not resting fully, completely in Christ through faith. You're
under the law. You're under the law. And the
law is speaking to you. It's all speaking to you. It's
for you. Now, if you believe God and He's
given you faith to where you rest in Him, complete in Him,
you're not under the law. And the law is not talking to
you. The law was not made for a righteous man. We got to go,
hold your place in Romans 3. Let's look at this real quick.
1 Timothy, 1 Timothy. Look at verse 8. 1 Timothy 1, verse 8. We know that
the law is good if a man use it lawfully. See, there's a lawful
way to use the law. Knowing this, that the law is
not made for a righteous man. What's a believer? He's righteous. He's righteous in Christ. The
law says, I find no fault with him. I got no fault. I got no
argument with him. I got nothing to say to him.
He's a righteous man. But who was it made for? For
the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly, for sinners,
for unholy, profane, murderers of fathers, murderers of mothers,
manslayers, whoremongers, them that defile themselves for mankind.
That's who the law was made for. Go back to Romans 3 now. Back
to Romans 3. It says now, verse 19, Now we
know that what things whoever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law for this reason, that every mouth may
be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
Romans 5.20. Go over there in Romans 5.20.
You see in the beginning, God only gave one law. He gave one
law to Adam. One law to Adam. Just don't eat
of that tree, Adam. That's all. And Adam ate of it.
He disobeyed. And because you're born from
Adam, and I'm born from Adam, when he died spiritually and
became corrupt, he passed that corrupt nature to us so that
when we came forth from our mother's womb, we didn't sin in order
to become sinners, we sinned because we were a sinner. That's
what we were by nature. We did what our nature was to
do. A cow doesn't have to strain and make himself eat grass. It's
his nature to eat grass. That's what he does. It would
kill him to try to eat meat. A cow don't eat meat, he eats
grass. A buzzard don't eat grass, he eats meat. That's his nature
to eat meat. We came forth and did what it
was our nature to do. And our nature was to sin, and
lie, and cheat, and steal, and rob, and do everything contrary
to God. That was our nature. That's what
we did. Now that law was given, all these 600 some odd precepts
were given to show us how bad that offense was in the garden.
And to show us this is what you've done. This is how impossible
it is for you to come to God by any works that you've done.
Romans 5.20. Moreover the law entered that
the offense might abound. You see that? The law entered
that the offense, what's that the offense? That one offense
in the garden. That one offense in the garden,
the law entered that the offense might abound, that you might
see and I might see how badly we sin in Adam. but where sin
abounded, grace did much more abound. So you see what the law
was given for us, given to shut our mouths. But Paul says, I
was alive without the law once. So then we know what Paul's saying
is this. Paul is saying, I had no idea
what the law was saying. I had no idea why the law was
even given. I had no idea the nature of sin
whatsoever. He was very religious. Paul,
when he went by the name of Saul of Tarsus, was a lost religious
man. He had faith, he thought, faith
in God, and faith trusting that the Messiah was coming. But for
what reason the Messiah was coming, he had no idea because he didn't
really need him. He thought he was righteous without
him. What purpose would there be for the Messiah to come? He
had no need of him. He thought he was righteous without
him. All his he was zealous in his religion working hard, but
it was all false. It was all a vain confidence
in himself. He had a false hope, a false
faith, a false joy. He had confidence in himself.
He wasn't resting in God's promise. And he was totally deceived and
he was totally dead. That's why he said, I was alive
without the law. And he was completely ignorant
of the spiritual nature of the law. He really did think covetousness
meant You don't look at somebody else's stuff and go and take
it and steal it from them. But just like that rich young
ruler, whenever he came to the Lord, he said, what can I do
to obtain eternal life? And the Lord said to the rich
young ruler, what does the law say? He wanted to do something
and live by his doing. So the Lord met him right where
he was. He said, what does the law say? And he listed everything
that the law said except for one thing. He left out, thou
shalt not covet. He left that out. And the Lord
said, here's the one thing you missed. He said, go sell everything
you got, give it to the poor and follow me. And he went away
sorrowful because he had many possessions. And Paul said, now,
I thought that that law meant just as long as I didn't take
other people's stuff or defraud them in some way or anything
like that. He said, but now, this is the
second thing he found out. He said, but when the commandment
came, sin revived. Sin became alive when the commandment
came. What happened when the commandment
came? The Lord made him to understand He gave him life. He gave him
life first. You've got to be alive to understand
anything about your death, your spiritual death. He'd already
given him life, regenerated him, given him life. And then he,
that artellist said it's not by man's will because God's got
to give you life where you can understand anything spiritual
at all. But God made him to know that
the lust, and he uses covetousness here as that lust whereby he
was made to see. This is why a lot of people think
the rich young ruler was Paul. But he says here in Romans 7, He said, verse 7, I had not known
sin but by the law for I had not known lust except the law
had said thou shalt not covet. When that law came and the commandment
came, he began to understand that the law is saying you're
a sinner by nature and you're a sinner by thought. by your
thoughts you've broken the law. So then sin became alive to him. Sin became alive to him. That's
what the law was given for. To make our sin come alive to
us. To make us see it. To make us
understand we're sinners. And it teaches Christ alone has
obeyed the law. By one man's disobedience we
were made sinners. And it's by one man's obedience
that we shall be made righteous. and that one man's Christ. That's
the two-fold thing. The law shows us our disobedience
and it makes us to see the glory of Christ. It makes us to see
how great He is because He's done it all. He didn't strain
to do it. It's His nature to do it. He's holy, holy, completely
holy. You know, grace and works are
opposites. Now some people, after they claim to be saved, They
want to use the law then to try to say, now this is how I'm made
more holy. And I'm coming to God by my being
ever so little made more and more holy. And they're looking
at their obedience that they've done and saying, now see? See
it? See that I've done it? But grace and words are completely
opposite. Grace, you know opposites. You
know light is opposite from darkness. You know, wet is opposite from
dry. They can't co-exist. These things can't co-exist.
Fire is opposite to ice. They cannot co-exist with each
other. Well, grace and works cannot co-exist at all. They
cannot co-exist at all. Listen to the Scripture. If by
grace, then it is no more of works. Otherwise, grace is no
more grace. But if it be of works, then it
is no more grace. Otherwise, work is no more work.
You hold in your hand God's own Word. You hold in your hand God's
own voice speaking and telling you, telling us, the only way
that He will accept a sinner. This is how. Look back at Romans
5 verse 19. By one man's disobedience, many
were made sinners. So by the obedience of one shall
many be made righteous. Look at Romans 8.3. Look at Romans
8.3. 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 who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Look at Romans 10 verse 4. Romans 10 verse 4. For Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth."
Do you see that? Well, before you're going to
be brought to understand that and see that, sin's going to
have to be made alive to you. That's the question. Has sin
been made alive to you? Has it become alive to you? I
asked the children, young people Friday night, I said, give me
something that frightens you. What's something that just frightens
you? And William said, a burglar. So we use that as our illustration.
If you came home one night, and you're by yourself and you turn
the lock on the door and you walk in and you shut the door
and lock it all up and you go walking through the darkness
trying to find the light to turn the light on and all of a sudden
you hear what's obviously another person in the other room that
is not supposed to be there. Do you know how terribly afraid,
you know how fearful that would be, how that fear would just
come over you? When sin revives and comes alive,
sin becomes like a burglar in the house. Sin becomes like somebody
that's not welcome and not supposed to be there and a trespasser
that's come in and you become so fearful because you see this
is before God Almighty. Now you listen to me. This is
what's got to happen before you're going to know your need of Christ.
You understand that? Alright, look what happened whenever
this happened. The next thing there in Romans
7 in verse 9. He says, the third thing happened,
I died. Do you see who died? Do you see
who died? I died. I died. Who? Tell me what your hope of salvation
is. Well, 19 something, something,
something, I decided I'd give my heart to Jesus. I has got
to die. Well, I decided that I needed
to straighten up and I needed to start obeying God, so I reformed
my life and I gave my heart to Jesus and I, I, I, I has got
to die. I has got to die. Well, I I found
Christ. Christ wasn't lost. You were
lost. I's got to die. I has got to
die. And it won't die. I will not
die until God makes this commandment come alive and make sin revive
and make you to die. To die. What's going to happen
when God does that? What happens when God does that?
I'll give you five things that happens. You see your sinfulness. Now get this, you see your sinfulness.
Your sinfulness stops being just your outward deeds, where you
felt guilty for a little while because mama told you not to
do that, you did it, and you felt bad because you did something
mama told you not to do. And you thought that was sin.
Sin becomes your nature. You find out sin is what you
are. Sin is what you are. Then you
find out sin is in not just your deeds, sin's in your thoughts.
And here's the big one. Here's the big one. You see that
all of your righteousness is sin. Every good thing you ever
did is sin. Paul said, while I was doing
all those zealous and doing all those deeds and thinking I was
doing it for God, it was concupiscence. It was licentiousness. It was
lawlessness. It was disobedience. Every bit
of it. Well, then secondly, you're going
to see the holiness of God's law. You see that God's law requires
perfection. It requires perfection of heart. Perfection of heart. And you
were created with a corrupt heart. I was conceived in sin in my
mother's womb. That's where it began. My nature
started right there. I was conceived in sin. And then
you see that it requires perfection in those thoughts and those deeds
and all those actions. And then you see, God will not
accept anything less than perfection. Whatever is offered to God, Leviticus
22, 21 says, it shall be perfect to be accepted. There shall be
no blemish in it at all. None. And then you see, I have
to be saved by somebody else. And that's when God shows you
the one who can save you is Christ. only Christ, God's own Son. He
was born of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin. So that
he didn't have a corrupt nature like we have. He had a holy nature.
So that it was his nature in everything he thought and everything
he did and everything he said to do what was absolutely perfectly
holy according to everything God's law said. And he did it.
And then you find out that after He did everything fully required,
He went to the cross and took our sin and bore the punishment
and put it all away. Answered to the precept and the
penalty of the law. So that now you hear God say
this. This is the fourth thing you
hear. You hear God say this. Believe Him. Believe on my Son. What shall I do, Father? Believe
on my Son and you'll be saved. What is that? Believing on God.
Believing on Christ Jesus. What is it? It's to take all
of the work and all of the heavy load that you've been carrying
whereby you've been trying to come to God and save yourself.
It's to take every bit of it and throw it all into Christ's
hands and then jump in His hands. If a husband and a wife get married
and they go on their honeymoon and the custom is for the husband
to pick her up and carry her over the threshold. She ain't
walking. She ain't even trying to walk.
She ain't even trying to do anything. He's carrying her the whole way.
That's the picture. That's what we're talking about.
Jump in His arms and He'll carry you the whole way. All the way
to God's throne of grace. All the way there, He's carrying
you. That's what it is to believe on Him. And then you find out
that He gave you the life and the faith and the repentance
and came and sought you and bought you and did everything for you. You didn't know anything about
any of this and He did every bit of it. He teaches you that. Now, go back to Romans 3.31.
I want to show you one last thing. Do we then make void the law
through faith? Romans 3.31. Do we then make
void the law through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish
the law. You're going to hear this come
about. You're going to hear this come up. You're going to hear
men that are going to say, now, but you can't take that too far
saying that the believer's not under the law anymore. You can't
take that too far saying that a man who's dead to the law is
free from the law. You can't take that too far.
Listen, we establish the law through faith in Christ because
He has completely thoroughly in perfection and righteousness
established it. You understand that? That's how
we establish it. We establish it. And we establish
it this way too. We establish it because we now
delight in the law in our inward man. And we say the law is much
better, much more holy, much more just, much more good than
I ever before imagined it was. When I was in my rebellion, and
going around trying to make believe and make other people believe
that I was actually keeping the law to sanctify myself when I
knew in my heart I was thinking evil and looking with this eye
constantly and it had adultery all in my eye constantly. I didn't
hear the law then. Now I know that I never was doing
anything then. And I can tell you I delight
in it now. You know why? It showed me that. It showed
me what I am. I delighted in it because it
showed me how perfect and righteous my Savior is. I delighted in
it because it drove me to my Savior, to rest in Him. So yeah, I'll establish that
law in every way. Look over Galatians 3, 323. It's
the man who's saying that the believer's still under it. He's
not establishing it. Galatians 3. Galatians 3 verse
23. Look at this. Before faith came,
we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should
afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster
to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith.
But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. Here was our example Friday night.
I'm gonna hurry, I'm running long. Here was our example Friday
night. You ever go back to see an old school teacher? Have you
ever done that? Ever gone back to school, see
an old school teacher? You remember how when you were under that
schoolmaster, you remember how much you dreaded getting up,
going to school? You remember how badly you dreaded
going into that classroom? You remember how you thought
what she was trying to teach you was foolish? You remember
how you thought that there was nothing about that she could
teach you? Remember that? You thought you already knew
everything she was trying to teach you. But when you go back
to visit the schoolmaster after you've grown up now and you're
not under that schoolmaster anymore, you can walk in that classroom
with fond memories. and just delighted. You can listen
to that schoolmaster talk to you and she doesn't frighten
you anymore. You can delight in what she taught
you because now you understand what she was teaching you. You
understand? There's a friendship now there
that wasn't there before when you was under the schoolmaster.
That's what it's like for a believer with the law. We don't dread
it. We don't fear it. We're not in bondage to it. We
delight in it. We're friends with it. The law
is actually my friend now because the law, justice demands. that because justice has been
satisfied toward me in Christ, now if God doesn't save me all
by Christ, apart from any works I've done, apart from any sin
I do, if He doesn't save me completely alone by Christ, God, not just. So the law's my friend. The law
says He's got to be saved. It's all done. I'm friends with
the law. And somebody will say, well,
if I believed like that, I'd live like I wanted to. Listen to me. Listen to me. I want to live
without sin. Don't you? If I could, I would
live just like I want to. I don't want to have sin anymore.
I want to fully, perfectly keep God's law. I just can't do it. Paul said, so then with the inward
man, I delight in the law and I serve the law, but in my flesh
and my members and this old man of flesh, the law of sin. I'm still a sinner, that's all
I am. But I thank God through Jesus Christ. He's delivered
me, and is delivering me, and shall deliver me. You get it
now? You get it? Okay, amen.