This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Turn to Romans chapter 7, starting
in verse 13. We were there last week when
we talked a bit about what the law is and what the law does
and what Paul is talking here in Romans 7. He's about to start
giving a little different resume for himself than he has ever
given. As we know the resume of Paul
to the church of Philippi, he tells them what? He says that
as a Pharisee, he was zealous. He was a Jew of all Jews, born
of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day. According
to the law, a Pharisee, perfect, obedient, etc. But in those moments
that we see after his conversion where God saved him sovereignly,
we see what? We see that Paul now has said
that he is a sinner. He could not see that he was
a sinner the way he looked at the law before regeneration.
He could not tell that he was a violator of the law. He was
not able to understand and comprehend the depths of his wickedness. As a matter of fact, Paul would
say that before conversion, he felt that he was a pretty good
guy, if not one of the best guys around. especially when it came
to morality, to obedience, to spirituality, to religion, to
following the rules of God, the laws of God, the precepts of
God, and the ways of God. As a Pharisee, he thought himself
pretty good. But as we see here in teaching
to the Christians at Rome, to the gathered ones at Rome, to
the church at Rome, Paul is saying that even though that the law
came and then killed him, showed him that he was truly dead and
revealed to him the total depravity of his nature as a human being,
that the law in itself is not evil, it's not bad. He asked
the question there, did that which is good then bring death
to me? He said that the law is holy
and righteous and good. It's not evil. Some people would
argue that. Well, the rules are evil. The
law is evil. Obedience is evil. It's not.
It's good. It's righteous. However, there
is, as we've already seen Paul argue, no possible way whatsoever
nor a possible promise whatsoever that any person who obeys well
enough can stand before God perfect. And if we are not perfect when
we stand before God, we are guilty. And if we are guilty because
God is righteous and just, we are condemned before Him. So
the world would tell us, and the world of religion, and the
world of false religion, and the world of evangelicalism even
sometimes, would say, well, you've got to work harder. You've got
to trust in Jesus, but you've got to work harder. You've got
to stay in the faith by obeying. That's not what it means to abide
in Christ at all. We abide in Christ by faith,
the sealing of the Holy Spirit, as we'll see in Romans 8, which
is where the really, the beautiful things start to take place in
Romans for the church. Here, Paul is saying that the
law is good, but there's no way possible that it would bring
him life. As a matter of fact, the law for any human being,
both Christian or unbeliever, brings death because it reveals
the wickedness of our own flesh. And that's what Paul is now arguing
in verse 14. He says, did that which is good
bring death to me? He said, by no means. It is sin. Sin produces death in me through
what is good. In other words, the law is good
and it teaches me of my sin. And when the law teaches me,
then covetousness lies close at hand. Before the law, I did
not even know what it was to covet. But now that the law has
come and I've been made alive, I've been born again. I see that
I am more than a covetor. I'm deeply covetous. Paul is
conflicted there and we'll see this in this latter part of this
chapter. Paul has a conflict with the flesh that he lives
in and the mind that he's been given by the Holy Spirit. With
this old man that has been crucified with Christ but is very much
alive, as I said Sunday, in its depravity. and this new man that
God has made him to be. Not continually getting better
and better, not continually getting more and more moral, for Paul
had no room to improve in his morality. As a matter of fact,
Paul would have been known as a legalist. If we were to define
him today, Paul considered his actions and his focus that which
pleased God and in doing so is required of him and in doing
so affected his righteousness before God. But Paul says it's
not the law, it's not that which is good, it was sin in me. And
the law shows what sin is, in order that sin might be shown
to be sin, and through the commandment that sin might become sinful
beyond measure. See, the law of God teaches us
not how we ought to live, but the law teaches us how we cannot
live. Some people say, wait a minute,
wait a minute. The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt
have no other gods. This, that, and the other. Love
the Lord. Obey your parents. Great, do it. I want to see you
try. It's not going to happen. It's
not possible to happen. It doesn't mean that we not strive
for obedience out of affection for Christ, but that is a work
of the Spirit in the first place. And even then, God the Holy Spirit
does not drive us to a place of perfection in our flesh, as
Paul will argue tonight in verse 14. He will not do it. He will not do it. God will not
bring perfection to our flesh. It is not possible in the jurisdiction
of God's economy of grace for if He did, then oh beloved, even
monergistically we could stand and put our toe forward and say,
look at me God. Look what you've created me to
be. You think, well that's a little bolsterous. It's exactly what
Lucifer thought in his mind. So let's be very careful. when
we understand the position that the law has in us. That we might
read our confession in light of the scripture and not the
other way around. That we might understand the
teaching of antiquity up to the present day theologian with the
scripture at heart, not the traditions of men. Verse 14. For we know, Paul says,
that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under
sin. Now let me say this right now,
and I'm going to say this very dogmatically, and it's going
to hurt some people's feelings. Not in this room, but maybe those
who might hear this teaching years to come, or those who love
to troll me and just want to watch it in a couple of days
and say, I knew it! People who assert that Paul is
speaking of himself before conversion are just plain ignorant of how
to read the Bible and how to understand context. Can I say
that again? I don't have to. There is no
place in any language, Greek, Spanish, French, German, or English,
that Paul is writing in the past tense, speaking of himself as
sold under sin, as sold under sin, before he was converted. That's why I reminded of Paul's
personal spiritual resume, that he thought of himself not sold
under sin. It was only when God regenerated
him, when Christ met him on the road to Damascus, punched him
off his horse, blinded his eyes, and awakened his soul and brought
him to life, whereby then, out of the abundance of the grace
of God, Paul believed salvificly in Jesus Christ. Because it's
a gift of God, as Paul would argue, just like he does in Romans
3, and just like he does in Ephesians 2 and other places. God saved
him and then he saw that he was sold under sin. This is Paul speaking now. This
is his personal testimony of what the gospel of grace has
done and what it did where he used to relate to the law in
one way. Now he relates to the law in another. And remember
what we talked about when we were in Romans 4 and Romans 5
and other places. Sometimes when Paul uses the
law, he's meaning the Decalogue. Sometimes he's meaning all of
the Mosaic and the precepts of Judaism and all those things. But most of the time, he's talking
about the totality of anything commanded in righteousness in
the Scripture. Here, it's no different. Paul
is not secluding the Ten Commandments in this concept. Matter of fact,
he doesn't speak of the Ten Commandments at all. In Romans, when he talks
about these things, people say, well, he talks about covet. Yeah,
he refers to them. But he also refers to the Jews
in chapter 2 and 3 and 4 and shows that Abraham was not justified
by the works of the law. As a matter of fact, Abraham
was justified before he was ever even given the precepts of Judaism. He was circumcised some 13 years
after the promise. The same day, however, which
was 8 days after the birth of Ishmael, which was an act of
sin and rebellion and unbelief on Abraham and Sarah's place. So here, Paul is saying, listen,
this is who I am now. I am of the flesh. I am sold under sin. But what is the context? Well,
see, you know why it's important for you all to listen to what
I say when I say to you every midweek and every Sunday morning,
please read what we're studying in context every single week.
Because if we just come to the first 14, just randomly go, boom,
and there's verse 14 of chapter 7 of Romans, no wonder I couldn't
find my place. I'm in John on my Bible. I'm
like, I am just totally lost. My eyes aren't working. I'm trying
to read Sunday and teach Wednesday. So, if we just pick out verse
14 and go, boom! 4, we know that the law is spiritual,
but I'm of the flesh, so I'll understand. Some people would
say, see there? See there? Paul's an unbeliever. Paul must be talking about the
past. For we know he's a believer now,
because he's an apostle and he's writing the Word of God. But
friends, just read it. He's already talked about, what
has He just said? That what was just out of His pen, the law
is holy and perfect and good and all of these things. So that
which is good, did it bring death to me? No! Sin is what brought
death to me. For the wages of sin is death,
Romans 3. But the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus, where He will land His plane in verse
25 in this text. The law that is good, it is so
perfect, it is so righteous, it is so glorious. Wasn't it
just a few weeks ago that I actually taught sort of explicitly about
the righteousness of God? So that we'd understand that
the revelation of God in His laws was to show the absolute
just glorious perfection of His essence, of His being, of His
character, of His nature. and that all the perfection of
Christ has been credited to us so that when God the Father sees
us, He sees a human being who has been credited with a divine
righteousness. You hear me? Want me to finish that statement?
Of the perfect man who is Jesus. Because the righteousness that
Jesus has in His humanity is equal to the righteousness that
God the Father has in His divinity. And now it's on our account. It's on our account. Friends,
if there's a better thing to call good news, let's hear it.
If there's a better thing that shows how we're forgiven of our
sins, and justly so, let's hear it. If there's a better thing
to talk about than Christ, who is God, becoming man, taking
our debt, and paying it, and giving us His righteousness,
and awarding us and rewarding us for His work, and then being
raised from the dead to prove to us that He was not a sinner?
That He was indeed the Holy and Anointed One of God, the Messiah,
the Christ? Even in His humanity? What is
it? There is no better news. That's
why that is the Gospel. And there is only one Gospel.
There's not the Gospel plus anything. Maybe we'll go to Galatians when
we're through with Romans. The law then here, he says in
verse 14, it's very obvious, I am not spiritual in my flesh,
he says, and the law brings to light that fact. The law shows
me what my flesh really is and makes sin to be known as sin. And not only that, it shows the
heinousness and the evil and the wickedness and the vileness
of what sin really is. When we say harmatas, or we say
the sin is missing the mark of the glory and the righteousness
of God, it is not just that we're a little bit dirty in a real
clean place, it's that we're absolutely death in a place of
life. We're absolute corruption in
a place of perfection. We are a pock and a object of
wrath if God were to be fair. And He is fair, even in His grace,
because He, what? He declared and decreed that
He would save His people through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
So in God's fairness, He can say, Thou art forgiven, because
Christ paid it all. And had He put His Son on the
cross and not saved His people, God would not only be unfair,
He would be unjust. And many people will say, what
do you mean by the word fair? Well, fair in our vernacular
cannot approach the perfection of God and His. The law is spiritual. What does
that mean? That means it's of God. See,
Paul talks about the mind of the flesh. What does he say about
the mind of the flesh? That it is hostile. We've already heard
this, right? The mind is hostile toward God. Human beings, there are none
righteous. No, not one. There's not one human being on
the world that even in the greatest of opportunities that they may
seem to think they're looking for God, they're not looking
for the one true God. They're looking for their own
God and their own way. And until Christ reveals Himself
to them through the Scripture, and the Holy Spirit opens their
eyes to see it and behold it, they cannot find God, because
only through Christ can one find the only one true God, for He
is the one and only God who sits at the Father's side, Jesus Christ.
The law is spiritual. That means it is of God. It is
of divine essence. It is of divine origin. Jesus
says in John 3, you don't understand these things, Nicodemus, because
you are of what? The flesh. You are carnal. You are of the world. You are
of the flesh. You can't understand things because these are spiritual
things. As a matter of fact, you can't even understand fleshly
examples like wind and birth. That's the case, Nicodemus. How
in the world are you going to be able to understand spiritual
things? Only the one who knows the mind of the Spirit can understand
spiritual things. That is why it is necessary that
I come from the Father. I come from heaven. I come from
the place of righteousness because I know the mind of God. So, the law is spiritual. It
is of God. It is of divine origin. We are
not. The law is good. We are not.
The law is pleasing to God. The law is holy. The law is set apart. The law
is so different from everything that could ever possibly enter
into our mind. That's the way things should
be. But humanity, on the other Well,
we know that the law is spiritual, Paul says, but I... See, he's
comparing himself to the law. The law is good and divine and
pleasing and holy and righteous. The law is good. But I am not. On the opposite, actually. So
if we were to entitle this, our flesh compared to the law, it's
never a comparison. There's never a parallel. There's
never a way for us to ever. Paul himself shows that there's
never a way for us to ever compare ourselves to the righteousness
of Christ whatsoever in any form. It is an impossible task. It
is a fool's errand. It is a devil's ploy to do so. It's hard. Because a legalist
stomps their feet and goes, you just don't know how I live. And
then that frustration right there proves they cannot hold the law
even for one second. But they want to measure themselves
by that that they do not do rather than measuring themselves by
that which they do, which is displeasing. And then there is a rogue ignorance
that comes after that and says, yes, but you're saying people
can sin. Nobody said people can sin. Paul's
already fought that and he's dealt with that. The case is
closed and the matter has been laid to rest by the gospel of
grace and no one who continues in sin will be allowed and permitted
to remain in the fellowship of the church. You see what I'm
saying? Then somebody says, what do you
mean continuous sin? I've got sin in my life. You best understand that you
do, because if you say that you don't, John says you're a liar.
I'm so confused. Oh my goodness, what are we going
to do? Praise God we have this testimony here, because Paul
says the exact same thing that I just walked us through. Why is it that we try to land
the plane of logic on the runway that doesn't exist of divine
simplicity? and say, OK, we've got God. We're
going to take God and we're going to make Him simple-minded. Which
is not what that means. A lot of people think that's
what it means. Let's just take God and let's make Him a kindergarten
God. God must be saying what He hasn't
said. We figured God out where He was
not equipped enough to give us all the answers, and some would
say, Well, that's because God doesn't know everything. God
doesn't realize everything. God doesn't control everything.
God's just hoping we get it right and He's tried, and when we get
it right, He's excited. No. This spiritual, carnal, Schizophrenia,
this war that takes place in the life of the believer, is
the comparison that Paul shows here. The law is good and spiritual,
but I am carnal. I am of the flesh, sold under
sin. Humanity. All humanity are of
the flesh. Does that make sense? We are
physical, fleshly beings. We are born of the flesh. We
are born through our forefather Adam in his depraved state. We are guilty as sinners before
we ever sin. That's the testimony of David
in Psalm 51. Does he lie? Does God permit
lies to be recorded as doctrine? No. Does Paul, does he permit
Paul to lie here? I am carnal. You know what people
think, because our vernacular is so whitewashed? Our intelligence
is so dumbed down in our day that we don't want difficult
words. We don't want anything that's not three letters, two
letters, four letters, or an emoticon. And if it's beyond
that, we don't care. But we'll binge ourselves to
death in front of a series on television, and we'll hoot and
holler ourselves to hoarseness in a football game, but we won't
spend five extra minutes considering the vocabulary of fifth grade
English, which is what the ESV is written in. You say, well
that's just too hard a word. Well look it up, then next week
it won't be a hard word at all. Someone said something to me
about the use of the word propitiation. Really, just a week before last. And they've been listening to
me teach for five years. You just keep using that word.
I said, do you know who the Kardashians are? Yes. I said, then you should
know who propitiation are. You should know them too. What
do you mean? I said, you watched E.T. enough to know who the Kardashians
are, you should look up the word that's written in your Bible
over and over again that you've been listening to for five years.
And I've got a good relationship with this person, and they took
the hint. I wasn't being snarky. I don't
treat people like that generally. People are carnal. Even believers
are carnal. We do not lose our fleshliness.
We do not lose the physical flesh. The flesh is not redeemed right
now, beloved. Our flesh is not redeemed. It
will be. It will be made new in glorification. But it is not
redeemed today. What is redeemed? We, our person.
Our soul, our mind, our heart, all those lovely words that have
no meaning in our day. Even philosophers of our day
don't think of those things any longer. Scripture uses these
things. Paul loves the use of the word
mind. He goes on to talk about the
act of worship in Romans chapter 12 as not the conformity of the
world in all of its temperaments, in all of its temptations, in
all of its aspects, not just one or two things, not just cursing
or drinking till we can't stand up, but everything, inclusive
of unbelief or self-righteousness or anything that would fall down
the line of sin. But he says, but be transformed.
by the renewing of your mind. Think differently. It's amazing
that that word was used a lot in the context of the proclamation
of the gospel by the apostles in Jerusalem and in Antioch and
other places where they would say, change your mind and believe
in this good news that we preach of Jesus. The word that we know
it as is repent. Change your mind, change the
way you think about salvation this day and believe in this
which I teach you, which is good news for you, this gospel. Words are not heresies, words
are not erroneous, words are not fallacious, only meanings
and uses of those words. And I think, beloved, it would
do us all good to consider what it is that we believe about what
the Word teaches in this context, especially that we are still
of the flesh. But notice Paul says, I am of the flesh, and
so to understand, let's deal with this of the flesh. He does
not say, I'm in the flesh. He does not say, I'm controlled
by the flesh. But he certainly gives light
to something's conflicting in him. 1 Corinthians 3, 1, Paul
says, but I, brothers, could not address you as, wait a minute,
I, brothers, Paul speaking, who's he talking to? That word is plural,
brothers, meaning siblings. It is also gender neutral. Uh-oh,
bad term, but it's a gender neutral term that means brothers and
sisters in its uses. So we say, the brethren, we're
not excluding you sisters. It just doesn't sound good to
say cistern. It's sort of like a, I don't
know, a little too much lack of sleep or something. Cistern. 1 Corinthians 3, I would, I brothers
could not address you as what? Spiritual people. Paul is not playing games with
these people. These are brothers in the Lord.
These are the ones who He is correcting in their behavior,
not only in the world, but amongst the brethren, amongst the gathering,
amongst the church. And not only in that, in their
worship services and all the things that they're doing. They're
suing one another. They're allowing and permitting
sin to run rampant and public without any type of correction. And Paul says, brothers in Christ,
I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, not
in flesh, of the flesh. You are carnal. And you know
how he defines that? As infants in Christ. Infants. There's a necessity for us to
grow in the knowledge of grace and the renewing of our mind.
Hold fast to the Word of truth that we heard with power. That's
just like the Thessalonians. The Spirit of God comes with
power and brings us the knowledge of the Word that we may be brought
alive and God is glorified in it. And then we fight and wrestle
and struggle and wonder and get confused and sin. And the only thing we can do
is come back to the cross of Christ. That's what Paul says to the
Corinthians. But I came to you, hardly able to stand, barely
able to speak, not with words of eloquence and words of wisdom
and all this stuff, but fear and trembling, and I chose to
preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified, because if I did
not preach just that, the cross would lose its power. Why? Because
we hang on everything that we can manage and manipulate. Brothers
and sisters, listen to me. We hang on everything. Listen,
the gospel, Jesus, the Christ, righteousness, the imputation
of righteousness, the work of God, the sovereignty of God.
Oh, we're just so overwhelmed. We get chills running up our
spine. We feel it in our flesh. We feel it in our soul. We feel
it in our mind. We're compelled. But the minute
that I say something about, and if you just say this or do this,
you go, oh, I'm going to take a note of that. Holy cow, I haven't
written anything down in 35 minutes. Pastor, that's some good advice. You know what you don't need?
Good advice. It's a compliment when people
say, you're preaching the same thing every week. Thank God His Word is enough. That doesn't mean we don't seek
advice, we don't seek counsel. At the end of the day, here's your
counsel. from the world, well, it's like,
you ever eat potato chips and there's crumbs on your shirt?
Just brush them off. I enjoy the taste of that. Now let's
get to the meat and potatoes of Jesus. Let's get to the main
course of the bread of life. Let me drown myself in the living
water. Let me open up the floodgates of the light of the world that
I might not see anything but Christ. See this imagery? I cannot address you as spiritual
people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. He goes
on to say in verse three, you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and
strife, see what he's, he's defining it. What does it look like? You're
of the flesh because you're jealous of one another. You have strife.
Are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? Fleshly, human, carnal, of the
flesh? This is the point Paul is making.
The law is good. We are fleshly. The law is spiritual. We are carnal. So in this contrast slash comparison,
Paul reveals that we are still very much fleshly. He talks about
that in verse 18. For I know that nothing good
dwells in me that is in my body, in my fleshliness, in my carnalness. or have desire to do what is
right, but not the ability to carry it out. In verse 25, then he
gives the alternate of that. He says in verse 25, "...thanks
be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then I serve myself
the law of God." Paul, you are crazy! What are you talking about?
You're fleshly, you're carnal, you're doing all these things,
but now you serve the law of God with my mind. You see that? He said in verse 25, "...with
my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin." What does he
mean? Well, that's where we are now,
sold under sin. Some people would say, well,
Paul being sold under sin, this is something extremely off. Paul is, he must be talking about
past. Remember fifth grade grammar.
I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I serve with my mind Christ the Law and
God with my flesh. Why? Because it is what we do.
It is what the flesh does. It is what the flesh craves.
I have four dogs in my yard. I won't say at my house, but
in my yard. And there's one of them that could eat everything.
They eat everything. I mean, I'm reducing the squirrel
population in my house, and I don't have to do anything with them,
just throw them in the mix and they fight over. It's always
the lab. She wins every time. Because
she swallows like a shark. It's crazy. Eats everything.
It is what she does in the natural sense of who she is. Who she
is, wasn't it? Like I said earlier, of how she's
made. Labs are smart. They can sniff
drugs. They can sniff bombs. They can
smell and find refugees. They can find people hidden inside
of lead pipes who are being smuggled out of the country. They can
throw a hot dog down there. They're worthless. It's the same thing that happens
in our flesh. In our flesh, we are sold under sin. We are trapped, if we will, that
the flesh will always be tempted, James 1, to that which it desires
the most. by the Lord's grace, most of
us as the body of Christ, it's not often, though sometimes it
can be, and for some it is, the heinous things of the world that
are tempting to us, and we hate them with our what? With our
mind, but our flesh loves them. But I want us not to think about
the most heinous things that we can consider, because if we
do that, then we're likely to look in the mirror and go, I'm
glad I'm not like those people. to which we would be guilty of
judgmentalism. Paul would tell the Corinthians,
don't judge the world, you take care of what's in your household.
You keep your congregation in order, you keep each other in
check and accountable and you let the world do what it's going
to do because if I let you go, your flesh would be just as bad
and your self-righteousness. You think you're all that in
a bottle of coke, well you're not. We're controlled not by sin,
but we are sold under sin. What does that look like? Let
me just give you some examples. Luke 18, 13. The tax collector looked
far away, wasn't he? Standing far away. He wasn't
near the temple. He wasn't near the center of
religiosity. He wasn't near. While the Pharisee
stood and went, I thank you God, I'm not like that man. See, he
gave God credit for all the goodness in his life. Man, I've cleaned
up, God. I'm giving, I'm tithing, I'm
preaching, I'm praying, I'm loving people, I dress nicely and I
put on cologne. I must be a Christian. I'm in church, I'm singing songs,
doing all the good stuff. Thank you, you have not made
me to continue in the ways of the world like that guy. I'm
so thankful, I'm thankful, thankful, thankful. And the religious world
of our day look at that and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, me too, I'm
so thankful. I'm not a fornicator, I'm not an adulterer, I'm not
a liar, I'm not a coveter, I obey my mama. No, you don't. You're
an adulterer at heart, you're a murderer at heart, you're a
coveter at heart. You're a hater of God at heart, because your
flesh hates all the things that are righteous and good, for it
cannot even abide by the law. But your mind, see, as the new
birth, when we're born again, the tax collector then comes,
this lost man who prides himself in his faith, and this tax collector
who is the object of the Pharisees' praise. In comparison, the tax
collector says what? He would not even lift his eyes,
the Scripture says, to heaven. but he beat his breast." Have
you ever beat your breast? Have you ever been in that much
anguish that you sort of punch yourself with a hammer fist into
your solar plexus, this little spot right there? And maybe you've beaten the ground
in despair. I want you to get that picture.
Here's this man who is a vile sinner who steals from his own
people to pad his own pockets, living in prosperity while his
own kinsfolk are going to jail for not being able to pay the
penalties of their taxes to Caesar. And not just to get the wage
that he gets, but anything he gets above that he's able to
keep. What a great system of compensation. And here's the
Pharisee frowning down at the Hellenistic Jew who steals from
his own people. But Jesus says that the Pharisee
is condemned, anathemas, cut off from heaven, damned, lost,
unsaved, unregenerate. But the tax collector who doesn't
even look up beats his breast and he cries, Lord, God, propitiate
me, that's the Greek, have mercy on me, a sinner. And Jesus says
in verse, what is it, 15 of that text, that man is justified. That man is justified. That's what it means to be sold
under sin. We know ourselves. We know who we are in the flesh.
We know that if it were not for the grace and the mercy of God
to save us through the finished work of Christ and His righteousness
become ours to our credit, to our account, counted for us. We don't become righteous. He's
righteous and all of His righteousness is given to our account, you
see. And Paul is showing we're not
getting any better, folks. Well, that ain't the way I've
heard that text preached. Well, you heard wrong. Isn't that easy
to say? You know what's easier for me
to do? To feel prideful that I can grasp
it. Even in the preaching of the
Bible, I can find sin in my heart. How desperate are we for an act
of God whereby He covers us and settles the debt for us and provides
an alternative in our place, a substitute to take punishment
that we will never, ever, ever receive the condemnation of God.
What does that motivate us to do? Anything we can to give glory
to the name of our Savior who is the Lamb who took away our
sins. David, as I mentioned, Psalm
51, verse 5, this is after David lusted and lusted and acted on
that lust with Bathsheba. As the king orders her to him,
she becomes with child and to cover his own sin, he takes his
most loyal general and brings him home out of the battle so
that he might go home and consider that child his own. But Uriah
is too loyal to David. He sleeps outside and he will
not go home. So David gets him drunk, but
even in the drunkenness of Uriah, he refuses to lay with his wife
that David may cover his own sin. And so what does David do? David orders the rest of the
generals at the march of the battle, when the trumpet sounds,
everyone in the front line step backward. so that Uriah runs
forward and dies. You know, David, you see the,
gosh, may the Lord have mercy on us. The David and the heart
that David had, he had zeal for God. He dressed crazily and he
danced crazily. And remember his wife, she was
so embarrassed because he would get so excited dancing to people
that he took off almost all of his clothes and he was just down
on his loin cloth with his harp, you know, and dancing and singing. Could you imagine? He was just
so in love with the Lord, his worship was wild. I'm not saying
Paul would tell the Corinthians that's not necessarily an order.
But he was the king, he'd do what he wanted to. And then he
says, woman, don't bother me, I'll become much more undignified
than this. How do you become more undignified
than underwear? I guess you just kick them to
the side. And this man murdered someone
to cover his own fleshly wickedness. And in those moments of this
happening, God says that David was a man after his own heart.
And Nathan goes to David and tells David that he is the sinner
who sinned against the Word of God. And David writes this psalm
to be sung in the temple. And he says, that I was brought
forth in iniquity. You're sold under sin, you're
brought forth in iniquity. You're carnal and fleshly, it's
because we're brought forth in iniquity. And beloved, listen
to me, God does not transform our flesh. Does the Spirit help us in the
time of temptation? Absolutely. Does the Spirit grow
us and mature us and push us and focus us on that which is
pleasing to Him? Yes, beloved, but don't ever
look in the mirror of your soul and think that your flesh is
better. It is never better. It is never more righteous. It
is never more sanctified than the day that God brought you
to life by the Word, that Christ took your sin and gave you the
credit for His righteousness. Soul to understand is the dualistic
issue that all believers have to live in. The flesh is depraved
by nature and the spirit and the mind that is made alive is
now in love with God. This is necessary to understand
so that we can know the next ten verses and what they mean,
so that we can understand chapter 8 and 9. so that we can understand
the gospel in its fullness. We need to grasp this. This is
necessary, guys. When I say necessary, this is
the legend. This is the key that unlocks
the understanding and the application of the next verses. We are all
sinners, and before we were born again, that's all we were. But
now that we've been born again, we are still sinners, but we
are also alive in Christ. This spiritual and physical and
schizophrenic dichotomy that continues to plague the mind
and the spirit and everything in between. We rush to figure
it out, but friends, sometimes, as we've already seen in 1 Corinthians
3, people remain infants way too long, and we are patient
with them as God brings them to maturity. Ephesians 3 and
4. We speak the truth in love until
we all attain the fullness of the stature of Christ. That's
the reason we gather together. That's why the church is so necessary.
Because, beloved, I could not even stay in the Word if I didn't
have to teach it to you. God's calling me out of the world
into the ministry was one of the greatest acts of kindness
that the Lord has ever done. And Lord knows I've tried to
make it a side job many times over. But now I get to share the beauties
of the joys of the grace of God and His gospel and His Son with
others and with you. And by His mercy, I am compelled
to do so, so much so that I cannot not be in the Word of God enough.
I cannot be in the Word of God enough. So I am bound to this
work. And it is for my good, and it
is for your good. We are now alive in Christ, in
our heart, in our mind, in our soul, but our depravity, it's
still there, and there is sin that is indwelling, there is
sin that is fighting, there is sin that is raging. And listen to what Paul says.
For, for, he's explaining this, I'm of the flesh, and I'm sold
unto sin, for, he's telling you how this works, I do not understand
my own actions. Not that I would use a comedian
as a proof text or anecdote to prove something, but I remember
hearing someone say years ago, back in the 90s, when his wife
was getting on him about smoking, and he says, well, I'll quit
smoking. Why don't you just stop? And he says to her, well, you
just stop yelling. I understand that. I'm a drill
sergeant at heart. I like to raise my mouth and
raise my voice and get loud. I started preaching on the streets
and in shopping malls and everywhere that I could so there was no
amplification. Those camp meets that we used
to have, you know, there'd be hundreds of people and you didn't
have a sound system. You just stood out in the sun. So this
monitor keeps my voice and keeps your ears. I like to yell. Should have been Turkish. We don't understand our own actions.
Why did I get mad at that? Why did I feel that way? Why
am I so troubled? Why can't I just get my act together?
Why can't I just stop feeling this way? Why can't I just stop
acting this way? Why can't I stop speaking this
way? Why do I have to doubt myself so much? Why do I have to doubt
the gospel so much? Why do I think God's disappeared all the time?
I'm just a sorry, pathetic, low good, no good, down, dirty, rotten
Christian. I'm a horrible excuse of a father.
I'm a horrible excuse of a mother. I'm a terrible friend. I'm a
terrible person. I might as well just disappear. But if I did that,
then somebody would be Let down, because I would not be there
on time to help them do what they needed to do, and then I'd
still be sorry in my absence. Yeah, that's right. We would
be. I don't understand my own actions,
but this is the key. Look at verse 15. For I do not
do what I want. He's like, I don't know why this
is happening, but it's not what I want. It's not what I want. I don't
want sin in my life, but it's there. What's the sin that Paul... Let's use Paul's example, covetousness. When the law came, covetousness
made a lie, and it was lying dead, and I didn't even know
it existed, and the law came, and boom, there it is, knocking
on my door, dragging up my shoelaces, sandals, pulling on my tunic,
untying my sash. Yanking out my beard. It was
always there. It's always there. Beloved, I
earnestly believe that Paul's thorn in the flesh is temptation. Not physical ailments. He never
complained about his physical ailments. Not a woman, as some
misogynist has tried to get me to believe for the last decade.
It was that woman who wouldn't leave him alone. So ridiculous. I think it was
temptation. I think it was the indwelling sin in his heart and
in his life. You notice I said, I think. But I do the very thing I hate.
I covet and I hate coveting. But I keep coming back to coveting.
I keep wanting that which I do not have and wanting that which
others have. Now see, if somebody stood up in a church service
of 150, 200 people and said, I just need to confess sin, I
just really wish I had a, not a new car, but a better one,
and my neighbor got a better car, we'd laugh them out of the
door. That is so silly. You don't worry about that old
sin. Paul says the law makes sin to
be what it is, even more sinful. Why is it that we don't see that
stuff? When Paul labored over this, Paul wringed his spiritual
hands over this and beat his breast and cried out, I'm a sinner. Paul's self-identified name at
the end of his ministry when he writes to Timothy's second
letter is the Chief of Sinners. What man who has ever lived of
the flesh has ever served Christ greater than the Apostle Paul.
No one. And Jesus even tells the Apostles,
He will suffer the greatest of any man for My name's sake. Verse 16, He says, Now if I do
what I do not want... He does not want to sin. But
if I sin that I don't want it, I agree with the law. What's
he mean by that? You're not agreeing with the
law, Paul. You're an idiot. He is agreeing with the law. The
law says his sin is sin. He's not saying his sin is not sin.
See, therein lies the problem. Oh, that's not sin. It's not
sin to hate my brother. You don't know him. It's not
sin to rob my neighbor because he's got more than he can handle.
It's not sin to be arrogant because I'm just that smart. I agree with the law, and that
is good. So verses 17 through 20, and then we'll stop. So now
it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
And I'm going to have to exegete this next week, because there's
a lot here. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in
my flesh. For I have the desire to do what
is right. In other words, I want to do what is pleasing to the
Lord. I want to follow after Him. I want to not covet. I want
to do these things in obedience. But I do not have the ability
to carry it out. In what weird country, in what weird culture,
in what weird vernacular does that follow up automatically
with the unspoken, so just do what you want? Paul said, if I do what I want,
I won't sin. Think about it. It's not that hard. For I do not do the good I want
But the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing. What
I keep on doing, present, active. Now, if I do what I do not want,
it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So,
this is the summation, I find it to be a law that when I want
to do what is right, evil lies close at hand. Do you ever feel
that way? Yeah, you do. It's just something simple. Like
James would say, he who knows to do right and does not, it
is sin. We know we ought to be in prayer,
and we know we need to be in a discipline of Scripture reading,
etc., just for our own joy and nourishment. And we're just like,
ah, John's Gospel that I've had for like 30 years sitting on
the shelf. I've already read it a few more times. It's a new
show that's just coming out on X-Flex. There's only 18 hours
of it. I mean, tomorrow morning I'll
read John, I'll be through. I mean, that's how it goes. We go, oh man, I'm terrible,
I didn't serve the Lord. And that's a silly example, but
we're there, aren't we? Evil lies close at hand. Four, I'll read this and then
we'll pray. I delight in the law of God.
John would say the law of God is not a burden to us. That's
the first epistle. I delight in the law of God where?
In my inner being, in my mind, in my soul, internally. I love
it. But I see in my members, my flesh,
my carnal thing, another law that waging war against the law
of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells
in my members. That's why I want to teach a
whole hour on this next week. And then Paul has a parenthetical
he inserts into this expression. Typically Paul would either put
a parenthetical of some great doctrinal truth like, by grace
you have been saved, like he does in Ephesians chapter 2,
or he will He put a doxology in there. Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God, who knows
and who all families on heaven and earth are named, who can
do all things, more than we could think of or ask for. To Him be
all the glory and all the praise and all the honor to the very
end of age in the church and in the world. Amen. Whoo! That isn't the parenthetical
that Paul puts here, is it? No. Oh, wretched man that I am! Paul,
dude, calm down, man. It's okay. And then he asks,
who will now deliver me from this body of death? Here's the hope. Thanks be to
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve
the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the
law of sin. And God gets the glory in it all. Let's pray. We thank You, Father, for just
the beauty of Your Gospel. Help us to stand firm in the
finished work of Christ. Help us to resonate, Lord, with
it in our mind and hearts, guided by Your Holy Spirit, Lord, through
the pages of Your Scripture, that we would understand and
realize and know this mystery that is revealed to us in all
wisdom and insight and perfection, that we are Your beloved. We
have been adopted and redeemed Our sins are forgiven, therefore
now there is no condemnation before You. You look at us and
are pleased with us from the moment that You regenerate us,
Lord. And even in Christ before on
the cross, God, Your justice has been paid. May we rest in
the finished work of Christ, no matter the call of your spirit,
or your word, or each other, to correct, and to move, and
to run, and to obey. Lord, let us do it with joy,
knowing that when we fail, Jesus is our advocate, Jesus Christ
the righteous, who sits to your side. And with one day, one day,
we will also be with you. In his name we pray. Thank you
for listening. We hope that this message has
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