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. ...has no bearing, has no function,
etc. Now throughout history when we
talk about the law of God, most people from a theological point
of view, even in the Reformed tradition, would Calvin made
this, actually he might have even invented the idea philosophically
or the argument of the three-fold use of the law. The first use
of the law would be it's a reflection of God's righteousness and His
holiness so that it teaches us about who God is and at the same
time, it teaches us how sinful we are. The second use of the
law is the law does something for the unbelieving world and
it gives a a cause for fear and it gives a structure for community
and culture in that everyone knows what is right and wrong
so that the law of God, just like the law of man, would be
a measuring rod through which the criminals would be fearful. And the third use of the law
is the idea that the law of God gives the believer not a right
standing before God, but that the believer has an understanding
of what pleases God, and therefore can obey the law, thus in his
or her striving. He can attempt to obey the law,
and just in that attempt to obey the law, that they are striving
to give glory and honor to the Lord. So that having those three things,
now those are philosophical arguments out of exposition. So in other
words, like we did sort of this past week, and what we'll do
this coming Sunday, it's really funny how John and Romans have
gone neck to neck, even though we're not in the same spot time-wise,
we're in the same chapter, and it seems to correlate. This coming
Sunday I'm going to close out for the most part, unless I see
something else, the chapter, and then we'll start in verse
12 of chapter 8 the next Sunday, and I'll tell you why anyway. But we're going to talk about
the law. And like topically, like we did last week, we didn't
necessarily have a whole big argument about the division of
the gospel. We just had an illustration of
the narrative. We had just a little bit of a
picture of how division comes. And so, in the same way, this
type of argument, these three uses of the law, is not something
that the Bible explicitly teaches. And I'm not necessarily saying
that it's absolutely accurate. It is an inference that John
Calvin saw and made very prominent in his institutes. And then the
Reformed traditions, 1689, the Westminster Confession, which
other than baptism and polyphy are almost identical in every
means, and then all the other historic traditions out of everything
up to Wesleyanism, Lutheranism, etc., all follow the idea of
the three uses of the law. We don't teach that. Our confession,
you can get it from it, but we don't teach that in that context
as the third use of the law in that way. But if you look at
Romans 7, Romans 6 said we're dead to sin and alive to God.
Paul asks the questions, are we to continue in sin that Magrathes
may abound in verse 1 of chapter 6, and he says, no, it's absurdity.
It's an absolute theological absurdity. It's ridiculous for
the Christian to even posit such a question. So that's why Paul
said it, so that anybody who did come up, the Christian could
automatically have the answer, that's stupid. That's silly. Let's sin because the law doesn't
apply to us. So then in Romans 7, Paul begins
to establish an argument here. And let's just hear, let me read
starting in verse 15 of 6 and go down through verse 3 of 7.
What then? Are we to sin because we are
not under the law but under grace by no means? And of course he's
talking about our standing before God. is by grace alone. We are justified before God because
of the finished work of Christ. There's nothing that we bring
to the table in order to be justified. Our righteousness is who? It's
Jesus Christ. It's not ours. All the good works
that James can muster in his entire life, all the works of
the ministry, all the writing, the teaching, anything that could
give glory to God is nothing in the eyes of God toward my
standing before Him. That's righteousness. And my
guilt before Him. and that I am justified through
the finished work of Jesus. So Jesus takes the penalty of
our sin and declares us innocent. That's justification. And then
in turn, gives us His obedience to the law. And that's our righteousness. So He takes it all. He takes
what is our guilt and pays it. And then in turn, gives us His
obedience. And that's our life. That's how God, Romans 3, can
say, you are justified. Because the righteousness is
not our own. Do you not know that if you present yourselves
to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom
you obey? Either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience,
which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God, that you
were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart
to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and
having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I'm speaking in human terms because
of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented
your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to
more lawlessness. So now present your members as
slaves to righteousness leading to, and I'm going to use the
word that we've been dealing with sanctification for a while, leading
to your setting apart for God. For when you were slaves of sin,
you were free in regard to righteousness. That means it wasn't on our radar.
It wasn't anything we cared about. But what fruit were you getting
at that time of the things in which you now ashamed? For the
end of those things is death. But now that you have been set
free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit that
you get leads to sanctification, leads to being set apart, and
in its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death,
but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Or do you not know, brothers? See the question he's asking?
Or do you not know, brothers, for I'm speaking to those who
know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long
as he lives? We've already taught this. It's week 34. It's on the
church website if you want a reminder. For a married woman is bound
by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies,
she is relieved of the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called
an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband
is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law,
and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress." Remember
we talked about, even though he's writing to a predominantly
Greek community, that they knew the law of marriage according
to Jews, according to Moses. They were familiar with it. So
he uses this as an illustration. Likewise, verse 4, my brothers,
You also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so
that you may belong to another. See, we don't belong to the law
anymore, or its consequences. We are not bound to the consequences
of the law. Though we are commanded to obey
it, we cannot obey it. Though we strive to obey it,
we will not obey it fully. So therefore, if we are bound
to the law, we are bound to the consequences of the law, and
the consequences of the law is death. For no man, woman, or
child has ever fulfilled the law of God. No man or woman or
child has ever had right standing with God through obedience to
the righteousness of God. No one can be set apart for God
in obedience for none are justified by the works of the law but only
by the work of faith in Christ Jesus who is now what? He's saying
we have died with Christ. so that it may belong to Him
who has been raised from the dead. See, Jesus took the penalty
of the law and thus He died, and in His death then He defeated
death, for He did not deserve the penalty of the law. So in
this resurrection now, we have the hope of life, no longer to
fear the death that the law brings. We've been raised from the dead
in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living
in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law, you hear
that, aroused by the law, don't touch that. Now I want to. Don't listen to this. Don't do
that. You can't say this. You can't
say that. And all of a sudden we feel like we need to do those
things. We're at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
But now, what does it mean to bear fruit for death at work?
So we were told not to, then we wanted it, and the fruit of
that desire is death. The wages of sin is death. The
desire is death. The desire is sin. The desire of sin. And I don't
want to get into Sunday morning, but I'm going to give a list
of all the ways in which the law cannot be taken so literal. It is broad. Do not covet, as
Paul teaches in verse 7 of this. He doesn't say, just covet your
neighbor's possessions. He says that the covetousness
in his heart brought death to him. Guilty before the law of
God. Sin is in the heart first. Satan
was cast out of heaven because in his heart he said, I will
approach the throne of the Most High. I will ascend the mountain
of the gods. He never stuck his finger in
God's face. He never spoke a word against God. He wasn't stupid.
But he wanted it in his heart and God threw him out. Along
with the multitude of the heavenly hosts. In the same way, in our
hearts, as we sin against God, we are guilty before God, and
the wage of that sin that never even gives birth to the fruit
of our hands, or our mouth, or our feet, or our bodies, is death. We deserve to die because the
very nature of our being craves that which is not righteous. So when we talk about total depravity
and total inability, we are really talking about what the Scripture
teaches. When Paul talks about it in Romans 3, we are evil human
beings. No matter how much good we do,
no matter how sweet we are, no matter how much love we fill
in our hearts, we are evil human beings. But by the grace and
mercy of God, He's given us a new mind that we do not desire that
which our flesh longs for, and we strive to have the rest where
there will be no more temptation, but our hope is not in even putting
to death these things or making our life, our faith alive, as
Trey talked about a couple of weeks ago, mortifying the flesh
and vivifying our faith, bringing it to life. Our hope is only
in the life and the death and the life of Jesus. He goes on to say there, but
now we are released from the law, having died to that which
held us captive. To what? Death. To the judgment
of God. That's what the law does. It
holds you captive to the judgment of God so that we serve in the
new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written
code. We serve now. out of the work of the Spirit,
this monergistic work where God the Holy Spirit works in us to
cause us to desire that which is good. But even in our desire,
we are at war with our members as Paul will illustrate starting
in verse 7 through the end of this letter. And he even cries
out through the end of this, he says, oh, what wretched man
am I? How shall I escape? And he answers
it, it's Christ. There's no escape in the flesh.
There's no escape in the judgment of God. There's no escape. Those
who sum themselves up as living right before the Lord have lied
to their own mirror image. We are not living right before
the Lord, though we may do things that are right, though we may
strive for what is right, though we may obey to a certain degree.
Even if it is perfect for a moment, it is not sufficient to satisfy
the requirement of God. And it doesn't mean that we just
say, well, it doesn't matter now, does it? Because our hearts
are new, our minds are new. We are born anew. We are born
from above. We are regenerated by the Spirit
who is God. And therefore, because of that,
we are now that which is flesh is flesh and it's still corruptible.
But that which is Spirit is Spirit and it is alive. So we live now
and serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way
of the written code. What shall we say then? This is where we
are tonight, verse 7. What shall we say then? That
the law is sin? Because, I mean, think about
it. The more you try, the worse you get. The more you look at
the law, the guiltier you become. So then somebody could easily
go, well, the law is just evil. The law is just sin. It's sinful
to even consider the law of God. It's sinful to consider thinking
about obedience. That's where an antinomian, those
who do not believe no law, anti-law, believe. It doesn't matter. Don't practice
it. I have been rebuked lately. It's no secret in our community
that we practice church discipline. And it's amazing. Y'all just going to have to stop
doing that kind of stuff. Y'all are judging people. Y'all
are judging people. No, we're not judging anybody.
We're praying that the Lord's work will be done. We're not
judging anybody. That's what I told this person.
Do you not teach your children to do certain things and not
do certain things? Well, that's different. Is it? So your child
takes the poop in the living room. You don't pop their fanny
and say, you use the potty. It's like you would a puppy.
What do you do? You let a puppy poop. You teach him when you're
trying to potty train him. Same thing with a child. You don't let them
just do whatever they want to do all over the house. You don't
let them catch fire to the curtains just because they think fire
is pretty. You're so sweet. You're such a creative child.
Burn the whole house down. Let's watch it. I mean, no, we
don't do that. That's just ridiculous. Why then
in the same way if we see a believer living sinfully? How do we know
they're living sinfully? Because the Lord's law tells
us they're living sinfully. The Word of God and the apostolic
teaching, the pastoral epistles tell us that we live sinfully
at times when we do this, or when we say this, or we think
this, or we act this way, or we go to these places, or we
desire these things. That's sinful. Put it to death.
Stop. Don't do it. No! Are we not supposed to teach
the full counsel of the Word of God? Yes, we are! We're to teach the full counsel
of the Word of God. We're to teach the don't-do's and the
do-do's along with the Gospel. Everybody thought, said, do,
do. We teach it with the gospel.
That's the point. Because of the gospel of grace,
therefore, we can live in a way that's fitting to the call that
we've been called. Believe it or not, what I just
said to you will mark me as a legalist. So in the last year and a half,
I've been an antinomian and a legalist because of my teaching in Romans.
What in the world? What are we supposed to do? You
know what I think? I got it right. By the Lord's grace, I'm reading
the text correctly. Because I don't care if you sit
there and don't ever do anything positively for the Kingdom of
God. If God has called you into salvation through Jesus Christ,
you are redeemed. And if you never move from that
chair, you never pick up your Bible again, you cannot lose
that salvation. At the same time, you could be
lost as a goat in the woods. And you could come and participate
and paint the walls and serve and teach and pray and sing and
cry and love each other and go straight to hell. You could memorize
every verse of Romans in the Greek, but you could still be
lost. It doesn't matter. What we do
in our lives is not has no bearing on our standing before God. It
is the work of God whereby He causes us to believe because
He's made us new. But as those who are born of
God and those who profess to be born of God, we have instruction
in the Word of God on how we ought to live our lives together.
And we will do what we have to do, not to make it perfect because
we're not stupid, but to strive to that end. Not even perfection. Isn't that really where we should
be striving? What is the standard of God? Absolute perfection. If you find an old toy that's
rusted and you have it restored, it's not perfect. It's fake. The gospel is not about the Christian
becoming restored. The gospel says that the Christian
has become a new creation. Something new from the beginning.
Our flesh doesn't get better. It doesn't get a makeover. Sure,
there are things that are made over and over. For us who live
in the world really deeply, you know what I mean by that? Before
we are born again, before we come to faith, Before we're saved
by the grace of God, there are some of us in our fellowship
who lived a hellacious life. We did drugs, and we partied,
and we hated people, and we murdered people, and we coveted people,
and we were adulterers, and we were idol worshippers, we were
Satanists. Terrible people. And then when
the grace of God appeared, all those things just sort of stopped
on the outside. Stopped. We no longer find joy
in them because Christ is so much more valuable. Why? Because He is. He does this work
in us. And so there's that type of Christian
who has been saved from a really dark past. You know, it's the
ones that go around and travel around and talk to the evangelical
cults. Back in 1953, I was a gangster
and I killed 40 billion people. Then Jesus found me and now I
just love kittens. I mean, you know, this is silly.
So your testimony is that you used to murder people, now you
love kittens? You're not going to tell me you're
going to sit in the living room with your wife and talk bad about the person who just
wrote a bad article about your book? That's a murderer. You haven't stopped murdering,
my friend. You may have stopped taking people's physical lives
because you cherish them because of the work of Christ in you,
but you're still a murderer. I, my friends, am a murderer. I'm a murderer. If my flesh were
not compelled by the Holy Spirit and convinced by the laws of
the land and the consequences thereof, I could have snapped
the necks of a lot of people through the years. Whether it
be the goofy person at the DMV who tells you to go sit back
down after you've been there for six hours, Or whether it be that government
official who really hurt you and cost you a lot of money.
Or whether it be just the person that said something derogatory
about your wife. What's the difference in my hatred
and my heart and my hands around their neck? Nothing according
to God's law. You see? By God's grace, I've never committed
the act of murder with my hands. But it's only by God's grace.
It was one of the sins that my flesh will run to if I am not
healthy in my spiritual walk, is that I will begin to have
this dame for people. I used to remember in my early
days of music school, there were always, it was before American
Idol ever even considered about it, there were always these people
auditioning for the music program. And if you were to take a feral
cat by the tail, Stab it with a fork and sling it around your
head. It would be greater music than
some of the people had coming out of their mouths. You know
what I'm talking about? Y'all have seen the show, right? And then
somebody like Simon Cowell says, that's the most horrible thing
I've ever seen. You're so mean. I have a beautiful voice. No,
you don't. You're a terrible singer. You
can't sing. We put a cassette tape in a bucket
and you can carry a tune. But that's it. That's it. You
know, I remember that frustration there when I'd see how I had
to sit in front of these things. And I'm going, this is stupid.
These people should not be allowed to come into the school. These
people should not be allowed to audition. There should be
like a pre-audition audition. Can you whistle? No, you're out.
I mean, you know. You're out. You can't. Can you
sing Mary Had a Little Lamb? No, you're out. Okay, you're
done. I mean, just something simple, like grade school, Tinkle,
Tinkle, Little Star. You know what I mean. The point
I'm making is that I remember the feeling I used to have, having
to waste my time listening to people waste my time. That's
murder. It's hatred. What are we to do
with it? Well, I don't hate people anymore.
Let them pull out in front of you. Let somebody come in here one
day and visit and tell you that you're in a cult. Let somebody knock on your door and say something ugly. Let your neighbor get to a fight
at 3 AM and wake you up. You will have a murderous spirit
If that is something that you deal with, how long does it last? By the Lord's grace for me, just
a couple of seconds. Oh Lord, I need to love this person. And
I have a real compassion for them. But that doesn't give me
any standing before God either way because the heart that I
have as a murderer is still there. Praise the Lord He's given me
a new one that fights against the old. Paul is saying the old
one is dead because he's been crucified with Christ. So I've
got two ways of function. I hope this is helping clear
things up. I've got two ways of function in my murdering.
When I feel the murderer coming out, I can say, no, I shall not
murder, and thus I will please God, I will not murder. And I
can go tell everybody, y'all, I have not murdered today. I
haven't felt murder. And I can have a pious attitude
about putting to death the murder. I can sing jingle bells in preparation
for my audition and take my mind off the murder. And I can say,
wow, look at that, I haven't had a murderous thought in years. What happens when we say those
things? Somebody rings the doorbell and gives us the opportunity
to have a murderous thought. Or I can say, you know what, Lord,
As I pray every day, I pray you pray this way. I do. I pray for
you that God would help you pray this way. Jesus was told us in
the Gospels how we ought to pray. And if you don't pray that God
would help you run from temptation, you are really running backwards. Run, God, to please don't cause
me. Don't put me in the path of this.
Bring me away from these things. Help my flesh. Not go here. It's not about the pragmatic
principles of good relationships, those things are great, or good
thinking, or critical thinking, those are good, or positive reinforcement,
oh yeah, wow, those only last so far, like a light of match
in a bathroom. You know? Well, nobody by and
large, I saw when my grandparents were around, you know, my great-grandparents,
you lit a match when you got through, and you blew it out,
and it smelled like sulfur. People come over and say, the
house is on fire! No, somebody had to go to the bathroom. Pay $9 for some potpourri spray.
Free matches at the bank. You know what I'm talking about? It doesn't matter. It's an ark.
So I can do that or I can do this. I can say, okay, Lord,
lead me not into temptation. Help me not walk here. I'm going
to see it. Instead of trying to work my
way around what I don't want to do, I have to do what the
Spirit is telling me through the Word of God to do. And the
crazy thing is it's not even me doing it. It's the work of
the Gospel. And that is that I rest in the
grace of Christ. I rest in the truth of Christ.
I come to the place where now I realize that I am still, if
God's grace had not been given to me, guilty before God as a
murderer. So therefore, my only hope is
the finished work of Jesus Christ. In those things, God begins to
grow us to have a better mind that's not necessarily as murderous
until somebody really pushes the right button. We do mature
sometimes in our sins. How is it that people who have
never had a sordid past... How about those who grew up Christianly?
It's not an advert. It's not an adjective. How about
people who grow up in a Christian way, and they always did the
good stuff, and they always served community, and they always loved,
quote, Jesus, and they did everything right according to the traditions
of their faith, but yet they were never born again, and then
years later they come and they say, wow, God has opened my eyes
and I'm a believer now. I just believed in all this other
stuff for so long. And the person who had a sordid,
murderous past that was just so evil and so wicked, the testimony
seems more powerful, doesn't it? But it's easy for the wicked,
wicked, wicked person, the openly wicked person, it's easy for
us to see that they were openly wicked. It's harder to see the
righteous person who's lost, and I'm using righteous in the
context of their own view of themselves. It's harder to see
the work of God in that because I'm doing the same thing that
I used to do, but I have a different point of view. Now instead of
walking the way I've always walked, thinking that I'm right before
God, I walk the way I've always walked now by faith because Christ
has given Himself for me. He loved me. I have died with
Christ and now I live with Christ. So He lives within me. So all
the work that I do and everything that I strive for now, that I've
always done, for that it was filthy rags, now it's just part
of what God is doing in me at this moment and it does not stand
a chance in changing where I am before the Lord. either good
or bad. For we who are living by faith,
the law has no control over us. The law has no consequence over
us. We are dead to the law because if we are alive to it, then we
are guilty of breaking it. But now that we are in Christ,
it's not that we throw the law away, it's that we continue in
the faith by faith as we strive for these things. That's what
Paul is saying. What shall we say then? That the law is sin
by no means. Look at verse 7. Yet if I had not been for the
law, I would not have known sin. You see that? I remember when I got to California,
I used to keep my wallet back in those days. That's one of
the reasons I had such a bad back then. In my back left pocket.
So when I had to go to a drive-thru, you had to unbuckle your seatbelt
completely so you could get back there and get that wallet out.
And I'd always leave the seatbelt on my left shoulder. Well, I
pulled out of a McDonald's. This was before they had good
coffee. Terrible coffee. Pulled out of a McDonald's and
I'm going through Fremont, California, one of the little streets there.
And there's like six police officers on motorcycles. And I wave at
them and I'm driving on through and I just nonchalantly put my
seatbelt on as I always do. About three blocks down, there's
one of the cops there and we just moved. Hadn't been there
but a couple of weeks. Still had Virginia tags on the
van. And he gets out and says, sir, I see your seatbelt's on,
but when you came out of McDonald's a minute ago, did you have your
seatbelt on? I said, excuse me? He said, is it a law in Virginia
you have to wear your seatbelt when you're in your car? I said,
yes, sir. He said, well, if it wasn't,
I probably would have given you a pass, but the law hadn't changed when
you moved from here to there, from there to here, so $109. the most expensive cup of coffee
I've ever had. But at some point I even thought,
well, if it wasn't a law in Virginia, maybe you're just dumb and you
don't know because you just moved here. You don't know you're breaking
the law, so you have no guilt on the law. But I did have guilt.
I just didn't realize it was that important. Before I come
out, what's three blocks? $109. I mean, it's just sort of like
parking in San Francisco. You've got parking meter, parking
meter, parking meter, parking... And they're exactly the same.
They're all exactly the same. They have the same buttons, they
have the same slots, they have the same color. They're all equally
the same, but there are some who have a thin line about that... Well, I say thin. It's a band
like that that are painted around and they're blue. Just that. There's nothing there. You don't
know what they are. You know what that is? That's service
vehicles only between the hours of 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. There is
across the street of all those blue things in San Francisco,
7 to 12 wreckers. And they just watch. And they
see you get out and you put money in this thing and you walk into
the store and you come out and your car is gone. Literally. Four seconds. That's how fast
it takes. Robin comes out of Gap, because
she's cold, see. We didn't know it was going to
be 40 degrees in the summer time in the bay. Ice tickles on your
nose. It's August. She goes into Gap. Oh, a front
spot. Park. Hoodie. Out. My car's been stolen. So we call
the cops, you know. We had no idea. We didn't feel
the guilt of having violated the law. We thought someone had
broken the law against us and stolen our car. So they hunt
it down and it was $700 for two hours. I put that coffee cup and that
hoodie together in a box, a shadow box. Expensive experiences. We didn't know, but now we know. Now we know. So I was aware of
my sin. That you don't get a pass if
you're just pulling out. You get it straight. I'm aware
of the sin of violating the law of the blue line that needs a
sign. I'm going to get a lawyer and get a sign on that. It should
say, no parking. Not, here's a free meter. Don't
park in front of it. That's ridiculous. But I knew. Was it the last time I ever parked
in a blue? Yes. I was scared to death to park
in a blue. Because I knew. The law comes and Paul knows. He's a sinner. But see, Paul
never coveted his neighbor's stuff. Because Paul had more
than his neighbor. Paul had more than theology,
more understanding, more wealth, more power, more prestige. He
didn't care about anything anybody else had. He had it all. Then
all of a sudden, the law was opened to him. He saw it for
what it was. He saw that he was covetous. There was nothing he
could do about it. He can stop it. And he says that. I would have
not known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you
shall not covet. But see, what happens there is
that sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, you
see what he said there? He's personified. You know what it
means to personify something? To give it a characteristic of
a person. So sin all of a sudden, seizing
an opportunity, there it is! There's your opportunity. He
knows not to covet, and there's something he wants. Let's go. You know, what's that animation
now in the girl's brain? Have you seen that movie? Inside
Out. Yeah, great movie. It's really
cool. And if it's wrong, I'm sorry, but I liked it. It's a
good one. You know, these thoughts and
emotions and all that control her mind. It's like sin. Paul
has personified sin in such a way that he's saying it sees an opportunity
through the commandment. Why? Don't covet. What is covet? A desire for something. That's
all it is. Simple. A desire for something. It's a lust of the eyes. A lust
of the flesh. See, we like to dictate pigeon-hole
lust just for sexual things. You know, like, oh, no, there
it is. Lust is all about sex. We got that banner. We got that
one out. No, lust can be for anything. I mean, I have coveted
nicer chairs through the last few years as we've gone through.
And I thought, well, we get those free, what are those things out
there? Pews. And then everybody, I thought
they were getting a little Pentecostal, they were just having pinches.
And when these chairs come along, I've got to have these chairs.
It's not a wrong thing to have, but I remember thinking, wow,
I just wish I could just buy better pews or fix those things.
It's a covetousness. Not, I wish I had the chairs
that they have down the road. Poor me. That would be coveted
too. But it's covetousness, desiring
something that's not necessary in such a way that it causes
me to labor over it in my heart. So covetousness can be something
that's sinful. There's nothing wrong with wanting
chairs. But the desire for those chairs can overpower worship. When I get new chairs, I'm so
proud of them. Man, look at those chairs. I don't know how much
time. So we can covet things that are just neutral morally,
but we can do so in such a way that we become idolatrous. I
want this, so I need to get this done, and we say it in the name
of progress or success or good administration or good ministry
or whatever, or good home life, etc. If I could just have this,
I could just have that, and it's covetousness. Or we could covet
things that are actually beneficial, like athletics. We could covet
playing sports or entertainment or something like that. We could
desire it so much that it becomes more important than the body,
than the church, than the family, than etc. We spend our whole
lives, you want to get together and watch a ball game? You want
to get together and do this? It could be anything. And it
could also be sinful things. It could be sexuality. It could
be drugs. It could be alcohol. Let's use
alcohol for a minute. It's not a sin to drink. It is
a sin to be drunk. It's not a sin to drink. It is
a sin to be drunk. But it can also be a sin to covet
alcohol. That it becomes such a staple in your life that it
centers around your very schedule. I've got to have this now. Coffee! Caffeine! I mean, you think about
it. All of a sudden now, everybody
in the room, if you're a coveter, stand up! We're all on our feet.
I mean, we're doing the wave. The Covet Bowl. We're all here
for the big show. I've had a headache today, so
I've got a little humor happening. So sin sees an opportunity through
the commandment. Don't covet! I don't covet. We recognize it
all of a sudden. I'm coveting. And now we're at
war. Because you know what we really want? I don't want to
covet. Isn't that the easy thing? Have you ever had somebody tell
you, I'm just so sad. Well, just don't be sad. Well,
I'm so angry." Well, just stop being angry. Why don't you hold
your breath for four or five days? Just stop breathing. Go brush your teeth. I mean,
you know, it's not like that, is it? It's not possible, friends. And people will argue with me
on that and say, well, it is possible, pastor. The Bible says
we are dead to sins. It's possible. And if those people
would stop yelling at me for five seconds, I will show them
they have deep sin in their life that they don't even know about
sometimes. Because they're taking the surface of, well, I'm not
coveting after my neighbor's stuff. I'm worshiping the Lord.
I love Him. I honor my parent. And, you know,
their nose is growing and getting larger. Remember Pinocchio? Getting
larger and larger and larger. And they can't even see it because
they don't even know they're lying. It's revealed, since he's
an opportunity of the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. What does that mean? That the
more he understood the law, that the more he wanted? No. It's
the more he understood the law, the more the law showed him about
what he wanted. It produced in him the exposure of his covetousness. That's what the law does, beloved.
The law is not there, listen to this, so that we can eradicate
covetousness from our lives because if that is our goal, now that
should be our desire, but wanting something and doing something
are different for humans. Surely God did not lead me to
covet things, but can you stop them from entering into your
heart? No. And I don't buy this trash that
says, well, the thought is not a sin. I'm sorry, it may not be the
sin, but Jesus says if you lust after a woman in your heart,
brothers, that you have committed adultery. You have committed
adultery. The Bible says that if you hate
your brother, or Peter says if you gossip, You have committed
murder. You see? So you violated the
law that says, do not murder. You violated the law that says,
do not commit adultery. You violated the law that says, do not commit.
You cannot stop that in your flesh from being aroused. And
the more we know about what the law teaches, the more the law
exposes the reality of the depths of our sinfulness. And what are
we to do, church? We're to run. Not even run. We're to fall into the gospel
of grace. All kind of covetousness was
produced in me. For apart from the law, here's
the contrast, apart from the law, before I really saw the
law, before the law was revealed to me, sin lied dead. I wonder, sin, am I lying? Paul's resume in Philippians
says what? According to the law, blameless!
Now was he bragging? No. According to the level of
the law of the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, the priests, the chief
priests, Sadducees, all those guys, Paul followed it to the
T. Even so much as making phylacteries
and put the Bible in front of him so that he could obey the
law that says, have the Word of God before your eyes at all
times. And he stitched it onto the breastplate of his robe in
a phylactery so that he could always have it near his heart. I think I made that comment Tuesday
in our Bible class. Why don't they follow the prophet
was told to eat the Word and eat it always. That's how silly we are when
we're blind to the reality of the Law. To think that we're
following it is blindness. Because it exposes the truth.
But when we cannot see it, sin is dead. We don't see it at all.
There's no sin around here. John would say anyone who says
he is without sin is a liar. And the truth is not in Him.
What does that mean? They're lost. They're unregenerate. Why? Because the Holy Spirit of God,
in the work of regeneration, shows us our sin. Is it not the
first thing that we see? After we recognize the glory
and the beauty and the perfection of Christ, is not our sin the
very first thing that we're aware of? Oh, look at my life. Look at my heart. Look at my
desire. Listen to my mouth. Look at what
my eyes are seeing. Look at how I'm treating people
in my own consciousness. Look how righteous I thought
I was. Look what a good Christian I've compared myself to others
to be. For apart from the law, sin lies
dead. Verse 9, I was once alive apart from the law. See, that
means that Paul is saying that I lived my life and I was free.
I was doing well with obedience. I was great. I was following
the rules and there was nothing. When I went to bed at night,
I'm like, man, thank you God I'm not like those Gentiles. Thank you God that I'm not like
that guy over there that's always fussing and complaining, not
washing his hands before he eats. Getting excited when he smells
pork from these wicked Babylonians. How wicked he is to want pork! Doesn't come out of the house
with the sandals fastened correctly. Doesn't bind up his legs the
way he's supposed to when he comes to temple. Oh, thank you
God that I'm not like them. Thank you God I'm not like those
Hellenistic tax collectors that are born of Jewish descent, but
then they just follow the world and they make money off of Rome.
Thank God I'm not like him. Oh Lord, I'm so thankful that
You've caused me to walk in Your ways." See what a damning confession
that is? It's terrible. It's condemnation. So before the law was there,
Paul says, I was alive, but when the commandment came, sin came
alive and I died. Why? For the wages of sin is
death. So Paul realized that he was really dead, spiritually.
He was alive religiously, he was alive in his conscience,
but he, oh, when the Lord showed him, he was blind, he could not
see, and then God blinded him so that he could have spiritual
eyes on the road to Damascus, and he could see. You know Paul's
first revelation of his wickedness? The road to Damascus. Boom! There's Jesus, appears to Paul,
resurrected Christ, appearing to Paul, which qualifies His
apostleship. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute? What are you doing? Go and preach
the gospel. You'll suffer more than any man. We generated Him like that. He
didn't convince Paul a thing. Paul didn't contemplate with
us. Jesus is blind to me. I guess I better believe in Him.
I can't see. No, Paul could see. Paul could see and he saw. His
sin, immediately he saw that his zeal for the Jewish way of
faith was a lie, and it was covetousness, and it was pride, and it was
unbelief. He saw that everything that he'd
ever grown into being from the day he was born until he was
bar mitzvahed at 13, and then when he became a Pharisee and
given head over Israel as a ruling class citizen, saw all of that
as garbage. The explicative he uses in the
Greek is very akin to the words we use for the word poop in our
cursing. That's how emphatic Paul is.
I count it all as loss. That's how we say it. Paul saw his zeal as evil and
darkness because he did not love the light. He loved the darkness,
just like Nicodemus was told. I died, he said. The Paul that
lived died. He died because sin came alive. And the wages of sin is death.
The very commandment that promised life, he said. See, this is it. I can't say anything else after
this. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death
to me. Do you see that? Proved to be death to me. So what am I to do? I thought
I was following the Lord, and I thought that doing so, I pleased
Him. And I wasn't even following Him,
so how am I to please Him? The very thing that I thought
I was doing was death. Sin, he says again, verse 11,
seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me. And through it, killed me. So,
the law is holy. And the commandment is holy and
righteous and good. Why? Because it shows us that
which Christ died for that. Purpose. It shows us our guilt. It shows us the need for Christ
and the grace of God. It exposes the reality of what
we call the good news as good news. It shows that there is
no well-meaning person in the world who is following after
God. There is no not one. Not one. the greatest of evangelists who
have preached the false gospel of decisionism for decades, will
stand guilty before God and be condemned by the law that they
did not even know condemned them. But the church, the elect of
God, those for whom Christ died, See the law for what it is. It
is, as Paul would say in Romans 3, as we've already talked some
months ago, it displays the righteousness of God. It displays the goodness
of God. It displays the holiness, the
set-apartness of God. How different He is from everything. How perfect He is in comparison
to everything. It displays it. Paul then says,
the righteousness of God, though it is displayed through the Law
and the Prophets, is manifested. It is brought to the forefront.
It is given and shown and revealed in such a greater way. And that
greater way is in the death of Jesus Christ. Because in the
death of Jesus Christ, God, who is not on trial, though would
be, is just in the forgiving of guilty people because Christ,
through His blood, paid for their sins and is their propitiation. He is the justifier of all who
have faith in Christ Jesus. And Paul has not left that argument
at all. Though he says that the sin brought
death to me, look at what he says in verse 13, and then I
am finished. Did that which is good then bring death to me?
No. He reminds us, the law did not bring death to me. The law
showed me I was dead. Sin brought death to me. Sin brought death to me. And it brought death, produced
death in me through what is good, the law, in order that sin might
be shown to be sin. And through the commandment,
become sinful beyond measure. Because if we didn't know it
was sin, is it still sin? Yes. But now we see it for the
fullness of what it really is, and we recognize that no way
in the world are we ever going to measure up to the commandments
of God. So Christ has, therefore we are
free, beloved, That's what he means. When I say we are free
from the law, what is that old hymn, O Happy Condition? That's
what it means. Not that we dismiss it. We're
not antinomian. And we're certainly not legalist
preaching that. We uphold the law for what it
is, the display of the righteousness of God, the teacher of the evil
of our sin. But the righteousness of God
is displayed more and manifest fully in the forgiveness of the
sinner through the work of Jesus Christ the righteous. Rest in
that. Let's pray. We love You. We thank You for loving us. Father,
I am not sure where everyone is this evening, our brothers
and sisters, but I pray, Lord, that they are well, that everything
is okay with them. Lord, those that we know who
are ill, I pray that you would give them healing. Touch their
bodies to give them strength. Lord, as we leave tonight, help
us to be joyful. Father, I pray for each of us.
Let us pray together as we are here, thinking of each other.
We pray for our marriages. We pray for our children. We
pray for each other's spiritual health. We pray that You would
help us in our bodies not be suspect to disease. But in all
of those things, we pray Your will be done and that our joy
would be in Christ alone despite the answer to these prayers. So Father, we know that those
prayers will be yes. We know that You will give us
joy. We know that You will hold us fast. And we know this because
of Christ and what He's done. In Christ alone, He took our
sin, that we might be called in the righteousness of God.
In His name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Church. Thank
you for listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
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