Turn with me to Romans 7. So
delighted, so thankful to be here with the children of God. To meet with God's people. Romans 7 in verse 15. And I'm going to read from 15
to 21. For that which I do, I allow
not. For what I would, that do I not. But what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would
not, I consent under the law that it is good. Now it is no
more I that do it, but sin dwelleth in me. For I know that in me,
that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For to will is
present with me, But how to perform that which is good, I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now, if I do
that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth
in me. I find then a law, this principle,
that when I would do good, evil is present with me. I want to
ask this question. Why does God allow sin to remain
in us? Why does God allow sin to remain
in us? Paul said here, here's a man
who's a strong believer, a mature believer, an apostle, a mature
believer, and he's describing a warfare that goes on inside
the breast of himself and every child of God. that God saved. You never have a problem with
sin in the flesh until you convert it. Sin never bothered me, never
troubled me until I got converted. And then I saw this awful principle
that when I intended and in my heart would do good, evil gets
right beside me. And the things that I wouldn't
do, I do. And the things that I absolutely
hate, That's what I do. I got the will to do it, but
oh, to find the ability to perform it. And you know that Paul called
himself the chief of sinners, said he is less than the least
of the saints, and then he called himself nothing. And this is
what went on in his life. And as we read the scriptures,
we read what God plainly revealed in the lives of so many of his
people. Start out with Noah. All the
things that God revealed about Noah. Things he revealed about
Abraham. Things he revealed about David
and Simon Peter. All of the apostles and the saints.
And we find that even in the best, best men that the scriptures
describe for us in Lot, we see that there's much evil in the
most mature, the most dedicated, Believers that says in God's
Word, we find that sin is also in much evil as even in them.
And we know these men knew God, we know they knew God, we know
they love God. But their sin stands out as a
great, great black mark in their character and their histories.
And in our own hearts, I should say in my own heart, and in my
own life, I'm painfully aware that I'm seeing through and through.
I'm seeing through and through. You know, one of the marks of
the covenant of grace, Jeremiah says that I would cause them
to loathe themselves for the evil that they did. And we're
just a mass of corruption. And sometimes it gets so great
in our hearts and in our and it almost stinks to us. We just can't hardly bear it
at times. And we certainly, you know, that's
why the Lord says, you know, the spirit indeed is willing,
but the flesh is weak. And we continually blunder and
stumble and fall. But I'll tell you something we
don't do. I'll tell you something we don't do, and Paul didn't
do it either. We do not excuse or justify our sin. We don't
do it. We don't do that, but we condemn
ourselves. We pronounce ourselves guilty
to our own conscience and own heart and condemn ourselves for
it. We don't try to justify anything
we say, do or excuse ourself in any way, but condemn ourself. But why did God plainly reveal
the sins of the fathers of the faith? Why did he do that? And
why does he allow sin to remain in us? He could have recanted.
He could eradicate his sin out of us just like that. He tells
us that we're holy. Why didn't he make us holy perfectly
in every way when we was on this earth? Why does he allow it to
remain in us? This awful, awful evil that Paul
said, it's no more I that do it. It's not I that does this. The I that I'm talking about
He says it's the eye that loves God, the eye that loves Christ,
the eye that needs Christ. But there's something in me,
something dwells in me. There's a nature in me. There's
a property in me. There's a principle in my very
nature. And when God regenerates us,
he creates a new man, but he absolutely does nothing, nothing
for that old man. Absolutely nothing. And let me
tell you why I have, I think I believe I got three or four
things I can say about it. And I'll tell you why I allow
sin to remain in us, to constantly, constantly teach us and remind
us that salvation is entirely of the grace of God. That salvation
is absolutely and entirely and completely of the grace of God.
I love the phrase free grace. And why I love the phrase free
grace is because when you say free grace, You're talking about
that there's no conditions on it. It's absolutely free. There's
no conditions of repentance, no conditions of faith, no conditions
of contrition, no conditions of feeling how sinful you are.
None of those. There's no conditions. Salvation
is never in what a person does. or what a person thinks or what
a person feels, salvation is entirely and completely and entirely
in the doing of the Lord Jesus Christ in his life and the dying
of our Lord Jesus Christ on that cross, bearing the sins that
you and I still bear in our own flesh in this world. Oh, bless
His name. And that's why, you know, if
it's of grace, it cannot possibly be of works. And if it's of works,
it cannot possibly be of grace. Cause if it's gonna be of works,
you gotta go all the way. And if it's gonna be of grace,
you can never mix the two. It's an impossibility. And salvation
is not in any righteousness that you and I have ever attempted
or thought that we have. but our righteousness is only
the one that our Lord Jesus Christ gives to us, gives to us, charges
us with, blesses us with, and causes us to be the only standing
we have in the presence of God is his righteousness and his
alone. And that's why again, Paul says,
I am crucified with Christ, yet not I. Yet I live, yet not I,
but I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself for me. None of salvation, none of salvation
at any time, any time, not at any time, not a moment in time,
is ever dependent on any man's works or any man's feelings.
I was talking with O.B. Williams about this Wednesday
night. We was talking about preaching. And you know, sometimes you feel
like you really, really do good. You know, you feel real good
about it. And then, you know, nobody gets anything out of it.
Other times you feel like you're pulling teeth, you know, trying
to preach. And the feelings don't enter into it, does it, Darwin?
You know, we don't know what God's doing with the message.
But feelings, we always, we like our feelings. And we worry about,
you know, we want to feel. We like to feel. But feelings
is not salvation. Feelings, sometimes I feel, sometimes I feel pretty, Pretty
rotten. Sometimes I feel pretty angry.
Sometimes I feel saved, sometimes I don't. If I go by my feelings, we don't, we don't out at any
time. It don't depend on any works
or feelings, but dependent on God's grace given us in our Lord
Jesus Christ before the world ever began. I tell you, that's
why Paul says, by the grace of God, I am what I am. And you
know the story in Luke chapter seven, when the Lord Jesus went
into Simon, the leper's house to have dinner, a Pharisee. And
the Lord Jesus came in, and as he sat there, reclined there,
this woman came in. And that Pharisee thought within
himself, said, this woman, which was a sinner, came in. And she
sat behind the Lord Jesus Christ. His feet was out here like this,
and she stood behind him. and she had an alabaster box
of ointment, she began to cry. She began to weep, and she got
down at the Savior's feet, and she began to weep over his feet,
and began to cry over his feet, and she broke that alabaster
box of ointment, spit it all over him, and then dried his
feet with the hairs of her head. But old Simon thought if this
man was a prophet, he'd know what manner of woman this is,
that she is a sinner. Well, our Lord Jesus Christ said,
Simon, I want to ask you a question. What is it? So if a man had two
debtors, this man loaned two people some money. He loaned
one of them 500 and loaned the other 50. And yet, frankly, because neither
one of them had anything they could pay with, they was both
penniless, both broke, could not possibly pay. He said, to
who do you suppose would love him most? And old Simon thought
about that a minute. He said, well, I suppose the
fellow that owed him the most. And our Lord Jesus says, thou
hast rightly said, said, I come in your house. You didn't anoint
me with oil. She's anointed me. She said,
you never met me with a kiss, and she did not cease to kiss
my feet. You never washed my feet, you
didn't do anything. But this woman, this woman whose
sins are many, they are forgiven. And that's what grace is, when
you absolutely have nothing. Nothing, nada, never from the
moment you trust Christ till the day you leave this world
have nothing, absolutely nothing before God except his blessed
son to plead. And all this, and look over in
first Peter chapter five in verse 10, just a minute. Let me turn
this around here so I can see what time we're going here. First Peter chapter five. I want
you to look at a few things about God's grace. You know, it's a,
I love grace. I love just the word grace. You
know, in all, we name our churches grace, and we talk about grace,
and we sing about grace, and we pray and thank God for grace,
and we see grace in the Bible. But look what it said here in
verse 10 of 1 Peter chapter five. But the God of all grace, oh,
If he's the God of all grace, I wonder how much grace he's
got. If he's the God of all of it. If he's got all, you know,
grace is all of God, and he's the God of all grace, you reckon
he's got enough for who he wants to give it to? And look what
he goes on to say. You know, the God of all grace,
it's eternal grace, electing grace, effectual grace. And then
look what it said, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by
Christ Jesus. Now here's something about God
and not you preachers and you know this much better than I
do, but everything, God is an eternal God, he inhabits eternity.
And so everything He does for us is on the basis of eternity.
There was no beginning with Him, no ending with Him. And what
He done for His has no beginning and end, and our salvation began
with Him in Christ before the world began. And it'll continue
on after the world ceases to be, and we'll be in glory the
same way we got in Christ is God take us there by His blessed
grace. And so God does everything on
the basis of eternity. And then he says, it's enabling
grace, after he hath called you, after you've suffered a while.
He enables us to suffer. He gives us to suffer. It's given
us on the behalf of Christ to suffer. And I shouldn't be this
way, but I know this, that whatever happens in this world, that God
gives grace sufficient to get through it, to deal with it,
to face it, and do it to his glory, and while people watching
us, after you've suffered a while. And that's all this suffering
we're gonna have. It's just gonna last a while. You know how little
our life is. David said, it's but a shadow.
It's a weaver's shuttle. It's the width of a person's
hand. Life's a vapor. And so whatever
suffering we gonna go through, if we suffered all the days of
our life, it'd still be just a while. And then the all-enlightening
grace, grace for grace, from faith to faith. And then look
what he said, and ensuring grace, ensuring that we'll make it.
After you suffered a while, he gonna make you perfect. He's
gonna establish you, strengthen you, and settle you. to whom
be glory forever and ever. And look what he says down in
verse 13. Excuse me, verse 12, the last part of the verse. I
have written briefly exhorting and testifying you that this
is the true, true grace of God wherein you stand. If he asked
to tell him about the true grace of God, then there must have
been somebody coming with a false grace to say that there's true
grace. And then I tell you something
else back over in Romans. Seven again. Not only does He
allow sin to remain in us, to constantly remind us that salvation's
by grace, grace alone. Salvation's entirely of God and
His blessing, grace alone. And to make us know that in our
flesh dwells no good thing. I know that in me, that is in
my flesh, dwells no good thing. And when He talks about flesh,
He's talking about our old nature. And sin manifests itself in our
own nature, manifests itself in this old wretched body. And
Paul said in Romans 8.12, look at that just a minute, right
across the page there, Romans 8.12. People, you know, talk about
living right and joining the church and turning over a new
leaf. My neighbor, he got cancer and he was fixing to die. He
didn't care about God, didn't care about Christ, didn't care
about anything, but boy, he called the Church of Christ preacher.
And they come and got him off his deathbed and took him and
baptized him and let him join the church. And I went down to
visit him. He told me, he says, well, I made a change, you know.
He said, I've been meaning to do it for years and years, but
I finally did it. I made a change. I made a change.
So he is trusting in his flesh. But look what he says there in
verse 12. Therefore brethren we are debtors not to the flesh
What do we owe our flesh in this business of salvation? What has
our flesh ever had to do with our salvation? What is our flesh
ever contributed to? to our side, but what has flesh
ever done to honor God? What has flesh ever done to bring
glory to God? What has flesh ever done to make
you feel like you've accomplished anything? What has flesh ever
contributed to anything right, good, or perfect about us in
any way? He said, are we debtors to the
flesh? What do we owe this flesh? Paul said, we're debtors not
to the flesh to live after the flesh. Oh no. No, no, because
in our flesh dwells no good thing. And I'll tell you this about
this rotten nature of ours, is that there's the potential in
this old rotten nature of ours for any evil that you can imagine. There's that potential in us
to do anything, any evil or any sin. Because all of our righteousnesses
are as a filthy rag. There's a, Paul said it this
way, he says, the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the other,
and I cannot do the things that I would. Because of this flesh,
I cannot be as spiritual. I cannot preach as good. I cannot
pray as good. I cannot study. I cannot, you
know, because of this flesh, I cannot be as spiritual as I
wanna be. And yet, because of this, the
Spirit in me, that was against the flesh, I cannot be as fleshly
as I would be and could be if it wasn't for the Spirit of God
dwelling in me. And they're just butting heads
all the time. It's like two goats, you boom, boom, boom, boom. Oh,
one of these days, God's gonna put to death one of them forever
and ever. Oh, I'll be glad when that's
done. Let me ask you something. When he says, yet not I, but
sin remained the sin that remains in me. Have any of y'all ever played the
hypocrite in any way? You ever had any hypocrisies? He read that tonight, you know,
they said these neighbors of ours, you know, they speak peace
to us and yet they got mischief in their hearts. Oh, he's the
best neighbor, good neighbor, oh, I love him, I love him, I
think he's the greatest. And then you get away from it and
say, oh boy, that poor old fellow there, you know what? We say
one thing with the mouth and the heart's got someplace else.
And said, oh, all the hypocrisies we've manifested, all the evil
and hard thoughts that we've had of others. Have you ever
had an evil and a hard thought of somebody? Your mind gets hard
toward them, you think hard about them. And oh, listen, if you
ever felt good about yourself and proud of yourself and thoughts
that you've had of yourself and all that you've done and all
you've accomplished, and if nobody else will say nothing good about
you, you'll say it yourself. Don't we do it, don't we do it,
Don? If nobody else will brag on us, we'll brag on ourselves
in our mind anyway. And that's just that. Boy, for
us to ever think, it's all right for somebody else to call you
good, you know, good man, good friend, good neighbor, good brother,
good husband, good wife, good child. Somebody else for them
to do it, but for us to ever do it for ourselves, to think
it even. And when you, and how, what,
You know, when you should have shown love and kindness to somebody
and yet you were so cold and indifferent and ignored them
in their troubles and their heartaches and their sorrows. And that's
why Paul says, you know, we're of the circumcision which worships
God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence
in this flesh. And Paul says the flesh is weak.
Boy, you know what we're going to not worry with anymore? when
He says, as old, as old, as old top lady said, when these eye
strings close in death. And I'll tell you something else
why He allows sins to remain in us, not only teach us the
grace of God and to teach us, you know, that this
flesh is weak and no confidence in the flesh and there's no good
thing in it. And He leaves it in us to teach
us to be patient, to be kind, to be understanding, with our
brethren, with our brethren. And I'll tell you something,
if you never hear anything else I've got to say tonight, you
listen to this right here. We ought never conclude that
a man has no grace because he has sin, or you saw him commit
a sin. If we did, concluded that a man
didn't have grace because he sinned, or we saw him sin, We'd
have to conclude that you and I didn't have any grace either
because of the sins that we've committed. Is that not right? And that's what it means. God
allows sin to remain in us so we can see. You that are spiritual,
if you see a brother overtaken in a fall, you that are spiritual,
go to him. Say, oh, bless you, brother.
I'm praying for you. I know you're having a struggle.
I know you're having a hard time. And I love you and I'm praying
for you. And people, that's why these
Armenians, that's why they think that you can fall for grace when
you commit a sin. You know, when they quit doing
some things, you know, and join the church and quit doing some
things that they do. And if they pick up any one of
those things that they quit, they automatically assume that
they fell from grace and they just will quit. But you're looking at a man that's
a sinner from the top of his head to the sole of his foot,
inside and outside. And I ain't fixing to quit. No,
no, I ain't got no place to go but to Christ. Lead me to that
rock that's higher than I. Oh, let me hide under your wing,
the shadow of your wing. Oh my, who hasn't, who hasn't
acted uncharacteristic of grace? Who hasn't? The average preacher,
if he knew Noah, and what Noah did, he said, there's no way
in the world a man could have been saved who got drunk and
laid naked, passed out in his tent. That man's not saved. And saw David, you know, sneaking
past Sheba in the back door. Oh, David, oh, there's no way
in the world that man could know God. And if you was standing
around that fire and you heard Simon Peter go to, Cussing and
and crying when that man that woman said, you know doubt one
of him He said oh he went to cussing and carrying on you'd
have said there ain't no way in the world that fellow there
knows the Lord And you know what God said about Noah, you know
what his name means grace comforter Do you know what he said about
David? He said he's a man after his own heart You know what he
said about Simon Peter He said, Simon Peter, I love
you. Do you love me? You know I do, Lord. For you
go and you feed my sheep. I know you fell flat on your
face and I told you you was gonna do it before you did it. But
you go feed my sheep. That's all I want you to do,
just feed my sheep. Forget that back yonder, go feed my sheep.
And I tell you what, if anybody saw you at any given time, when
nobody ain't looking at you, there's no telling what in the
world that God sees that no, you think nobody else does. And
there's not one of us at one time or another and several times
in our lives that we acted so uncharacteristic of the grace
of God. I know I have. And the fourth
thing is this, to remind us that when we do sin, oh, bless his
name, when we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous. I love that. He said, if any
man sin, then say, if any man's possible for him to sin, that
he might sin. He said, if any man sin, we've
got an advocate, we got a lawyer, we got somebody to pick up our
case. And this is his title, Jesus Christ the righteous. You preached on that at our conference
two years ago. And I'll tell you this, when
we sin, this is, when we sin, we don't lose our salvation.
We aren't cast out of God's family. Our Lord said, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me, I will,
I will, and no wise ever cast him out. Do you look, if he was
gonna cast anybody out, he would have cast out so many of his
children, but he would have cast you and me out years ago from
the very beginning. But oh no, there's no wise, there's
nothing they can say, nothing they can do, no way they can
act, no fall they can endure, no stumble that they have, no
thought goes through their mind, no emotion in their heart, nothing
that happens in their lives, past, present, or future, will
cause me to cast them away. I will not do it. I will not
do it. And oh, we may lose the peace
and joy of our salvation, but I'll tell you what, that God
made a covenant with his blessed son, and that covenant, beloved,
is that covenant is God said, I'll give you a people. You shed
your blood for those people, you die for those people, you
endure those people's sin and guilt and shame, and I will bring
them to you, and I'll never, ever let them get away. Oh, listen. And when our Lord
Jesus, here's what happens. We go to the Lord and we start
pleading, you know. And we start admitting. And I'll
tell you this something about me. I don't know about you all,
but I learned a long time ago not to make no promises that
I ain't gonna do. I'm not making any promises.
I learned a long time ago to quit promising myself, God, or
anybody else that I wasn't gonna do that anymore. Just as sure
as I make a promise, to myself now, I'm not talking
about, but our Lord Jesus, he pleads for us. When we sin and
when we fall and when we're in such a miserable state of mind,
and you know, let me say this, do you know you don't have to
leave your house? You don't have to leave the church house. You can be washing dishes, mowing
your yard, or sitting with a Bible in your lap, or sitting in a
service like this here, and commit enough sin to damn your soul
for eternity, and yet God in his sovereign mercy, Christ pleads
for you. Now ain't that right? Don't have to lift your hand
to commit a sin. Don't have to get up and go someplace.
Just lay back in your easy chair. Sit down in the church building,
and see who comes in and sits down beside you. See how your
mind wonders here and your mind wonders there. That's what he's
talking about. It's not I, but sin that dwelleth
in me. It's in our heart to come here
and be committed to this service and to the preaching of the gospel
and delight in it from all with our being. But yet we have this
old flesh to deal with. And yet our Lord Jesus pleads
for us. He pleads his wounds. Oh, I let
him go. Here's the wound. Here's the
proof that I paid for him. He pleads his person. I'm Jesus
Christ the righteous. He pleads his work. I died for
him. I shed my blood for him. Their
righteousness is mine. I gave it to them. They don't
have a righteousness of their own. That's my righteousness
that I gave them. It's my blood that cleansed them from the sin.
And he don't even mention us. He mentions what He did for us. And remember that our works or
anything that we think we do do not commend us to God. And
neither can our sins separate us from us. God's always, always
viewed us only in Christ. And let me give you the fifth
thing. Why does God allow sin to remain in us? The fifth reason's this. to wean
us from this world, to wean us out of this old world. You know
what's in this world? The lust of the flesh, the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life. People used to raise their families
in a little old four or five room house with one bathroom.
And now you don't have four or five, six kids. Slept on pallets
and everything else. And nowadays, you know, they
have one kid and they'll build a house of 4,500 square foot
with no kids at all. Lust of the eyes, you know, I
want everybody to see what I got. That's what lust of the eyes
is. It's not, you know, I want everybody to see me. It's I want
them to see what I've got, what I've accomplished. I want everybody's
eyes to think, oh, man, ain't that something? And pride of life, oh, look at
all my accomplishments. But oh, for God to wean us from
this world. Do you ever want out of it? Do
you ever just want to say, oh, you know, it's like taking your
clothes off. Do you ever feel like, you know,
I'd just like to rip this old flesh off and go on being the
Lord? Just leave here? Just be done with it? But oh,
to wean us from this world, to wean us from our selfishness,
to wean us from our self-love, our covetousness, materialism,
to make us want out of this world, to make us want the joy and peace
and believing. Oh, and I tell you, He to wean
us off of this world and He lives this sin to remain in us to make
us desire Christ, Christ our Lord and His salvation and His
presence more than anything else on this earth. God can take anything
He wants away from me. Anything He wants. He can take
my home, my children, my wife. He can take anything. Take my health. But I have one
thing I don't want to lose. I don't want to lose my relationship
with the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't want to lose that. I want to know Him. I want to
win Him. I want to be found in Him. And that's why we press
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus. And you know, about the time
we get winged, it'll be time to go home. You know, John said,
the Lord Jesus says, behold, I come quickly. You know what
John said? Come on. Come on, come on. Behold, I come
quick. Come on, Lord Jesus, come on.
It won't be as long as it has been, will it? And I tell you,
if God would have made us absolutely without any sin in this flesh,
we'd have been... But He didn't make us that way.
Made us absolutely and utterly dependent on Him for everything
in this world. And we give Him thanks for everything
that happens in this world. Because it's got to be good.
because it comes from Him. Amen? Amen. The Lord bless you. Thank you for listening so well.