Let us all then turn to God's
word in the Book of Romans, chapter 7, beginning reading with verse
12, on to the end of the chapter. Wherefore, the law is holy, and
the commandment holy, and just and good. Was that thing which
is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin that it might
appear sin, working death in me by that which is good, that
sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. For
we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold unto sin. For that which I do, I allow
not. For what I would, that I do not. But what I hate, that do
I. I think every Christian finds
that experience in his life, and Paul was no exception. If
then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that
it is good. Now then it is no more I that
do it, but sin that 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 doeth, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find
then of all that when I would do good, evil is present with
me. for I delight in the law of God
after the inward man. But I see another law in my members
warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. So then with the mind I myself
serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. May the Lord bless the reading
of his holy word to every heart. Now the 8th chapter of Paul's
letter to the Romans, and our most familiar text, the
28th verse of that 8th chapter, where the Apostle said, And we
know that all things work together for good to them that love God,
to them who are the called according to his purpose. And I announced
to begin with in my first message on this text what evidently the
Lord used to lead me to preach on it at this particular time. But I had no idea that I would
bring several messages upon it. I thought one or possibly two
messages on Romans 8.28 would be sufficient. But we've been
branching out. In my first message, you remember,
we spoke about the great privilege of the child of God, that all
things work together for his good, and the certainty of that
privilege. We know that all things work
together for good. And then, secondly, all things
that are good work together for the good of the child of God,
such as the attributes of God, his power, his wisdom, his mercy,
grace, justice, and all of those. plus all the other good things
that we were able to mention in that message. And then we
came to speak upon the bad things, taking up these. And here we
are majoring, we are enlarging upon this particular side of
the question, that the bad things, we know that all the good things
work together to the children of God, but there seems to be
some question about the bad things. However, we were able to bring
a message on a number of bad things that do work together
for the children of God, such as affliction. We found that
God works that good for the people of God, something that we often
think of as real bad and none of us pray for or actually desire. And then a message on temptation,
whether One believes it or not, even the temptations that come
to a child of God are for his good. And then that third message
was on those times of withdrawal when the Lord departs from a
Christian, not entirely, for God never forsakes his people
entirely. There are those withdrawals in
the sense that God withdraws the manifestation of his presence,
when the Christian feels there's a cloud between the Lord and
himself. But we found that even those
withdrawals of God from the Christian are for his good. Now, at this
time, I want to speak about the worst thing that anybody in the
world or in heaven, or as far as that's concerned, in hell,
could imagine to be working together for the good of the people of
God. And that thing is sin. Sin. Would you believe that? That even sin, while the good
things and the bad things such as affliction and temptation,
and God's hiding his face at times from the Christian, that
while those things work together for good, that we can put into
this category of all things working together for the good of the
people of God, even sin itself. Now, this may challenge your
faith, because sin in its nature is a damnable thing, as you well
know. It's a despicable thing in its
own nature. But despite this, though sin
itself is such a despicable and filthy thing, yet we can say
this by the Word of God, that sin does work good for the saints
of God. And the reason it does is not
because of any merit or any goodness whatever in sin, but because
of the infinite wisdom and power of our God who is able to take
sin and bring good out of it, that this thing that we might
liken to a lion in the lives of a Christian, God is able to
bring honey out of that and make it sweet to the child of God.
Therefore, I want you to observe a number of things under this
heading. And first of all, that the sins
of men are made to work good to the believer in Christ. Now, you know that we live in
a sinful world. We live in a world of sinners,
sinful men, sinful creatures. And we ourselves are sinners,
even after we're saved. Sin is a big question. We were
talking about it before the service this morning. it's most difficult
to find a church or a pastor or an evangelist that's really
actually preaching about sin and telling sinners that they
are the kind of sinners that God in his Word says they are. Now, there's some mention of
sin that men sort of glide over, but when you get right down to
the Bible teaching, of the root of sin and the fruit of sin. You don't hear many preachers
talking about that. And someone asked me if I read
about this preacher that has started a big affair, a great
worship church meeting, and he's getting crowds and throngs to
come to hear him. And he says his philosophy is
not to tell men that they're sinners. He says the Bible does
not say that they're sinners. But he's telling sinners, or
he's telling men in his own particular congregation, that they're just
nice folks and they're lovely people. And on that basis to
come to Jesus. Of course he gets a big crowd
like that. You know better than that, dear friends, you know
that men are sinners. And they're sinners not because
they sin. They are not sinners because
just simply they do wrong or break and violate the law of
God Almighty, but they are sinners by birth. They are sinners by
nature, and therefore they bring forth the fruit of sin, the manifestation
of sin in their lives because of the root nature, their sinful
corruption. indwelling, as Paul mentioned
in that 7th chapter, which we read together. When you talk
about sin, there are a number of definitions for it. There
is that root of sin, the nature, the old man, the corruption,
that indwelling corruption that has been even left in the child
of God but is in its entirety in an unsaved man. But when you
come to sins themselves, God defines that, that all unrighteousness
is Unbelief is sin. Unbelief is the sin that will
damn you to hell and condemn you. The thought of foolishness
is sin. The transgression of the law
is sin. Whatever is not of faith is sin. And those the Bible makes clear
are sins, and they are particular sins that the Word of God brings
out in a long list. We need to get the differentiation
between sin in its nature, in its root, and sin in its fruit. Because the reason we sin, dear
friends, is because we have a sin nature. And that's why education
today has missed the mark. That's why all has gone awry
in the world and in the country, because the educators of today
have ruled out this business, this truth of sin in the nature. They can't understand why boys
and girls sin, why they violate laws, why they break all commandments,
why there's such great immorality and violence in the world. They
never can seem to conceive the truth that's taught in God's
word, that men are born into this world with a sinful nature. that they are corrupt to begin
with, and that what is coming out is already in the heart and
in the nature. Now, it is indeed a trial of
faith for Christians to live in a sinful world like we live
in. And sometimes the people of God
wish that they could just get away from all the sinners in
the world and form a colony of just Christians living holy lives
and get off to themselves. Well, that would be wonderful,
wouldn't it? Oh, yes, that would be a great fellowship among the
people of God. But that isn't the way of God
for us at the present time. This is going to be later. We
do have this sweet fellowship with the people of God at times. But God has set us in the midst
of a crooked world, a wicked generation, sinners like ourselves,
by nature and by practice and by choice and love. And though
God has given us his righteousness and made us a holy people in
justification and in sanctification and regeneration, and caused
us to love him, yet he set us right down. in the midst, as
it seems, where Satan's throne is. And we're often made to cry
out like David who said there, it was the 119th Psalm, he said,
Woe is me for I dwell in Meshach. He said, Woe is me for I dwell
in the tents of Kedah. That is among wicked persons,
like Lot dwelling in Sodom. There, that justified man, that
Christian man dwelling in that city for 20 years, the word of
God says that righteous man was vexed every day with the ungodly
deeds of the wicked. Well, all right, it is God's
way then that he puts Christians in this world among the wicked. And we cannot get away from them,
and in a sense we are not to get away from them. We mustn't
try to isolate ourselves and to move completely away from
sinners, from wicked people. We are there for a purpose. We
are in the world to shine as lights and to be the salt of
the earth, as our Lord said. Paul said to get away from wicked
people, you have to go out of the world. You rub elbows with
them every day. You're not to take up with their
wicked deeds. and you to be separate in that sense. So then the sins
of men are made to work together for the good of believers in
this sense that first of all you are dwelling in the midst
of them and though God has made you different from them in a
great way yet you must dwell with them for your good and God
works that for good. And he does that In this way,
he works our dwelling among the wicked of this world, their very
sins to be for our good, in that he makes Christians mourn over
the sins of the wicked. Isn't it true, dear friends,
that just as soon as you come in contact with unbelievers,
with those who are in rebellion against God and against his commandments,
that the tears begin to flow? The grief rises inside at the
breakers of the law of God, at those who have no real consciousness
in deliberately attempting to keep God's holy commandments,
but break them every day and every hour of the day. So it's
a childlike faith. that grieves over injuries done
to his father. Our father is injured every day
by the wickedness of men here in this world who care nothing
about him. But that childlike heart and
faith grieves over those in injuries. And just as our Lord Jesus Christ
would grieve for the hearts of wicked men, Even religious people,
so the child of God's heart, grieves in the same way. That's because he's Christ-like.
So we should weep when the glory of God suffers in this world.
God says he puts our tears in a bottle, tears of the shed in
that regard. Now, that the sins of men produce
mourning in the children of God, that's for their good. And in
the next place, we find, too, that the sins of the wicked cause
the children of God to pray. You not only grieve about these
sins of wicked men, all about you, but it starts you to praying,
does it not? When you begin to behold wickedness
in every place, You say, my Lord, we live in a world that's in
rebellion against God. It really starts you to pray
and crying to God in your prayers that God will check sin and that
God will, what sin he allows the wicked to exercise and express,
that he will turn that to his own glory. So in that sense,
it's made good for the children of God, not only that they mourn
over the sins of others, but they pray about those sins too.
And then again, the sins of others increase the love in the child
of God for the grace of God. Do you know about this? Sins
increase our love for grace. You can see the grace of God
more clearly, can you not? When you have the dark, black
background of sin, the wickedness of man, we were just mentioning
a moment ago in our meeting that God's grace, God's justice in
condemning man is wonderful, indeed it is, and he will punish
sin. But the thing that I marvel at,
brethren, perhaps more than anything else, is the restraining, that
God restrains his wrath. that God allows wickedness to
continue and he doesn't just grind men to powder all of a
sudden and send them to hell. And so it makes us admire the
grace of God that he's exercised toward us in granting us forgiveness
and peace and salvation in him. I notice when I go to a jewelry
store I look in sometimes at the counter that you know if
they have a diamond display They never have those diamonds lying
on a white cloth or a white sheet of paper. Those diamonds are
always placed on a black piece of velvet, I believe, something
like that. Why so? Well, that diamond looks
more beautiful, more brilliant, doesn't it? Or because of that
black, dark background. Well, isn't it true that the
grace of God manifested in the children of God looks more beautiful? and more reflects the brilliance
of God, the image of Christ, against the dark background of
wickedness and rebellion in this world. So in that sense, it just
works for the good of the people of God, in that they come to
see the grace of God clearer, and they come to love the grace
of God more clearly. So when you see the pride of
men Everywhere it makes you love the grace of humility more, does
it not? And when you see the malice and
hatred of men, it makes you fall in love and admire love more
and charity more. When you see drunkenness on every
hand, it makes you love sobriety more and admire that. And so
the blackness of sin points up and actually brings in a clearer
light the holiness of our God and of his dear people. Now,
also we may say this, that sin actually works together for the
good of the children of God in that it moves the child of God
to an opposition to a sin. When the child of God views sin
in the wicked, does it not have a tendency not only to make him
mourn over that to pray about that, to love the grace of God
more, but also moves him to oppose sin in a greater way. You read
in Psalm 119, verse 26, David said, The wicked have made void
thy law, therefore I love thy commandments. See that? The more
the wicked hate the law of God and rebel against the God of
heaven and his commandments, the more it moves the child of
God to love God's commandments and to love the God who gave
those commandments. That's what David said. He said
in that psalm that it made him love the commandments of God
more. And so it will work where there's
grace. And then, continuing our thought
here, sin works together for good to the people of God in
that they make us desire to work out more and more
our own salvation. The Word of God said, work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling. How do you get
that fear and trembling? You're saved, you say. Is it
so that you just get careless and you don't care? There's wickedness
all around? You say, well, they're going
to hell. They're wicked. I care nothing about that. It
makes you fear and tremble, doesn't it, when you see wicked men plunging
into sin? They take such pains. They study
to work for hell and for Satan and sin. And when you see wicked
men doing that, Does it move the child of God to work more
for heaven? And you say to yourself, well,
if men can be so strong in sin and so zealous for wickedness,
should I not, who am a child of God, who is inclined to love
God, be stronger in righteousness and more zealous for the Lord
Jesus Christ? Do the wicked have a better master
than I have? Is Satan a better master to them
than Jesus Christ is to us? You know better. So we find there is real joy
and duty in the keeping of the commandments of God, and in virtue,
there is pleasantness. And while men are never weary
of sinning, a child of God ought never to be weary of living right
and praying to God and calling upon him. And then in the sixth
place, sin works together for the children of God for their
good, because the sins of others are really mirrors in which we
see our own hearts. Oh, beloved, this fellow that's
got this church won't tell anybody about being a sinner. just for
the love of a crowd. Great and God have mercy upon
him, dear friends. And on us, if we have any such
tendency to get a crowd or would compromise the word of Almighty
God in relation to sin and telling people what kind of sinners God
says they are, I'd rather close the doors of this house and say,
forget it. But the sins of others are actually
reflections. and the image of our own hearts,
are they not? But when others, we see them
sin, we see rebellious people, wicked sinners, what do we say? We say, look, that's a picture
of my own heart, a picture of myself. Because what others do
outwardly, I know the very seeds of what they are performing and
doing are in me. And if it were not for the mercy
and grace of God and his restraining hand, I'd be doing just as bad
as they're doing. We have the root of bitterness
in us. We have that indwelling sin in us. Three times in just
a short space, beginning with verse 17 of that 7th chapter,
the Apostle says, "...sin that dwelleth in me." In the 18th
verse, "...I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth
no good thing." Can you say that? I know that! And then in verse 20, "...sin
that dwelleth in me." So you don't grow in holiness by denying
what the Word of God says about you, dear friends. That's a holy
man talking there. Some people read that and say,
well, Paul must have been an unholy person. No, sir. When
you find language like that, you find a holy person, and only
a holy man. One who has the grace of God
in him making him holy will ever admit that. So then, we've got that root
in us, and we bear just as much hellish fruit as anybody if it
were not for the grace of God. restraining us, or the grace
of God changing us. Oh, thank God for that. So it
works together then. Yes, I see a mirror of my heart
in every sinner. Do you believe that? Our Lord said in the 15th of
Matthew, What verse is that in Matthew's
gospel, chapter 15? He said, in verse 18, he said, but those things which
proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart. The heart
is the inner man, the real self, the fountain of the person. and they defile the man. For he says in verse 19, out
of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile
a man, and they are in the heart. Christ says there, we need to
teach our boys and girls that. Don't be afraid to tell them
really what they are, because if you don't, You'll just make
a hypocrite out of it, make a Pharisee out of it. Our Lord doesn't want
a church full of Pharisees. He wants sinners saved by the
grace of God. People who live holy lives, though
they are sinners, saved by the grace of God. So, beloved, as
terrible as it may seem, we can see the blackest, most hellish
sin in the world and say, that person, that sinner is a mirror
of my own filthy heart. unrestrained by the grace of
God or unchanged. And then in the seventh place,
the sins of other people are means by which God's people are
made more thankful. And so therefore work together
for our good. Anything that will make you and
I more thankful to God is good for us, is it not? And if the
sins of others were not good for the people of God, God would
not permit those sins to take place. So what takes place when
you view these awful sins in the world, dear friends, in other
people I'm talking about? Well, it makes you think how
good God is to you, does it not? They say there's going to be,
or there may be, they do not say definitely, there's going
to be a flu epidemic of the swine type. Maybe it will come, or
maybe it won't. Well, it's a dreaded thing. But
suppose it does come, and it just sweeps a lot of people away
and infects them, taking them away, and misses you. Wouldn't it make you more thankful
as you viewed others taken by that plague, and you yourself
are allowed to escape? No, dear friends, when you see
sinners going to hell just as hard as they can run, and plunging
into sin, does it not make you thankful to God that you are
not infected with that plague by the mercy and grace of God,
that God has allowed you to escape? And why has he done it? Not because
you are better than anybody else. There is no merit whatever in
you that made God propitious toward you. But God willed to
do that. He determined to be gracious
to us. Therefore, we bow before God and say, Lord, that we can
use even the sins of others to make us more thankful to God
that we are restrained and saved from those sins and changed to
hate them and to love righteousness. Oh, beloved, somebody wrote a
hymn or a gospel of peace, Why Me, Lord. I think of that very
often. Why me? Oh, beloved, I think
of so many good folks that God passed by and picked up this
poor sinner and saved him by His grace. And why shouldn't
I be thankful to God? I might have been left to run
the same rod of others and perish in hell forever. Should I not
be thankful? Should I be ashamed to praise
Him before anybody in this godless world? God helped me not to be. All right. How much this ought
to make us to adore the grace of God. If you are restrained
from sin. People talking to me in grief
about their own son here just recently. He got in bad, looked
like he'd go from one bad thing to the other. Grieved their hearts. Wanted to know if there was anything
in that they could be thankful for. And I said, Yes, you can
be thankful to God. This boy hadn't gone any deeper
in crime and sin than he's gone, can't you? Well, they said, Amen.
Because unless God restrains him, I'll tell you this, he'll
go deeper. You pray for him and be thankful to God. Oh, God's
free grace is so wonderful. Let's not think lightly of sin,
but let's thank God if he's restrained us and kept us from going the
way of wicked men. And then in the next place, these
very sins of others are means by which the Christian is made
better, made better. How is that? How can we become
gainers by the sins of other people? Well, by just what we've
been talking about. The more wicked, the more the
wicked give themselves to sin, the more the godly give themselves
to prayer, to mourning about sin, to seeing their own hearts,
the mirror of their own inward selves, and the thankfulness
to God that God has been merciful to us and saved us from this
plague. David said when he saw the wicked
in rebellion against God, he said, I give myself to prayer. That's where we should go, and
do go by the grace of God. Let's take another thing here,
and that is that sins work together for the people of God in this,
that they afford a Christian an occasion, a moral occasion,
to do good. Now, think about this for just
a moment. God left us here in a sinful
world. He didn't just save us and take us right on up to heaven.
He could have done that. He does some people that way,
but here we live in a wicked world. And suppose that we did
not have a wicked world, that all was right about us. What
would there be left for service? Well, there would be some occasion
for service if all were right in this world. But look how much
more service is occasioned to a child of God by the very wickedness
of sin in the world. You see this, that God uses Christians
as instruments to convert sinners, the wicked, does he not? God
uses Christians as lights in the world and as salt in the
world. He uses their example and their
godliness, their testimony, to bring the elect sinners to the
saving grace of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Their
advice, as well as their example and their witness So God said
we are to be lights to shine in the darkness of this world.
So in that sense we can thank God for the sinfulness in that
we have a greater occasion to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. So much for that then, that the
sins of others work together for our good. Ever thought about
that? And then in the second place
here, We can see how the knowledge of our own sinfulness, the awareness
of our own sinfulness, dear friends, will make us or will be made
to work together for our good. Let's see how that will be. We
said there is no good in sin itself. There is no merit, there
is no righteousness, whatever. Sin is deadly. Sin is damning. whatever kind of sin it may be.
And sin brings death, and sin brings the wrath of God. But
in God's power and his wisdom, God brings and makes sin in its
working out to the good of the saints of God. I really thought
of Augustine, as he's called by some people. He said this,
and I made mention of it a while ago in another way, Augustine
said this, that God would not permit sin if he couldn't bring
good out of it. I think we could put everything
in the world in that, all the tragic things and terrible things
that happen. God Almighty would not permit
those things if he could not bring good out of them. How can
he do that? My dear friends, if God Almighty
could bring the greatest blessing, that is, the blessing of the
salvation of sinners out of the greatest crime, the crucifixion
of the Son of God, then He can take every other sin in the whole
world, all sins which are lesser than that capital crime, and
bring good out of them too. So I agree with Augustine on
that. God permits sin because God will and can. and is able
to bring good out of it. Well, let's look at some things
about sin in ourselves, or the knowledge of sin in ourselves.
I hope you, like Paul, that the grace of God is in you enough
that you can say with Paul in verse 18 in that 7th chapter,
I know that in me, that is in my flesh, He's not talking about
the body here, the blood and bones and so forth. He's talking
about the carnal nature. That's flesh there, sharks. It's
the carnal nature, the indwelling sin and corruption in the believer. that is in my flesh, in my very
nature dwelleth no good thing." And then he talks about that
sin dwelling in him. Well, how then does sin in us,
or the knowledge of it in us, work together for the good of
the children of God? First, for this reason, The awareness
of sin in a believer makes life a burden to that believer, so
that sometimes even a believer becomes, because of the awareness
of sin in him, weary of life itself. In fact, a Christian
just told me the other day, oh, he said, sometimes I feel so
condemned I wish I were dead. I said, well, thank God for that. He was surprised. Well, I said,
Brother, that's in your favor. Oh, he says, is it? He said,
I get miserable. Yes, bless God, I wish I could
find more people getting miserable about seeing their awareness
in themselves. And the brother was confident
and helped in that, and made strong in the faith by pointing
out his own experience. So, you take the case of the
apostle Paul, he said, I know there's no good thing in my nature,
in my flesh. And when you come and look at
Paul's writings and how he regarded affliction and how he regarded
sin, it's two different things. In affliction and tribulation,
he said, I rejoice! But my God, when he became aware
of his sinful nature, what did he do? There was no joy in that!
He said, O wretched man! O wretched man that I am! Verse
24. who shall deliver me from the
body of this death." That was Paul's attitude toward the sin
nature, the knowledge of sin in himself. Do you afflict and
persecute Paul and tribulate him? Brother, he said, I rejoice
in that. What about Paul when you look inside and you see how
wicked your heart is, how carnal? full of sin, your nature by birth
is," or he said, I can't rejoice in that, is that I weep, I cry,
I feel wretched and miserable, and I cry out, who shall deliver
me from this body of death? So this sense of sin within us
works for our good. It makes us weary. of life itself. And in the next place, this indwelling
sin causes the believer to value Christ more. You notice that
here in Paul's writing, who shall deliver me from the body of this
dead? While he answers that question, I thank God through Jesus Christ,
our Lord. He is the only one who can deliver
me. And isn't it true You don't want a doctor coming to your
house and seeing you unless you feel sick, do you? But boy, when
you get real sick and a doctor comes to your house, you welcome
him, do you not? So when we feel our corruption,
when we know our sinfulness, Christ is more welcome. You love
to talk about him. You love to welcome him! People
who are not aware of their sinful natures and hearts, dear friends,
and corruption, Listen to them talk. My God, they're talking
about everything else in the world, but not the Lord Jesus
Christ. He just answered them. Well,
he saved me, that's all right. Parade their own righteousness?
No. The child of God knows that he is sick unto death over his
own corruption, his own wicked heart when he comes to know the
truth of the matter. And therefore he cries out with
Paul, I need Christ. I need him every day, I need
him every hour. He's the only one who can deliver
me. I thank God through Christ Jesus,
our Lord." Now, another thing, too, that is that the sense of
sin, this knowledge of sin within a child of God, gives him an
occasion for exercising some important duties. What are they? Well, first of all, it starts
him in this grace of self-searching. The moment a believer becomes
aware of his sinfulness, he begins to take the lamp of God's Word,
the light of God's Word, to search his own heart, doesn't he? That's
right. He desires to know what's the
matter, what's wrong with him. You're not like this crowd, Professor,
today. You start talking about sin and get into searching. They
say, look, don't bother me. Talk to some sinners out there.
There's some drunkards and crooks out there. Go and talk to them.
No, sir. The Word of God talking to a
believer. And when God tells us of our sins, the believer
cries out, search me, O God. Don't hold anything back. Tell
me the worst thing about myself. I want to know my corruptions,
I want to know my sins, so that I can deal with my sins lest
they deal with me. Make me to know my transgressions,
cried Job, away then with this self-flattery, this false conception
of our own conditions. good to find out our sins, that
we may confess them and get them right before God. And then, not
only does the knowledge of sin in a believer make him exercise
that grace of searching his heart to see what is really wrong,
to know it, but that inherent sin, that indwelling corruption,
enables the saint to abase himself. Now watch this. It enables the
sinner to humble himself, to abase himself. A proud sinner
is one, dear friends, who just doesn't know what kind of a sinner
he is. When the Word of God, dear friends,
is applied to our hearts and we know that sin is left in the
saint, what does it do? It doesn't make him proud, it
makes him humble. Deuteronomy 32, verse 5, speaks of the spot
of God's children. And God's children do have a
spot. they are still unrighteous in
a great sense, especially by nature. And when he comes to
know that, though he may be lifted up in pride when he comes back
to the knowledge of that, it's like a pin to prick that balloon
of pride and humble him, like God sent a devil to Paul to do
that. Paul was guilty of the sin of
pride, that great servant of God, but when he was lifted up,
the devil came in and knocked him flat. Our sins occasion this exercise
of the grace of God to humble us, to abase ourselves, to have
low thoughts of ourselves. We don't talk about our goodness
once we know really ourselves, brethren. And anybody else talking
about our goodness, we put our hands over their mouths and say,
look, there's only one good. We read of old Holy Bradford,
a servant of God, a righteous man. He said, I am a painted
hypocrite. That's what he said about himself.
And then Hooper said this, Lord, I am hell and thou art heaven. Both of these were godly men.
Job, the godly man. God said he was a perfect man.
Job said, behold, I am vile. Isaiah said, I am a man of unclean
lips. Holy Paul said, I'm chief of
sinners. That's the talk of godly, holy,
righteous people, dear friends. So watch it. Now, this knowledge
of sin makes a saint then to examine himself, to abase himself,
to judge himself, to confess his sins. And it starts a battle
within him. Self-combat. Do you have that?
Paul has it there in that 7th of Romans, which we read as the
basis of our message, and taking our point of departure from Romans
8.28, Paul has a conflict! And you remember in Galatians
5, and I believe verse 17, he said, "...the flesh lusteth against
the Spirit, and the Spirit lusteth against the flesh." There's a
warfare. So sin cannot find peace in the
possession of a believer. He may go into sin, in sinning
against God, but he can't find any peace in it. It makes him
miserable. He starts a warfare, and a warfare
wherein, by the grace of God, the Christian overcomes. Or,
let me say it, not overcomes, but is overcoming. We read in
Revelation 2, verse 7, "...blessed is he that overcometh." Not,
blessed is he that has overcome. Because a Christian has not yet
overcome, but he is always overcoming. He's growing, he's continuing
in sanctification and righteousness, but he hasn't arrived yet, and
he knows it. Then our Lord tells us, of course,
as we read in Matthew, about what's in us. Sin in a believer,
when he becomes aware of it, starts him to do something about
it. He wants to find out what that sin is that drove the joy
out of his life, what's keeping him back from serving the Lord
Jesus Christ. So sin in believers, the knowledge
of it, works for their good, you see, as well as the sins
in other people. Now let me close with this. I can't say that sin works good
to anybody but a believer in Christ, a true child of Sin does
not work for the good of the ungodly or an unrepentant sinner. In fact, sin rather multiplies
his damnation. It works good for the child of
God, but not for an unrepentant sinner. Even good works bad for
the unrepentant sinner. What will sin work for him? His
damnation will be multiplied by it. But now, though it works
good in believers, you will not draw a wrong conclusion from
this and think that a believer may go on in sin with confidence
and with deliberation and that he can get by with it. No. The
truth of the matter is, sin in a believer will cost him dearly. And you see that in one particular
illustration in David. Do you remember David's sin? He could find no peace. And yet
he was King of Israel. He had everything that the heart
could wish. He had riches and glory and fame
and honor and servants and food and all material things. And
yet those things could not give him peace when he sinned against
God, though he was a child of God. And those things will not
give you peace. You take a sinning Christian,
you know what he'll do? He'll go to the ends of the earth
seeking for peace, and he'll never find it! Though the whole
world may be possessed by him, peace will flee from him and
joy will vanish. God will make a hell on earth
for a Christian who continues in sin, unconfessed. Now, God
isn't going to send a Christian to hell, but he'll bring hell
to us. If we think we can get by with
sin, brethren, let's just mark it down. David is proof of that.
If anybody in God's world had the material things to give peace
while continuing in sin, David had, but he could find it not
until he bowed in submission before God and cried for his
mercy and forgiveness. Do you remember what he said
there? asked for God to restore the
joy of his salvation and to heal those bones that he had broken.
Well, David hadn't broken his arm or his legs or limbs, but
inwardly there were the bones broken up. There was a hell rising
inside. Let's not then think of sin lightly,
dear friends, lest we come into bitter agonies of soul and spiritual
convulsions. when we can have joy. I thank
God Romans 8.28 does cover the whole business, and we know that
all things work together for good to them that love God, to
them who are called according to his purpose. My dear friends,
I'm glad I'm in that way. I'm glad I'm a Christian, because
if there isn't anything in God's world, in hell or in heaven,
that can hurt me as a child of God, nothing can hurt the Christian. Nothing can really do him harm.
It all works for his good. Doesn't that make you want to
be a Christian? If sinners could know that, oh,
how they would want to embrace Christ, that everything would
be made to work for their good. May the Lord bless the exhortation
to every heart. I'm going to ask you to stand
and sing hymn number 212.