Romans Chapter 7 - Who Will Deliver Me . . .?

So very much to me. You're more than able. Ain't no problem that's too hard for a strong and mighty God. It's you. I am— you're more than able. Time and time again, I can always count on you. Good morning, good morning. I'm seeing my camera's still not working on my laptop, so let me switch back over. I gave it a shot, y'all, gave it a shot. Okay, do this. This. Okay, you got me here good, right? You got me? You can see me? You can hear me? We're all good. Okay, good. Raj, my computer just went black on me, and, uh, the enemy will not prevail today. Not today. Not today. Yeah. Well, welcome aboard, everybody. My Wednesday morning crew. It's always a joy, a pleasure, an honor to be with you on Wednesday mornings. I texted Rog early this morning, said I go on, going on about 4 hours of sleep, but it's all right because this is what I need every Wednesday morning on hump day. You guys revived me. Well, Jesus revives me. I don't want you guys to take full credit or glory, but you know, Jesus revives me. But you guys, um, yeah, he— I, I'm really blessed to, to be able to meet with you guys every Wednesday and have this time. And, um, if you remember last week, um, it— well, it's been a little bit of a I don't want to say struggle, but I'm on the road every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and it's been kicking my butt lately. Last week I overslept my alarm. I think the first time I ever did that in my life this week. Yeah, it— my alarm woke me up plenty early. But yeah, it's Wednesday mornings. I always look forward to it. And because I overslept last week, if you remember, there's no notes when we concluded Romans chapter 6. So to make up for it, today there's 25 pages of notes for chapter 7. Okay, just so you know, I had to make up for it. 25 pages of notes. And, uh, I think we're gonna get through all— well, I don't know if 25 pages of notes— the notes are there, they're usually pretty thorough and in-depth. So you guys could go through them during the study, after the study. But I think we're going to actually go through all of Chapter 7 today. Um, not just because Chapter 8 is such a good chapter and I want to get there sooner, but I think we could get through all of Chapter 8 today. I, I've said this before, I have a hard stop and it really should be about 7:50. Every time I've ever said I have a hard stop, I usually go 10 minutes longer or later than my hard stop. So if I do jump off at 7:50, I'll do it in a gentlemanly way, and then I'll let you guys kind of discuss amongst yourselves if you want to. But with that said, Chapter 7, gonna be looking this way probably a little bit because my eyes playing tricks on me. I saw myself here, saw myself there. All right, technology. Thank God for technology. We have the ability to meet with each other spread out through, through the whole nation. So praise the Lord for that. I'm going to try to look at my notes over here because I don't know how to pull up my notes on my iPad while I'm actually on Zoom at the same time and see you guys. So Chapter, uh, 7. We're getting that to that today. But if you guys remember, um, just the, the Book of Romans in general is the most, uh, theological systematic book in really all of scripture. And we spent— we, since the beginning of the year, when we started in verse 1, and the first 3 chapters just kind of recap Paul gets into kind of the, the ruin of man, that we're all guilty. The pagan is guilty, the moral person is guilty, the religious person is guilty. We're all guilty. We've all sinned, we've all fallen short, um, all fallen short. But none of us have an excuse as to why we're apart from God, because God reveals himself in three ways to all three categories of people. He reveals himself through his creation. He reveals himself through our conscience, and he reveals himself through his commandments, right? So, um, that's why we all know— unless you're a complete sociopath— we all have, uh, the moral law written on our heart. We all know, for the most part, right and wrong. We all— even as a young kid, uh, we, we have to learn to do what's right because we do have a sinful nature. And, uh, you know, you never have to teach a kid how to hit somebody, bite somebody, say no, be disobedient because we have that, that guilty nature, that sinful nature. But morally, in our conscience, we do know what's wrong from right. And, um, my youngest grandson Noble, we call him Bobo, we call him Bodhi. We have a lot of nicknames in our, in our family. Um, he's so funny because my son-in-law Kyrie You know, he used to box a little bit, and he had 2 girls and then a boy. So Noble's his boy. So Noble's only 18 months old, and, you know, he's teaching Noble how to box. So then Kyrie will be at work, and what does Noble want to do? He wants to hit people, right? He wants to box. And so sometimes just as soon as you see him, he'll run up to you. He'll start swinging away, right? Swinging away. And then like, if you're like, "No, Bull, don't hit." Usually, you know, I'm Pop Pop and I'm a guy, so he could hit me. It's just a little boy having fun. But, you know, if he does that to one of his sisters and we say no, right, he'll stop that hitting and he'll just give them a big hug. Like, he knows it's like, "Oh, okay, I was just playing, but I know I'm not supposed to do this." It's the cutest thing in the world. Even with me, if he sees like I'm not in the mood, to, to do it, he, he'll just like give me a hug. And it's almost like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't really want to hurt you, Pop Pop, as if he hurt me. But even young kids, they, they know right from wrong. And then Paul gets into the, the redemption of man, right? Thank God for Jesus Christ, that although we all fall short, um, you know, we, we are imputed God's righteousness when we believe in Jesus Christ. And then, you know, in chapter, uh, 5, we got into the Adam. We could live our lives in Adam. We could live a life of sin, where if we're living a life of sin apart from God the Father, where we're really sons and daughters of rebellion, we're in our— the enemy is our father. Or we could live our life in Christ and through Christ. And then chapter 6 was really the The transformation of the believer. And Romans 6 is kind of preached and quoted during baptisms, water baptisms, because, you know, in our identity as followers of Christ, we assume Christ's identity when he was buried, right? We go down in the water, we come up, and we're raised to walk in newness of life. And that, that's a, that's a big deal. We, of course, the water baptism is just the, the physical outward representation of what has already happened in our hearts. But that, that's not a minor thing. That's not something to gloss over really any day as a believer, that when we were saved, that when we, we went from darkness into light And remember, Colossians 1:13 says that, that God delivered us from that dominion of darkness, right? And he transferred us into the, the kingdom of the Son he loves. That transfer is a big deal. It's a big deal. We're new creations. We have new identity. We, we, we have a new purpose for life. We know what our destiny is. We know where we're going when we die, when we pass from this earth. And then, then Paul gets into chapter 7 here. Um, and chapter 7, it really picks up more from verse 14 of chapter 6. Verse 14 in chapter 6 says, for sin shall not have dominion over you— dominion, that, that rule and reign over your life— for you are not under the law but under grace. And Paul continues for what is it, 8 more verses in chapter 6, but that's more just like a parenthetical statement that he makes, um, about what he said previously in the chapter. But ultimately chapter 7 kind of picks up where verse 14 leaves off, and we're going to get into the difference between law and grace. Right? Um, so we're not under the law anymore. And a lot of times that, that's a, uh, people who you might be witnessing to, they'll, you know, that they'll have all sorts of issues about the law, right? Ultimately, we all fall short, but the law's purpose is to draw us and to point us towards Christ. The law reveals how sinful we are, and essentially it acts as, um, it's like an x-ray machine, right? The law diagnoses the problem. If you have a broken bone, the x-ray machine will tell you you have a broken bone, but the x-ray machine does nothing to actually fix your problem, just tells you you have the problem. And that's what the law does. It allows us to identify that, okay, we have a problem, we fall short of this. And Paul gets in, so he talks about the law for most of chapter 7, and when it kind of sounds bleak, it seems bleak, um, ultimately he, uh, he just throws it up to the Lord Jesus Christ, his Savior, our Savior. And, um, then of course we'll get into chapter 8, such a victorious chapter. Now The law, it's important for us, although we're not under the law anymore— Jesus came to fulfill the law— it's important for us to know a few things about the law. Like I just said, the law reveals sin to us, right? Uh, the law magnifies sin. And Paul will even go on to say in this chapter that if it weren't for the law, he would not know that he, he coveted, and that the covetousness was a problem. So the law helps us to, to identify our sin. But also with the law, what it does is it kind of sparks this war within. Because if any of you can remember when you were a kid, if you were told not to do something, oftentimes you went ahead and did that thing, right? Especially— I see Sean nodding— especially if you're a boy, right? I don't know if any women on this call could, could attest to that, but as a boy, when you're told not to do something, usually do it. For me, I remember, uh, I don't know how old I was. I was young. My mother was ironing. She said, the iron's hot, don't go near that iron. As soon as she turned her head, I went up to the iron, I touched the iron. If she had not told me to not touch the iron or go near the iron, I probably would not have gone up to it. But the fact that she said don't go near the iron, there was something within me that said, oh, I got to touch this thing now, right? So the law actually um, I don't want to say it sparks this inner battle, but it helps us to recognize there is this, this inner battle that we have. And sometimes we feel crazy because we're drawn to things we know we shouldn't be drawn to. And the fact of the matter is, we are in a battle constantly. When we say yes to the Lord, we're signing up for battle. But the law ultimately reveals that our willpower could never do the law of justice. We can never earn our way into salvation. We can never fulfill all 600-plus Mosaic laws, right? I mean, if we just look at the Ten Commandments, I mean, even as born-again, Spirit-filled believers, there might be one or two of those those laws that you broke today, right? And not to condemn anybody, but it's just a reality. The good news is, is that when we sin, when we do fall short, that Jesus offers forgiveness, right? He doesn't forgive— when he died on the cross, he didn't just forgive past sins, he forgives present sins, current sins. All is forgiven as long as we come to him with that, that heart of repentance and we cry out to him. And when we confess those sins, when we turn from those sins, as John 1:9 says, he is faithful to forgive us, forgive us of the unrighteousness, and then cleanse us, right? So it's not just, okay, it's forgiven, I, I see you as perfect as a lamb without a blemish again, but he cleanses us, right? Just, just that inner washing that he does of our heart every time we truly confess. Now, uh, The point of Romans 7 is for us to really, um, is to bring us to an end of ourselves, to know that there's no trying we could do to, to live up to the law, right? And there's a lot of discussion and debate about the grace. Paul made it clear already by this point that because of the grace of God, that doesn't mean that we have license to sin where we just continuously sin, sin, sin, knowing God, uh, he's a, he's a gracious God, he's going to always forgive us. It— that, that's not what he calls us to do. When we, we put our faith, our trust in Jesus Christ and we're saved, we're born again, what he does is he transforms us to not desire the same things that we desired when we were just walking in our sinful, our, our sinful rebellious nature. He, he changes the desires of our hearts, and that's, that's the sanctification process. When we're saved, we're sanctified, right? We're set apart. He pulls us out of the world. We're citizens of heaven. We've been plucked from the dominion of darkness, and now we've been transferred into the kingdom of God. But there— so that act of, of separation, it happens upon salvation, but the sanctification process is an everlasting, ongoing thing until we ultimately die, and one day we get our glorified bodies, right? Those bodies that will never see death. They're incorruptible, as the Bible says. And I'm looking forward to that day at some point. I'm not in a hurry to get there necessarily. Um, I like to live. I know heaven will be better, but I enjoy my wife, I enjoy my kids, I enjoy you guys. Uh, and as long as any of us are here, that means God has a plan for us to be here. Because if the plan he had for us was done, he would just call us home, right? So, uh, no matter how inadequate any of us may feel, how useless or maybe unworthy we may feel, if we woke up today, God has a plan for us. He has a plan for us, and he has a purpose for us, and he doesn't need us. But through the entire counsel of scripture we see that, that God uses man and works in agreement with man for his will to come to pass. So with all that said, I mean, that's just the introduction, Raj. 19 minutes in, I don't know if we're getting through the whole chapter. Where I was just about to say, you know, you're almost 20 minutes in and you haven't even read a verse yet. Yeah, it's not necessarily a short chapter either. It's another 25 verses, but we're gonna, we're gonna give it a whirl. We'll get as far as God wants us to today. Amen. Amen. Turn that up there. Okay, so chapter 7, verse 1. Or do you not know? Remember that those 3 Rs we talked about— you need to realize, you need to, to know, you need to reckon, um, and then you need to— gosh, what was the third R? God help me. Somebody remembers. Somebody was paying attention last week. Tell me the third R. Two weeks ago, drawing a blank. Forgive me. It's what happens when you— and resist, replace. Yes, exactly. Thank you. All right. That's why I married her. I hear you. I hear you. I married Lucy for the same reason. She always has the answers. Always. Even when I don't want to hear them, she has the answers. She always has the answers. So, do you not know, brethren— for I speak to those who know the law— that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the woman— now Paul uses it in illustration on marriage. He's not teaching on marriage, he's just using it in illustration of marriage. For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then, if while her husband lives she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress though she has married another man. So what Paul's saying— he's using this marriage illustration to really say death cancels all debts. Right? You'll never see a debt collector standing over a tombstone in a cemetery trying to get money from the person that owes them money. When you die, it really cancels all debts. And just as a husband or wife is free to, to remarry when their spouse dies, it's not adultery because the spouse has died. That marriage contract has, has been canceled essentially. And I don't want to, you know, for folks who are believers and their spouse dies and they never get remarried, that there's nothing wrong with that by any means. But if you do, you're not an adulterer or an adulteress. So Paul is making this illustration to say that the law no longer lives with us, like we're dead to the law now. So it's kind of a, you know, you kind of hear that the opening of this chapter is like, okay, but I thought the law was important. I know Jesus came to fulfill the law, but it's not like law is erased or eliminated. When, when we see the law in scripture, the original Greek language doesn't have the, the in there, right? It's just law has dominion over us. So when we sit— when we see the law, usually we think the Ten Commandments first, and then perhaps the, you know, all, all of Levitical law, the 600-plus laws. But it's not the law, it's just law. Paul uses the word law in this book, the book of Romans, to not only identify the law of God, but he refers to at one point the law of Christ. So it's not just a Levitical law, but this, this law that he's referring to, it— there's a broader, broader principle that he communicates. When he talks about law, not just the commandments of God, but also our, our conscience, also the way God reveals himself through creation. And yes, God does reveal himself in those ways, but the, the law is essentially dead to us because the law becomes dead to us when we die to ourselves and we're born again in Christ. And if we're born again in Christ, the one who came to fulfill the law, the actual— the, the rules of the law and the, the the legalism that Paul is speaking to here, that's gone. We can't possibly earn our way into salvation. Zach? Uh, I just had a question. I never heard that about, um, and not having the word 'the' before law in the original Greek. Is that, um, throughout the— is that the one verse throughout the chapter of the book? I mean, do you know how, how far that reaches? I know it applies here Um, there's other— I remember in my chapter 1 notes I refer to that, just the, the use of the word law throughout the book of Romans. This is a specific example where the is just added for the English translation. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head all the other uses, but typically what we'll know— you wouldn't know it here because when you see the law you think, okay, Usually when we hear the law, we specifically think of the Ten Commandments, and then again beyond that, the, the Mosaic law. But here, um, for certain, the is not in the original Greek. Now, the point of this illustration is that death ends all contracts and obligation, so we don't have an obligation to the law anymore. And like I said, it could kind of be befuddling. It's okay, we don't have an obligation to the law, uh, we, we should be fulfilling the law even more now that we're, we're walking with Christ, in Christ. And he goes on to say, therefore, my brethren, you also become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another, to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. Like I said, death ends legal contracts. So that, that contract, uh, what we were bound to by the law, we become dead to that. And then we remarry. We remarry. We remarry Christ, essentially. We're bound by the law. We, we had to uphold the law. And even, you know, before we come to Christ, even if we didn't know anything about scripture or Jesus himself, you know, we're bound by laws. We're bound by laws, whatever country you live by. We— there is a conscience that we have, and we're bound by that. As far as now, obviously, when we're walking in Christ, we know at an even greater scale that murder is bad, right? But we know murder is bad before we come to Christ. When I hated Jesus, I didn't want to believe in him, didn't really know if he was real, if this whole God thing was real. I still wouldn't murder somebody, um, because I knew it was, it was wrong, right? Although if I had hatred towards somebody, it turns out that that would be equivalent to murder. But you still know, you still have that, that moral code written on your heart. And what Paul says is believers are dead to the law as far as it represents a principle of living, or really the place of right standing before God. So we're dead to that, that there's nothing. And he's really concluding the point he's been making through all these chapters thus far, is that our salvation is not because we earned it through upholding the law. It's like we're, we're dead to that. That's gone. We fall short of that. We're sinners. I mentioned a couple weeks ago, um, that, that Minnesota, the, the crime commission, when they came out with that statement that to, to, to kind of justify or explain why the crime rate was raising— was going, going up. They, they said— they started by saying we're all born as savages, right? We're all born as sinners. Little Noble, all my grandkids, my son Ezra, as cute as they are, they're born sinners, right? And so what Paul anticipates here, like he does a lot of Romans, he'll write something like he did in chapter 6 when he got to verse 14. He makes that statement, and then he knows there's going to be questions about it. He knows there's going to be, you know, pushback to what he says. So that's why he kind of dives into it a little bit. And that's what he does here. He anticipates that there's a problem with the law, and he'll explain the problem here through these next few verses. And then, and he actually says in verse 5, for when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. So part of that walking in the newness of life is the newness of the Spirit. So when we say, um, we're dead to the law, it's just really to say that that obligation we have to uphold the law, where we think— we think, and oftentimes even as Christians, we think that we are in a better place with God because we are upholding the law. And God sees us just like when Jesus was baptized. But what did the Father say from heaven? This is my Son in whom I'm well pleased. Right? Jesus hadn't started his ministry yet, right? It's easy for a father to say, I am well pleased with my son, when you see him do good things, be obedient, um, walk in uprightness. But just as God said to his Son when he was baptized, in whom I'm well pleased, he's well pleased in us even when we, we screw up, right? Like, like, we don't have to earn We, we get this mentality that God hates me, God's disappointed with me, God doesn't love me right now because I'm screwing up again. But that's not the case with God. God will, will correct us, he will chasten us, he will discipline us, he will get us on the right path. But the love he has in his heart for us, uh, you know, any of you with kids, you know, no matter how much your, your kid messes up, you don't love them any less. You don't love them any less at all. And even as us, as, as humans, we, we can get disappointed in our kids, right? We can get disappointed. But I'm not going to use any, any examples of getting disappointed with the kids. But anyhow, you can get disappointed with your kids. Um, and Lucy, she, she can't get on these these studies at this time, but she, she'll rewatch it and sometimes she'll say, oh, so you talked about such and such today, huh, on Bible study? I was like, oh yeah, I did. So I'm not going to mention this one time where, um, she was a little disappointed in Isaiah for, uh, for, uh, finding out he wasn't gonna walk for graduation because he had, um, he kind of slipped up a little bit at school. And boy, was she disappointed in, in him at that moment. And kind of the old Lucy came out in that moment. But anyhow, he wound up, he wound up graduating, walked across stage, all was well, all was well. But anyhow, God, God sees it like we're so beloved, we're so the apple of God's eye, and we, we feel that condemnation, right? Like we feel it from the enemy. The enemy always tries to convince us we're something other than what God declares us, and we feel guilty. We feel, uh, that there's a difference between feeling convicted and feeling condemned. Right? And oftentimes, like, God will convict us. And whether it's us twisting that into condemnation or the enemy convincing us it's condemnation— it's not condemnation, it's conviction. And thank God for conviction, because if God didn't convict us, then we, we'd have some issues, right? If there's no conviction, that, that would probably be a good sign that there's no real presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, like, like in our, in our being. That the Holy Spirit's not there if we didn't feel or face that conviction. So Paul goes on, he says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? Right? So he's already— he knows what the rebuttals are going to be. And what does he say? So similar to what he said in the previous chapter, certainly not, heaven forbid, right? Absolutely not. Is the law sin? On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law, for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. So again, Paul, Paul insists here, obviously, if we're going to bear fruit to God, then, um, we essentially— if we're going to bear fruit to God, we can't live a life apart, like not upholding the law, but the The fact is, the goal isn't to uphold the law. The goal is to be dead to all things and be born again in Christ. And when we're born again in Christ, now our desires change. Those— like for me with addiction, my desire changed the minute I was saved. I was delivered, I was redeemed. I didn't know it in the moment. I knew I was a new person. I knew something radically had shifted in my life. I knew I felt the presence of God within me now. But I didn't know I was in that moment, like, totally set free. Because when something has its grips on you, the chains of addiction that wrapped around you so tight for so many years, and you know that pull, like, that yearning for whatever it is. For me, it was a drug. For you, it could be something else. But that yearning, that desire to fulfill that, that sin, that, that fleshly desire. It's like I get this thing hundreds of times a day. It's not like, oh, every once in a blue moon it pops up and I have the urge to do this. When I was addicted to drugs, it was constant. It was constant. It was turmoil. And, um, effectively what Paul's saying is without the law, like, like the law kind of sets the record straight as far as these are the dos and don'ts. But ultimately, he's going to go on to say, um, that part of the, the law is really an identification in us acknowledging that when there, there's law and we, we have a fleshly nature still, that, that's why we're going to get incorruptible glorified bodies. Because although we have a new heart, a regenerated heart, the Spirit of God is living within us, we still have these fleshly tents that, that all that new stuff is living in. And there's going to be that, that pull between the flesh and the spirit. Verse 13 says, has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not. But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. When he's saying he's carnal, yes, he's a Christian now when he's writing this, but he's carnal. It just means a worldly nature. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do. If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law. That it is good. But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do— now if I do not what I will to do, It— this is kind of a tongue twister— for the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who, who do it, but sin that dwells in me. A bit of a tongue twister, right? And it leaves you sitting there. It kind of makes you feel like you're in a place like, gosh, how do I actually overcome this battle? This is Paul. This is like one of the most awesome, uh, men of God that was ever used by God, right? And he's saying, okay, I, I want to do good, but I have this fleshly carnal nature, and what I will to do I do not do, and what I, I know the Lord wants me to do, I'm still drawn to these things. And it kind of leaves you like, oh crap, like, what am I doing? There's this battle that's going in that, that's, that, that's happening internally. And I, I— Paul, you know, inspired by the Holy Spirit, if he had just like chosen to be an author in life, I, I think he would have been a pretty— he would have been a best-selling author because the way he writes this out, it, it leaves you in this place where you're kind of feeling like, okay, I'm lost. But again, part of the law is to essentially reveal to us that willpower will never overcome any sin. No willpower will overcome sin. Think about it. If a man is in quicksand, right, like you start sinking and you may be able to kind of like tread in the quicksand, flail your arms and do what you could do for a while, while you're sinking in that sand. But at some point you're going to tire yourself out. That quicksand is going to draw you under. And I don't know about any of you guys, but for me, I used to watch Gilligan's Island as a kid. And because of that show, I was deathly afraid of quicksand. That show made me think quicksand was everywhere and that, that quicksand would be my demise, that I, that like I would die somehow in quicksand because Gilligan was always sinking in sand. He never died on there, of course, but I had this like phobia as a kid that I was going to die in quicksand because of that show. But if you are in quicksand and you're just doing your best, you're fighting it with all your effort, at some point you're going to tire out, right? At some point you're going to tire out, you're going to stop flailing. What you're going to do, you're just going to simply scream, help! At some point you're going to scream out for help. And the whole point in all this, what God is doing, is that we, we try to use our willpower to overcome sin, to try to uphold the law. We're going to fall short of it. And, and even, uh, you know, in prayer time, when, when we have prayer requests for people who are just like battling their faith right now, Oftentimes that battle, it is us, like, and oftentimes it's because of our own decisions, it's because of our own apartness from, from the Lord, where we, we start to feel like we're sinking in that quicksand. And as we sink further and further, we may have a whole team of people around us praying for us as we're battling our faith. We start to doubt, we start to have questions, we start to, to to waver in our faith. But ultimately, oftentimes that's, that's just a show and sign of God's grace, because God wants us to just simply be in that place every day at all times where we just simply cry out, help! That's it. That, that's the whole denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him daily. It's that, that daily yell for help. God, I I want to die to myself today, tomorrow, every day that I walk this earth. But it's not just wanting to do it, it's to actually do it the same way you did when you first said yes to the Lord, is to deny yourself. And, and for a lot of people, we don't cry out for help, we don't cry out for Jesus until we are almost at the bottom of that quicksand. And maybe just like our nose or mouth is above the quicksand and we're at the absolute end of our rope, we know we're going to die. And then finally almost as a last resort, we cry out, "Help!" We shout, "Help!" to God. And for me, I'm stubborn. I, you know, being raised in northern New Jersey, you're born with the cynicism, you're born with the skepticism. It's like you have an even more rebellious heart growing up in the type of culture that I grew up in. And I was pretty thick-headed. So for me, it was like, even though, you know, when Lucy first introduced me to Jesus, when she first shared the gospel and she started drawing me to the Lord, it wasn't an overnight thing. Like, I was still a tough nut to crack. I was still sabotaging my own life in the process of my curiosity piquing for the Lord and just seeing and being more convinced that Jesus had to be real because I see Lucy and her relationship with him, and I see what he's doing in her and through her. And I see how Lucy treats other people, and she couldn't possibly do that, like, just from her own strength and her own love, because she should hate people based on some of the things that she's been through, the way she's been treated. But there had to be something. But for me, it was like that last gasp with a cry out, help, to the Lord. Like Peter, right, when he walked on the water, he had his eyes on Jesus. He was walking on water. He looks at the The storm, he gets fearful, takes his eyes off of Jesus, he sinks, falls into the water. And what did he do? He yelled, help! He yelled, help! And as soon as he yelled, help, what happened? Jesus stuck his arm in the water, grabbed him, got him out of that water. That's what Jesus does for all of us. And that's why it's frustrating at times when we have loved ones— and I say this coming off of just telling you how rebellious I was and thick-headed, and I waited until I was at the absolute end of my rope to cry out to Jesus. But we get frustrated when we see people that we love and care about not cry out for Jesus, because it is really so simple. It just has to be a genuine help, a genuine seeking of the Lord. God, you're real. Just please help me. Please, I, I turn from this. Like, everything I've done, every decision I've made in my life, it's led me to this, and I'm sinking, and I'm about to drown. I'm about to be overwhelmed and overcome. And I'm literally about to die. And when you cry out help in that moment, Jesus meets you. It's as simple as that. Jesus meets you in that moment, and he's faithful, and he's waiting for that moment. And in Luke 16, the parable where, where the master, he, he compels, uh, those to, to come to, to have a feast at his table, he compels those to come into the kingdom our Master Jesus, he compels us, right? And Jesus is Master, he's King of Kings, Lord of Lords, whether we acknowledge him as such and we treat him as such. So as, as the Lord of all, the King of all kings, he compels us. So when we're having that moment where we're sinking, I was of the mentality, I'm sinking, my life sucks, I'm going under because of God. If God's real, No, he did this because I'm a good person. He did this to me. And then you, you come to that, that realization where it's like— and that, that's that self-denial and, and, and dying to the flesh daily. Because to, to come to that moment— and this is why pride is such a big, big issue— because what we have to come to that moment was like, wait a second, it wasn't him, it was me. I was actually messing up. I was screwing And if we get real with ourselves and really reflect on our lives, probably nobody's let you down more in life than you have yourself, right? Just by decisions that you've made. And this isn't to condemn anybody, it's just the truth that that's what happens. Nobody's lived with us longer than we live with ourselves. We know every mess up, we know every bad decision, we know every time we were drawn to sinful things and we fell. Paul goes on, I find then a law that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to 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. Remember, the members are, are the instruments, the, the tools of warfare, the, the weapons. So with all this, if you just stop there, it's like, good Lord, what, what's going on here? We're in this battle, and if Paul seems like he can't overcome it, like, are we going to be able to overcome it? And then verse 24, he says, oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, wretched man. The wretched just simply means to be, um, to be tired, to be exhausted from trying. That's really what wretched means, to be exhausted from trying so hard. Wretched doesn't just mean, um, we're depraved and we're sinful. It's to literally be worn out. That's what wretched means. And we all get worn out, even in this Christian walk. We can get worn out by trying to do things ourselves now. And when he says, who will deliver me from this body of death, most commentators are in agreement that Paul had something specifically in mind when he wrote this. In biblical days, especially in Tarsus where Paul was from, when you were a prisoner, oftentimes they would chain you to a dead body. They would chain you to a rotting corpse, and that rotting corpse you would drag around with you. You were literally chained to this dead body. So when Paul says, who will deliver me from this body of death? And when, when we're not walking with Christ, even when we are walking with Christ and we're just not devoted to him, so I take that back. Maybe we're not walking with Christ, but we're saved, right? We're, we're saved, we're in, we're in the kingdom. But then we're not like presently walking, uh, in the fruits of the Spirit. We're not dying to ourselves daily. It could feel like we're, we're walking around literally chained to a dead body. It's like the, the enemy feels like he's always present in our lives. Things feel like they're not going our way. And what Paul is saying is, who will deliver me from this dead, rotting corpse that's chained to me but is really in me, that, that old me? And he says, 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. So it's just fascinating to me with Paul here Again, like the way he writes this as an author, it's like if anything seems like doubtful, if it seems like it's hard, it's like, wait a second, I didn't mention this, but Paul refers to himself as, as like I. He talks about himself here more than 40 times in this chapter. It's I, I, I. It's all this current, current struggle that I have, that this inner man. But the reality is, is that Who Paul is, is a redeemed man, a delivered man. He's a new creation. That's who all of us are now. But there's times where we feel like we're that old person. There's times where we slip up. And there's a, a really good illustration in a book by Chuck Smith. It's called Why Grace Changes Everything. And I read it years ago But when I read this chapter, it makes me think of this illustration. And Chuck Smith, he uses an illustration from Greek mythology. There's two characters, Ulysses and Orpheus. And as the story goes, Orpheus— I'm sorry, Ulysses— he, his ship would pass by this island and the sirens from the island, the sirens were like this mythological creature. Of like half woman, half bird, and it would sing. It would sing this beautiful song and draw you to it. Now, the sirens would sing this beautiful sound coming from this island and would draw ships and the captains of the ships towards the island. The thing was, is that the water was shallow. The closer you got to the island, as you drew nearer and closer to that island, your ship would hit the rocks and you would essentially crash and sink and die, right? So what Ulysses did was he knew about this island. He knew that he would be drawn as he's captaining the ship. He knew he would be drawn towards the island. So what did he do? He said, tie me down, tie me down that I can't steer the ship towards that island, to that beautiful sound that's enticing me. And he said, put wax in your ears so you can't hear me scream and yell. He said, make sure we don't turn that way. And what happened? The ship got closer to the island. They start to hear this beautiful sound, and Ulysses starts going nuts because he's so drawn to this sound that's enticing him. His flesh was drawn to the sound. And when I, I first read this in the book by Chuck Smith, I was like, oh my gosh, that, that sound, I know what that's like. That, that pull, when that, that drug, that, that temptation to, to take that drug, to, to get high, it's drawing you, and you will do anything to steer your ship towards it, right? And guess what happens? He was tied down and the ship sailed past the island, and he was tied down, and he— but he was tormented until he couldn't hear that sound anymore. He was just tormented by it. So physically, did he steer the ship? And did he give in to that temptation and fulfill that desire? No. He didn't physically. So can we say he upheld the law in that moment? Yeah, he upheld the law, but he was tormented. He was tormented. And it wasn't until he couldn't hear the sounds of the sirens anymore, that beautiful singing— he was tormented. So you could physically uphold the law but still be tormented by sin. And then there was another captain named Orpheus. And what did he do? He knew about the same island. He knew when his ship went by it, there would be the same temptation. These sounds would entice him to draw near. So he brought a lyre— not a liar like somebody who doesn't tell the truth, but the instrument, like more like a harp, right? And what he did was, as they started to hear the sounds from this island, everybody on the ship just started to play the instrument. And they played the instrument, and the instruments drowned out the sound from, from the island, essentially. So he didn't need to be tied down, right? He didn't need to be physically withheld. You know, that's why so many people, they go to rehab, they get thrown into a rehab, and they, they find a way to get out and they relapse. Were they sober for 3 days? Were they sober for 30 days? Were they sober for 90 days? Yes, but they were still in bondage. They weren't free by any means. So Orpheus he was free because the sound of his instrument, it outweighed the sound of that enticing sinful noise that was playing. And it really captures the difference between law and grace, right? So Ulysses, that, that's the law. All right, I know I can't do that. I know I can't give in to that sin. I know I can't give in to that temptation, and I'm going to do anything by my own willpower, even if you have to tie me down. Guess what? You know, scripture says it's better to pluck out your eyes than allow your sin to— or your eyes to get you to fall into sin, right? It's better to cut off your hands if your hands are enticing you to sin, if you're going to do something sinful with your hands. But it doesn't mean literally just pluck out your eyes and cut off your hands. Yes, you're not going to be sinning, but you're still going to be tormented with the desire to Orpheus represents the grace. It's like, wait a second, no, that, that instrument that we play now whenever sin is enticing us, that's our praise, our worship to God. That is literally how we fight our battles. Uh, Jehoshaphat, right, he sent out the worshipers first to praise the Lord, front lines of the battlefield. All right, get the tuba players out there, that's how we're going to win this battle. Forget the guys with the, the, the guns and, uh You know, battles aren't even fought anymore with guns and things. It's drones and missiles and rockets. But it's like, no, no, no, send out the worshipers, send out those to just lift up a joyful sound to the Lord, and that, that'll be how we get this victory. And that's how it is for us, because when we, when we live in grace, it's not that the, that, that temptation still isn't there. And ultimately when Ulysses would— if you were to start to steer a ship towards the island, if you start to steer your ship, that's still not the sin. But when you start to steer your ship towards the sin, right, that's going to give birth to the sin. The sin is going to give birth to death. So the, the— that's why the enemy, he just tries to get us to, to veer off path, to start to steer us towards sin a little bit. I, I've said this a couple times, when you see these pastors that fall because of an extramarital affair or something like that. They didn't wake up one day and just decide to cheat on their spouse. They veered off the path. They started to steer their ship towards that island. As they got closer, just the sound of those enticing voices, right, whatever that sin is, it just became louder and louder. And the closer you get to that island, the closer you get to that sin, the harder it is to now just by your willpower just now all of a sudden steer away. That's why I, I will never rely on my willpower, and I suggest none of you ever rely on your willpower. If you know that, um, willpower will, will be flawed and will, will get tired and will give in at some point, then don't put yourself in situations where you have to use willpower to overcome sin. Don't, don't— if you're a married man, don't be alone with a, a woman, right? Don't think, oh, I'm a saved man, I love my wife and never cheat on her, and just use willpower. No, avoid those situations. But what grace is— grace is now through the power of the Holy Spirit. Now Paul mentions the Holy Spirit zero times in chapter 6, just one time in chapter 7, and then 21 times in chapter 8, and that's the victorious chapter that he's building, uh, like he's building kind of all this tension to. But when he says— and of course when he wrote it, there wasn't chapter breaks— but really chapter 8, this victorious chapter, really starts in chapter 7, verse 24. Oh, wretched man am I! I'm just so tired. I, I can't— as much as I try to uphold the law, as much as I try my own willpower to, uh, to elude sin, to not fall into temptation, to fall into sin. I'm wretched. I'm tired. I'm exhausted from this. And our willpower is never going to be strong enough to always abstain from sin. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will deliver me? It's Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ delivers us. And when Jesus told his disciples, hey, it's going to be better for you when I'm out of here because I'm going to send you the Helper. And guess what? It's going to be better that you have the Holy Spirit than me actually here before you, because the Holy Spirit is going to live within you. I, I could stand beside you. I'm God in the flesh. I could stand beside you. I could do life with you. But it's better when I'm out of here because my spirit will now live in you. And that's who we have living in us now, that whenever sin comes our way, whenever we're tempted that whatever that island is that's just singing this beautiful song and the sound that's so enticing that everything in our flesh wants to steer towards it. It's like, no, the power of the Holy Spirit allows us to not be drawn to those things that are wicked, and it changes our desires. As much as I still have the flesh, I still have— there's desires from time to time. I mean, I had a stretch after I got saved and delivered from drugs, I didn't have a temptation It was literally for months and months and months. I had no withdrawal, no nothing. And then one day it just hit me like a ton of bricks, where it was like everything in me was like, I, I gotta, I gotta take one of those pills. I gotta do it. I just sat down and started crying. And thank God Lucy was with me. She said, let's just pray. We prayed, and God just, he just relieved me of it. He just took it away. We can't do that by our own willpower. If it's my own willpower, it's like, I'm just not gonna do it, right? Even if I lock myself in a room— okay, I'm having this temptation, I'm gonna lock myself in the room— you're gonna be like Ulysses, who he was tied to the mast of the boat, but he was tormented because he could hear that sound. We still be tormented by our sinful desires even if we don't give in to our sinful desires. But with grace, with the Spirit of God living in us, we don't have to be tormented by those things. Those temptations are always going to come our way. The enemy is always trying to throw the banana peels in our path to get us to slip up one way or another. And it's not a big egregious slip up. It's like, oh, just get him to slip a little bit, you're off course. I'll just get him steered in the direction of that island that ultimately will entice him, and he's gonna hit rock bottom, and that ship is going to sink, and they're all going to die. That's what the enemy he wants. With that said, I told you I'm about these hard stops, Rog. I was just going to tell you, it's top of the hour, man. Yeah, I didn't, uh, didn't plan on leaving no time to, to chat about this. I want to hear your thoughts because I, I think this is a great chapter. It could seem like, you know, when you read Romans sometimes, like, man, this sucks. It's like you're getting, uh, hit in the, the you-know-whats, right? It's like, oh man. But it's just Paul telling the story in its entirety. That's why Paul says in Acts, he says that no blood is on my hands at all, because when I preach, I preach the entire counsel of God. I gave it to you from beginning to end. I didn't leave anything out that was uncomfortable, anything nobody wanted to hear. I, you know, I wasn't tickling people's ears. I preached the entire counsel of God, and that's why there's no blood on my hands. If you sin, it's because you heard the truth from me and you still chose to sin. Therefore, you made your bed, you gotta lie in it, but the blood won't be on my hands. Anybody got anything? No, man, you gotta go. You guys are so gracious. Love you guys. I'm gonna hop off. If you guys want to discuss amongst yourselves, feel free to. As long as Roger's on here, you guys are here. Roger, when you got to go, I think the whole thing shuts down. It does. All right, well, I love you guys. I have to run. We can start next week by discussing this if you like, because it kind of does kind of just pave the way for, for all of Chapter 8. And I'm thinking, you know, if it was a casino and you set the over-under I'm gonna go— we're going over 3 weeks as far as chapter 8 is concerned. We're going to take our time through, through chapter 8. All right, I'm looking forward to it. Love you guys. Bless you guys. Pray for my strength. I, I'm worn out physically, but right now I feel like I could run through a brick wall because the Spirit of God lives in me. Let's go! Yeah, amen. But by like 3 o'clock, I'm gonna be like, oh God. But no, I'm not going to speak that on myself. By 3 o'clock, I'll, uh, cancel that. I'll call one of you guys. I'll pray for you at 3 o'clock. Yeah, thank you, thank you. Love you guys. See you next week. See y'all.