[0:00] Now, seeking God's help this evening, I should like us to turn to Romans chapter 7 and to take as our text the words of Paul in verse 24, where he says of himself, Wretched man that I am.
[0:30] I'm not sure what kind of sermon you expect on Monday evening of a communion. You've sat through many services already, and you've remembered the Lord's death, and you've meditated on the best things and the most glorious things.
[0:50] And all of these means of grace ought to be an incentive to go and serve the Lord and be his people in this world.
[1:01] And you want some kind of encouragement to do that, and some kind of reassurance that the Lord of the table is with you every step of the way.
[1:12] And perhaps you don't want to reflect on Paul's great self-assessment here in Romans 7, where all he can say about himself is that he is a wretched man.
[1:27] You don't want to be told that you are wretched man and woman. That belongs to the self-seeking and introspective side of the gospel that's perhaps fitting for Thursday evening of the communion, but not so much Monday.
[1:47] And you don't want to deal with this passage, which is such a mysterious passage in some ways, because Paul uses language about himself that you would hardly dare use about a Christian.
[2:02] I mean, here is Paul saying, I delight in the law of God, and I see it, and it's holy and spiritual and good, but I am carnal, sold under sin.
[2:14] Is that language that can really be used of a Christian? Well, I have no doubt at all that it can be used of a Christian, because it's a very seasoned, mature Christian who's writing these words.
[2:26] Well, surely he's in some place where things are very bleak and things are very dark, and perhaps Paul is even in some kind of spiritual depression when he's talking about himself in this way.
[2:39] If this is all he can say about himself as he looks at himself and says, wretched man that I am. Is not this the worst aspect of our experiential Christianity?
[2:54] That it leaves people with all of these neuroses about themselves. Surely we want something on Monday evening of the communion that will give us a much more positive image about ourselves as Christians.
[3:08] Well, let me just say something about Romans chapter 7. I think that what Paul is describing in this passage and in the wider context is, to borrow a phrase from Watchman Ni, the great Chinese pastor, the normal Christian life.
[3:31] He's not talking here about something abnormal or subnormal or exceptional. He is simply painting a portrait of the normal Christian life.
[3:49] And I want to try to capture that portrait this evening. I want to ask, what is the normal Christian life?
[4:00] I mean, there may be highs, and I hope there are many. And there may be lows, and I hope there are few. But on the plane of normal Christian living, what are the things that characterize us as Christians?
[4:23] That's what Paul is dealing with as he comes in this context to talk about life in the spirit and the liberty and the freedom that belongs to those who are in Christ Jesus.
[4:38] What is the normal Christian life? And it seems to me that as Paul explores that great theme, there are three issues that stand out in his experience and therefore in your experience if you are a normal Christian.
[4:56] You may be an exceptional Christian. And I hope you are. You may be a strange Christian. Most of us are at one time or another.
[5:08] But if we are normal Christians, what are the things that feed themselves into our experience? What are the things that mark out our normal Christian life?
[5:21] I'm just going to say that there are three. The normal Christian life is marked out, first of all, by a sense of service.
[5:33] Paul uses that language here, doesn't he, in Romans 7. I serve the law of God with my mind. That's my default position.
[5:45] I serve the law of God. I love the law of God, he says. I've been freed from the bondage of the law and the oppression of the law.
[5:57] I don't keep the law because I have to. I keep the law because I want to. I keep the law because the gospel has given me a new perspective on it.
[6:08] I'm now married to Jesus Christ. And being married to Jesus Christ means that I want to please him. And I want to serve him. And again and again and again that concept appears throughout the letter to the Romans.
[6:24] Paul describes himself in the opening words of Romans as a servant of Jesus Christ. He's, of course, a minister of the gospel and he describes the ministry of the gospel later in the epistle as a kind of priestly service.
[6:41] So he's serving God in a particular way. But he writes this epistle so that his readers and his hearers will serve God too.
[6:53] In fact, one of the great exhortations of Romans in chapter 12 is simply that. To be fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.
[7:05] That's what you are if you are a normal Christian. You are serving the Lord Jesus Christ. You're serving him where he has put you.
[7:17] You're serving him with the gifts he has given you. You're serving him in the opportunities that he gives you. You're serving him every day of your life as you are and where you are and with what you are.
[7:34] You don't need to look for his special direction as to where you should serve him. You serve him where he opens the door and places you.
[7:46] Because that's his prerogative, isn't it? He's the one who has the key of David. He's the overseer of David's house. He opens doors of gospel opportunity and service and ministry and mission work and evangelism.
[8:02] And he gives all of his people in their particular contexts the opportunity and the ability to serve him. You may not think you're doing very much because you're raising your children at home.
[8:15] That's such a noble calling. You're serving God in that circumstance. You may not think you're doing very much in your classroom or in your office or in your workplace, wherever it might be.
[8:30] But your default position as a normal Christian is to serve the Lord. In fact, you know, it's one of the great reasons for thanksgiving that Paul expresses in this letter to the Romans.
[8:45] In chapter 6, he says, God be thanked. Thanks be to God. You who were once slaves of sin.
[8:57] That's what you once were. You have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.
[9:08] And having been set free from sin. What? You're now free to do whatever you like? No. Having been set free from sin, you've become slaves of righteousness.
[9:22] So once upon a time, you did live the way you liked. You just lived to satisfy your own desires and to fill your life with the things you wanted.
[9:33] Paul says that's the worst kind of bondage. The worst kind of slavery. When God leaves us to our own desires and to our own hearts.
[9:44] When a person becomes a Christian, Paul says, God sets him free from that bondage. And gives him the freedom that belongs to those who are slaves of Christ.
[9:57] Well, what kind of freedom is it to be a slave? Well, you remember the great law of the Old Testament in Exodus 21. When a slave was given the opportunity to leave in the seventh year.
[10:12] He served six years and then he could go free. And you would think, well, any slave would go free. But the law actually made provision if the slave doesn't go free.
[10:26] And you think, what kind of person is this? What kind of slave would prefer his slavery to his freedom? Well, says the law, the slave who loves his master.
[10:43] That's the slave who prefers his servitude to his freedom. And that gracious, kindly law that permitted the slaves to go free also had this clause.
[10:55] If the slave says, I love my master, I won't go free. Then take him and let him be your servant for life. Well, you see, that's what the Christian is. He's been set free from being the slave of Satan, which is the worst kind of bondage.
[11:10] To being the slave of Jesus, which is the best kind of freedom. And you wouldn't want in a million lifetimes to be free from your obligation to Jesus.
[11:24] Because you love your master. And you love serving him where he leads you. And you love working for him where he has placed you. He died for all, says Paul in 2 Corinthians, so that those who live should what?
[11:42] Those who trust in him and who have life through his death. What should they do as a result of him dying? Should they just retreat to some kind of pietistic meditation every day of their lives?
[11:56] Should they go to some monastery somewhere and spend the rest of their lives there? No, not at all, says Paul. He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who loved them and gave himself for them.
[12:12] Well, isn't that what you're doing tonight as a Christian? You want to serve God, to serve the law of God. It's the default position of the normal Christian life that it is a life of serving God.
[12:28] But there is a second thing here, and it's this. The normal Christian life is not simply characterized by service. It's also characterized by sin.
[12:41] It's the great but of this passage, isn't it? I serve the law of God with my mind, but...
[12:54] It would be great if there was just a full stop there. I serve the law of God, and that's it. Every day of my life, I serve him, and I serve him only, and I serve him fully, and I serve him to the best of my ability, and I serve him with every ounce of my energy, and I serve him and no other.
[13:16] It would be wonderful if that's where the sentence would end, but that would not be the normal Christian life, would it? Because the normal Christian life doesn't put the full stop there.
[13:28] It would be great if that's where the Lord is going to be the best of my life, and I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh. I serve the law of sin.
[13:39] That's the reason for this passage. That's Paul's great burden in this passage. We have been free, he is telling us in chapter 6, from the reigning power of sin.
[13:56] We must realize that. We are buried with Jesus Christ, and our old life, with all its sinfulness and default disobedience, it has been buried.
[14:14] We are now new people in Jesus Christ. We have died with him, united with him in his death, in his burial, and in his resurrection. We are born again, brought out of that spiritual grave to walk in newness of life.
[14:31] But that sin, whose tyranny is broken, whose reign is broken, has not left the building. That sin is still dwelling in us.
[14:45] And Paul is reckoning here with the great mystery of the fact of indwelling sin. He's not describing here a person who's not been born again.
[14:59] He's not describing here some kind of second-rate Christian. He is describing here the normal Christian life. We have been taken out of Egypt, but Egypt has not yet fully been taken out of us.
[15:17] We have been set free from the tyranny of sin, but its presence is there, and it is still dragging us away into the world, and to the flesh, and to the devil, so that the good that we want to do, and long to do, and wish to do, and hope to do, and pray to do, is the very thing that we end up not doing.
[15:44] And the things for which God in Christ has given us such a revulsion, the things in which we found such pleasure before, the things that we ran to before, and now we want to run from, these are the things that we find ourselves doing.
[16:01] I find a law in myself, and it is battling against every delight that I have in the law of God.
[16:19] I look at the law of God, and it's holy, and spiritual, and heavenly, and divine, and I want to obey it. There is nothing in it that I find unattractive or uncompelling.
[16:33] But I look at myself, and I find in myself another principle at work entirely. And it is battling against the delight I have in the things of God, and it's trying to weigh me down, and bear me down, and take me away from doing the thing that I long to do the most.
[16:55] I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members, wretched man that I am.
[17:10] Tell me that's not the normal Christian life. Tell me that's not your experience as a Christian. At your best moments. I'm not talking about at your worst moments.
[17:23] I'm talking about at your best moments. Where you find yourself constantly longing for communion with God, and the blessing of God in your home, and in your heart, wanting to serve him wherever he puts you.
[17:40] And then you look at yourself, and you realize just how much sin is still clinging to you. Stuart Oliott, in his commentary on Romans, compares the Christian to a man walking down a lane in the middle of the night and falling into a puddle.
[17:56] And he gets up on his feet, and he keeps walking. But when he comes under the streetlight, he realizes just how dirty he is, because he fell into the puddle.
[18:11] He felt the fall, and he stopped, and he had to stand up on his feet, and he had to keep walking. But when he came into the light, and the closer he came into the light, the more he realized just how much mud was clinging to him as a result of the fall.
[18:29] It's the same with you. It's the same with me. And that principle works itself out in a hundred thousand different ways every day of our lives.
[18:45] We want to witness, don't we? We want to be the best witnesses Christ has ever had. We want to be the means of spreading his gospel, and showing and telling others of the loveliness of Jesus Christ.
[19:01] And he gives us the opportunity, and we stay silent. We want to be the best missionaries he has ever sent, to show by our lives, and by our conduct, and by our bearing, that we are living under the discipline of the cross.
[19:19] And so he gives us an opportunity. He puts us into a place where there's no other Christians. And we simply wrap our faith in a scarf, and we walk on as if we were just like them.
[19:31] And we warm ourselves by the campfire, and we say, I never knew him. And they point the finger at us, and they say, you were in the garden with him.
[19:43] You sat at the table with him. You had communion with him. You had his blessing on your life. And we begin swearing, and we say, I never knew him.
[19:58] And all of these providences, we want to be the best saints that ever enrolled in his kingdom. We want every hard providence to produce the best fruit in our lives, don't we?
[20:13] We want every knock, every blow, every unforeseen circumstance, every unplanned emergency. We want all of that to bear the fruit of righteousness.
[20:25] We want to be the best disciplined pupils in his school, so that after the event, we will emerge victorious as a result of the afflictions through which he has brought us.
[20:39] And instead, he sends adversity our way, and we kick against him, and we wonder, why me? Why here?
[20:51] Why now? Why this? And it's not so much the providences that show what we are, but our reactions to them.
[21:02] We want to be the best praying people in his church. And he says to us that there is a remedy for care and anxiety, and it's to take everything to him in prayer, and with supplications to make our requests known to him, and he'll give us his own peace.
[21:22] But we don't do that, do we? We try and sort it out ourselves. We speak to our friends about it. But deep in our heart, we're bitter against God.
[21:36] Wretched man that I am. Paul actually looks at himself, and describes himself, as a body of death.
[21:51] It's such a paradox, isn't it? I've been made alive in Christ, he has said in chapter 6. And now in chapter 7 he says, I'm carrying a body of death.
[22:07] We were reading in the Old Testament part of the law concerning the cities of refuge. You know, that remarkable provision that God made for someone who had accidentally taken the life of someone else.
[22:25] Not guilty of murder, there's no premeditation, there's no malice, but guilty of manslaughter because there's some accident, something has happened, and I've caused the death of someone else.
[22:39] Well, I've shed blood. My life is forfeit. The relative of the dead man can avenge his blood by taking my life. It's the law of absolute justice, life for life in the Old Testament.
[22:53] But because there has been no malice, God in his grace and in his mercy said, no, I want you to set apart six Levitical cities throughout the land, throughout the promised land, on both sides of the Jordan.
[23:08] It was a remarkable provision when you think about it. anywhere within the boundaries of the promised land, you were only within a day of one of these cities of refuge.
[23:20] So you could go there for asylum. You could flee to the city of refuge. The avenger of blood, the relative of the dead man, could pursue you and had every right to take your life and make your life forfeit for the life that had been lost.
[23:39] But you flee along the road because of a body of death. And there is no place for you to go but to that city of refuge.
[23:52] I sometimes wonder if Paul is echoing that kind of language here. I know there's a vast difference. In the Old Testament, the law was for someone who had accidentally caused the death of someone else.
[24:05] Paul is actually looking at himself here and says, it's as if there is another person with me in my life every day trying to cause my death and trying to bring me into bondage and into captivity to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
[24:26] And just like the man fleeing along the road to the city of refuge, it's almost as if Paul is looking at himself and saying it doesn't matter where I try to serve or how I try to serve or with what I try to serve or with what energy and desire and will I have to serve.
[24:45] I'm being pursued relentlessly by this body of death, by this body of sin that wants just to unconvert me all over again.
[24:59] And in fact, sometimes he appears so successful that I look at my unconverted neighbor who doesn't seem to have half of these problems and I wonder why I ever became a Christian.
[25:19] Asaph was like that, wasn't he? In Psalm 73, he looked at his unbelieving neighbors.
[25:29] They had no worries about life, no worries about death. They just lived their life for themselves, blaspheming whenever they wanted and pursuing everything the world could give them.
[25:42] They had nothing to worry about. Here was Asaph going to the temple, keeping all the regulations of the law, trying to please God and everything that he did and he was getting nowhere.
[25:54] I envied the wicked. I envied the wicked. That's the normal Christian life. Don't be at all surprised to see how powerful sin can still be in the life of the Christian, even knowing that you have been freed from its penalty and its tyranny.
[26:25] I'm saying tonight, the normal Christian life is a life of service, longing to serve God.
[26:36] It's a life of sin, battling with sin, conscious of sin, conscious of not doing the good you want to do, conscious of doing the evil you don't want to do, conscious of wanting to please God, but so often not managing it at all.
[26:54] But the normal Christian life has something else. It's concerned about service and it's concerned about sin, but thank God it's also concerned with salvation.
[27:11] Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? The avenger of blood is following me all down the road.
[27:25] The body of death is pursuing me every step of the way, trying to bring me into captivity to the law of sin. Who will deliver me? There is a city of refuge.
[27:39] Isn't that? I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
[27:51] So I flee to Him. I come with my body of death and I flee to my city of refuge. And it's there for me every place I turn.
[28:04] You study the geography of these cities of asylum in the Old Testament. See how carefully they're placed. Anybody can run to them at any time, whoever he is, wherever he is.
[28:18] And it was one of the duties of the priests to make sure that the roads were well signposted and free of debris so that there would be no hindrance at all. That's what you need, isn't it?
[28:33] You know, it's an education living on the Braai. You watch the storm come over the wall and the elements have such power to stop everything.
[28:46] The traffic is halted. People get so frustrated they can't do what they planned. They can't go where they wanted because the waves are raging and then suddenly the storm is over.
[28:59] And we've been studying the internet and we hear the Braai is open and the traffic can move again. Only the road has to be cleared first because the storm has left such debris on the road.
[29:16] And only when it's cleared can the traffic move. well, these priests had to clear the way so that there would be no hindrance to getting to the city of refuge.
[29:28] You see, that's why you need the means of grace. That's why you need to keep coming to the prayer meeting and you need to keep coming to the gospel. You need to keep coming to church. You need to keep coming because the gospel is clearing the road for you and pointing you again and again and again to Jesus so that you'll get to him without any delay and without any hindrance so that everything that the storms whip up in your life that have such potential to keep you from coming to Christ will be dealt with and you come with your burden of sin, particular sin, indwelling sin, the sin that so easily besets, that prevents me from serving and points me to Jesus so that I flee to him to cover me and I go to the city of refuge.
[30:21] You went to the city of refuge and you stood before the congregation. You made your case. You proved that it was not murder. It was manslaughter and the judges said, okay, you can stay here and you can go home when the high priest dies.
[30:37] That's the law. And it's what makes your city of refuge all the greater because your high priest has already died.
[30:51] That's what you were remembering this weekend in different places but around the same table. The death of the great high priest.
[31:05] Everything has been dealt with. Peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. The sins of which I was long guilty. The sins of which I've been guilty most recently.
[31:18] I take them all to my city of asylum and the death of the high priest gives me all that I need to serve him in this world.
[31:32] That's the normal Christian life. I'm not saying that there won't be extraordinary burdens placed on you or abnormal providences testing you or particular difficulties that you must face that nobody else can ever experience.
[31:53] But what I am saying is you go forward longing to serve conscious of sin but looking to the Savior running your race with patience because he who provides for you now in this world of sin in these shadow lands of fleshliness and of worldliness and of carnality he who provides for you here a city of refuge has gone to a better city to prepare a place for you.
[32:34] And one day when your service is over he will take you there to serve him in his temple day and night forever. So yes tonight I'm just a normal Christian and here is my son wretched man that I am.
[33:00] I want to serve and by his grace I will serve. I'm conscious of sin and by his grace I'll confess it every day of my life but he has taught me his salvation and I will simply say with the psalmist I flee to thee to cover me and under the shadow of his wings let us serve him as we can with every ounce of energy that we have until these sad calamities are holy overpast.
[33:45] Amen. May God bless his word to us. Let's conclude.