Lord, my God, I was moved this morning by reciting the Ten Commandments.
You speak to us, Lord, and as Jonathan said, the law drives us to grace,
and you pour out your grace on us, Lord God.
And because of that, we just pray again, thank you for the cross.
Thank you for the cross, Lord.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
I read a story this week about a missionary family that was overseas,
and as happens, we find this in the military as well,
when you go overseas, you go without a lot of creature comforts.
And so, like Amy does for me when I'm overseas, they had some family members send to them
one thing that they really liked, which was peanut butter.
So this young missionary family, every now and then, family from home would send them some peanut butter,
and they'd have this lavish gift on their table that they would enjoy for the next couple of weeks.
What they didn't know, until they received said peanut butter,
was that there were other missionaries involved in their circle who really believed that it was a badge of honor
that they didn't have condiments, that they didn't have these creature comforts that they could enjoy.
They really felt like carrying your cross meant not having peanut butter.
Now, this young family was more than happy to let them believe and feel that way and worship the Lord in that way,
and they went on, in the privacy of their own home,
enjoying their peanut butter and whatever condiments that had been sent to them,
not making a big deal out of it.
You fill your boots, I'll fill mine, and we'll just all go on our merry way.
Unfortunately, it became a thing, because legalism almost always becomes a thing.
And this disagreement about the spirituality of peanut butter became a catalyst for a lot of difficulty that they had.
There was just all kinds of issues after this,
and the issues that started with the spirituality of peanut butter ended up burning that family out,
because anybody who's been involved in mission work, it's hard enough,
without fighting over legalistic stuff like that with your fellow missionaries who are around you,
just burn them out to the point that the family left, and the family went home.
Now, to me, this story that I read this week was, it's a silly story,
but it's a classic example of legalism,
and what legalism does within the body of Christ,
attacking when we seek out and attack each other's liberty,
based on maybe a conviction that we have in our own heart.
Basically, someone saying, you know, to be completely right with God,
you need to do this.
You need to go without peanut butter.
You need to do this sort of thing.
You need to live in this sort of way,
and it's imposing that on everybody else that's around them.
In Romans, our passage from Romans,
Paul, speaking to Rome,
is writing to a people who have had legalists come up along beside them,
and start speaking to them,
and trying to get them to change their way away from Christian liberty.
Trying to say, you know, you need to follow,
that's all well and good, the gospel's all well and good,
but you need to follow the law of Moses.
You need to follow, not only the law of Moses,
but you need to follow the law of Moses in this particular way,
in order to really be accepted by God.
And so, that's kind of like the spirituality of peanut butter
that they were putting onto the Romans.
And so, Paul is writing to the Romans in our passage this morning,
721 to 8.4,
and he's addressing this very thing that they're talking about.
He's saying,
he saw, in our passage,
Paul is setting the record straight,
pretty much exactly on the role of the law.
So, if you'll turn with me then, again,
to the passage that was just read.
If you don't have a Bible,
there are Bibles available down front here.
It's a gift from Messiah Church to you,
if you want to take one home.
So, Romans 7.21 to 8.4.
And basically, what this is,
what we're reading,
and what we had read this morning,
is the summary,
Paul's summary,
of what the role of the law is
in the life of the Christian.
We just recited the Ten Commandments
and said,
Lord, have mercy upon us,
incline our hearts to keep this law,
but we don't follow law,
so it can be kind of confusing sometimes.
What is the role of the law?
Any law,
in the life of the Christian.
That's what Paul is dealing with in here.
I'm working on a major,
I was talking this morning,
I was working on a major paper
for one of my courses that I have to get done,
and one of the things I'm learning how to do
for the first time in my school-a-stack career
is how to write an abstract.
Now, if you've ever seen kind of the summary
on the back page of a book,
on what that book is so you can read it,
go, okay, I want to read that book,
it looks interesting.
An abstract is kind of like that.
You're taking 150 pages,
and you're putting it down into about 200,
well, exactly, not about,
exactly 250 words, no more.
I know that because I wrote more than 250 words,
I had to make it less.
It's actually a very difficult thing to do,
I think I'm on my fourth iteration of my abstract.
Of the 450 pages,
it seems like the hardest thing I have to do.
Paul is writing,
in these few passages we have,
his abstract,
his summary
of what the law is
and what it does
in the life of the Christian.
As we look at Romans 7,
if we look at Romans 7,
if you look just above it,
the part preceding this
is where Paul is,
that kind of famous passage
where he's like,
I don't know what I want to do,
I do what I don't want to do,
even though I know what's right,
I do what's wrong,
I don't have it memorized,
I probably should if I was a good pastor,
but it's that famous passage
where he's just talking about
that inner turmoil
of the Christian's life
and of within life,
and there's two ways
that scholars actually interpret
that passage
and then our passage as well.
First,
is that this is the,
that Paul is talking about someone
before they come to faith.
Okay,
Paul is talking about
the unregenerate Christian
because,
and one of the key markers
that scholars would say
is no Christian would ever say
wretched man that I am,
no Christian would ever feel
that level of failure,
so Paul must be talking about
someone before they come to faith.
Now,
more Orthodox scholars,
some,
or sorry,
different scholars,
Orthodox as well,
state that actually Paul,
no,
he's talking about someone
after they's come to faith.
And kind of the key marker there
is that Paul says
he delights in God's law
and delighting in God's law
is actually a marker
of a regenerate heart.
So,
it's something that happens
when we can only do
after we come to faith.
And I have to admit,
I spent far too much time
on that one theological question.
Was he talking about this?
Is he talking about that?
Just to kind of land on
something from my own
personal experience.
I actually read this
and resonate with it.
I don't know about you,
but I resonate in my faith life
with what Paul's saying.
I think he's speaking
very clearly
to the Christian experience.
I might be projecting
my own experience on it,
but I really think
it's true to life
and the life of the Christian.
This battle to live up
to the life that God
has given us in Jesus,
it's a real battle.
He talks about it being at war,
and that's my experience.
I don't know about yours.
And so that's what I think
he's talking about.
The Christian life
is not all puppies
and rainbows and prosperity.
I hate to break it to you.
And one thing you're probably,
you know,
one thing that we tried to do here
in this church
is we try to be,
take me to the next slide, please.
We try to be as real as possible
as we can here
at Church of the Messiah.
One thing that Pastor George
will probably never be accused of
is sugarcoating things.
We are all trying to be
very honest in who we are.
And that's what Paul's doing here.
I think he's opening up for us
and we can all just open our hearts
and say if we're honest,
this is the experience
that we have as well.
I look at Paul's struggle.
It's the struggle of faith
being called,
being a human
who's called to new life.
But it's a struggle
with a purpose.
As Jonathan said this morning,
the struggle of faith
drives us to the cross
and calls us to press deeper
into the grace
that God has given us.
Because I love,
if you look between
verse 24
and verse 25 there,
very quickly
Paul turns to grace.
I love how fast
it's boom,
but thanks be to God.
Very quickly,
Paul turns
from the clash
between his consciousness
and actions
to power,
faith,
and hope in Christ.
In that,
basically what I'm saying
this morning is that
in our own spirituality,
in our own Christian walk,
friends,
that is a move
that we need to learn
to make spiritually
consistently.
Because we've experienced failure.
Wow,
that shows me my need
for Christ.
That shows me my need
for the cross
and I'm just going to
press in more to God.
That whenever I feel
the weight of my sin,
it's not a moment
to start feeling
terribly guilty
about myself.
It's a moment
to turn to God
and offer that to God.
In that way,
the law fulfills
its true role
in the life
of the Christian.
That is to make
our sin known
so we can turn to God.
Now,
nomos,
or law,
you can see it here,
has a number
of different nuances
in the New Testament,
especially in Romans
where Paul is talking here.
The primary sense,
the first sense,
is the law of Moses.
Whenever the law
and the prophets
the Bible will talk about,
Paul in here
talks about
the law of the mind
or the law of God.
So,
sometimes in our passage
when he talks about
the law of the mind
or the law of God,
he's talking about
the Mosaic law.
Everything in the Old Testament
and all the traditions
that build up around that,
the law and the prophets.
So,
that's the first way
he's talking about.
The second way
Paul uses law
in our passage
is he's talking about
the law of sin.
So,
this is like,
this is the compulsion,
the law of the world
that works against God.
So,
the first law
is the law of God.
The second is,
or the law of Moses.
The second is the law of sin.
It's that compulsion we have.
And whenever Paul
in our passage,
when you see he says,
the law of the flesh
or the law of our members,
our body,
he's talking about
the law of sin,
that compulsion we have
to go against God's law
that he has there.
And when he talks about
the law of the flesh
or the law of the body,
the law of our members,
he's not saying
our body is bad.
Whenever the Bible
uses the term
sarx or flesh,
not necessarily saying,
oh,
the body is bad
and the spirit is good.
We don't believe that.
Jesus came in the body.
He came
enfleshed.
So,
there is goodness.
But when he talks
about the law of the flesh
in contrast
to God's law,
he's talking about
that corrupt nature
in our flesh.
That fallen part
of our nature,
that sinful part
of our nature.
The shadow side
of human existence.
So,
that's what he's talking
about in the second part.
The third sense
that he uses law
in this short passage
that we have
is he's basically saying
it's a principle.
It's a rule of thumb
that whenever
I think about
the law of Moses,
number two comes along
and battles it.
So,
it's law
in the sense of rules,
one and two,
a different set
of rules.
And number three
is just a principle,
kind of a rule of life
that whenever one comes,
number two is going
to happen.
Now,
by using law
in all these different ways,
Paul isn't like
one of those teachers
you may or may not have
that stood up
at the front of the class
and purposely confused you
so they would feel smart
and you would feel dumb.
what Paul is doing
is he's using
a turn of phrase,
he's using
Greek rhetoric
that his readers
immediately would have
recognized
and known what it was
he's talking about.
Problem, of course,
is we're almost
2,000 years later
and we don't understand that
so it takes us
a little more
time to kind of
unpack what it is
that Paul is saying there.
He's using a rhetorical
device from the time.
What he's basically
saying is this.
Inside,
I delight in the law
of Moses.
I'm a regenerate heart.
I love God's law.
But it's a rule of nature
that a competing authority
works in my body.
It works in my members.
So it's a principle
that the law of our minds,
the law of God,
is always at war
with the law of our bodies.
That is a fact
in the Christian life
and something that
not even Paul
rid himself of.
And so if you are doing
battle with the sin
in your life,
if there is some sort of
some sin that's really
besetting you
and you're struggling with,
welcome to the human race.
Welcome to being a Christian.
Because it's a law
that that's going to happen
within the Christian life.
In fact,
in the life of the Christian,
that exact thing
is the role of the law.
It's not a bunch of rules
we follow to find God.
The role of the law
is simply this.
To show us our need for God.
The law of the Old Testament
shows us our need for God.
This battle shows us
our need to go to the cross.
Romans 3.20
says,
Through the law
comes the knowledge of sin.
That's its function now
in the Christian life.
That's what Paul believed
and that's what he's teaching us.
The new role of the law
is how it helps us
see our fallenness
imperfection
and it makes us cry out
for more of God.
When I was growing up,
my father was a contractor
and one of my jobs was,
we didn't have anything nice
like this,
which is a magnetic wand.
We had a magnet on a rope
because we didn't like
to spend money at that time.
And my job,
Amy will tell you,
I am not the best
at swinging a hammer,
but I can drag a magnet
like no one's business.
And so my job
was to basically
walk around the job site
dragging this hammer,
or his hammer,
dragging this magnet
so that any of the nails,
any of the screws,
anything like that
from that day
that had ended up
on the ground
was picked up by the magnet.
Because when the new people
move in,
you don't want to have
this stuff coming up
every spring
out of the backyard.
A good contractor
will clean up the backyard
every one to two days
like that
or pay some young schmuck
like myself to do that.
Amy and I moved
to Petawawa.
No surprise.
Because the contractor
didn't do that
before they fixed
the house up
that we moved into.
And so for eight years,
because they hadn't
simply taken one of these
every day
and cleaned up the yard,
there were rusty nails
coming up.
There were like screws
about that long.
We had pieces
of sheet metal
appear out of the ground.
And as you've seen
our brood of children,
we have four kids,
young ones,
running around.
It can be a little bit
disconcerting.
You have to clean up
the little bits
as you go along
in order to make
the law unusable.
So when we talk
about the law
in the life
of the Christian,
it's not a weapon
that we use
against sin
in order to overcome
ourselves by our own power
and impress God.
That's not what the law is.
And what Paul is explaining
is the law
is more of a magnet
that draws out
those areas of sin
in our lives
that we need to offer
to God.
That is the function
of the law
in the Christian life.
Makes us aware
of the areas
we need to give over
to God
because Jesus met
every dot and comma
of the law
for us.
He sacrificed himself
to meet the requirements
of the law
so that we can have
that relationship
with him
in which we walk
with him
and by his Holy Spirit
he deals with these
areas of our lives.
This matters
because life of faith
is not a life
under the law.
It's a life
in the spirit.
I'm not a big fan
of movies.
Unless it's
Lord of the Rings
or Star Wars
I am probably
not watching it.
I haven't watched
Han Solo
because newsflash
hot take
it's not really
a Star Wars movie.
I don't watch movies
other than those things
but what I will do
is I will watch
a movie with my kids.
I don't even
really eat popcorn.
They all love popcorn.
It makes me feel ill.
However,
I'll sit there
and I'll eat the popcorn
because you know
what those really
intense moments
in a movie
my kids turn back
into my little
my little critters
and they snuggle
right in
you know
right into my side
and that's that
moment of intimacy
I haven't had
since they were
they were really young.
And so I kind of live
in movies
function like that
for me.
The proximity
to my kids.
The law itself
in the life
of this people
is not about
entertaining him
with our greatness.
That's not the function
of the law.
The law is about
the intensity
of our lives
realizing what's going on
and God
drawing us
into greater intimacy
with him.
That's what God wants
with you
is greater intimacy.
It's the life
in the spirit
which gives life.
I love how emphatic
again in 8.1
Paul makes that transition
to life in the spirit.
Sometimes he says
therefore
sometimes he says now
but in our passage
he uses both
which is a big deal
apparently in the Greek.
Therefore
now
life in the spirit
he talks about.
In Christ
life guided by the spirit
replaces condemnation
and death.
And then
if we look at
8.3 and 4
for God has done
what the law
weakened by the flesh
could not do
by sending his own son
in the likeness
of sinful flesh
and first sin
he condemned sin
in the flesh
in order that
the righteous requirement
of the law
might be fulfilled in us
who walk not
according to the flesh
but according to the spirit.
so that we were drawn
closer to him
not by showing
how great our flesh is
but by coming to him
and walking in the Holy Spirit.
And it's a continual battle.
If we go back to 7.23
Paul talks about war.
He uses imagery
from war
and from battle
throughout his writings
in the New Testament
talking about
being a soldier
for Christ
and other authors
talk about as well.
This imagery
of the Christian life
being a battle
permeates it.
And when we think
about a war
wars take
a lot of time.
You know
it takes an awful lot
once a war is won
we think about a war
the way we understand it
I mean
I think a lot about a war
it's my job
when we think about war
when a battle
when the battle
is finally won
when the war
is actually won
in a lot of ways
that's kind of the midpoint.
That's not the end point.
Take us to the next slide please.
If we think about Syria
what's going on right now
you see the little black area
up there
and there's some other areas here
you know ISIS has been contained
to there
but in the battle was won
the actual war was won folks
a long time ago
but it's taking time
to kind of mop up the extra.
It's taking time
for them to rid it of ISIS
and stability operations
which is the next phase
of the war
comes after ISIS has left.
And one of the problems
is stability
building stability
in a place you just
clean people out from
who are doing evil things
doesn't make for very good
front page news.
And so often times
peacemaking countries
will move out too early
because it takes time
to win a war
and to rebuild.
If you think about it
when on D-Day
next slide
on D-Day
when they hit the beaches
and they won that war
it took time
to march towards Germany.
It took time
after that
to not make the same mistakes
they made in World War I
which led to World War II.
It takes time
to win a war.
So yes
on the cross
Jesus won the war
and now we are moving
into the time
when we're cleaning up
our lives
when he is cleaning up
our lives
by the power
of his Holy Spirit.
And it doesn't just happen
in an instant.
My point is this
Paul uses military language
because even once
a war is past
its tipping point
it takes a great deal
of time
to finish up.
There's a great deal
of work to be done
to put away
our old self
as Paul says.
And they take on
the new self
that God has given us.
And so we are called
to do something
this morning.
We are called
by the power
of the Holy Spirit
to put the law
into its proper view.
I want to tell you
what I mean by that.
Christ put away
the legal requirements
of the law
so that we could
be zoomed out.
Okay, here's a picture
of downtown Ottawa.
We're kind of way up there.
Anyways, up there.
We're zoomed out now
to the 10,000 foot view
of the law.
That's what Jesus gave us.
And what do we see?
What did Jesus say
the law was?
All the law
and the prophets.
What did he say?
Anybody?
Point to him.
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
That's the 10,000 foot view
of the law.
It's not the minute details,
all the little side streets
of the law.
It's the broad law.
And so even when we recited
the Ten Commandments,
if you notice,
there's two tablets
of the Ten Commandments.
Those that have to do
with loving God
and those that have to do
with loving one another.
And that is the 10,000 foot view
now of the law
that we measure ourselves by.
We allow that to search us out
so that we can find the way,
the places in our lives
that we need to invite God into
in order to do it all over again
and allow God to continue
that process of sanctifying us
and bringing us
into relationship with him.
From this level,
God, Jesus showed us
and he said,
love God
and love your neighbor.
It's summed up by Jesus.
So that's why when we look to Jesus,
he draws us into the living
in the power of the Holy Spirit,
not under the law.
Later, Paul will say in 8.6
after this passage
to set our minds on the Spirit.
Coupled with 8.4,
it's a call day by day
to cultivate
a spiritual inclinement
towards him.
To incline our hearts
towards spiritual things.
So that,
as 2 Corinthians 9.8 says,
God will be able
to make all the grace
abound in us,
not by our own power,
but by having sufficiency
in all things
at all times
will abound
in every good work
in the power
of the Holy Spirit.
Not because we're following
some law,
because we've allowed him
to search us out
and do battle
for us in our hearts.
The law helps us
see our weakness
so we can continually
offer those areas
to Jesus
and let him transform us
by the power
of his Holy Spirit.
It's a celebration,
friends,
of the cross.
That's what Paul's doing here.
He's celebrating the fact
that the cross
put all that stuff away
so that we can truly
have an open,
honest,
dynamic relationship
with him
in which,
when things come to light,
we're just honest
and we allow him
to move on it.
I'm going to move on
to the big finish,
I think.
The big finish for me
is sometimes
there's some cutting room
floor stuff
that comes out
of my sermon prep.
Some of you here
might be questioning
whether or not
there's actually
this law out there
that everybody
is measured by.
That there's what we call
the meta story.
There's a big story
out there
all-encompassing
universal law
or truth
that we're measured by.
That's not very popular
in Canada
in 2019
to think that.
However,
at the same time,
while our culture
tries to tell us
there's no
all-encompassing truth,
our culture also believes
in inalienable
human rights.
Is that the right term?
Inhuman rights.
At the same time,
well,
there's no truth
but there is such a thing
as human rights.
And the reason we believe
in such a thing
as human rights
is because
the law of God
is written
on our hearts.
You know what's wrong.
I know what's wrong.
After I'm finished
beaking on up here
about Paul,
we're going to be praying
and we're going to pray
about
the 25th anniversary
of the genocide
in Rwanda.
Friends,
killing upwards
of a million people
in a hundred days,
if anybody in here
thinks that's not wrong,
well,
you've got problems.
we know,
we know
the difference
between right and wrong.
There is such a thing
as right and wrong
and it's not,
friends,
just a matter of opinion.
Genocide is wrong
is not a matter of opinion.
If you disagree,
we can talk afterwards.
There is a freedom
from the discord
each human feels
and we know
there's a way
things ought to be
and there's a way
things are.
And friends,
there's a freedom
from the discord
between the way
we think things
ought to be
and the way things are.
Between the way
we are
and the way
we believe
we should be.
And that freedom
comes through
faith in Jesus
and it comes
through the life
of the Holy Spirit
that he calls us to.
So if you're thinking
about it here this morning
and you feel that discord,
I really would like
to invite you
to consider Jesus
and the freedom
that he brings.
Let's pray together.
Loving God,
you have given us
the law
to drive us
to grace
and you lavish
your grace on us.
We pray that you would
have your mercy upon us
and incline our hearts
to keep your law
in our hearts,
measure ourselves by it
and offer ourselves to you
when we find ourselves wanting.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.