Well, again, good morning and welcome to Advent.
My name is Jeff, and I'm one of the pastors here.
And if you're new to our church,
or if this is your first time joining us for worship,
I just wanna welcome you.
I would love to meet you after the service.
I'll be out there by the entrance
and would love to connect with you and hear your story.
We're so delighted that you're here this morning.
In his book called The Year of Living Biblically,
writer and journalist A.J. Jacobs
tells about the story of a year-long experiment that he did.
And his experiment was to follow all of the laws
in the Bible as literally as possible.
And he says that he did this experiment for a couple reasons.
One is that he was culturally Jewish,
and so he wanted to understand the traditions
in his culture better.
But he said that the main reason why he wanted to do this
is that he had a growing concern
about religious fundamentalism
and all of the various problems in society
that arose when people took their religious texts
like the Bible literally.
He wanted to understand not just what Scripture said,
but he wanted to understand communities of people
who took the Bible literally from the inside.
And so for an entire year,
he wrote about his journey
of taking all of the commands of the Bible
as literally as possible,
even ones that sounded arcane and strange,
like some of the ceremonial laws in Leviticus,
like not wearing clothes of mixed fabrics
or not trimming your beard.
But he also tried to follow
all of the moral commands of the law too,
like don't steal, don't lie, love your neighbor,
some of the commands that we read earlier this morning
in the Ten Commandments.
And if you watch the TED Talk
that he gives explaining this experiment,
he talks about the surprising positive benefits
of this year-long experiment that he had in his life.
He says that the ritual of taking a Sabbath
was transformative for him
because by nature he was a workaholic.
And so even though there were some positive benefits
that he experienced from this experiment,
he says in the end,
his conclusion was that
even though there might be some positive benefits
from taking the Bible literally,
in the end,
if you want to benefit from the Bible's teaching,
you really just have to pick and choose.
You have to pick and choose
which parts you want to follow
because some are helpful
and other parts are unhelpful
and even immoral or morally regressive.
And A.J. Jacobs' experiment
gets at a question
that's at the heart of our text
here this morning in Romans 7.
Are the commands and the laws in the Bible
just an antiquated, morally regressive system of morality?
Or do they actually have some sort of relevance
for our lives today?
That's a question Paul is addressing here in Romans 7.
In the previous chapters, 1 through 6,
Paul has been expounding the heart of the gospel,
which is that we are saved by grace
through faith in Jesus Christ,
not by good works,
not by works of the law.
Now if that's true,
if we are saved by grace,
a natural question follows
and it's a question that Paul anticipates
and it's a question that Paul answers.
And the question is this,
well if we're saved by grace,
then what was the purpose of the law?
Does it even matter?
Is there any relevance for our lives?
And I should clarify briefly
what we mean when we talk about the law.
And I wanna talk about three ways
that Paul uses the law
so that can help us the rest of our time together
as we refer to it.
There's a few different ways to think about the law.
The first is the Mosaic law
that God gave Israel in the Old Testament.
So we're thinking Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy.
There's the Mosaic law.
More broadly, we can think about
all of the commands in Scripture,
both Old Testament and New Testament.
But another way that Paul talks about the law in Romans
is the moral law inside each of us.
The moral law that all of humanity experiences.
Every person, whether you're religious or secular,
whether you believe in God or not,
has an innate sense of right and wrong.
You might be here this morning
and you may think that the Bible
has absolutely no relevance to your life.
But I can almost guarantee
that you're also not a moral relativist either.
At least not in practice.
You probably have a keen sense
of moral obligations and duties,
of justice, of human rights.
And that's what we call the moral law.
It's this deep sense of right and wrong
that all of humanity has in common.
And so whether you're a Christian or not,
whether you believe in God or not,
this question about whether or not
the law has relevance for our lives,
it's a question that's relevant for all of us.
So what is A.J. Jacobs' experiment
of following the Bible literally for a year?
What does that get right?
Where is it incomplete?
Where is it worthy of critique?
That's what I wanna look at this morning.
We're gonna look at three things
from Romans chapter seven.
We're gonna look at the goodness of the law,
the problem with the law,
and the fulfillment of the law.
The goodness of the law,
the problem with the law,
and the fulfillment of the law.
So first of all, the goodness of the law.
At the beginning of Romans chapter seven,
Paul is explaining that those who have faith
in Jesus Christ now have a new relationship
to the law, to the laws of the Old Testament.
They no longer live under its obligations
and expectations.
This then anticipates an objection in verse seven,
and he anticipates this objection.
What then shall we say?
Is the law sin?
If the law couldn't save us, to begin with,
and if we now, through faith in Christ,
are no longer under the law's obligations,
then does that mean that the law was bad
in the first place?
Does that mean that the law was a morally regressive system
to begin with?
And his emphatic answer throughout this whole passage
is absolutely not.
No.
His own answer to his own question in verse seven
is by no means.
Later on in verse 12, he says the law is holy,
and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
He is affirming the goodness of God's law
as something to be cherished and delighted in.
This is the attitude of Psalm 19, which we read earlier.
Psalm 19 says,
the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold, sweeter than honey
and the drippings of the honeycomb.
Psalm 19 is not only saying that God's law is true,
but that it's desirable,
that it's more precious than gold.
It's sweeter than honey.
That it keeps us from destructive paths.
It leads us towards flourishing in life.
And you can imagine that Paul may have even had Psalm 19
in the back of his mind
as he is writing Romans chapter seven.
He's affirming that the law is good
because it's meant to show us what freedom looks like.
The law is good because it's meant to show us
what freedom looks like.
God gives us the law to show us the design
and the grain of his creation.
How we're to thrive and flourish as human beings.
Now this might sound ridiculous or even offensive
to a lot of people in our culture today
because a lot of people think about freedom today
in our modern culture
not as the presence of rules or constraints,
but as the absence of constraints.
I'm most free when I don't have any constraints
or limits or rules in my life.
If you've ever seen the TED Talk
from psychologist Barry Schwartz
called The Paradox of Choice,
Barry Schwartz says that he defines
what he calls the official dogma
of Western industrial societies.
And it's this,
that to maximize the welfare of our citizens,
we have to maximize individual freedom.
And the way that we maximize individual freedom
is that we maximize choice.
That the maximization of choice leads to freedom
and leads to welfare for all.
And so that's why
if you go to the grocery store this afternoon,
you don't just find three kinds of salad dressing,
you find 53 kinds of salad dressing
because more choice leads to more freedom,
leads to general welfare.
This is how most modern people
think about the good life.
The good life is about the maximization of choice.
It's about freedom from constraint.
But I actually don't think
that you have to be a religious person
or believe the Bible is true
to actually understand
that there's a lot of issues with that.
Because practically,
you can't actually live that way.
How many of you drove here this morning
ignoring the lines on the road,
ignoring the stoplights,
ignoring the stop signs?
Hopefully none of you.
It was in following the constraints of the road
that you were actually free
to arrive at your destination.
If I decided that I totally wanted to be free,
by removing all constraints from what I ate,
that I just wanted to eat whatever I wanted all the time,
it would probably involve a lot of steak and cheeseburgers
and a lot of oily, fattening, fried, sugary stuff.
But if I did that, it wouldn't go well
because I would be ignoring the constraints
and the limits of my body.
I'm actually most free
when I follow the constraints of my body
by eating healthy food.
That's good for me.
Let me give you one more example.
Oxford mathematician John Lennox
makes the connection with music.
He says,
When a great musician wants to play beautiful music,
they first have to read the sheet music.
The success of their performance
depends on their ability to read and play those notes
as they are written.
It is only when you know the notes
and submit yourself to their discipline
that you are free to play beautiful music.
And it is the same with our lives.
We want to make music with our lives
and the quality of that music
depends our attention to the score of God's law.
True freedom isn't the absence of constraints,
but it's embracing the right constraints.
And this is what Paul is affirming here about the law,
that it's meant to show us
the design and grain of God's creation
that lines us up with life and flourishing.
And this, by the way,
is why we read the summary of the law
every week in worship.
It's why during Lent,
we rehearse the Ten Commandments.
Because the law is good.
It's meant to show us what freedom looks like.
But there is a problem.
And that's the second thing we want to look at.
We want to look at the problem with the law.
In verses 7 through 11, Paul says,
For I would not have known what it is to covet
if the law had not said,
You shall not covet.
But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment,
produced in me all kinds of covetousness.
The very commandment that promised life
proved to be death to me.
And this is the biblical understanding of sin.
It's a power that has influence and dominion
and control in our lives.
It's something that we are enslaved to
and held captive by and that dwells in us.
And part of our captivity to sin
is seen in the fact that the more that we understand the law,
the more it provokes the power of sin inside of us.
The better we understand God's law,
the more sin is provoked.
The example that Paul gives here is coveting,
or jealousy,
the last and tenth commandment.
Coveting is the disordered longing
for stuff that doesn't belong to us.
And Paul is saying,
knowing that the law says you shall not covet
didn't make me not covet.
Actually, it helped, it gave me,
it made me think of 900 creative ways
in which I wanted other people's stuff.
It actually produced lots more creative ways to sin.
That's what it did.
And we can think of all sorts of ways
that we experience this in our daily lives.
And if you, this afternoon,
were to make a dessert
or a batch of chocolate chip cookies
and you were to tell your kids
or your roommates or your housemates,
you know, I made these cookies,
but you can't eat them before dinner.
You know, cookies are for after dinner.
What are you doing?
You're trying to do something good
that leads to freedom,
and you're trying to protect your kids
from ruining their appetite.
But if you were to do that,
what is that gonna do for them?
It's gonna create this longing and desire
to eat, to swipe one of those cookies before dinner.
And maybe it won't just do that for your kids,
but maybe it'll do that for you too.
There's lots of other examples we can think of
where knowing more about the law
actually provokes sin inside of us.
And this is not because the law is bad,
but because sin is sinful.
There's a great classic Puritan book
called The Sinfulness of Sin.
It's a great title.
And that's what Paul is saying here,
actually, in verse 13.
If you look in verse 13, Paul says,
did that which is good then bring death to me?
By no means.
It was sin producing death in me
through what is good,
in order that sin might be shown to be sin.
And so just to summarize where we've been,
the law is good because it's meant to point us
to what freedom looks like.
But even though the law can point us to freedom,
it can't actually make us free.
And that's because the problem with the law
is not with the law itself,
but with the power of sin.
Our struggle with sin is perhaps
most clearly articulated here in verses 14 through 20,
perhaps more clearly articulated here
than anywhere else in Scripture,
where Paul here gives us a glimpse
of his own inner struggle with sin.
And see if you find yourself resonating with these words.
In verse 15, he says,
for I do not understand my own actions,
for I do not do what I want,
but I do the very thing that I hate.
Now, if I do what I do not want,
I agree with the law, that the law is good.
For I have the desire to do what is right,
but not the ability to carry it out.
For I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want
is what I keep on doing.
Friends, doesn't this describe
our daily, inner, unrelenting struggle with sin?
I know it describes mine.
We're constantly doing things that we don't wanna do,
and the things that we wanna do
that we don't want to do, we keep on doing.
Perhaps this describes your own inner struggle with pride.
Pride.
Or with anger.
Or with jealousy.
Or with lust.
Or with eating too much.
Or with drinking too much.
Or with working too much.
Perhaps it describes your struggle
against substance abuse or pornography.
We long to obey God,
to do what will lead us into freedom,
but there's a huge gap between that
and how we actually live.
And if we live in that gap long enough,
if we live in that tension long enough,
it can drive us to a really dark place.
It can drive us to a place of despair.
It can drive us to a place of shame.
It can drive us to a place of self-hatred.
This is where it leads Paul.
Did you notice Paul's conclusion?
In verse 24, he says,
his conclusion about this struggle is,
wretched man that I am,
who will deliver me from this body of death?
It's a place of despair.
It's a place of shame.
And perhaps you know what this feels like.
Perhaps you've heard voices like this inside your head.
I'll never be able to stop acting this way.
I'll never be able to change.
I'm such a terrible person.
I'm such a failure.
I'm damaged goods.
I'm beyond repair.
I'm such a hypocrite.
And if that's you this morning,
I have good news for you.
First of all, you're not alone.
The fact that the Apostle Paul is describing this
as his own personal experience
should give us comfort
because it means that this is the normative experience
even for those who have mature faith in Christ.
That we live between the gap
of how we know we should live
and how we actually live.
And second, the good news is that
there is freedom to be found
in our struggle with sin.
Even though the law can point us to freedom,
it can't actually get us there.
But we can find freedom.
We can find freedom
from the one who fulfilled the law in our place.
And that's where Paul goes next.
And that's what I wanna look at finally.
Third and finally,
the fulfillment of the law.
At the end of chapter seven,
Paul says in despair,
wretched man that I am,
who will deliver me from this body of death?
And where does he go next?
Thanks be to God.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Jesus Christ brings us the freedom
that the law points to but can't deliver.
Specifically, we're gonna see
in Romans chapter eight
and the verses that follow
that Jesus frees us from the penalty of sin,
the power of sin,
and the presence of sin.
Jesus frees us from the penalty of sin,
the power of sin,
and the presence of sin.
The verse right after this,
Romans chapter eight,
verse one through four,
Paul says,
therefore, there is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Because through Christ Jesus,
the law of the spirit of life
has set you free from the law of sin and death.
For what the law was powerless to do,
what was the law powerless to do?
Help us keep the law.
Free us from sin.
For what the law was powerless to do,
because it was weakened by the flesh,
God did.
By sending his own son.
What the law could not do,
God did.
And friends,
that is an incredible summary of the gospel.
What the law couldn't do,
God did.
All of us are rule breakers
and law breakers in God's sight.
Because of that,
we rightly deserve God's judgment for sin.
But Jesus Christ came into the world
to fulfill the law in our place.
He perfectly obeyed
every single command in scripture.
Not only the letter of the law,
but the heart of the law.
What's the heart of the law?
It's love.
It's what we read every Sunday.
To love God with all of our heart,
soul, mind, and strength,
and to love our neighbor as ourself.
And Jesus did that.
Jesus loved God with all of his heart,
with all of his soul,
with all of his mind,
all of his strength.
Jesus loved his neighbor perfectly,
completely.
And Romans 8 verse 4 says that
because he did that,
for those who trust in him,
that the righteous requirements of the law
are actually met in us.
Now that's an incredible statement.
What does that mean?
It means that if you have trusted in Jesus Christ,
that when God looks at you,
he doesn't see your moral failures,
he doesn't see all the ways
that you've completely blown it this week
in your pride,
in your anger,
in your lust,
in your jealousy,
he doesn't see your sin.
He sees you as if you have
perfectly obeyed the law
every day of your life.
Because Jesus' perfect resume
of law keeping is credited to you.
All who have faith in him
not only have his forgiveness,
they have his righteousness.
That's what it means
for the righteous requirements of the law
to be met in us.
And friends,
this is incredibly good news
as we struggle with sin
in the midst of our daily lives.
Because not only do we struggle with sin,
but we struggle with those voices
of shame and despair.
I'm such a terrible person.
I'm such a failure.
I'm beyond repair.
I'm such a hypocrite.
And if that's you,
let me invite you
to meditate on the truth
of Romans 8.1.
This is a verse
that you probably should memorize
until you know it,
to let it sink down deep
into your heart
until it drowns out
the voice of shame.
Romans 8.1,
there is now
no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus.
No matter how much
we struggle with sin,
we can be assured
there is no condemnation for us.
Why?
Because Jesus
has already stood condemned
in our place.
And because through him,
the law is fulfilled
in us.
So first of all,
Jesus brings freedom.
He frees us
from the penalty of sin.
Secondly,
he frees us
from the power of sin.
From the power of sin.
Romans 8.11-13,
if the spirit of him
who raised Jesus
from the dead
dwells in you,
he who raised Christ Jesus
from the dead
will also give life
to your mortal bodies
through his spirit.
For if you live
according to the flesh,
you will die.
But if by the spirit
you put to death
the deeds of the body,
you will live.
What is this saying?
It's saying that
the presence of Christ
dwelling in us
through the Holy Spirit
allows us to experience
the freedom
that can never be gained
through the law.
Through the power
of the Holy Spirit,
we can experience
real change,
real healing,
real freedom
from the power
of sin in our lives.
How does that happen?
How do we experience
the kind of freedom
and change
by the power
of the spirit?
Well, sometimes
it happens
in mysterious
and miraculous ways
in ways that we
can't fully understand.
And some of you
have experienced that.
But often it happens
as we give ourselves
to spiritual practices
and habits
over time.
Spiritual practices,
spiritual disciplines
are like raising
the sail
of a sailboat.
They're like raising
the sail
of a sailboat.
Raising the sail
doesn't move
the boat.
But what raising
the sail does
is it opens
the boat
to the power
and potential
of the glory
of the wind.
which does have
the power
to move boats
great distances.
Prayer,
reading scripture,
fasting,
solitude,
community,
confession,
worship,
all of these
are raising
the sail
of the sailboat.
It's not
the disciplines
themselves
that bring freedom
over the power
of the sin,
over the power
of sin,
but what they do
is they open us up.
They open us up
to the power
of the spirit
that does free us
and heal us
and change us.
When you engage
your body
and your soul
in any kind
of spiritual practice,
you're raising
the sail
and you're asking
the power
of the spirit
to come and blow
with his power
to bring freedom
and healing
in your life
against your struggle
with sin.
Now,
will we ever
be completely free
from our struggle
against sin
this side of heaven?
God,
no,
we won't.
Can we experience
real and significant
change and progress
and healing
in our struggle
with sin
this side of heaven?
Yes,
we can.
And this is what
is promised to us.
By God's grace
and through the power
of the spirit,
we can experience
real freedom
and real change
as we raise the sail
moment by moment,
day by day,
living,
walking in the power
of the spirit.
So Jesus frees us
from the penalty of sin
by fulfilling the law
in our place.
Jesus frees us
from the power of sin
by dwelling in us
through his Holy Spirit.
And finally,
Jesus will free us
from the presence
of sin
by renewing
all of creation.
This is what Paul
goes on to talk about
in Romans chapter 8.
And if we had time,
I'd love to go there,
but that's another sermon
for another day.
The hope of the renewal
of all creation
is what the rest
of Romans 8
is about,
about the redemption
of our bodies,
about all of creation
that longs and groans
to be renewed.
And that's our hope,
that all of creation
will be renewed
from the presence of sin.
And what this means
for the present
in our lives right now
is that as we struggle
and as we fight
against sin
in the power
of the Holy Spirit,
experiencing both triumph
and defeat,
we do so
with the incredible hope
that one day
this struggle
will be no more.
The greatest struggle
that we will have
against sin
is right now.
But one day,
we will be freed,
completely freed
from the presence of sin.
One day,
we'll no longer
have to fight
the daily fight
against lust
or pride
or envy
or anger
or our relationship
with food
or alcohol
or workaholism
or greed
or substance abuse
or whatever it is
the thing
that you struggle with.
One day,
the freedom
from sin
that we can taste
now
by the power
of the Holy Spirit
will be the very air
that we breathe.
And so to put it
all back together
and to bring us back
to where we started,
what A.J. Jacobs
and his experiment
of a year
of living biblically,
even though it sounds crazy,
what it gets right,
what he gets right
is that the law
actually does have
incredible relevance
for our lives
because it's meant
to point us
towards freedom.
The problem
is not that A.J. Jacobs
explored the demands
of the law.
His problem
is that he didn't
deal enough
with the power
of sin,
with a struggle
that we war against
and that holds us captive.
but just as equally,
he didn't deal enough
with the one
who has brought us freedom
by fulfilling the law
in our place.
He didn't deal enough
with the Savior
who came to bring
the real freedom
that only the law
can hint at.
Freedom from the penalty
of sin,
freedom from the power
of sin,
freedom once and for all,
forever,
from the presence
of sin.
Having a better
understanding of the law
or even of our own
culture's understanding
of morality
can only get you so far.
But what we need,
what the world needs,
is the freedom,
the kind of freedom
that only Jesus can bring.
Let's pray.
our God and Father,
thank you that you have
made us for freedom.
And thank you that,
Jesus, you came
and fulfilled the law
in our place.
Lord, help us
to experience the freedom
that you came to bring us
by the power
of your Holy Spirit.
Lord, change us,
heal us,
free us, renew us,
we pray.
In Christ's name,
amen.