Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's Daily Blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org. Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing: a biblical, faith-filled vision for your life. Paul's cry comes from the depths and echoes through the corridors of time and the chambers of heaven's courts.
Who will deliver me? And the answer thunders forth from the throne room. Jesus. Jesus will deliver you. Jesus has delivered you.
Who will give me strength when I'm weak? Jesus, who will lift me up when I'm down? Jesus, who will open my eyes when my vision is blurred? Jesus, who will show me the way when I am lost? Jesus, who will send his angels to fight in the heavenlies for me in the cosmic battle.
Jesus, who is the only one in heaven or on earth who could give me victory over my sin. Jesus, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Jesus. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Alan Wright. These two things are true at the same time.
The law is good and holy and just, but The law If you try to keep it, will make your sin worse. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I am Daniel Britt. Excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, It's All Right Now, from Romans chapters 4 through 7, as presented at Rinolda Church in North Carolina.
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More on that later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright.
So, Paul has been arguing not just here but previously that the law has this way of in some Some kind of bizarre, counterintuitive way, drawing sin out of us. Saint Augustine has a famous text in his writings called the Confessions, in which he says, Near our vineyard there was a pear tree loaded with fruit. Though the fruit was not particularly attractive either in color or taste, I and some other youths conceived the idea of shaking the pears off the tree and carrying them away. We set out late at night and stole all the fruit that we could carry. And this was not to feed ourselves we may have tasted a few, but then we threw the rest to the pigs.
our real pleasure was simply in doing something that was not allowed. I had plenty better pairs of my own. I only took these ones in order that I might be a thief. And once I'd taken them, I threw them away. And all I tasted in them was my own iniquity, which I enjoyed very much.
Everybody can understand something about this that. There is A way in which telling someone Don't do this. Gives temptation to do that very thing. That there's something in the sin nature. In the sin nature, Dip.
takes pleasure in doing the forbidden thing. This is the etymology of the word perverse. It is the turning of something that You might not otherwise even want to do, except for the fact that you're not supposed to do it. Interesting.
So the law is good, Paul's saying, but trying to keep it. is deathly. Here's verse 9. I once was alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
The very commandment that promised Life proved to be death to me. For sin. And here he personifies sin as if it's its own power and personality. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Sounds a whole lot like Adam in the garden, doesn't it? Adam and Eve. Freedom and grace everywhere. Don't eat that one tree in the middle. And what did the serpent use but that one commandment?
to lure them into sin. But the law was good. Because the law is God's revelation. You learn something about God from the law. If the Lord says be holy because I'm holy, if the Lord says don't commit adultery, if The Lord says, do not lie.
You're learning something about God. God's for monogamous covenant. God is for honesty and transparency. and integrity. You can see something about God and His law.
It's a revelation of God. It's good. And God spoke it, and so it's God-breathed.
So it's got to be good. But The devil has used the good law of God to, starting with Adam, lure people into something that leads to death. That's what Paul is saying. And so These two things are true at the same time. The law was good and holy and just, but.
The law If you try to keep it... will make your sin worse.
Some years ago, I shared this testimony that I received from a very wonderful brother in our fellowship. Yeah. Who was describing some new freedom he had experienced? And he said that he said, he wrote me, he said, when I was 13 years old, So I was riding my bicycle to go see a friend, and coming back, I got curious about an old abandoned house. And he said, I went in to explore it, and I found a magazine in there.
That I shouldn't have looked at, that somebody had left behind. And so I was 13. He said, I did what young guys do. I picked it up, I looked through it. And then a surprise thunderstorm blew in so fast that it startled me.
I had not long before given my life to Christ and been baptized, so my conscience was screaming at me almost as loudly as my lusty curiosity. had been. And I just hopped on my bicycle and raced home as fast as I could in this blinding rain. And just as I passed, you can't make this stuff up. Just as I passed under a telephone pole, a bolt of lightning hit the power.
transformer above me and a twenty foot circle of sparks came down around me. The light was blinding and a crack of thunder almost stopped my heart. White with fear, I was off the bicycle and on my knees in an instant, praying as fast as I could. And I swore to God I would never do that again. Just please don't kill me now.
But listen to this. This is profound.
Well, the oath lasted about a month. It did little to deter my lusty curiosity. but it served well in increasing my shame. and causing me to fear God. to be afraid of God.
I knew this brother, and I'd prayed with him before. He had been on a decades-long struggle with this addiction. that had been threatening his uh marriage. And I did. detracting from everything in his life.
He was throwing himself into, immersing himself into. the gospel of grace. One Sunday I preached a sermon about God swears to God from Hebrews and How It's not our vows to God. that delivers us is God's vows to us. And he said, I was listening to that on.
in the car. And he said, About 28 minutes into the sermon, you began to prophesy over the congregation, and I sobbed and I cried out loud and pulled over on the side of the road. and he went on to tell me that the harder I tried, The more deeply I was ashamed of my failure, and assured of a seat at the extreme far end of the table by the door, where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. But now In this good news, I've told all those lying demons where to go to the foot of the cross. And he said, I'm better.
At the time of writing this, he said nine months sexually sober, his addiction was broken. by the grace of God, but it was heightened. By trying to keep the law. Right. That's what Paul's talking about.
Trying to keep the law made things worse. Verse 13: Did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means.
So he's just reiterating. That though I'm saying that the trying to keep it just exposed and heightened my sin by making me more ashamed that I couldn't keep it. I'm not saying that the law was bad. You have to understand both those things. You have to understand both those things at the same time.
It wasn't the law, he says it was sin. producing death in me. Through what is good, the law. in order that the sin might be shown to be sin. and through the commandment might become more sinful.
become sinful beyond measure. One of the reasons that God gave us the law, even though he knew we couldn't keep the law. Was that the law lets us know How bad our sin is.
So that we will cry out for the Savior. Until you realize I'm utterly sinful and I need a savior, why would you cry out for a savior? That's what he's saying.
Some many years ago, Tim Keller preached a two-part sermon on this text, and he used a powerful and pervasive illustration from Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's not really this novella. Of Stevenson's is not really like the horror movies that are made, not really a monster movie.
It is instead an amazing and insightful look at the struggle of this dichotomy of the human nature. And in fact, Robert Louis Stevenson was raised in a staunch Calvinist home, and in several places in the book, he directly quotes Romans chapter 7. It's a story about a benevolent doctor. Jackal who was bothered By this incongruous struggle he saw in his own being. That on the one hand, he was benevolent and he wanted to do good.
But he also said. He saw the dark side, the shadow side. And it bothered him because it's unpleasant. It's going to be one of the things that will be so wonderful about heaven, won't it? Where we've just got one nature, a perfected nature.
But here. We're new in Christ, but we still got this struggle with the old sin nature that we can all identify with.
Well, what Dr. Jekyll did was he thought if I could segregate these two things, so I'm mostly good, but I got this bad, and if I could isolate and put all the bad in this other person, then I could just be all this good. And he came up with a potion. That when he drank it, He became Mr. Hyde.
All evil. Mr. Hyde, like the word Hyde, hideous, the thing you wouldn't want anybody to see. But what he found out, much to his displeasure, was that mister Hyde was far worse than he'd imagined. mister Hyde was Total evil, total selfishness, and thus eventually murderous.
But what he also found Was that the more that he drank the potion to try to get all of that bad out of him and into Mr. Hyde, Mr. Hyde just got bigger and bigger? until finally He had to drink the potion to be even doctor Jekyll. It's a very powerful look at.
A flawed attempt to deal with the problem of this struggle. And Paul at verse fourteen shifts from the past tense And he comes into the present tense. Which is why most interpreters would say he's talking about. the Christian life, even for him, a super apostle. He says, For we know that the law is spiritual.
meaning of the Spirit, God breathed, but I'm of the flesh, sold under sin.
So he's saying that That this statement, which in many ways you go, how could you say that and say we're more than conquerors? Is probably his admission that even as a spirit-filled, powerful follower of Jesus Christ, that there's still something of the flesh that's there. and the struggle is real. The struggle's real and the struggle's frustrating. And Paul says something similar to this that I think explains it all in Galatians 5.17.
for the desires of the flesh You can say the flesh is that part of you. If it were to stand alone from God and try to be self-reliant and rely on its own abilities and its own appetites. The desires of the flesh are against the spirit. and the desires of the spirit against the flesh. for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
And there he's clearly speaking to Christians.
So This is what I think is being described here, starting at verse 15 in these famous words. For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. And what the reason probably he's talking about his Christian life is that. is that This is the this is only a Christian hates what's evil, right? But now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it's good.
So now it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. 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.
Now, if I do, What I do not want is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. The thing to notice here. In the first place, is all these I statements. I do not do what I want. I don't, I find the case.
I find. What's this a picture of? It's a picture. Of what probably every honest Christian could say they've been through, and it is that when you get a new nature in Christ, your affections turn towards Christ, and there are things that you just want to do that are completely different, and you want to amplify that in your life, and you want to become more like Christ, and yet you also can feel this tug of this shadow side of the old sin nature. and it can create a real struggle within.
That's what he's talking about. A lot of movies and films try to deal with this struggle. My favorite super. Hero movie is Captain America. I love Captain America.
Captain America started as a guy who was too scrawny to even be accepted by the Army. And they had an experimental potion, an injection that they could inject that could make him super strong and be able to jump over things and run faster than everybody else and be stronger than everybody. And so he got injected and it worked because he was such a noble person that what it did was it intensified in an exponential manner his nobility and gave him strength for good. But there's a bad guy, Red Skull, who also gets hold of the potion. and takes it wanting to be strong, but Red Skull is evil in intent.
And the potion works the opposite for him.
Now, instead of amplifying any good in him, it amplifies because he was bent towards bad and he becomes the evil antagonist in the whole thing. We would like to kind of have a injection and be Captain America. Where I don't have to struggle with any of those things. And I think Paul is probably being honest and saying, I want you to know I'm really like everybody else. And there are areas of my life that I still struggle with it, even though I'm so filled with the.
Power of the Holy Spirit. I find it, verse 21, a law, now meaning not. Law like Mosaic law, but a principle that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. Right. If people didn't love God at all, evil probably doesn't lie nearly close at hand.
For I delight in the law of God and my inner being. Everywhere Paul uses that word in the New Testament, he's talking to Christians. But 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. We know for sure that he's not saying that we're under bondage to sin. He's already made that clear in the opening chapters of Romans.
But what he's saying here is that there's some way in which The struggle that he's being honest about is identifying that he really wants something better than that. The fact that you are at all frustrated with sin in your life. The fact that you at all want to be like Jesus. is proving that you're gods.
So, don't be so discouraged by the besetting attitudes and problems and sin of your life. If you're frustrated with them at all, It just proves that you know there's something better. Um Alan Wright, our good news message: Who will deliver me? From the series, It's All Right Now. It's from Romans chapters 4 through 7 and an in-depth study.
Of these great words of the Apostle Paul. Please stay with us. Pastor Alan is back joining us in the studio and a parting good news thought coming your way in just a moment. Prayer works. And here at Allen Wright Ministries, we believe prayer is one of the greatest ways that we can care for one another.
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Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's Daily Blessing. It's free, and just to click away at pastoralen.org. Back here with Pastor Alan and our parting good news thought for the day and who will deliver me.
For Pastor Alan, for someone who's listening right now and they're really, well, they can hardly wait for the next installment of this message.
So, what can they chew on over the next few hours? The first thing to say is: this is all headed towards the best news ever. who will deliver me? Thanks be to God in Jesus Christ. There is a way out.
And Romans 7 is about the honest struggle. And I think he's talking about Christians here. There's debate about that. But I think he's talking about Christians, even his own life, where we know. That there is a struggle between The flesh and the spirit, and there's a struggle.
Sometimes the very things we don't want to do, we end up doing. But there is a way forward, and there's the way of God. And God is not going to leave you in this. God is committed to your deliverance. And so we will in the end join Paul in saying, thanks be to God who sets me free from sin.
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