My flesh does, my spirit hates it. And therefore, you are a threat to hell. If hell can get you to be casual about your sin, then you're not so much of a threat. Now, it doesn't mean you can't live with this intensity.
You just would collapse. You couldn't serve. I can't serve them, such as sinners. It's learning to accept the grace and continue to fight at the same time.
It's a very simple solution that is difficult. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Romans.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Today, Pastor Rick will conclude his study called Unwanted Wants as he teaches in Romans Chapter 7. I can't go to the world to say, help me understand the Bible. I can't go to the world to say, help me understand human behavior.
I can only go to the Scripture, to the OEM, the original manufacturer. I must go to God and say, what makes us tick? Now, I can certainly learn about that by interacting with people, but I have to have as my foundation the Scripture. And if you don't believe that, then you reduce the Scripture into some sort of moral traffic cop which says, hell that way, heaven this way, and that's it.
The book wouldn't be so thick if that were all it were. Well, I've had my moment of coming back to verse 19, that flesh which is opposed to Jesus Christ, it is totally beyond redemption. God will not bless the flesh in its dealings, though the person who is the host of the flesh can still be blessed. The natural man lives in the flesh, the carnal Christian is stumbled by the flesh, and the spiritual man subdues the flesh.
No way around that. If there is, tell me, we'll put it in a bottle and we'll sell it in the chapel store and humanity will be better after that. Well, verse 20, now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me, spoken like one who has tried to be perfect in the past and in the present, only to realize their own personal great imperfection. He doesn't have to be a serial killer to be a sinner.
He can just be somebody that is behaving in a way that God has forbidden. And if you, who here reads the Sermon on the Mount and says, boy, I'm glad that's not talking to me. You read the Sermon on the Mount and you go, woe is me, for I am undone.
And if you don't, then you'll probably have a reading comprehension issue. Well, anyway, the invasive influence of sin exploits our fallen nature and the spirit responds and fights it. So, this is grace. The Bible teaches the inability of man and the responsibility of man at the same time. There's no need to reconcile them. This is what's, they will be reconciled when we get to heaven when we jettison the flesh. Verse 21, I find then a law that is evil, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.
I meant to do the right thing and I messed it all up. There it is. I am dead to sin, but sin is alive to me.
It is present with me. That's what he says. Now, you can get around this and you can say, well, he's not talking about himself. He's just pointing fingers at everybody else.
That's why he's opened up with, he's talking, this is autobiographical. The personal pronouns demand that. And here, again, I am dead to sin, sin alive to me. Psalm 120, verse 5, I love the poetic way of saying the same thing. Woe is me, I dwell in Meshech that I dwell among the tents of Kedar. The psalmist is saying I'm with those outside of the covenant that are against Yahweh. And it's a poetic way. That's my flesh.
I'm stuck with this. The flesh is guaranteed to sin, the new nature is guaranteed not to sin. First John 3, whoever has been born of God does not sin. Again, that's the spiritual nature. For his seed remains in him and he cannot sin because he has been born of God.
You say John is double-talking. No, earlier he had said if any of us sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Why do we have an advocate with the Father is a question. How do you get that advocate?
Who doesn't have him? Well, the one that's not submitted to Jesus Christ is Lord. That's why Paul says if you confess with your mouth, the Lord Jesus, what does that mean? He's Lord, he's master, he's sovereign, he's owner.
And you are under that entirely or not and suffer those consequences. Verse 22, and Jesus gave parables about coming back and finding what they did in his vineyard. The parables in Isaiah about that, parables in the gospel. Verse 22, for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. Which Christian, which Christian has not read scripture and said I love your word, I love it, knowing that we struggle.
We all do. We love his word. Only the believer says I delight in the law of God.
Because in the law, in the rule book of God, there is this rule. The grace of Jesus Christ. The willingness and the ability to not crush the sinner. That is grace. That's a part of grace. Grace is difficult to understand because it's spiritual, not natural. We, you know, we don't, we tend to not think in those terms until we come to scripture. How many of you knew, how many of you applied grace to your state with God before the Bible? Before scripture, grace was something where the ballerina did.
Oh, she's so graceful. Sorry, I meant to do that a little deeper. No identity problems up here. Anyway, my voice just went up. Psalm 40, I delight to do your will, oh my God. And your law is within my heart. Now again, for the Greeks and the Hebrews, the heart was the entire being.
It was not only your feelings, your emotions, it was also the way you thought and what your, where your will, the seat of your will. You put those together, that's the heart. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
The heart covers it all. Psalm 118 verse 15, the voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents of the righteous. Well, David could never say, I will enter his courts with thanksgiving in my heart, I will enter his courts in praise had it not been for his understanding that there's more to God than the 10 commandments. He could not say, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever without understanding that God has invested in sinners.
He is not satisfied with them as sinners, but he, he makes a way of escape that you may be able to bear it as he writes, Paul writes in the Corinthian letter. When you come across a God, which is the God, like this, what is your response if you're not giving your life to him? Are you casual about this?
Are you eating a sandwich or eating the bionic gear? Or do you say, woe is me. I'm in trouble.
I need to fix this. And you run to the cross of Christ. Satan wants you to be in a fog about these things or casual. There's nothing casual about salvation. There's nothing casual about the Bible. There's nothing casual about the cross of Christ or your salvation.
All of it is intense and there's nothing casual about Satan either. In verse 23, he continues, 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. Me too, Paul. You want to find out where that me too belongs? There it is.
The fierce conflict, all out, painful, scary, very costly. But Jesus said, I send you out as sheep among wolves. Well, he must have some backup moves to pull that off.
And he does. It's the Holy Spirit bringing me into captivity. I recovered this last session. I may be a POW, but I'm no traitor.
Huge difference. I may be in enemy territory as a prisoner, not as a traitor. And this is the story of Ezekiel and of Daniel as discussed last session. As a child of God, I'm always planning my escape from sin, never collaborating with the enemy. My flesh does my spirit hates it. And therefore, you are a threat to hell. If hell can get you to be casual about your sin, then you're not so much of a threat.
Now, it doesn't mean you can't live with this intensity. You just would collapse. You couldn't serve. I can't serve.
I'm such a sinner. It's learning to accept the grace and continue to fight at the same time. It's a very simple solution that is difficult. It's a paradox. Sounds like a contradiction.
It is not. You who serve, you know, if we were waiting for, if you waited for any Christian to be perfect before they could serve, we would have no servants. You'd have no pastor. The law of sin, which is in my members, that's in me, my flesh, my body. Universities teach every law known to man, accept this one.
This one's known to man. They don't want to teach the law of sin, because then they have to come under its authority, the authority of the one who has revealed this law, Christ. This law explains why people do what they do, the single root of all behavioral problems. Mentally, every believer sides with God on the question of conduct.
Physically is a different matter. Warring against the law of my mind. Again, the inward man, that's the mind. As referred to in verse 23, the inward man. Verse 24, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? What if the scripture ended there? We'd be doomed. But it doesn't.
It's a great sob in the voice of the one who says this, which is all of us. His strength failed, his struggle to overcome sin. Through sincerity and hard effort and study, a lot of Christians become disillusioned because they study so hard and don't get the results they want.
And they think that, well, it's not working or, you know, they just can get tripped up by that. What do you do when you study so hard and you're not getting the results? You persevere. We have a word for that. But you persevere. There are rules to that. You just can't keep going forward.
You can just become a judge. You still have to have love. You still have to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. You have to still bear all things.
You have to understand love never fails. Well, God loves me, and I know it, and I love him back. That love will not fail me when I die. There is hatred in his voice when he writes about sin, not for himself, but for sin. Romans 12-9, abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.
Sound your advice. Romans 8 verse 7, because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. Now the carnal mind is found in the Christian struggling. The natural mind has that too. It is carnal in that sense. It is not spiritual. I have noticed that Christians love the song Amazing Grace, because we can all identify it with it.
It's an easy fit. And before his conversion, Saul, the writer of this letter, was smug in his own legalistic approach to religion. He thought that his effort and his sincerity and his study was good enough, but when he comes to Christ, he realized that wasn't the case, and he writes, he speaks about that.
Luke writes it down in Acts chapter 26. Indeed, I myself, Paul said, thought I must do many things contrary to the name of Jesus Christ. That is the picture of a person without the Holy Spirit. The lost soul may catch a glimpse of their wretched state. They don't want to be addicted to things.
They want control over their life. That's just common grace. It's not spiritual grace. Spiritual grace has its eyes on Christ, on his will, doesn't want to offend him. Common grace is not interested in Christ.
It has its own definitions for what's good and bad. Zechariah, he said that he shared the things of God with the people, and an element of them, of course, refused this, and he writes it down, Zechariah 7-11. But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. Well, that is still happening. Luke chapter 22 verse 62 gives the difference. In Luke, in Zechariah, they had human problems. They dealt with it in human ways, even if they had false religion.
It's still human because they are human gods. But the Christian, when faced with these things, Luke 22 verse 62, when Peter denied the Lord the third time, it says Peter went out and wept bitterly, a grown man crying like a platoon of babies, just sobbing, heaving, just destroyed. And what did Christ do for Peter? He carefully reconstructed him and put him back to work in ministry. He still does that. Peter, do you love me?
Let's get to the bottom of this. Let's not sweep this under the rug, Peter, because I need not only you to see it, I need generations to come to see it, that you who are spiritual restore such a one. And Peter was restored. He says here in verse 24, who will deliver me from this body of death, the genuine cry for deliverance. Matthew 5 verse 4, blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. It has to do with sin, not only the grief we find in life. This has to do with a poor spirit concerning sin. And as I mentioned, if Romans ended here, we'd be devastated, but it doesn't because he raises the poor off the dung hill and sets him among the princes.
Verse 25, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with my mind, I myself serve the law of God, the Bible, but with the flesh, the law of sin. So he's very mature about this. He's not, you know, in a fantasy world when it comes to sin. He is not behaving as though facts are not facts. So once again, having said this in a while, the approach to the scripture, I think, should be fact, faith, and feelings in that order. Satan comes along and switches that order. So your feelings are now dictating what your faith should be and the facts are then of course ruined because your feelings are, our feelings are so imperfect. I'm not the only one that has this formula.
It is a good formula. And so back to verse 25, when he says, with my mind, I serve the Lord. Now the Gnostics took such a verse of teaching as this because Paul wasn't the only one teaching this.
They took this to sponsor lawlessness. Well, you know, sin is abstract. It's not concrete.
Long as the concrete part is in the heart, it doesn't matter how you act. You see how they twisted it? As Peter said, they take Paul's words and they twist them to their own harm. And what did God do in response to the Gnostics? Well, he dispatched Paul and John, primarily, to refute these things. First, John is aimed at the Gnostics and so is Colossians. So, and the other teachings have it also.
So we have to understand very clear about this. We're not saying it's okay to sin. Sin is a hated thing. And to take the shame out of sin is to sin. The apostles, you know, they have given us what we need to go forward. But with the flesh, the law of sin. And so there he says, where sin abounded, grace did much more. But to get that grace, there needs to be genuine, of genuine faith. Peter talks about that, does he not? And he talks about the genuineness of your faith, that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes.
Why? Why is that so important? Because if you are faking it, if you think you can live lawlessly and pretend to be a Christian, you're going to be disappointed in the end. And that's a euphemism. But if you're genuine, the grace applies.
It sticks. And so we read, I'm almost done. We read 2 Corinthians 4. Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though the outward man is perishing, that's the part, the members that sin. He continues, yet the inward man is being renewed daily, day by day.
Why? Why do I have to have a morning sacrifice, even sacrifice in the Old Testament? Because it's telling me that in the New Testament the fight is daily. Well, now that I have this amazing grace, what am I going to do with it?
I'm going to clobber other people over the head. To forgive others, according to the Scriptures, is to launch an attack against hell. Every time that you seek to apply your faith, you are attacking the enemy.
Just take out your resistance and see what's left. The cross of Christ is something to say, and it says it at the crucifixion. And Christ says, unless you take up your cross and die daily, you can't be my disciple. We just do these things as Christians. So I close with this verse, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 18. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. Yeah, because they don't see that genuine element. But to those of us who are being saved is the power of God. Why?
What is the difference? We've met Christ. That's what. We've been born again. We know the Lord, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, fellowship of His suffering, if by any means I may be conformed. This is the Christian life.
Let's pray. Al, Father in Heaven, your grace is truly amazing. It's an understatement to say that your grace is amazing. There are no words in any language, but there is the perseverance, the determination to follow hard after you, to do whatever it takes to remain under your lordship in spite of failure.
We thank you for these infallible proofs. Lord, it is the prayer of the righteous for those who are lost. And if you're here this morning or watching online or listening on podcasts, or maybe in the future when the message is posted, if you've not opened your heart to Christ, why not? What is so special about a life without Jesus?
Because there's a whole lot more. And we who believe have lived in both worlds. We know what it's like to live life according to our own judgment and preferences. And we know what it's like to come to the cross of Christ, to be lifted to the throne of God, to be in touch with the maker of the universe and the savior of the soul, the lover of sinners. And you're invited to join or you can stay in the world and suffer their fate or come to Christ and begin to see what life is really all about. If you'd like to open your heart to Christ, if you tried it your way and you realized that you are a sinner, you're in bad standing with God, you've broken his law, you've trampled his law, if you would like to receive grace and forgiveness, then come to him. Make this prayer in earnest, he'll receive you. Lord Jesus, I am a sinner.
I've broken your commandments and I ask you to forgive me. There's nowhere else to go. There's no one else that's good enough to die for me. There's no one else who loves me enough to die for me.
There's no one powerful enough to rise again. I give my life to you and from this day forward, I ask that you would be both the one who saves my soul and lords over my life. And now Father, if anyone has made this prayer this morning, may it go forward. May they not be ashamed of their confession. May they come to love you with their whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. These things we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.
