Albert Mohler - "The Scariest Thing in the World"

well good morning I feel like I should begin by reminding you of the always true adage that you should not believe everything you hear when Dean York got up to describe things you did not know about me I made a signal to the audiovisual folks to disconnect the cable it it didn't work but I refuse to be slandered in such a way I need new duties actually I I do not do any imitation of Napoleon Dynamite it would be far too humiliating because I was Napoleon Dynamite if you were to go back into the 1970s which is an awkward decade in itself I I hesitate when I look at the high school yearbook because I recognize I was a movie star before it was cool I'm not sure it ever has been cool but I look at those pictures and I realized yes I was Napoleon Dynamite it is so good to be here with you this morning it's good to be here in this chapel service it's good to be able to sing together a mighty fortress is our God it's wonderful to be able to be confronted by Scripture together and and it's it's just good to to be here in a service on the eve of Halloween um the eve of All Hallows Eve and remember first and foremost to the 500 first anniversary of the Reformation it's a it was just a year ago that we were celebrating that 500 year mark of the Reformation and here we are just as committed five hundred and one years later to the great theological truths that were recovered and restated with the hope and promise of a church reformed in the 16th century and now the society around us does celebrate however Halloween and it has become now one of the largest commercial holidays in the United States this is if you were a Marxist you would look at Halloween and you would say this is just how capitalism works you begin with something that that it's just organic and and local you begin with with a Victorian recapturing of the idea of children dressing on All Hallows Eve to go out on what will be called Halloween and go trick-or-treating and and before you know it it is a massive consumerist holiday we are told in the top four of all spending that will go on on all american holidays during this year Halloween now ranked so near the top that that it is a massive expenditure of billions of dollars now that there's a history to it I've written quite a bit about this I've talked about it on the briefing the the basic pagan history to Halloween and and there was there was always a sense of paganism behind it there was always a sense of something spiritually very dangerous behind Halloween a sense of a fascination with evil one night celebrating and you know the the dark side and and then of course there have been the the festivals that have been alongside Halloween from the very beginning that have been not just historically pagan but explicitly pagan and more so now with the resurgence of paganism of all things in the 21st century it turns out that a secular society won't stay secular just as nature abhors a vacuum so also does the human soul and in a society that has increasingly turned its back on Christianity new forms of paganism and New Age spirituality and all kinds of nonsense are now flooding such that we have headline news and so many major newspapers about gatherings of witches for this and for that I was just recently in a bookstore one of the the rather successful independent bookstores in this country only to discover that that there was a witches meeting going on in the bookstore that that presents a challenge for the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary what what exactly do you do I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be Elijah or or what exactly should take place when you notice the sign that witches are meeting therein I decided an exit was the was the most appropriate response for the president of the seminary lest there be any confusion by remaining in the bookstore there's always been something incongruous to me about this I was a teenager in the 1970s and the 1970s were in American popular culture when there was a significant turn in the way movies were made and tales were told this this was when Stephen King's literature began to gain traction in the United States and there was a shift in movies it was a shift towards greater darkness more explicit violence indeed horrifying violence violence that never would have been tolerated on the big screen or for that matter in American literature and previous eras in emerge in the 1970s and Beyond and then has exploded into an entire industry of horror I've never even quite understood it psychologically I mean I can't explain it as again a confused society a secular society developing a fascination with with evil precisely because of its theological confusion I can understand that I can understand the allure of wanting to to give a fleeting glimpse to the dark side I can understand that that's a seduction a temptation that's identified even in Scripture what I don't understand is buying a ticket or for that matter buying a ticket and taking your girl friend into a movie where you know you're gonna eat popcorn and you're gonna come out at the end and go home and in the meantime you you suspend your disbelief in order to enter into an experience in which you are to be scared out of your wits here's the amazing thing it works I have no interest in those movies but I really don't I really don't I I my dad my dad grew up of course in the 1930s and 40s and and he told me that the most traumatic experience of his life was when he was seven seven he got home his mother had a migraine headache she sent him to the movie theater at seven he walked down to the center of this little town in the south and walked into the movie theater and saw a matinee of Bambi Bambi but when the forest fire scene came he couldn't take it and he ran out of the theater and ran all the way home crying because of the horror movie Bambi now there's an entirely different dimension we could talk about here which is Disney's domestication of a story that is genuinely more complex and it's genuinely more scary but not in its animated version but I basically am my father I have no desire to go in order to be scared in a movie theater much less the celebration that goes beyond merely being scared of violence and mayhem and worse and besides that I've read the Bible and brothers and sisters that's quite scary enough I want to preach this morning about the scariest thing in the world and III mentioned this on social media yesterday and sure enough I got some interesting responses about what the scariest thing in the world might be and because it is a sermon and they knew it was going to be preached in Chapel they didn't come immediately to some kind of natural of explanation such that it will be a great white shark or a grizzly bear or a tornado or a hurricane no no they went to something deeper than that and they said oh it's going to be Satan well that's it would be a very good candidate for a sermon about the scariest thing in the world the scripture tells us that he roams to and fro seeking whom he may devour and and and someone else said no III bet it's it's going to be about sin well and in some sense yes it is going to be about sin but that sin as just some sign some kind of deep threat they say Oh baby it's the wrath of God well there's nothing scarier in the sense of understanding the holiness and the righteousness of God and the judgment that is to come then the wrath of God poured out upon sin some churches as you know again going back now a couple of decades have decided to use Halloween as an evangelistic opportunity by creating some kind of fright house and pray that the news media are our captive by this and appalled by this and you know that you get teenagers there primarily for teenagers and you get them in a church and and and it's our southern our evangelical our our Christian way of trying to do something genuinely scary and of course the problem is we can't do scary like Hollywood can do scary and and besides that we get preachy about our scary and so you've got room one which is a teenager killed by drunk driving and and then you get the drunk driving message while you're in room one and then you go into room two and it's drugs and you just go through all this and by the end of it you know they then present the gospel and report how many people come to Christ because they were scared out of their wit's and and we're we're led in some kind of formulaic response to the end I'm not saying that no sinner has ever entered into such a fright house and and come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord I'm just saying it falls what to me is the Apostle Paul test wwp D what would Paul do I just cannot imagine a fright house in Philippi this just does not work I don't see the Apostle Paul giving his apostolic sanction to such a methodology that given the world the flesh and the devil given the holiness of God and the wrath that will be out poured upon sin given given the reality of all of the dark side all of the honesty in God's revealed word about evil and death and judgment and all of the enemies of humanity there would be any number of candidates for the scariest thing in the world but I want to suggest to you that the scariest thing in the world is you for me the scariest thing in the world it's me I want to invite you to turn with me to Romans chapter 7 Romans chapter 7 beginning in verse 7 Paul writes what then shall we say that the law is sin by no means yet if it not been for the law I would not have known sin I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said thou shalt not covet but sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness apart from the law sin lies dead I once was alive apart from the law but when the commandment came sin came alive and I died the very commandment that promise life proved to be death to me for sins 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 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 through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure for we know that the law is spiritual but I am of the flesh sold under sin I do not understand my own actions for I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate now if I do what I do not want I agree with the law that is good that it is good so now it is 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 it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me so I find it to be a law that when I want to do right evil eyes close at hand for I delight in the law of God in my inner being 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 wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh I serve the law of sin this is God's Word it is a haunting word as we shall see it turns into a hopeful word but first it is a an indicted word if you were to ask me my favorite city in the world I think I would answer the same way just about every time I'm a very proud American but my favorite city in the world is London and there's something about London that has captivated me long before I was able to be there and I've been there many times and and and no number of times will be enough London's the city where every few feet you you you you you mark something new and it's new to you because it's very old it's one of those few cities in the world where ever where you step there is there is history to be seen a story to be retold it was for so many years the most important city in the world and in many ways it continues to be one of the most important cities of the world so much of our literature in the english-speaking world by no accident comes from London so much of our history our shared history as well one of the things I love about London are the squares London is a great metropolitan city with an enormous wealth coming into London and representing London especially during the 18th and 19th centuries it was it was during the 18th century that London after the Great Fire of previous years had had begun to rebuild and it rebuild in the in these elegant squares where the person is able to live in in in these squares in London they built these opulent homes and in London there they're townhomes they come they come right up to the street and and there are these beautiful classical facades and behind them are these grand homes and and and so the squares are just they're just front after front after front and so you would have four different angles of these beautiful homes made made of stone and marble and and prick this is where the wealthiest of the wealthy would have lived and their carriages would have dropped them off at the front door and when they held their their soirees and their their elegant parties and when they gave dinner which was of course a multi-course multi hour event the carriages would would unload their their occupants that would go into the front door and then and the front door would leave you into these elegant drawing rooms what one of the homes in one of the most historic of the squares there in London what was the home of a physician by the name of dr. John hunter and dr. hunter is one of the most important figures in the history of Medicine we have a we have a great deal to thank dr. hunter for it was it was dr. hunter who first actually came to an understanding of the of the role of the placenta in human development and gestation in the womb and explained how exactly the the growing child in the womb is nourished by the mother through the placenta it was he who who helped to to come up with with modern germ theory as we know it today at least being able to trace epidemics to contamination and of course this is in a day when because of a basic respect for the body autopsies were not done there was very little knowledge of exactly how the human body worked and and claiming a Christian concern for respect for the body it was considered a criminal act to to do an investigation on a dead human body and so that those investigations were were done in secret and of course in order to conduct those investigations those autopsies those vivisections you you would you you would have to have a body and that required stealing a body there was no provision for someone to leave their bodies to science there were there was not even a provision for autopsy in the case of a criminal investigation the only way to gain these bodies was to you those who were called resurrection men don't read any theology into it it was merely a crude way of speaking of grave robbers that they would go to graves especially if executed criminals or others that no one would miss and the resurrection men the grave robbers they would steal the bodies and and then they would sell them to those brave and and illicit souls who were conducting medical experiments dr. John Hunter was one of them and I I was reminded of him just a few years ago when I was walking in this square I wasn't looking for dr. John Hunter but one of the marvelous things about London are the medallions the historic medallions they're often painted blue and then they have the writing on them they're embedded into the walls of buildings such as the houses new kowalzck whereby Square and discover who lived here and and who lived there and I just happened to pass a medallion on a beautiful square in central London and the medallion said this was the home of dr. John hunter one of the founding fathers of modern medicine and my blood turned cold when dr. John Hunter died they discovered that behind the elegant facade of his home there there was a back part of the house and the back part of the house was walled off so that it was it was not even perceptible to the people who would come to his elegant parties he was such an esteemed physician that the wealthiest of the wealthy the most elite of the elite in London including members of the royal family saw him as an attending physician and and and thus his social life was very important and and those dinner parties were crucial and no one could know what was going on behind what everyone thought was the back wall but accessible only by an alley the resurrection men had for a long time been bringing bodies into the back area of dr. John Hunter's house and after the dinner was over dr. John Hunter would change clothes he would get out of his out of his clothes as you would know from Regency or later Victorian England he would get out of his evening coat and get out of his starched shirt and collar he would take off his tie he would put on very different clothing and he would go into the back of the home this was in the late eighteenth century in the nineteenth century another man very fascinated with humanity but not fascinated so much with the human body but fascinated with the human mind and and and seeing in himself a dark side that he had written about ever since he was a teenager Robert Louis Stevenson knew the story of dr. John Hunter by day and dr. John hunter by night and he translated that into a story that has become a fixture of the English Canon the strange tale of dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde now that was based upon a real doctor dr. John hunter and it was based upon real events that took place in the home of dr. John hunter but Robert Louis Stevenson had a deeper concern we would identify it as a theological concern is one of the concerns that haunted Stevenson throughout his entire life it's a refrain that comes up story after story after story it's the question how can humanity be simultaneously so capable of good and so attracted to evil now unfortunately most Americans know the strange tale of dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde by some kind of synopsis or some kind of animated presentation or some kind of movie if you've read the tale the novella you know that it's actually a story that is related by one man to another about what he had heard about what had been taking place and he told of dr. Jekyll and and like John Hunter dr. Jekyll is one of the most esteemed physicians of London and now that this was fast forward into the Victorian era out of the of the 18th century into the 19th century but Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about dr. Jekyll and and he's just mr. doctor he wrote about dr. Jekyll he's just doctor hunter updated into the times of Robert Louis Stevenson again everyone in the elite of London wants him as their attending physician but what they don't know is that dr. Jekyll has a fascination there's a there's something inside of him that there's something inside of him that he says no to he keeps saying no to until he stops saying no to what was coming from within him as a medical doctor as a physician he had acquaintance with with chemicals and with pharmaceuticals and and the way Stevenson tells the story dr. Jekyll begins to experiment with potions who will transform which will transform him into someone else and eventually he achieves a potion that will transform him not now as dr. Jekyll but instead as Edward Hyde and and and Edward Hyde is everything he is not and and by the way it's it's a total transformation and Edward Hyde is actually a Stevenson depicts him younger than dr. Jekyll and all kinds of Freudian analysis has gone into that as well but it basically is the dark side of dr. Jekyll perhaps a dark side that he had been repressing since he was a very young man such that mr. Edward Hyde is a very young man now remember this is taking place at the same time that crime is becoming endemic in London the industrial revolution has happened an urbanization is taking place there are hordes of people moving into London that this is that this is the London that Dickens will speak about of the dark satanic Mills and and with the urbanization and with all the workers and and and with the underclass as it was then described that was emerging in in London there was an endemic of prostitution and venereal disease and all kinds of things including murder the most famous of which the serial murders attributed to a man known as Jack the Ripper well as Stevenson tells the story that to Jekyll experimenting with these potions is able to transform himself as a pattern into mr. Hyde and once he is mr. Hyde in there you have the front of the house and he had the back of the house you have dr. Jekyll and you have mr. Hyde and you have mr. Hyde in precincts of London where dr. Jekyll would never go where the kinds of things happen that Edward Hyde wants to be a part of and and he is a man of evil and violence unleashed and and you know the story or at least the general outlines of the story you know that it required a different potion to to transform mr. Hyde back into dr. Jekyll and and you understand the crucial turning point in the story when that that that potion begins to be in effective the great moral turning point in the story is where dr. Jekyll having been transformed into mr. Hyde is is only partly transformed from Hyde back into dr. Jekyll and.and he still has the body of mr. Hyde but he has the eyes of dr. Jekyll and passing a glass a mirror he sees with the body of Hyde but with the eyes of dr. Jekyll and he says this to was myself that's the truly frightening thing that that's what Stevenson came to understand this was the obsession that had so concerned Robert Louis Stevenson even earlier in his life that's reflected in his very first attempt at writing a short story that this too was myself how can I be two people at the same time how can that be possible how can it be possible looking at humanity writ large that that someone can be capable of such good and then the same person capable of such evil it's almost surely not an accident that Robert Louis Stevenson began to have these concerns in adolescence because a part of the achievement of adolescence is complex analytical reasoning it's it's flex cognition is the ability to to see one self and to analyze oneself that's a part of the of the trauma of adolescence of the identity crisis of adolescence every single human being who has to grow into adulthood through that period of adolescence and you know the it there's a very real sense in which we as Christian theologians understand that we don't resolve the identity crisis of adolescence we just get busy we just get busy the reality is this too is myself now in turning to Romans chapter seven I fully recognize I I have opened a can of worms I have entered into a long-standing theological debate I am very well aware that one of the New Testament scholars I most respect dr. Tom Shriner has written saying that we should not see this as the Christians experience I can also remember his faculty interview now more than 20 years ago when this was the text that was raised by then members of the faculty to ask him about his interpretation of the New Testament and an article published for the Gospel Coalition dr. Schreiner begins by saying don't worry basically this is not about the Christian but at the end of it he says that is not to say that the Christian doesn't face this kind of struggle there basically - there are more positions but they're only to really legitimate positions and understanding this text and that is either this is referring to Paul's pre conversion experience or to his experience as a Christian those are the two basic options here by the time dr. Schreiner gets the end of his article he he basically says that he believes that this is not referring to Paul's present Christian experience because of the sense of total defeat that Paul registers here and so as you look to the text and as we see it we can see this total defeat that the Apostle Paul seemed seems to register here at the end because Paul concludes if we consider the conclusion at the end of chapter 7 so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh I serve the law of sin but let's look backward before we try to solve this puzzle let's look backward in Chapter 7 you'll understand that the background where we began reading the text is Paul understanding the righteousness of the law the the gift of the law this is this is after in Romans chapter 3 verses 21 and following Paul has made very clear the doctrine of justification he's defined the gospel and we are told that what the law and the prophets were unable to do although they are witnesses to what God has done God is now in Christ put forth Christ as his propitiation demonstrating how he is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus one of the questions Paul is clearly answering in the book of Romans is how should Christians view the law and and and and Paul has two messages and they're not at all contradictory they are absolutely the essence of the gospel his first message is that the law kills and the second is that salvation doesn't come through the law it comes only through Christ but but holding both of those truths and and making very clear that the law kills and that salvation can come only through Christ never through the law he does not want us to disparage the law because as he makes clear that the first role of the law is to point us to our need for Christ which the law does by slaying us the law kills all of our pretensions the the law is righteous because it is the gift of a holy and righteous God the law the law is in this sense good and we should be very thankful that that God has not only given his law his his law by special revelation and the Commandments and and everything revealed in Scripture we should be extremely thankful that God has implanted his moral law in creation we're by the witness of that moral law there's a restraint upon evil without which we would simply destroy ourselves the specificity the Apostle Paul points to is right down to the commandment that indicted him thou shalt not covet he said if it had not been for the law I would not have known sin I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet in verse 8 but sins seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness there's more here than we can cover in such a sermon as time provides today but this is one of the horrifying experiences of the Christian life we read the law of God and we understand the more we read the law and the more we understand it the more we understand ourselves to be lawbreakers the more we come to understand the law the more we come to understand that we have been breaking laws from the time that we were born we have been doing violence to the law of God ever since we have been able and in one sense we understand the human timeline and the very sequences of human development as developments along the line of greater opportunity and manifestation as sin we become more clever in our sin we become more complex in our sin and and that that's the Apostle Paul makes very clear the law is a gift the law of God is not to be disparaged because if the law had not said thou shalt not covet he says I would not have known that I was coveting that language here is very interesting sin seizing the opportunity I was talking to a parent some years ago and the context was home school and the the parent that they had lots of kids it was like eight children and the oldest was about 13 and and thus they were having to kind of rethink some of their homeschooling philosophy and and and and so that with a 13 year old boy now and in the home school you know they're having - this is one of the challenges of being a teacher by the way you've got to stay ahead of your students which is is easier when they're in the second grade than when they're in the eighth grade things get more complex and and then that's when just about every homeschool parent has to call for help okay we need a homeschool parent who knows algebra really really well we need back up and and and and so this was a conversation was going on but the Pacific thing they wanted to talk to me about was introducing their children to sin now that may sound like a strange thing but that's actually otherwise what you would call reading the Bible you know just how carefully do you want your children to read the Bible I've told many people that one of the strangest experiences of my life was when I was 13 and my Sunday school teacher challenged me to read through the Bible so I just started reading through the Bible beginning in Genesis that's the way I started with any other book and I showed up at breakfast one day before school the oldest of four children looked at my mother and just asked a question that came as naturally as any other question and I never asked my mother at breakfast before school I simply said mom what's a concubine and and and she and and and and every thirteen-year-old boy in this room or anyway ever was has been you you know exactly what I'm gonna say when you got I got that look which is when the thirteen-year-old boy has no idea what exactly he's done wrong but whatever he's done is thermonuclear it's this is this is one of those looks and and then she said those words no thirteen-year-old boy wants to hear when when she just said to me your father will discuss this with you when he gets home oh oh good grief what am i I was reading the Bible huh how much trouble can I get into reading the Bible by some evil teacher told me to do this and by the way I'm a thousand times more interested in what a concubine is given mom's response this morning whatever it is if it's gonna require a walk and talk it's big it's big it's big and of course it is big and and do you exactly want to talk to your thirteen-year-old son about a concubine over oatmeal with little brothers and sisters of big eyes waiting to find out what a concubine is vocabulary word for the week no no but but this is the thing the the the more you read the Bible the more sin that this family came to me and they said you know we're just trying to think this through maybe you can give us some assistance we don't want our children introduced to a lot of sin before they're ready and I thought oh that is the stupidest statement I have ever heard in my life I get it I do get it I get it but it's not that you don't want to think they're not ready but what scares me is when do you think they're ready I'm not ready for this I don't need to know what a concubine is when I'm 59 I sort of do but you know what I mean I did yeah I've got to know that thou shalt not let's be clear about that but when you look at this you all of a sudden realize we walk around with even a knowledge of things frightening knowledge of things a frightening knowledge of things evidently God wanted us to have because he revealed it in his inspired inerrant infallible Word I'm not sure a 13 year olds ready to know many of the things in the Bible I'm not sure I am but I know it's God's gift and I know it's God's Word and I know that the law is good and there are several uses of the law if we had time we could look at this but the most important thing for us to recognize is that Paul understood that when the law indicted him he had no hope but Christ he speaks a sin seizing the opportunity but he speaks of a struggle within himself and and it's it's a struggle that is so important for us to understand he says I do what I don't want to do I don't do what I want to do and and and and there's despair in this and and this is where and I appreciate dr. Schreiner acknowledged this in his article whether or not Romans chapter 7 is speaking of someone's pre conversion experience or their post conversion experience the reality is that Christians struggle like this and we need to look each other in the eye and say we struggle like this we struggle in the same way the scariest thing in the world is the individual I meet in the mirror and if you're honest the same thing is true of you when you look at the strange tale of dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde the most horrifying reality is there is no resolution Stevenson didn't have any resolution he didn't know any resolution huh how do you end this therapy's not going to be rescue here you can't take dr. Jekyll or mr. Hyde and just enrollment therapy you think that's gonna help and and clearly the the Victorian fascination with potions you can just translate that into our 21st century fascination with pills that's not going to liberate it is true that if we consider chapter 7 the end of an argument that there is no victory there is no salvation Paul asked the question when he speaks of his predicament wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death isn't that interesting it's a ho who who shall rescue me from this body of death and then he says very quickly as you see in verse 25 thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord well that sounds like victory but then these next words so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh and I served the law of sin that sounds like we've gone from defeat to victory to defeat or assuredly not and of course we remind ourselves Paul did not write Romans in chapters and in verses he wrote Romans is a letter and so we dare not stop at the conclusion of chapter 7 but rather we reread wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh I serve the law of sin there is now now therefore there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death and so we conclude I don't know that we can ever fully answer whether this text in its historical context and in the flow of Paul's argument is about the pre conversion experience of the Christian that's what many of the early church fathers thought or the ongoing expiry to the Christian that's what the Reformers in general thought but the reality is we have to end up understanding that what we must not ever assert is that there is no victory for us because that's a repudiation of the gospel and what we simultaneously must never forget is that we cannot deny there is a struggle for us a continuing struggle as believers in Lord Jesus Christ but before our conversion there is nothing but defeat and before our conversion there is nothing but ignorant even about who we are there's nothing but darkness despair there's no hope we are trapped within ourselves with no hope of rescue but then comes the gospel the gospel that promises us salvation from sin through Jesus Christ our Lord a gospel that promises us glorification that promises to us in this life progressive sanctification by the word and by the spirit but also makes very clear to us that as believers we are still in a struggle against the world against the flesh and against the devil and the scariest thing in the world is ourselves but that's not the end of the story thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Robert Louis Stevenson didn't know that and couldn't end there we do know that and we can't end anywhere else thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord Father we ask that you will bless the preaching of your word and that you will by your spirit and by your word by the indwelling Christ give us every single day greater victory as we pray to be made more holy sanctified by the Lord Jesus Christ and by his gospel until Jesus comes and until we are glorified we pray this in Jesus Christ's name Amen you

Channel: Southern Seminary

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Keywords: SBTS, Chapel, Sothern Seminary, SBTS Chapel, Seminary Chapel, Albert Mohler, Romans 7, Sin

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Length: 44min 39sec (2679 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 30 2018