Romans #14 - Good Gifts : New Power

[Music] [Music] well i know it's the christmas season and i'm supposed to stop and do a little christmas series but i just think 2020's had enough change amen i think we do something consistent and normal we're in the book of romans we're just going to continue we're in romans chapter 7 and he's going to use this analogy of marriage so how many of you are married how many of you are married okay this is a good time to hold hands and uh if you're single there's hot cocoa in the back afterward good luck okay now let me show you my wife grace and i literally today's sermon is are you married to the law are married to grace i already made my pick you can make yours so this is when uh grace and i got married i'm on the i'm on the right i'm on the right i know it's hard we look alike people say as you get married and are together you start to look alike i just want to thank my lord and savior jesus christ for that not being true and i always like to say that men and women age differently women age like wine i always say men age like milk and this is uh this is how it's going for us so we were married we were 21 years of age and when we got married we didn't really understand marriage how many of you you're married and you could testify to that right and marriage is hard you know why you're both in it that's why it's hard okay and what he's going to do he's going to use an analogy of marriage and he's going to compare and contrast the christian life so let me tell you a little bit about marriage and then we're going to get into relationship with jesus marriage is supposed to be covenantal the two of you in a very exclusive very unique very loving relationship unlike any other all of our other relationships are contractual marriage is covenantal number two it's supposed to be mutual the decisions we make impact and affect one another you're not too independent people you become one person together and it's total marriage includes all of your life your money your time your energy your relationships your employment all of you is involved and invested it is in addition supposed to be sacrificial you're supposed to serve each other give up some of your freedoms give up some of your preferences so that you could enjoy love and unity and consideration for the other it's also supposed to be fruitful the bible says it's not good to be alone you're better together you can get more done and be more effective in life and ministry together and it's also supposed to be a good marriage is flexible meaning there are tools for the marriage not rules for the marriage so different couples different people are going to need to figure out their methods and how they do life together flexibly so let me ask you a question is marriage a good experience or a bad experience we have a little difference of opinion in the room and here's why it all depends on who's in the relationship if he is a decent guy she is a decent gal they may have a decent relationship if he is a situation and she is a situation they're going to have quite a situation what i always do when i'm officiating a wedding i have the husband and wife i have them face one another and i tell everyone there are only two possible things that could go wrong in this relationship this man or this woman those are the only two real variables marriage can be awesome or it can be awful it all depends who you are and who you're married to this is the basic analogy that the apostle paul is going to give us and he's going to say that we're either married to the law or we're married to grace that we're living under law or we're living under grace so here he begins romans chapter seven verses one through three you guys enjoying romans it's been fun right it's been good it's been really good um this is our 14th week in romans so we're going to be halfway through next week or do you not know brothers for i am speaking to those who know the law they these are people that grew up in church and knew some of the bible that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives four he uses this analogy a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage let me just say this and she can't kill him okay that's important okay so she's obligated to her husband as long as he's alive a lot of women will be like oh we can fix this no that's murder that's back in the old testament we can't do that either they once asked billy graham's wife ruth graham have you ever considered divorce to billy graham she said no i have never once considered divorcing billy graham but many times i've considered murdering him welcome to marriage okay so what what paul is saying is the relationship as long as you're both alive accordingly she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive but if her husband dies she is free from that law and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress so an example would be grace and i we're married and we're committed to one another until death do you part that's what we say in our vows if i should die she is released and freed uh vice versa would be true if i had another wife or she had another husband that would be the violation of the law and i would be doing prison ministry from the inside once i found that guy so the way all of this works is he's using this analogy of marriage and that is a couple of things i want to make note of number one god often in the bible when he talks to the church he uses language of family god does this a lot there are lots of images in the bible for the church but one of my favorites is church family and this is where he says now brothers meaning spiritually we're brothers because jesus is our big brother and god is our father and he talks about husbands and wives and marriage and the point is this that sometimes you have multiple families that you're involved in so for example uh grace has got her family so that's her extended family i've got my family that's my extended family we've got our immediate family and then in addition we have our church family and so you guys are church family and what i always like to say is my job is to love you like a dad her job is to love you like a mom and we want to treat you like extended family that's how we see ministry now that being said when people hear this if they don't know jesus they don't understand the new family and and what is really curious is in the new testament when it uses this language of brothers and sisters in the ancient roman empire to which this was written it was actually illegal because inheritance estate and property was tied to family so you weren't allowed to declarity one family unless they had legally become a member of the family because it confused the the legal distribution of wealth from generation to generation but what happened was once you meet god and once you're part of the family of god you love each other so much that sometimes you feel even closer to fellow christians who are family by new birth and the blood of jesus then old birth and biological family blood relative how many of you if you're here with your parents don't raise your hand but how many of you somebody like yeah that's how i feel now your mom's crying don't do that so how many of you though people who love jesus you feel closer to them than you do people with your last name yeah it happens right that's what he's talking about so that's what he's talking doesn't mean we hate our family but it means that sometimes the family of god feels even more like family and we can learn a lot about our relationship with god as we look at this motif of family and so what he's basically saying is in regards to family when you're married you're obligated to your spouse as long as you're both alive as soon as one of you dies the obligations of the relationship have come to an end he's using this analogy and he's saying that we all start married to the law that we live under the law and that ultimately when jesus died we died he died fulfilling our obligations to the law and we are freed from the law and now we are free to be married to god not married to the law to live under grace not to live under law in some regards he's talking about it being kind of like a remarriage and what he's saying that living under law is like a bad marriage and then he's going to say that living under grace is like a great marriage and what he's talking about here is that ultimately law often shows up in our marriage a lot of commentators struggle with this analogy and they'll say well paul's analogy falls short and here are the reasons i think that they overcomplicate it i think what he is in fact saying is that we live under law and one of the reasons i think he uses the analogy of marriage who is the person that we tend to drop the hammer on the most all the wives said spouse it's interesting the husbands were checking the score of the game okay so um so ultimately if the bible says to love your neighbor who's your nearest neighbor your spouse so the love and the grace is supposed to start there but that's where the law often starts okay when grace and i were first married her name was grace my name was law i was i was more based i'd read the bible look at all the things that should be done and then hand out the job descriptions and for her it created yeah one honest wife said oh yeah i know i know i know it's amazing we're still here i know i know i know we're only here because her name is grace okay so she brought the grace and so ultimately what happens in marriage oftentimes is one of you is law based one of you is grace-based and the one who is based tends to be very inflexible the grace-based one has to flex the law-based one tends to create a real difficult environment and the grace-based one is struggling to flourish under that environment and what he's saying is that ultimately living under law is like living under a bad marriage and it creates an environment or an atmosphere or a culture this can be in a home or in a relationship or in a family or in a business or in a ministry control rules fear punishment threats impossible expectations demands for perfection no help or assistant very non-relational and it's very discouraging and it is killing of those who are living under it it just literally robs them of the joy of life how many of you have been in or under a law based environment how many of you have been in or under a law-based relationship in those environments there are only two categories perfect and failure and even if you were perfect it's only a matter of time before you're a failure so it's inevitable and it's this treadmill of performance and it's always talking about what you didn't do not what you did do or how far you've fallen short and not the progress you've made i'll give you an analogy an illustration as i was studying this text this week god brought to mind a family i haven't thought of in some years but when i think of law this man comes to mind i won't say his name or show his face but he was a very law-based man he grew up with a law-based debt non-relational punitive high control threat punishment rules about the rules about the rules about the rules didn't help always was telling you what to do was never going to help you do it he grew up under a law-based dad and he grew up to be a law-based man very law based his wife was grace-based she was loving tender kind relational forgiving so in the dating year she was always working around him but she didn't realize it because she was so grace-based he was never accommodating her she was always accommodating him well then they start having kids now we have division jesus says a house divided can't stand division is two visions and if one law one is law and one is grace there's now division in the home so he's dropping the hammer and she's comforting the kids and he's giving them lots of expectations and chores and demands and she's trying to help the kids live up to his demands and expectations eventually what happens is his law-based environment non-relational punitive high control lots of rules it broke his wife it broke her spirit she just became very discouraged very sad she tried hard but she never measured up what it created in the children was total rebellion to this day these kids if you say i'd like to talk to you about god i'd like to quote a verse or invite you to church it's like a trauma trigger as soon as they hear a verse they hear their dad's voice as soon as they think about god they think about their dad and his erroneous view of god and anytime you're inviting them to church they immediately have a very demonstrative response because for them it is a dangerous environment and then i was thinking about it these kids have utterly and totally rebelled they want nothing to do with god and they want nothing to do with their dad and the sad cold hard truth is they put their father and god the father together and they see them as identical and they're not the father's heart is not like their father and god is not like their dad now the basic idea that paul is saying here is that if we live under law it breaks us it's too much to bear the jewish people had a they had a word for this a yoke i think it's in acts 15 10. they talked about living under the yoke of the law if you've ever seen a beast carrying a yoke it's a really heavy burden living under laws living under yoke it's heavy it's burdensome it breaks you it seems very unfair and unjust now let me say some of you asked what does this have to do with everything this has to do everything with everything this has been a year of law and it's a yoke and people are dying and broken and others are rebelling because that's what happens in an environment of law in our nation we have laws and this year we added a bunch more mandates rules and laws and then we have people who have deputized themselves in the bible they're called the pharisees that's the greek word for karen and today okay today today they are going to make sure that the rules are enforced and they have additional rules about the rules okay how many of us are not flourishing under this law-based environment right people aren't doing well and we and some of you said but pastor mark let's argue let's argue let's not okay let's not because we can argue whether or not all the rules and laws and mandates and demands and commands and expectations are helpful or harmful but i am telling you this that it is breaking people's emotional spiritual and mental well-being because law doesn't create life grace produces life law only kills the gospel of jesus is that ultimately we are judged by the law and killed and then we are brought into newness of life by the grace of god so the law shows us that we are dying and the grace gives us new life the problem in our world today our culture today our nation today all law no grace people are struggling and suffering and i was curious because uh we tend not to think of law in terms of these kinds of contexts we tend to think of it just in terms of religious law or spiritual law but there's legal law there's moral law there's relational law there's all kinds of law and uh there was a gallup poll that came out this week every category in gallup so you know is not a particularly christian pro-jesus bible verse group okay they just do the data analysis every single group in america reports having worse mental health in 2020 than 2019 how many of you that doesn't shock you okay except for one category of people those who attend church every week those people those people actually improve better mental health this year than last year okay now the question is why is that because the church is supposed to be a grace-based environment and as there's more law out there there's more gratitude for grace in here if your whole life is law you really need a dose of grace and so what it shows is the key to mental health is going to an open church okay so all you pagans just come on in we'd love to have you and ultimately what we have seen this year is that as the culture has more law god upon his people pours out more grace so that his people can be healthy even if the environment around them is unhealthy because the environment in them is healthy i'll be honest this is not one of the five hardest years of my life i'll be honest with you i have seen more of god's grace this year than any time in my whole life all year me and my family not perfect but we've been living under grace supernatural provision from god that is inexplicable and quite frankly just wonderful and i'll i'll share it with you so we started romans 14 weeks ago we're gonna talk about law versus grace law versus grace since we started romans 14 weeks ago the average church in america is running 36 percent one in five churches is at risk of dying and closing statistically 30 percent of pastors are considering quitting and resigning we're running 186 percent as an average since we opened the book of romans last weekend we were running 217 percent okay and i got pastors all around the country calling like what's a secret it's not a secret if you have grace people find you if you have god pouring out grace people will find the place of grace because right now there's a shortage of supplies but the greatest shortage is a shortage of grace there is no shortage of law in addition during the time that we have been in romans and romans is a book about grace and when i started i was like lord really now's the time to go into romans i pray about these things i fast i seek the lord and i listen he's like son preach romans okay dad that's what i'm doing i didn't know that we'd need grace this desperately and i didn't know that the book would be so filled with grace this immeasurably so during that time our average attendance is 186 percent we've added 630 little kids to our children's ministry okay we baptized just since we started romans 117 new christians okay because people are walking around go la la la la la la they walk in like we have grace they're like i'm in where's the tank get me wet i'm in in addition just online as things have been closed and bible teaching is going out we're seeing a great appetite for people living under law who want to live under grace just my social media is up to about 6 million a month and we've started the real faith live show where we do interviews and worship videos and the sermon we send it out that is now reaching saturation total reach of 1.5 million people a month all around the world okay so many of you are joining us on online and let me say this for many of you that are joining us online and at home everything's closed you can't go out you know what people are doing they're sitting home and they're looking for grace anywhere they can find it they're looking for hope and meaning and purpose and joy and ultimately whether they know it or not they're all looking for jesus because that's where all the grace comes down from [Applause] so let me just tell you what we're going to do we're going to keep going forward in grace that's what we're going to do that's what we're going to do so let me just give you a little bit of vision as we're at year-end and i know some of you you're trying to figure out your taxes before we swap people okay so i had a few words and the holy spirit is like not that one not that one not that one not that one like okay so thank you lord i mean when i started he wouldn't show up until after the service and then it's like ah so um so here's what we're gonna do we we need to add another classroom space in back for children for students for women's we need that at six o'clock to saturday night we need to add a race park out front we need to make a water slide park in the back and we're just gonna throw parties and we're gonna have fun and we're gonna invite people and we're going to build relationships and if people are asking why would you do that we believe that our god is god of grace we believe that heaven is a fun place that god is an awesome person and nobody who's with jesus in heaven is bummed to be there and karen will have repented of all of her ways and it's going to be amazing okay so we want to still have joy we still want to have fun we still want to have generosity we got our big christmas party coming the number one question we're getting from people is how much does it cost what's the answer it's a free 99 because ultimately our god is a god of grace and our people are people of grace and one way the grace shows up is generosity so i'm going to ask you to be generous through the year end i'm going to give you some numbers to finish the campus and add more capacity because i think that there is the greatest opportunity next year of any year of my 25 years as a senior pastor because i believe as people are living under law they more desperately than ever are open to grace okay and who gives grace jesus does hey i'll let you a little secret grace is his thing grace is our thing yay that's everything amen so he's going to talk about living under law versus living under grace if living under law is like a bad marriage and it is then living under grace it's like a great marriage likewise my brothers you have also died to the law so you're married until you die or they die and then you're released you're married to the law until jesus died for your sins and then you met jesus so you're dead to the law now you can live under grace you've died to the law through the body of christ jesus died to set you free so that you may belong to another you don't belong to the law you belong to the lord tim who has been raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit to god for while we were still living in our flesh that's our physical rebellious old nature our sinful passions passion isn't bad but sinful passions are bad you could be passionate for marriage or adultery you could be passionate for the fruits of the spirit or you could be passionate for getting drunk on spirits passion isn't bad but it can direct you to or from god quickly aroused by the law we're working our members to bear fruit for death but now we are released from the law we don't live under the law anymore we live under grace we live under jesus having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not the old way of the written code he's juxtaposing living under law living under grace and let me talk about law in the word and then law in the world law in the word sometimes it refers to all of god's laws the first five books have over 600 laws sometimes it refers to the 10 commandments here i believe he is referring to just right and wrong the god is lawgiver that god is over everyone and everything that god says these things are right and these things are wrong and it doesn't matter where you live or who you are or what you think there is right and wrong paul's going to use this word namas in the original greek not to get too nerdy about 121 times in all of his letters in romans this concept of law is this universality of right and wrong and number one it reflects something of god's character laws reflect the law giver so when we we open the word of god god says no adultery so god likes faithful relationships no stealing okay god likes us to only have what he has given us and not take something that he's given to someone else well god says to forgive he likes forgiveness and grace in relationships that's his thing the laws of god tell us about god the lawgiver number two one of the things that the law does it restrains some evil okay in romans 2 he said that we have this internal witness of a conscience you're like that's just wrong there are certain things that we don't know do because god wrote his law on our heart and our conscience tells us now that's wrong in addition we're going to get into romans 13. god gives the government and the government has laws to restrain some evil so law tells us about god's character law restrains some human evil and then number three it also reveals our sin okay it gives category to our sin so you're reading it how many of you are you're a brand new christian there were sins you were committing that you didn't even know you started reading the bible you're like oh i didn't know that the laws are naming your behavior they're naming your behavior is the law is god's law bad no but we are and so the law shows us who we are the law shows us two things who god is and who we are okay god's good i'm bad god's right i'm wrong god says no i keep saying yes there's a problem the law shows us our sin our problem our faults failures and flaws it's not bad but it's not complete because the law can't change us or help us it only diagnoses us it doesn't treat us in the same way how many of you have ever had an mri ever had an mri what an mri does it shows what's wrong but it doesn't fix it you go in there like you got a broken bone here and you got a tumor there you're like okay i appreciate that now what is the mri machine going to do to fix me answer nothing that's all it does it just shows the problem not the solution god's law is good we are bad it literally is like an mri on our life here's all your problems you're like okay well what are you gonna do well that's not the law's job it diagnoses the problem it doesn't heal or solve it that's the that's the law in the word now some of you are not christians and we love you and it's a tremendous honor to have you and for those of you who are joining us online that includes you as well there is also a concept of law not just in the word but out in the world and people acknowledge god's universal law whether they believe in it or not i'll give you some ways that this manifests itself any time we get a law if we don't have a new nature what's our first instinct break the law rebel against the law because what we want is to be sovereign highest authority in our life and as soon as a law shows up we don't like that because it's over us we don't want anything over us another way that the law shows up in the world we feel guilty how many of you have done something and you feel guilty you're like that was wrong if you've never felt that you're a sociopath okay just to tell you they're like i've never felt that what am i sociopath that's what you are that's not good we know because there are laws and whether we recognize them or not certain things are right or wrong when we violently be like i feel guilty i shouldn't have said that i shouldn't have done that i shouldn't have said that i shouldn't have done that okay i experienced this quite frankly just a little while ago in my office i snapped at my wife yeah her name is grace so you know it wasn't her fault okay so i tend to be more law okay how many of you tend to be more law and when you violate the law you feel guilty sometimes those of us who are law based a lot of our violation of the law is relational we keep the letter but not the spirit of the law okay if i try to tell my wife i'm sorry i'm going to go preach a sermon on grace and i'm snapping at grace okay this is apparently what a hypocrite does so when you violate the law we feel feel guilty feel bad and i've had people come up there's like i'm reading the bible it's not working why i feel bad it's working because you're bad what happens is well we appeal to law when we feel that someone else has violated it we criticize them or judge them what i think is really cute is uh our current move toward social justice it's adorable there are no laws and you violated it okay well which is it i mean why are you angry if laws were violated if laws don't exist you want to judge others by the law but you don't want to be judged by the law this is the old hypocrites law for you grace for me we appeal to the law that's wrong when we feel like they did wrong we also appeal to the law when we feel that we did right if you feel like there's right and wrong and i did right i'm going to appeal to the standard to talk about the good thing that i did and what a good person i am in addition when we fail to live up to right and wrong the law we hide it we hope we don't get caught we get real sneaky or we deny it or we blame shift it but we don't own it because the law judges us and we don't want to be judged by the law we just want to use the law to judge them we don't want them or god to use the law to judge us and then when we are caught and we violated the law and we did something wrong we feel defeated we feel depressed because we're living under the law i blew it see because law beats you down grace builds you up law shows you what you've not done grace shows you what jesus has done to make up for what you've done okay and ultimately we all engage the law we all deal with allah now here's the good part of the law it shows us who god is and who we are and it shows us that we need god okay it's like i i don't do what i'm supposed to do i i am not the person that god says i'm supposed to be i need a savior i need a savior and you know what i need a savior who number one lives up to the law did jesus christ live up to the law yeah he never sinned and thought word or deed we live under the law and it breaks us jesus lives under the law and he breaks the law he fulfills it no sin of any sort or kind so it shows us that we need a savior who number one fulfills the law defeats the law satisfies the law and then has grace for us who have not lived up to the law and this is why we love jesus so much i'm not going to stand before jesus and tell god what i did i'm going to stand before jesus god rather and i'm going to celebrate what jesus has done and i'm not going to i'm not going to feel any condemnation under the law because jesus already satisfied the demands of the law for me see and i just some of you've got a very tender conscience and you're very dear people satan's gonna remind you of all the ways you've fallen short and you need to remind yourself of all the ways that god's grace through jesus christ makes up the difference okay and so what happens is we die to the law and then we get this new relationship this marriage type relationship with jesus christ through grace and this is where the bible uses the language of marriage a lot to talk about the relationship between jesus people and the church so the church is referred to like a bride jesus is a groom and what it's doing here in the scriptures ephesians 5 and elsewhere it is saying that we were married to the law is that a fun marriage no and let me just say this i love you but if you're law based it's no fun being married to you okay and some of you say but i got a lot of verses that's what lawyers do they quote a lot of verses but they don't give a lot of grace so they win a lot of arguments but they lose a lot of relationships okay being married to the law living under the law it's a bad marriage being married to jesus living under grace great marriage he makes up for what you have failed to do he forgives you for all your shortcomings and he helps you to change he comes alongside you law's just over you telling you what to do jesus is alongside of you helping you to do it okay because he's relational and he's loving and he's gracious and he's kind and he's patient and all that comes with that disposition of grace now let me say this when you get married a couple of things happen first of all there's a sacred moment where you exchange vows how many of you remember that your wedding day and then what happens is your legal status changes you're now together new legal status and then number three ladies you get a new last and you get a new name so to be a christian is first of all that you and jesus have got to have that sacred moment where you enter into a special covenant relationship and jesus be like i jesus take thee sinner and i sinner take thee savior okay and then what happens is your legal status changes you're no longer married to the law you're now married to jesus your legal status changes and jesus is your inheritance his kingdom is your kingdom his eternity is your eternity his generosity is your return your generosity just like when grace and i got married all that is mine is legally hers when you get married to jesus i'm using the analogy of marriage for this covenant relationship you get the inheritance and then your last your name changes so now we're called what christians we take jesus name we take jesus name so my question to you would be this have you entered into this relationship with jesus some of you may not know it but you're married to the law you're living under the law you know what that means all of your sin is being accounted by god that the law is keeping a record see love doesn't keep a record of wrongs but the law does that ultimately the law is like an attorney that is just keeping record of all of your wrongs and then when you die you will stand before god and you will be judged by the law and you will not only in this life live under the law in all eternity you will live under the law and you will suffer to pay the debt that you have gathered to the law we call that hell hell is a debtor's prison for the guilty who live and die under the law what i want you to do today is i want you to die to the law and i want you to start living under the grace of jesus christ okay and everyone who has done this would tell you it's the best thing that's ever happened to them i've never met anyone it's like i'm i'm living under the grace but i rarely miss the law i've never met that person okay so how do you go from living under the law to living under grace it's that sacred moment where you enter into this special covenantal relationship with jesus christ and you know what you can do that right now i just told you 117 people have been baptized in the last two months a lot of people are saying i don't like living under the law well good news you can live under the grace you can live under the grace of god through jesus christ so my encouragement my exhortation my admonition to you at this moment would be right now would you give your sin to jesus let his death satisfy the demands of the law so that you could die to the law and would you receive jesus and start to live under the grace father god i pray that right now that the holy spirit would come and would awaken hearts and change minds change desires and change natures god as we're living in a world that just keeps adding law after law after law we're feeling that pressure we're feeling those burdens we're feeling those frustrations and lord god as it seems like the laws are only increasing would we use this as an opportunity to remind ourselves that apart from the grace of god through jesus christ all we have is law and more law and less freedom and more restriction and more condemnation and more control and more fear and less life and less joy and jesus thank you so much that you satisfied the demands of the law that you never sinned in any way that you perfectly fulfilled the demands of the law and that you died to pay our debt to the law for the wage of sin is death and that lord jesus you rose from death and you conquered satan sin death held the wrath of god and you satisfied the demands of the law and jesus thank you that you're ruling and reigning from your throne in heaven right now that you are alive and well and the bible says that we can approach your throne of grace boldly in our times of need and god it's a time of need and we thank you that our lord and savior rules over everyone and everything and all that flows from his throne is a never-ending provision of grace so holy spirit we ask you to bring that grace down on people right now god would you please bring salvation to those who would hear would you open up their hearts to love jesus to receive jesus to trust jesus to follow jesus and to start to experience living under grace and we ask that they would make this incredible decision right now in jesus good name amen if you made that decision you came with a christian tell them they'll be excited about it or stop by and let us know we'd love to give you your first bible we'd like to pray with you we love you we want to help you and serve you and you may have come in living under law we want you to leave under grace and and that is a life that never ends and only gets better so then he's going to juxtapose these two things in his grand summation we're either living under law or living in the spirit okay the law is over us but the spirit is in us the law tells us what to do the spirit comes to help us to do it highly relational what then shall we say is that the law is sin is it a sin to have laws and rules no by no means yet if it had not been for the law i would have not known sin it named my behavior for i would not have known what it is and he uses this example personally to covet if the law had said had not said rather you shall not covet but sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness he's like i heard doug covett next thing that's all i'm doing okay for apart from the law sin lies dead i was once alive apart from laws just living my life but when the commandment came the more bible i heard the more rebellion i had sin came alive and i died the very commandment the promised life proved to be death to me for sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment deceived me and through it killed me so the law is holy the commandment is good and righteous and good that thou 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 let me explain this and we'll finish it next week in the remainder of romans 7 and then he's going to drive romans 8 right into the ministry of the holy spirit he says that the law has two primary purposes number one it names our sin and what he says is coveting is his example he's like i didn't even know what coveting was and then somebody's you know reading the ten commandments they're like don't covet you're like what's coveting it's where you want stuff that belongs to other people what kind of stuff do other people have i want that boom you're guilty was the commandment bad no you're bad okay parents know this okay parents know this so they've created something called reverse psychology which is i know if i tell you to do something you're going to do don't eat your vegetables do not eat your vegetables do not do not go to bed on time do not do not be nice to your sister and you're wanting them to rebel eat their vegetables go to bed and be nice to their sister what what that means is not only is the child evil so are you that's what that means okay that's what that my wife testified in the front row she said yes okay it names our sin that's what the law does now here's what we've done in our day we decriminalize and defund okay decriminalize well we made laws and then everybody broke them so let's just get rid of the loss that'll fix it does it no because unless you're filled with the spirit nothing changes okay so what we've done in our world we're like well there's all these laws and everybody breaks the laws and everybody's guilty and ah the prisons are full and it's really expensive so let's just decriminalize it i mean certain cities have decriminalized most misdemeanors including assault public urination drug use so you can be high taking a leak and punching someone and it's okay and you may feel like that's good until you're that person getting peed on by someone smoking a cigarette and slapping you in the face that's where it bothers you somebody like no i believe in the law i i believe in universal hey pants on needle out hands to yourself this is we all know that there's a law when when it's been violated to our demise okay and then it's defund well you know the problem is we have laws and then the police enforce them that's a problem i bet right and i mean this is what legal drugs in public school this is the end this is where the logic goes okay like okay so you know what we'll do i know i shouldn't say this i don't care i i don't care um i live under grace if you live under law send your email i'll feel free to delete it um so [Applause] so so the answer is you know what we need to decriminalize it and defund those who enforce the law no because either the law changes or we change it's called repentance and a lot of people say well let's just change the law and god's like actually the law doesn't change the law exists to tell you that you need to change and if we expect a lot of change we're pulling hell up if we change then we're inviting heaven down okay the other thing that sin does and not only the law does rather not only names our sin it aggravates it because we're bad we're rebellious until we get a new nature so let's use the language of coveting paul deals with that how many of you you don't even think that coveting is a sin we call it social media we call it marketing we call it advertising we call it impulse buying our whole economy is built on company just so you know that it's all jealousy we're all on social media oh look at them oh they're skinny i hate them oh look at their kids their kids are nice my kids are terrible i hate them they got a new car i got an old car their husband he's got a six-pack my husband has a cooler i hate them okay i just tell you what i'm thinking but this is where the longer you're on social media the more miserable you are because you start comparing your life to other people's lives you start coveting their life and that is the death of contentment all the law does the law is good we are bad but the more law we get the more rebellion we have how many of you know for a fact if you want to get a bunch of people on grass the best thing to do is put up a sign that says keep off the grass that's how you get all the people on the grass the best way to make sure that somebody throws a rock through a window is to put a big sign in the window that says do not throw a rock through the window one guy's like i'm for sure doing that right now another guy's like not so fast you're cutting in line i get to throw it first as soon as we make laws we elicit an incite rebellion and lawbreakers think well the problem is law no no the law is good we're bad it diagnoses our problem it doesn't fix our solution how many of you the more laws you've gotten the more rebellion you've had okay i'll give you an example from my own life paul uses an example from his life he's going to speak very personally just in romans 7 he's going to say the word i almost 30 times so he's going to use a personal let me use a personal so i was a little boy i grew up next to an airport okay so our house is here and the planes land and take off right over our house i love playing baseball somebody like mark are you any good no that's why i'm preaching but i love playing baseball and uh my dad said that's probably watching thanks dad he put a batting cage up in the backyard post in the ground net pitching machine bat helmet balls me and my brother we could take batting practice any time we wanted good thank you dad my dad makes one law son this is not a weapon i hadn't actually thought of that until that moment wow actually it could be you know i hadn't even thought of that i'm a little boy my dad says marky still calls me marky i said dad when we're in church you got to be respectful call me pastor marky so that's what he does when he visits so i said what do you mean dad he's like do you can only use it for batting don't take it out of the cage and aim it at anyone or anything that's all i'm thinking about that's it my dad goes to work or something what do i do what do you think i do i'm like well we got to get that out of the cage as soon as possible and then and i look at it it has two knobs because it has two wheels you can crank it to 100 miles an hour i'm gonna start shooting things that's what i'm gonna do i'm a little boy so my dad gave me one law was it a good law or bad law it's a good law he has a bad son that's what he's got all of a sudden satan sends an airplane right over me [Laughter] wasn't the lord i'll tell you that and i'm like i'm gonna shoot a plane so i pop the wheels on the pitching machine true north to what paul calls the third heaven i crank the knobs to a hundred miles an hour i'm waiting for a plane to land and i'm trying to sequence it as a little boy here comes here comes here comes here comes i start loading the pitching machine baseballs i am sending all of our baseballs at the plane i am a terrorist i'm gonna take down a plane okay i never think number one what if i succeed that never crosses my mind okay number two if i miss what happens to all these baseballs going a hundred miles an hour at people's homes and cars and heads okay problem was not the law it was in me okay it was in me this is what paul is saying what happened what happened [Laughter] all right come on up all right you're here is my so my daughter has a question come on up all right this is my daughter you just you just spoke very loudly you didn't finish the story we're all wondering what happened i don't know i just shot a plane that's all i know that's disappointing all right i feel very judged that felt like a lot of law for my daughter so thank you for illustrating my point i don't know what happened i wish i had a better ending i should have thought about it but i shot a plane that's what i did the big idea is this that ultimately law is good we're bad law's good we're bad so he makes this very personal what he says is his thing was coveting my thing is shooting airplanes what's your thing right what's the thing in you that when you hear it you just want to rebel against it so he's talking here about the ten commandments and he hits number ten which is coveting so let me let me hit the ten commandments okay you find your thing you shall have no other gods before me ever been a part of another religion worshiped another god been just sort of pagan spiritual atheistic whatever you shall not make idols what that is is worshiping anyone or anything other than god have any of you live for your job live for your beauty live for your health made sacrifices so that you could glorify someone or something other than god including yourself you shall not take the name of the lord your god invade how many of you have done that somebody like don't say it but you've done it remember the sabbath day and keep it holy how many of you just keep working honor your father and mother gotcha if you don't believe me ask either of them we've all dishonored our father and mother right we've all done it and what happens is when you're a kid you're like that's a stupid law when your parent you're like that's a good law you shall not murder and jesus says this includes hating someone from your heart like i didn't murder them i just talked trash jesus says you murdered their reputation that counts too you shall not commit adultery jesus says that adultery includes adultery of the the heart oh no so when i looked at him yeah what if it's on the internet still counts oh gosh adultery of the heart and adultery of the hands both count on the sight of god because it's not just the letter of the lot it's the spirit of the law you shall not steal shall not steal you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor is everything you've ever said about everyone true how many of you are like i've got to delete my social media posts right now and then the tenth one is the one that paul quotes you shall not covet your neighbor's house how many of us do that how many of us we literally oh zillow oh look at their house oh my gosh do you know what their house is worth they have a garage in their garage that's a big house that's huge oh my gosh they got a brand new kitchen oh my gosh covet their house paradise valley see many of you many of you if you if you want to covet if you usually go left go right when you leave our parking lot just go to paradise valley it's called paradise the houses are big the lots are big the pools are big coveting their house how many of you you walk into someone's home and your first thought is i'm sure in heaven they're gonna be homeless and i'm gonna get this house that's your first thought we covered people's houses right all the fixture up you guys are in denial okay hgtv okay all we do is we watch we covet their house and then we find a cheap way to make ours like that that's what we do covet their house cup it cover your neighbor's wife bad says the wife husbands could go either way that says the wife how many of you the big problem in your marriage is you compare your spouse to someone who's not your spouse bingo shots fired right like why couldn't you be more like karen yeah don't covet your neighbor's house your neighbor's wife or anything would that include their car would that include their beautiful family on the christmas card would that include their children performing so well in sports and having such an amazing grade point average and meeting with the teacher is really just a fun annual session yeah i met with the teacher they said they're my kids are angels oh my god i've met with my yeah mine are demons um we can covet anyone and ever anything amen their income their beauty their spouse's beauty their car their possessions their success their platform now the first nine of the commandments are primarily external the tenth one coveting guess where it is it's in here because you can steal you can lie you can murder people see that coveting who sees that just god only you and god know if you're truly coveting and coveting is the demonic counterfeit of contentment god says here's your spouse you're like i want a different one well here's your job i want a different one well you know here's your body i for sure want a different one all right here's your car i want a different one coveting is the demonic counterfeit of contentment and only you and god really know when you're coveting because you can't see it you can smile and pretend and be totally coveting internally while faking it externally okay and what paul is saying here is this he says i was a pretty good religious guy keeping the law in philippians he says in regards to the law i was blameless what he's saying is the first nine externally not internally nailed and nailed and nailed and elder nailed when it came just to the internal i was guilty because man the bible says looks at the outward god looks at the heart and where paul is driving all of this we either live under the law or we live under grace if we live under the law we ultimately have to take the law and allow it to judge not just our external behavior but our internal motivation the things that only god sees the motives that only god knows the thoughts that only god is keenly aware of we need to be honest about ourselves and our internal condition so that ultimately we could give our sin to jesus and we could get a new nature under the reign of grace and so what he's saying ultimately is this that his real problem isn't just out there his real problem is in here and the good news of the law it reveals all the problems in here and then it drives me toward jesus who fulfills the demands of the law and here's the really good news three things that happen to those who live under grace instead of the law number one you get a new nature you're new and you're not perfect but you're new and you're in a process that will ultimately result in perfection he calls it sanctification he used it previously in romans and some will come to this text in romans and they're going to argue is he talking about a carnal christian who's met jesus and never changed or is he talking about maybe a perfect christian who no longer struggles with sin the truth is we're all somewhere in the middle we're not who we were we're not who we're going to be we're in the process we're in the struggle we're in the middle we're in the journey he's going to say next week i do some things i don't want to do i don't do some things that i do want to do what do i need the holy spirit so you get a new nature and the new nature comes with new desires to where you hate living under the law you love living under grace and then thirdly it comes with a new power god gives you the power of the holy spirit so that as a new nate with a new nature new creation new person with new desires you don't want to rebel you do want to obey you now live by the new power of the holy spirit and this is the christian life we're going to get into it next week but let me just summarize it by saying this law is about what you have to do grace is about what you get to do okay law is about tools grace excuse me law is about rules and grace is about tools that ultimately law demands and grace helps you to do what the law demands that ultimately let me just close with this i believe as there is more and more and more and more law in this world we have to give more and more and more grace to each other and i believe that god gives more and more grace to us so let me just tell you the good news your relationship with god it's under grace you're forgiven oh praise god he loves you he's not going to change his mind he's married to you he's not going to give up he's committed to you he's devoted to you he'll never leave you nor forsake you nor abandon abuse or betray you you're under grace as you live under that grace it makes you healthy and then you and i have an opportunity especially during the holiday season to what to give grace i don't know what people have got on their list but i tell you what god has on their list grace that's what they really need how many people right now they're living under law and they're dying and maybe we can bring the grace that god gives us that we could give some grace to them um i'll just close with this illustration i wasn't planning on sharing it but it comes to mind i was at target this week long line there's a lady in front of me racks up a bunch of stuff and then she goes to pace she's like oh my gosh i forgot my purse she turns her out she feels really bad because you know what the law says she's just racked up a debt that she can't pay i'm so sorry uh can you hold my stuff i'll go home get my purse i forgot it i looked at her i said well what happened she starts crying at target she's like somebody ex-husband kid job loss i through the tears it was just an avalanche of pain i said i'm so sorry she's like i've solved i've just been a horrible way out of 20 20. 2020 is a four-letter word you know it is and so and i looked at her and i said you know what i'm going to pay for all of this you just go and i looked at the cashier and i said so take everything that's hers and just add all that's mine and i'll pay for it the lady looks at me she says i'll pay you back i said no no no no no this is jesus money it's not mine and he put me here to give you some of his money and i said as christians we call this grace you have a debt you cannot pay someone else pays it because they love you and they want you to be free from the demands of the law so i'm doing roman seven at target okay i'm doing seven at target okay so she looks at me she says no i really want to pay you back no that's not how grace works [Laughter] she says just give me your name and address and your contact information i'll send it to you never i don't want you to google me and see what's said and then talk to me like i don't want to hear that i just want to give you grace so i looked at her and i said i said this is paid for by jesus i said the god i worship is a god of grace and i said there's more grace where where this came from i said jesus loves you i said and he just pays for things and he blesses people and he cares for people she's like oh thank you she was very sweet she walks away the teller looks at me she's like she's like wow i said yeah i said grace is astonishing isn't it grace is astonishing the people in line they're all looking at me like i'm god i'm like no no no we live in a world right now where you just drop a little grace and it explodes you just show a little grace and it's contrary you just put a little grace on a situation and all of a sudden the kingdom of god shows up so my encouragement to you would be this holiday season for those of you who are living under law start living under grace for those of you who have been making others live under law allow them to start living under grace and be looking for opportunities where people are living under law to bring them grace i'm going to bring grace up and close our time in prayer that seems like the right thing to do and uh i just wanted to uh publicly uh apologize to you early in our i mean for a lot but just in particular when we were first married i was a i was a law-based husband not a grace-based husband and i would encourage the men to be grace-based husbands but i started as a law-based husband and i put a lot of expectations and demands and commands and burdens on you and you are obviously grace-based grace and so um i just covenant with you that uh this holiday season i'm gonna i'm gonna by the grace of god give a lot of grace from god so thank you [Applause] [Music] thank you lord for repentance for forgiveness for the grace that you give to each of us lord i pray that we would delight in that that we would not reject that but that we would receive that so that we can give that to others thank you that paul has said this in such a clear way lord you covenant with us as christians and then you coven it to give us grace until we see you in eternity so lord just help us to be receivers and givers of grace in jesus name amen you

Channel: Real Faith by Mark Driscoll

Views: 3,995

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Mark, Driscoll, ministry, thetrinitychurch, scottsdale, arizona, bible, teaching, gospel, theology, jesus, biblestudy, faith, bibleverse

Id: db6blSBJL-4

Length: 68min 55sec (4135 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020