Romans: Our Civil War…

If you're here for the first time or for the 200th time, I don't know if we've been meeting that long.

We've been around for about three years.

We've talked about going on a journey.

We've talked about the Christian life is a journey.

We've talked about all of life is a journey.

And sometimes we put an illustration up that's in your bulletin, hopefully, and it's this diagram right here.

And we think this diagram best represents what the Christian life looks like as we, as children of God, walk with him.

We're on this journey and we're walking through life.

And all of a sudden, at some point in our life, God's spirit comes into our life and opens our eyes.

And we see A and B.

We see our sinfulness and we see God's holiness.

And at that point, we invite Christ into our life.

Christ comes into our life.

He changes us.

We enter out of the, Scripture says, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

But we continue on this journey after that conversion point.

And what Scripture says and what Romans has been teaching us is that as we grow, as we continue to journey,

that A and B continue to increase.

If we're walking the normal Christian life, we're going to continually grow in our awareness of God's holiness.

If we're walking the normal Christian life, we're going to continually grow in our awareness of our sinfulness and our indwelling sin and our fleshiness.

And if A and B are growing and getting wider, then the cross fills that space and the cross becomes more beautiful and wonderful and purposeful to us.

As Christians, the cross is everything because it's where we are redeemed and brought back to the Father.

But the passage today and the things we've been talking about is that it doesn't work like that.

That there's this struggle, this indwelling sin in us.

And this indwelling sin in us tends to shrink our vision of the cross.

It shrinks our vision of what Christ has done for us.

It shrinks our idea of our need for redemption and to be saved.

Either we say things like, well, you know, God really isn't that good.

Because if he was good, he would be doing these things for me.

My life would be different than he is right now.

And so A shrinks.

Or we say things like, you know, I'm really not that bad.

I'm really not that bad of a person.

When I look at the people in my office, I'm surely not as bad as my boss.

My boss is terrible, but I'm not that bad.

And so we develop our own righteousness.

And so the cross gets smaller and smaller.

If A decreases, if we see God as less holy, then what we do is we start to perform.

We don't think of God as holy and totally other.

We think of him as just Tobin plus 10.

And so we think we can do things and we perform and we come to church

and we enter the worship team and we preach and we tithe and we serve

and we do all these things.

But all these things are is our performance in trying to make up for

how small God has gotten in our eyes.

If B decreases, if B decreases, what we do is we tend to minimize our sin.

We pretend.

We say, well, we're not as bad as we really think we are.

Well, when we go to church, sometimes I get depressed

because they talk about how we're totally deprived and we're sinful

and things are really bad, but that's not really true.

And so we pretend.

We compensate by pretending.

The Romans says we wear a mask.

And so when you come in here, people ask, how are you doing?

You go, great, thanks, fine, everything's good.

Because we don't want people to see our brokenness.

We don't want people to see our need for the gospel.

We don't want people to see what we struggle with.

We don't want people to see our shadows and our dark places.

And so we pretend.

And as we pretend or as we perform, what we do is we shrink God.

And most of us are on this journey that we want to shrink God down into this little box

because we get God into this little box and we can control him or we can rub him

and we need to do something and he pops up like a genie.

And the passage that we've been talking about throughout Romans and what we're going to talk about today

is why this happens in our life as followers of God.

And it's this idea of indwelling sin.

That sin stays within us and it indwells in us and it changes us.

You know, guys, today is this massively difficult and important passage.

I think no other parts of scripture besides Romans 6, 7, and 8 have changed my life

in the 30 years plus that I've tried to walk with God.

What you heard, read today is this idea that there's this indwelling sin in us

and it stops our journey.

It prevents us from doing what we want to do.

You know, my greatest fear is I'm going to do a bad job of covering it today.

My greatest fear is it's such a massive and huge thing that I'm going to just slice off a little bit of it.

And so I've been praying and praying that we would all see that this struggle is true of all of us.

You know, I think about it.

When I talk to non-Christians, people who aren't in church, people who are pre-Christians,

some of the things they say sometimes is,

well, I don't like to be around Christians because it seems like they're always talking about struggle

and things are difficult and things are hard.

But what I've realized in my journey is that all of us struggle.

Even people who aren't in the family of Christ.

We all struggle on this journey of life.

We all struggle.

And we've been reading about it in Romans, Romans 1, 2, and 3.

It talks about that we all struggle and that before we come to Christ,

we all struggle with God.

We all struggle with this idea of God, that he's holy and he's righteous,

and so we don't like it, and so we try to make our own righteousness.

We try to develop our own purpose.

We try to develop our own meaning.

We try to avoid this idea of judgment that we talked about in Romans 1, 2, and 3

because God would never judge us.

We try to think of God in different ways.

We try to think of God in our image because it would be easier if God was like Tobin or like you

because then you would never have to worry about displeasing him or not being holy

because he's just like you and everything's going to be great.

And so before we come to Christ, we struggle with this, and we try to avoid God.

We try to create God in an image that we can handle, or we try to be God,

and we try to serve ourselves.

And so even before we come to Christ, we struggle.

But the passage that we've been reading says that once we enter into the family,

we continue to struggle.

I mean, life is this struggle.

But now once we come into the family because of the gospel, because of what Jesus has done,

now we have this different struggle in us.

And this struggle is these conflicts of these beings inside of us.

We struggle with our old person, our old flesh, the sinfulness, and our total depravity.

Remember we talked about total depravity before?

I mean, I don't know if I did a very good job of describing it because people kind of came up and asked questions.

But I said, you know, total depravity means that everything about us is tainted, right?

We all are tainted with sin and brokenness and selfishness, and we all have this in every part of our life.

And if sin were the color blue, that if you looked at you, if you looked at your heart,

that every part of you would have this kind of shade of blue.

Now, we wouldn't be all blue, but total depravity doesn't mean you're totally sinful.

It means that there's not a part of you that isn't touched by sin.

And so everything we do, our thoughts, our actions, our deeds, they all are blue.

Now that we come to Christ, we struggle with this because we have this blueness in us,

but that we have this new spirit that came in us, and it's this righteousness that God put in us,

and God saves us, and he gives us this new nature.

But when he does it, when he gives us this new nature,

the thing that bothers me is he doesn't take away our old nature.

The Bible doesn't say that God takes away our old nature.

The Bible doesn't say that God takes away our sinfulness.

He doesn't take away our corruptedness.

We still feel its power.

We still feel its pull.

We still feel its influence.

We still feel its longings on both of us.

And so we have this struggle between our old nature and our new nature,

between our sinfulness and our total depravity and our righteousness.

And the passage says that as long as we're on earth, please listen to me,

as long as you're alive, as long as, I call this our earth suit,

as long as we're wearing this earth suit, we're going to struggle.

And as Christians, we're going to struggle with this conflict between these two natures.

Does that make sense?

Because I didn't understand that for a long time in my life.

For a long time in my life, people said,

when you come to Christ, everything's going to be great.

When you come to Christ, you get a Rolex, and you get a great job,

and you get a great wife, and you get a great house, and you get a great family,

and no problems, nothing ever happens wrong.

And if something happens wrong, it means that you don't understand it totally.

You go back and reboot, and you reboot, and everything's going to be perfect.

But the Bible says no.

And if you hang around people who say they're perfect and they're not broken,

you need to run away from those people.

Because those are the people that grab a lot of people around them

and go off to some Africa or some country,

and they start their little commune, and bad things happen.

When you're around perfect people, right?

It does.

Bad things happen when you're around perfect people

because you start to feel how imperfect you are.

But the passage doesn't say that.

The passage says we have this struggle,

and the struggle's always going to be with us.

And to me, it's incredibly comforting.

Because I grew up thinking I was going to be perfect,

but I still felt imperfect, and I still felt this struggle,

and I wondered, why am I feeling this struggle?

What's wrong with me?

How come I can't do these things?

And I started reading Romans, and I realized that's normal.

That there's a battle within me, and this battle is struggling,

and this battle wants control.

And so I want to start a dialogue today.

I want to begin this foundation of this talk,

and we're going to come back to it over and over and over

because I'm sure we're going to have to.

And what I want to look at in this passage is three things.

I want to look at our struggle.

So what does the battle look like?

Why are we battling in this struggle?

What is this conflict?

I want to look at what does it look like in our lives?

How does it live out here?

Because Paul gives three really powerful examples

of what his struggle looks like.

And then the third thing is I want to see how we can deal with this struggle.

Okay, so why do we have this struggle?

What does it look like?

And how we can deal with it?

That's pretty easy.

That's the only way I can think simplistically like that.

So you guys ready?

Because you guys are really quiet, and you're kind of looking at me like,

okay, this is a really weird person.

I don't know what's going on here.

Why do we have this struggle?

For thousands of years as Christians,

we have been trying to deal with the problem of sin in our life.

You know that?

For thousands of years,

Christians have been trying to deal with the issue of indwelling sin in our life,

and people have done amazing things to try to escape the struggle

and the conflict within them.

I mean, early Christians would go to the desert.

Some of my favorite writings and authors were these guys called the Desert Fathers.

And these Desert Fathers went to the desert,

and they tried to just escape everything around them that caused sin.

They tried to just separate themselves,

and they did some weird things.

I mean, they wrote some great books and articles,

but they did some crazy things,

and they just tried to separate themselves from the world,

tried to separate themselves from evil,

tried to create their own little commune,

and tried to get rid of all this indwelling sin within them.

And they figured, if I can get rid of this stuff,

I can get rid of this stuff.

Some of us do that today, don't we?

I mean, it seems to me that some of us struggle with creating this perfect world.

Some of us try to separate things that cause discomfort and pain

and tension and sinfulness.

It happens all the time.

I read about it in America.

They're trying to separate these different things from this and this different things,

and if we can create this great utopia.

They try to do it in Switzerland with Calvin and Zurich and Zwingli,

and they try to separate all these things,

and so we do these weird things, and we do it today.

But the passage says that, and history tells us,

no matter how much we try to separate ourselves from the bad influences

and the sinfulness and the stuff outside of us,

we can't separate ourselves from our heart.

We can't separate ourselves from the indwelling sin in our life.

No matter how much we try to change our schedule or our regiment,

that our heart is still there, and we struggle with this flesh.

We struggle with this fallenness.

There's a really interesting story in the Desert Fathers.

The most holy guy, he'd been in the deserts for like 30 years,

and everybody came to listen to wisdom and all the things that he did,

and he was just amazing.

And so the story says that one day the devil went to tempt him,

and the devil went to tempt this Desert Father

who'd been in the desert for 30 years,

separating himself from all things that would cause sin,

and he tried to tempt him with lust, and the guy said, no.

Tried to tempt him with power, and the guy didn't take it.

Tried to tempt him with money, he didn't do it.

And the devil goes, wow, you're really holy.

And as the devil was walking out of the guy's hut,

the devil turned around and said, hey, I just want to congratulate you on your brother

for being nominated the new pope of Rome.

What an amazing thing he did.

And the story says that all of a sudden this anger rose up within this monk,

and he realized that as much as he wants to separate himself

from the things that cause discomfort and sin and pain and badness in his world,

that he couldn't separate himself from his heart,

and the brokenness in his heart.

And that's what Paul says here in verse 14.

Look at it.

He says, I know that the law is spiritual, but I am flesh.

I am sold into the bodies of sin.

When he says I am flesh, he says the law is spiritual.

It's been given by God.

The word actually means it's been imported by the Holy Spirit,

that it's good.

It's from the Lord.

The law isn't bad.

But in me, there's this flesh.

There's this sinful nature, this thing that dwells within me.

And this battle fights on.

We talked about in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 that people said that the law is bad.

The law causes us to stumble.

The law causes me to get in trouble.

And what Paul is saying is the law is just like this x-ray.

This law takes this x-ray of our life, and it shows us what's in our heart.

The law doesn't produce the bad things in our heart,

but the law shows us our fleshiness.

And Paul says it right here that he struggles with this.

In chapter 6, he says, even though I have a new nature,

I'm not completely changed.

He says, I'm not totally like Christ,

and I struggle with this sinfulness in me.

And this sinfulness in our lives put us under its will,

put us under its dominion.

And Paul says, I struggle with the darkness within me.

He says we all struggle.

And the verbs from verse 14 to 25 are all present.

They're all active.

They're all right now.

And what it means is that from here on out,

from onward, for the rest of our lives,

we are going to struggle with the darkness in our life.

He's talking as a Christian.

So here's a question for you.

What is the darkness that you struggle with?

As a follower of God,

what is the darkness in your heart that you struggle with?

Is it pride?

Is it selfishness?

Is it comfort?

Is it security?

I mean, all these things are great,

but once they become our idol.

One of my favorite authors and pastors in America,

he says that we all have a shadow mission.

That in our lives, we all have this shadowy side.

We all have this shadow mission.

And even though we're acting great on the outside,

inwardly, we have this shadow mission.

And this is the thing that we want to see carried out.

And if it's not carried out,

we become upset and we become angry.

What is the darkness in your heart?

Because Paul says that we all struggle with it.

We all have it there.

C.S. Lewis once said this amazing thing.

He says, if we don't realize we struggle,

we don't realize what it means to be a Christian.

He says that the struggle is the mark of a Christian.

And if there's no struggle, there's no true faith.

Those are pretty strong words, aren't they?

If you're not struggling as a Christian

with the darkness in your heart,

if you're not struggling with your shadow mission,

if you're not struggling with the things you should do,

but you want to do, but you don't do,

but you do other things,

if you're not doing that,

Lewis says that you need to ask yourself,

do you have faith?

He said this.

He said, ask Hitler if he's a spiritually bad man.

And he would say no.

But he said if you ask Abraham Lincoln,

if he was, he would say yes,

and to a very great degree.

Lewis went on to say this.

He says, common sense tells us that the worst off we are,

the better we feel about ourselves.

Did you hear that?

The worst off spiritually we are,

the better we feel about ourselves.

And the better off that we are,

the worse we feel about ourselves.

Did you hear that?

He says, common sense will tell us

that the worst off you are,

the worst off you are spiritually,

the worst off that you are within your heart,

the better off you're going to feel about yourselves,

the better off you're going to see yourselves.

And the better off you are,

the worse you're going to see yourself,

the worse you're going to feel about yourself.

So the question is,

how do we feel about ourselves today?

We talk about our life with God.

We talk about our growth.

We talk about that chart as we walk.

Do we see ourselves performing?

Do we see ourselves pretending?

How do we see ourselves today?

Paul's going to tell us that in all of our lives,

we have this darkness that's hiding,

and we often wear masks,

and we try to hide it from other people,

and we say, you know, that's not me, it's not me,

I don't have any of these problems.

You know, I wonder sometimes

why non-Christians look at us in the church and say,

you guys are crazy.

Because I see you struggling with those things.

I see you anxious and angry

and nervous and worried.

But when I talk to you about faith,

you say, well, everything's perfect,

everything's great, come to church,

and you'll be good like me.

No wonder the non-Christian world around us

has a hard time looking at the church

and finding attractive things within our lives.

Am I going with things this way?

I remember the first time I shared with my friend

who was not a believer,

and we were talking about life,

and he was worried about things going on,

and I said to him, you know,

I worry a lot.

I struggle with worry a lot.

I struggle with control a lot.

I struggle with those things.

And he looked at me and goes, you're a pastor.

You're not perfect.

And he said, you know what?

I'm not.

And it was like I'd hit him over the head

with his sledgehammer,

because in his mind,

Christians, and especially pastors,

were supposed to be perfect,

and we never had troubles.

We never had struggles.

We never talked about those things openly,

at least in his world.

Let me ask you a question.

what would it be like if we were a church

where everybody knew they were broken?

Everyone desperately needed grace.

Everyone knew they didn't have to hide it.

and they could encourage other broken people

to come in here

and go on the journey with him.

What would that look like?

Would that be a good thing?

I wonder sometimes.

Because it seems like sometimes in the church

we just want perfect people.

And when a non-perfect person walks in our doors

or a broken person comes into our community group,

we don't know how to handle them.

We distance ourselves from them.

We say, oh, that's bad.

That's terrible.

Get away from them.

But Paul says that's not real life.

That's not the Christian journey.

What would it be like if we were a church

where people knew they were broken,

they didn't hide it,

they didn't have to hide it,

and they encourage other broken people to come in

and to be changed by God's grace?

The next thing the passage shows us,

and it shows us this very small glimpse,

a very intentional, personal glimpse

of Paul's life and his struggle.

It shows us Paul's hopelessness.

It shows us that Paul,

even after he had been a Christian for all these times,

still struggled with his Christian walk.

Can you think of this for a second?

Someone comes walking into your community group,

and they've been a Christian for 30 years.

They're Paul.

And they say, no, I'm really struggling.

I'm really struggling with these areas of my life.

I'm really struggling.

I feel like I'm getting beat up by the devil all the time.

I'm really, really struggling.

What would you do?

What would you do?

Well, in my life,

I might have said,

well, you need to read the Bible, dude.

You need to read the Bible.

If you read the Bible, everything's going to go away.

You need to memorize the Bible.

What would Paul have said?

Yeah, I wrote about a third of the Bible.

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Sometimes people come in like that,

and some churches say,

well, you know, you need to get more spiritual gifts.

Your problem is you're not speaking in tongues.

You're not having enough spiritual gifts.

If you had all those spiritual gifts,

then all the darkness would walk away,

and you wouldn't struggle with that anymore.

Paul would say, yeah, you know,

I speak in every tongue.

In Corinthians, it says, I have all the gifts.

I still struggle with it.

Maybe we would say something like this.

Well, you don't have a big view of heaven.

If you had a bigger view of heaven,

if you thought heaven was amazing,

if you saw heaven as it really is,

if you really saw heaven,

then you wouldn't struggle with all this darkness.

You wouldn't struggle with the pain.

You wouldn't struggle with the evil in your life.

You wouldn't struggle with those things

if you could just see heaven.

Paul would say, you know,

I've been in heaven.

It's amazing.

I mean, I struggle with wanting to go there right now.

I wonder, should I stay or should I go?

Because I've been there.

I've seen God's throne.

I've seen it all.

But I still struggle.

I still hurt.

I still conflict.

I still battle.

Verse 15, he says,

for what I'm doing,

I do not understand,

for I'm not practicing what I would like to do,

but I'm doing the very thing that I hate.

You gotta listen to these passages,

because Paul's not,

he's complaining about his actions,

but he's not putting responsibility on somebody else.

He's saying,

all my actions don't line up with who I know I am.

I have this new identity.

I have this new heart.

I have this new mind.

I have this new spirit.

God has given me all these things,

but for some reason,

all these things in my actions are out of sync.

They don't sync up.

They don't work.

I mean, I understand that I'm this new man,

but within this new man,

I have these desires that are,

they're bad,

and this sinfulness,

this indwelling sin,

prevents me from doing the things that I wanna do.

I wanna do those things,

but I don't do those things.

I have this conflict,

and I can't fight it.

I can't do it.

What do I do in my life?

And when you read verse 17,

he says,

there's no longer I and the one doing it,

but sin which dwells in me,

he's not using it as an excuse.

He's not saying I'm not responsible.

He's not blaming other people.

He's not putting our blame on other people like we do

or like I do,

but what he's saying is

that there's a sinful nature in there,

and the sinful nature indwells in my heart.

It's always gonna be there,

and just because I'm a Christian

doesn't mean that I don't struggle with indwelling sin.

It's never gonna disappear,

and the sinful nature is there,

and it's struggling with me,

but I know that this sinful nature isn't who I am.

It's not me anymore as a child of God.

As a child of God,

I'm different,

but this sinful nature hasn't struggled,

hasn't disappeared,

and I continue to struggle with it

over and over and over.

Does that make sense?

So he's struggling with this,

and he's thinking through these things,

and he's saying,

how do I fight this struggle?

What do I do in my life to get rid of sin?

How do I deal with this brokenness in me

that is there,

and I don't want to show people?

How do I do with these things?

What do I do?

You know, in my life,

I've tried to walk with the Lord

for over 30 years,

studied the Bible for years and years,

memorized huge passages of it.

I've taught most of it.

In my heart,

I want to do the spiritual thing.

You know, after all these years,

reading God's word,

being in community,

leading worship,

understanding God's will,

communion with the Holy Spirit,

praying,

after all these years,

I understand a very clear path.

I understand this very clear path

that God wants me to walk,

but it still does not take away

the control of the indwelling sin

in my life.

I still hear those voices.

I still feel those temptations.

You know, chances are very good today

that before this day is over,

I'm going to hurt

everyone I love in my family very dearly.

I'm going to hurt them.

I'm going to say something mean to them.

I'm going to be sharp.

I'm going to be focused on myself

instead of them.

I'm going to say something

that's going to really hurt them deeply.

And I'm going to have to struggle with sin

the moment I leave

and even now as I preach.

I'm going to have to confess my sin

to my family, my friends.

I'm going to have to repent of those sins

and walk away.

I'm going to have to realize

every moment of every moment of my life,

I need God's grace.

in my life.

And there's not a time

that we will not struggle

on this earth

as God's people.

Does that make sense?

No, growing up,

I hated struggle.

I tried everything in my life

to stop struggle,

especially as a Christian.

I mean, and I'm just being very honest

and I'll share things

and please don't feel like

there's fingers pointing at you

because his fingers are pointing at me.

But in my life,

I've tried formulas.

I said, okay,

I'm going to do all the right things.

I'm going to study all the right books.

I'm going to do all the right programs.

I'm going to do four steps.

I'm going to do 12 steps.

I'm going to do stop this.

I'm going to do that.

I'm going to let go, let God.

I'm going to think life

is supposed to be easy.

If life is hard,

then I'm not doing the right formula.

If things are difficult,

I'm going to get a different formula.

It's all about having the right formula.

If you have the right formula,

then life's going to be easy.

In my life,

I've tried new experiences.

I mean,

if I get new experiences,

if I get gifts and get tongues

and I get the second work of the Spirit,

I get lordship.

I got non-lordship.

I get cleansed.

I get past defeat to victorious.

I become victorious to defeated.

I get more emotional experiences.

I get different worship.

I get different church.

I get different pastor.

I get different spouse.

I get my best life now.

I've tried all these different experiences in my life

and I know that some of you have also.

Hoping that with these different experiences,

you will deal with indwelling sin in your life

and you won't have to struggle with it anymore.

Sometimes in my life,

I've just tried to avoid this struggle.

I've tried to turn away from the struggle.

I've tried to remind myself and think,

well, it's not really a struggle.

It's not there.

It's just in my mind.

It's not a part of who I am.

I'll get, again,

get involved in Bible studies.

I get involved in programs.

I get involved in other things

instead of dealing with my sin.

You know, sometimes I think in the Christian church,

hear my heart here.

We have more programs

and more Bible studies

and more study cues

and more things we can do

than any other time in the history of the church

to help us.

And most church historians would say

that we are worse off as the people of God

than we were before we had all these things.

Our influence is worse.

Our testimony is worse.

Our lives are worse.

I mean, it's almost like we feel like we get all these,

and I, in my life,

and not pointing at anybody else,

but in my life,

sometimes I had Bible study

after Bible study after Bible study

and other things that I did

throughout the week at my church

because I didn't want to have to deal

with things going on in my life.

Because it was easier to go to a Bible study

and pretend that I wasn't struggling,

that I didn't have these issues.

It was easier to read another book

and write out a study

than to deal with people in my life

and to deal with the brokenness of my life.

And I say that

because I know that's true of me,

and I know that it's true of many of us

because many of us get involved

in doing, doing, doing things

because we don't want to deal

with what's going on in our heart.

We don't want to deal

with the darkness of our heart.

We don't want to deal with everything going on

in the shadows of our lives.

And because we don't want to do that

because it's uncomfortable,

we try to escape the conflict and the tension.

But God says, and Paul says,

that you will never, ever do that

here on this earth

because we all will have tension

and we will all struggle with those things

and we will all have to deal with those things.

The passage says at the end

in verse 24 and 25,

Paul comes to this realization

after saying,

I, me, mine.

He says it 40 times.

And finally in verse 24,

he says this.

After trying to do,

there's three examples of this

trying to do it by himself,

trying to do it by himself,

trying to do it by himself,

over and over and over.

And he does it all by himself

over and over and over.

And finally when he comes to the end

in verse 24,

he says this.

He says,

Wretched man that I am,

who will set me free

from this body of death?

Wretched man that I am,

I'm pathetic,

I'm helpless,

I'm calloused,

I'm miserable.

That's what it all means in Greek.

I'm terrible.

Remember, this is Paul.

This is the church father.

He's 60 plus years old.

He's written one third of the Bible.

He's walked into the Lord

for over 30 years

and he's still struggling

with a sin inside of his life

that people don't want to talk about,

people want to hide,

people don't want to be real with.

And he says to himself

after he's tried to hide it

and do all those things,

Wretched man that I am,

I'm pathetic,

I'm helpless,

I'm calloused,

I'm broken.

Who will set me free?

I can't fix myself.

I can't make myself holy.

I can't get rid of my shadow mission.

I can't do the things

I know I should be doing.

I'm helpless,

I'm hopeless,

I can't rescue myself.

Who will set me free?

Because I can't do it

from this body of sin.

It's a very interesting word,

body of death.

You know, in Rome,

if you did a really heinous,

heinous crime,

I mean, if you did a really,

really bad crime

and it was really heinous,

one of the punishments

they would do

is they would actually

strap the person

that you murdered

onto your back.

And so they would strap

this dead body

onto your back.

And you would walk around life

with this dead body

on your back.

And as this dead body decayed,

it decayed into your flesh

and it eventually destroyed you

and killed you.

And this is the imagery

that Paul's using there.

And he says that dead bodies

are indwelling sin.

And he says,

we're carrying around

this indwelling sin

on top of us

and we're trying

to get rid of it.

We're trying to hide it.

We're trying to get rid

of all these things.

We don't want people

to see it.

And he says,

wretched man that I am,

who's going to set me

free from this?

I have this body of death,

this indwelling sin.

I can't do it.

What am I going to do?

In verse 25, he says,

thanks be to God

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then on the one hand,

I myself with my mind

am serving the law of God,

but on the other

with my flesh,

the law of sin.

He says, thanks be to God

that God loves us,

that God saves us.

It's not me, but it's God.

It's God who comes

into my life.

I'm struggling,

but it's God

who comes into those moments

when I struggle

and he changes them.

He makes them less.

He makes me able

to go through them.

How?

Through the cross.

Through Jesus Christ.

Basically, verse 25

is the gospel.

What Paul is saying there

is that there's no way,

even after,

remember, he's not coming

to Christ.

He's been a Christian

and even as he walks

as a Christian in his life,

just like before,

he had to deal with sin

and the wrath and judgment.

The cross came in.

It dealt with that.

Paul is now walking,

but he's still dealing

with his indwelling sin

and he says,

the same way we deal

with our lives now

is the same way we deal

with our lives in the beginning.

And as we go to the cross

and we trust Jesus

to come into our life

and we realize

all that he's done

and when we realize

that all that he's done,

we give our lives to him

and we trust him

and we walk with him.

Wretched man that I am,

who will set me free

from this body of sin,

this indwelling sin,

this body of death?

Praise be to God.

Thanks be to God

because he does it

through Jesus Christ,

our Lord.

What he's saying

that you and I

in Christ

as we walk every day,

we can be secure.

You and I

as we walk

with Christ every day,

we can trust him,

we can surrender our lives

to him,

we can walk in his spirit,

we can realize

that he's with us.

We can realize

it's okay to be broken.

We can realize

that it's okay

to have this struggle

with indwelling sin.

In fact,

the more we bring it out

into the light,

the more we deal with it.

I think our biggest problem

as Christians

is we think everybody

thinks we should be perfect

and so we never talk

about our brokenness

and we never bring it

out into the light

and so the light,

God,

the Holy Spirit,

doesn't have a chance

to come in and heal it

and fix it and change it

because we're afraid of that

because we're afraid

that if someone sees me

broken as a pastor,

they're not going to want

to come to church

because they're perfect people

but there are no perfect people.

There are no perfect people.

What would it be like

if we all realized this?

What would it be like

if we walked through our day

and we continually said things like,

thanks be to God

who saved me

through Jesus Christ?

You're struggling

with the brokenness,

the darkness,

the shadows in your life.

You shared it

with your friends.

You're about to do the thing

that you don't want to do.

What if in the middle

of that time

you said,

thanks be to God

who saved me

through Jesus Christ?

You're about to walk

into this incredibly

hard board meeting

and you know things

are going to be tough.

You know you're going

to have to compromise.

You know you're going

to be trusted.

People are going to want you

to compromise

and your values

and all these things

and you don't know

what you're going to do.

What if you said

before you walked

into that meeting,

thanks be to God.

God's in control here.

I can trust Him

because He saved me

through Jesus Christ.

Does that make sense?

I just want to share

four closing thoughts.

We're done.

But I don't think we're done

because I want to be a church

where broken people come

and share their brokenness.

and realize it's okay

to be broken

because we're all broken.

And Jesus is doing

an amazing thing

by healing us

and changing us.

And we need to talk

about that.

My first thought.

you and I will always be

in this very intense struggle.

There will always be

this intense struggle

going on in our lives

as we're Christians.

The struggle is

with our indwelling sin.

If we're not struggling

right now,

the passage says

there's something wrong

with us.

either we've renamed it,

we've hidden it,

we've closed it away

in a closet,

we don't want to talk

about it.

But Paul says

as His people,

as His redeemed people,

as His chosen people,

as His people

who are a holy priesthood,

that we're always

going to struggle

with this indwelling sin

in our lives.

And if we're not struggling,

He says

there's something wrong

with us.

Number two,

we are never going to,

and this is going

to bother people,

especially,

I think,

Americans,

because we want victory,

we want success.

But we're never going

to get to a point

in this world

where we don't need grace.

We are never going

to get to a point

in this world

where we don't need grace.

We don't need God's empowerment.

We don't need God's strength.

Even our victories,

the Bible says,

even our victories,

even the good things you do,

even when you succeed

as a husband,

a wife,

a worker,

you do the great thing

and it's an amazing thing,

even our victories,

the Bible says,

even our victories

are because of Jesus.

Did you hear that?

In Revelations 4,

it's one of these

interesting passages.

In Revelations 4,

what it says is that

as God's people,

we will come to heaven

and we will see Jesus,

the Lamb of God

and we will have crowns

on our head,

crowns of gold

and jewels

and all these things

that we did well

for his kingdom

and we served him.

In the passage,

it says something

very interesting

in Revelations 4,

11.

What it says is that

you and I,

we all take off our crowns

and what do we do with them?

We all take off our crowns,

what do we do with them?

We lay them at Jesus' feet.

Why do we do that?

Why do we do that?

Because everything we've done,

everything good,

everything great,

everything righteous,

everything perfect,

everything the way

God calls us to do it,

everything the Bible says,

you do it this way,

everything you've beat

this indwelling sin

in this case

and you've really been nice

to your wife

or your husband

or your worker

or you've done all these things

to your friends,

you've been great.

All those righteous things,

he says at the end,

we just lay them

at Jesus' feet.

Why?

Because everything we've done

is because of his grace.

Everything we've done

is because of his power.

Everything we've done

is because of his strength.

But Jesus is the hero

of our story.

We're not the hero

of our story.

Number three,

no matter where you are,

no matter where you are,

if you're God's child,

he is pursuing you.

No matter where you are

in your journey,

if you're pretending

or you're performing

or you've shrunken the cross

so small that you can

just keep it in your pocket

and pull it out

when you need it,

no matter where you are,

God's word says

that he's pursuing you.

He never gives up.

He's the God

of second chances.

You're never by yourself.

You're never blown it

so badly

that he's not looking at you.

You never mess up

so badly

that he's turned his back

and he's ignoring you.

The passage says

he's always,

always,

always pursuing

his children

because he loves you

so much.

One last thought.

I love

I love

Lord of the Rings

and Tolkien

and a couple of those.

I really don't like

science fiction that much.

I really don't like

fantasy that much.

But I love

the Lord of the Rings.

I love Tolkien.

I love the story

that he tells.

I love C.S. Lewis.

I think it's amazing

how they

weave

myth

into this grand story

and they capture

our story

in life.

and I've been

thinking about this

a lot,

you know.

When Peter Jackson

in New Line Cinema

was reading Tolkien

and they said,

you know,

hey,

we need to make

a movie out of this.

This would be

a great movie.

We don't know

how successful

it's going to be

but this is going

to be great.

We need to make

a movie out of this book.

What's the first thing

they had to do?

They're reading

The Lord of the Rings,

they're reading Tolkien,

they go,

wow,

this is incredible.

I really like this story.

This is going to make

a great,

great,

great book,

a movie.

Let's make it

into a movie.

What's the first thing

they had to do?

Come on.

What did they have

to do first thing?

Do what?

Wow,

Elaine.

You know,

the first time

I heard this

I was like,

okay,

you got to get

the right character

for Legolas,

you got to get

the right character

for so and so.

Maybe I'll do that.

You know,

you're thinking

all these characters

or you're thinking,

well,

where are we going

to get the money

to produce this

and where are we

going to shoot this

and all these things

but no.

The first thing

they had to do

was they had to buy

the rights

to the book.

They had to buy

the rights

to the story

because until

they bought

the rights

to the story,

they couldn't

keep the story

going.

They couldn't

fix the story.

They couldn't

change it.

They couldn't

do anything

about it.

I mean,

even though most

movies are different

than the books

and so there's

these changes

going on

but they wanted

to make the movie.

The very first

thing they had to do

was they had to

buy the rights

to the story.

You and I

are on a journey

and God comes in

and he buys

the rights

to our story.

He sees your life

and he goes,

wow,

that's amazing.

I don't even

worry about

who's playing it

because you're

playing it

but what I got

to do,

I got to buy

the rights

to that story.

How do I

buy the rights

to that story?

I send my son.

My son

buys the rights

to that story.

now I have

that story.

I love

that story.

I want to make

sure that story

has an amazing

ending.

I'm going to make

sure that story

is filled with

grace and mercy

and struggle

and love.

I'm going to make

this story amazing.

Do you know

that?

God has

bottomed the

rights to your

story

and he wants

to do something

incredible in your

life.

He's going to do

it through your

struggles,

through your

failures,

through your

successes,

through your

hard times,

through your

good times

because he wants

to do something

amazing in your

life.

Do you believe

that?

That's the

message of

Romans.

That's the

message of

God's word.

Father, we

thank you for

this day.

We thank you

as we think

about the

struggle that

we face,

that we

have heroes

of the

faith like

Paul who

shows us

that the

struggle

doesn't just

stop at

one end,

but it

continues and

continues and

continues.

But in the

midst of that

struggle,

we have a

hero.

This hero is

your son.

And this

hero comes in

and he buys

the rights to

our story.

movie.

And it is an

expensive movie

because the

rights cost him

his life.

But now he

has our

manuscript in

our life.

And he's

doing an

incredible story

in our life.

And we don't

know what the

ending is going

to be like

because sometimes

he rewrites

things different

than we want

them to be.

And so we

face pain and

struggle and

tension and

conflict and

we want to

avoid.

We want to

say you're

not in it.

You don't

love me.

If you love

me, you

would have

done these

things.

You wouldn't

let these

things happen.

Why are you

there?

You're not

good.

But your

word says that

you are and

you bought our

story and you

want to do

something amazing

with it.

And the

question is,

will we let

you?

Will we

let you?

Father, I

know there's

some people

here who are

on a journey

by themselves

and they're

still trying to

be God and

still trying to

create God and

find God.

And I pray

today that

somehow, Lord,

you would open

their eyes and

their ears to

your son,

Jesus, that

they'd realize

that all of

life is a

struggle.

The question

is, where

is their

efforts going

to go within

that struggle?

I pray they

would come to

know your

son and

enter into

the family.

And I pray

that when they

walk into the

doors of this

family, they

would see a

family of people

who are broken,

people who are

being changed and

redeemed and

honest and

real and

struggling with

indwelling sin and

talking about it and

praying about it with

each other and

confessing it and

helping each other

along the journey.

and all along,

crying out, praise be

to God who

changes us through

Jesus Christ.

I know there's

some of us in

this room who've

been on that

journey for a

while and we've

been on it for

so long we've

even forgotten

where we're

heading.

We're kind of

like the hobbits

in the woods and

we lose track of

the trail and all

of a sudden we're

in the middle of

the mirkwood and

we don't know how

to get out and

we're captured and

we're in these

webs of sin and

indwelling sin and

we're waiting for a

hero to come and

to release us.

Lord, I pray for

our hearts.

Help us to confess

our shadows.

Help us to be

honest and real

with you and to

repent of our

brokenness and to

realize that the

only way we can

make it is through

your mercy and

grace and that

you're doing an

amazing thing in

our story.

I pray for us,

Lord, that we

would be different

people because of

your word.

I pray that we

would be different

people because we

gather together to

worship you and to

sing of amazing

songs of how good

you are.

I pray that we

would be different

people because we're

in a community that

loves you and

reaches out to

those who don't

know you yet.

I pray for this

part of Hong Kong,

Lord.

I know there are a

lot of people who

are rewriting and

writing their own

stories and those

stories are ultimately

going to end up in

pain and badness and

hurt.

help us to be a

church that introduces

them to the author

that can rewrite all

things, the one who's

willing to buy them

whatever it costs so

they might have life and

hope and mercy and

grace.

Father, we love you.

We desperately,

desperately need you.

I pray these things in

your son Jesus' name.

Amen.