Guest Series | The Gospel Is Struggle (Aug 1, 2021) Todd Dugard

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

Thanks for joining us today.

Amen.

Good morning.

Very lackluster.

Good morning.

Way better.

Hey, good to be with you this morning, to be able to share God's word with you here in the room and also on the live stream.

It's always a great privilege to be able to share God's word and to be able to do it out from Harvest Berry.

And Pastor Mike and I go back a long, long way.

I gave him his first ministry job in a church.

And so he was with us for about seven years before we released him to come and plant uh Newmarket.

And so I was saying to the worship team prior to this, uh, whatever mistakes Mike makes in ministry, you can blame me.

I just it's just bad mentoring, bad oversight, bad counseling.

So just lay that all on me.

I'm I'm happy to take it.

I've been in ministry 20 years.

I'm happy to take anything now.

So um so grateful to be here with you.

I'm gonna preach a message that uh I preached at our church as part of a series in Romans, and I preached it on February 7th in this you know, super weird year, and I think February 7th was, I don't even remember, was it the second lockdown or the third?

I don't know which lockdown it was.

It was one of those.

And so I preached this to an empty room, and there was uh five of us in the building that morning, and I watched the video of it as I was prepping for this, and and it's just painful, it's just been a painful season.

Can everybody agree on that?

And uh, and so it's I'm super excited to be able to preach this message again, but to real live human beings uh here in New Market.

So God bless you guys for being here and uh for getting your Bibles in your hands right now, whether you use uh an analog version version like this, or you use uh smartphone or tablet, get your Bibles out and open them up to Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

And uh see if this isn't true of you as well.

Um there are times uh when as a believer you feel like there are two you's.

You feel like there's two you's.

There's the you that wants to be faithful to Jesus, and there's the you that still gives in to sin.

Now you don't need to raise your hand, but just a gentle nod would say, yeah, I've had that experience.

There's the part of me, there's the me that wants to live for Jesus, and there's the me that keeps giving in to sin.

And the two you's, if you were to really think about it, the two you's for you, they feel like they're very much at war with each other.

And I'm I'm sure you would agree that that sounds like a good description of the Christian life, no matter how long you've been walking with him.

And in today's passage, we're gonna look at Romans 7, 7 through to the end of the chapter.

Paul says of his own life, he says this in verse 23, I see, this is the Apostle Paul saying this now, I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind.

He's talking about the two Pauls and the law that was in his heart and the law that was in his mind, and he describes for us this internal war.

We're gonna see this in the passage.

And if you're like me, you're gonna be able to closely identify with Paul's words, and you're gonna come to a greater understanding of the gospel, and in particular, this one aspect of the gospel.

And as we worked as a church through the first eight chapters of Romans, we saw all these different facets of the gospel.

But this one facet is one we don't often think about, and it's this the gospel is struggle.

We think about all these positive aspects of the gospel, but the gospel is struggle.

In other words, the gospel doesn't come easily as we continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

But along the way, we also see how victory over sin can increasingly be ours as we walk with the Lord.

And so uh Romans 7, 7 through 25.

So a long passage here.

I'm gonna read this and then we'll uh start working through it.

Romans 7, 7, what then shall we say?

That the law is sin?

By no means.

Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet.

But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

For apart from the law, sin lies dead.

I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died.

The very commandment that promised life proved death to me.

For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.

So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous and good.

Did that which is good then bring death to me?

By no means.

It was sin produced, uh sin producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin, for I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

If I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good, so now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh.

For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

No, if I do what I do not want, it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am.

Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

All right, up on the board that's a long passage.

There's a lot to it, it's a kind of passage.

But this is what we're going after.

Living out the gospel is a struggle.

Let's look at this first.

Not because I'm confused about what is sinful.

The principle comes to us right off the bat in verse 7.

What shall we say then?

He asks the question that the law is sin.

The question is coming off an earlier part of chapter 7 that told us that we have actually, in verse 4, it says, died to sin.

We've died to the law, and that we are, verse 6, released from the law, which had in fact enslaved us.

So it's natural, it's a natural conclusion to say that the law is sin, to which Paul replies here in verse 7, by no means.

That's not what I'm saying.

Yet if it had not been for the law, I would have not known sin.

And again, the law is a reference.

Anytime he's talking about the law, it's a reference to the Old Testament, to the Torah, what God had prescribed for Israel.

It's all encapsulated in the Ten Commandments and in Exodus.

And we've heard in our series as we went through this multiple times that the law could only take us so far.

As you read the book of Romans, that's what you see, the law can only take you so far.

If you're on the law program, if you're on the obey God program, if you're on the I'm going to be good enough for God program, that's fine, be on that program.

But understand you can't make even one mistake.

Like if you're on that program, it has to be perfection, and it can never be perfection.

And so the law, the law here can only take us so far.

No one can be saved by keeping the law.

Or the law, as John Stott puts it in his commentary, the law reveals sin, but then Stott goes a little bit further than that and he says, the law actually, listen to this, provokes sin.

The law provokes sin.

And we're going to come back to that thought.

So Paul jumps into an illustration here about covetousness to help us understand exactly what he's saying.

Now, covetousness, a very simple definition is, I want what you have.

That's covetousness.

I see something that you have, I want that.

That's coveting.

And verse 7, the latter part of it says, For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet.

There would be no coveting if the law had not said, Don't covet.

So this is this is this is uh to put it this in in City of Barrie terms, if you're ever coming up to use our beautiful waterfront, we have all these nice parks around our downtown, and you can walk along our waterfront, and there's trails and there's bike trails and there's walking trails and there's parkland and there's beach and all of that.

But the city of Barrie says there's two things you can't do if you come here.

If Newmarket people, if you're gonna come to Barrie and use our waterfront and you brought and you brought your dog with you, okay, you got to keep your dog in a leash.

And and by the way, if you're a smoker, don't smoke in our park.

So these are the two things.

You can't smoke and you can't have your dog off-leash at our beautiful waterfront park.

But that's only because there's a city of Barrie bylaw that says your dog has to be on a leash and you can't smoke in our park.

And so if you're sitting back on a park bench and you've lit one up and your dog is off the leash, you've violated the law.

Only because the city of Barry has said so.

So we have the tenth commandment.

Come back to the text.

The tenth commandment in Exodus 20 says this you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, you shall not covet his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey.

I don't know how many people in Newmarket have oxes or donkeys, but this is relevant.

Or anything that is your neighbor's.

You can't covet anything that anyone else has.

And it's so interesting to me that he picks this particular one as his example to show us this.

It's a commandment that deals with an internal battle that is quite possible no one else knows about.

Stealing, adultery, let's talk about some of the other commandments.

Stealing is something other people can see.

They can witness you take it, they can see that you have it.

That's an outward sin.

Murder, outward sin, adultery, outward sin, lying, outward sin, using the Lord's name in vain, outward sin.

These are all things that people can observe, but not coveting.

It's an internal battle.

And Paul uses it here because it becomes representative of all the other sins that we fight internally.

So, like lust and hatred, which are corresponding sins to adultery and murder.

Idolatry, these are internal sins.

And these, I think you and I might admit, these are the harder ones to fight.

So he comes back to this idea, or we come back to this idea now that of the law provoking sin.

We see what the law is doing, it's revealing sin, but as Stott said, it's provoking sin.

He says in verse 8, but sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

For apart from the law, sin lies dead.

So by laying it out so clearly, the law provokes sin in this sense.

Knowing that I could covet.

Oh, did I covet?

You could take that phrase, in fact, and you could you could apply to whatever sin is your favorite sin.

Everybody's got a favorite sin.

Oh that I could lie, knowing that I could lie, oh, did I lie?

Knowing that I could lust, oh did I lust, knowing that I could steal, oh did I steal.

We just insert our own preferred sin.

We we, in other words, are provoked to sin by the law.

We're drawn to it.

We we we throw ourselves into our favorite sins.

And then he goes on to say in verse 9, I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, I died.

Verse 10, the very commandment that promised life proved death to me.

For sin seizing an opportunity.

Again, he talks about opportunity twice in verse 11, but also back in verse 8, through the commandments, deceived me and through it killed me.

We think in our flesh, this is the deception of it, we think in our flesh that sin satisfies.

That's the lie that we tell ourselves.

If I do this, it's gonna satisfy me in some way.

It doesn't.

Instead, the text tells us it actually kills us.

Both physical and spiritual death coming on humanity as a result of our sin.

And the conclusion in verse 12 of this is far from the law being sin, because this is where we might be led now, far from the law being sin, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and the and and righteous and it's good.

But how, how, after everything else you said, Paul, could it, how could it possibly be described in these terms?

And it is because it reflects the very moral character of God that we desperately need to be reconciled to.

The law sets out the parameters of that reconciliation.

The tragedy is we can't get there.

Not on our own.

And so the implications of this is that no one should be confused about what's sinful because the law lays it out.

It's a travesty to actually, and I maybe this is someone here, you know, you have the Ten Commandments posted in your house.

You have a nice plaque that you bought in a Christian bookstore when those existed.

You know, like you, it's up in your house.

And you're like, we live by the Ten Commandments.

I'm going, no, you don't.

None of us do.

But if you want to have them there to point out the fact that you're a sinner and why you need Jesus, that's fine.

But please don't claim that you're living by the Ten Commandments.

Use the Ten Commandments to point to Christ and your need of Him.

No one should be confused about what's sinful.

The law lays it out.

People get off track.

When people get off track here is when they ignore, they reject, or they reinterpret the Word of God.

In fact, the invogue thing to do today is to redefine what's sinful.

Because not liking the way things have been laid out in God's Word, people are simply moving the stakes.

They're changing the field of play to redefine what is actually sinful.

Culture influencing what we know to be true, even as Christians.

And it's nothing new now to hear Christians say things like premarital sex is okay.

It's nothing for two single Christians to decide to go on a trip together.

Because they've moved the stakes, they've changed the field of play, they've redefined what the scriptures say about these things.

There are Christians today, professing Christians, who say that it's permissible to be in a same-sex relationship as long as it's monogamous, or to excuse watching explicit sexuality on your favorite streaming services.

Because that's the culture, or that's what's on TV today, or we have to know what's happening out there.

But let's get real.

We know those things are wrong.

We know, as Christians, if we have the Holy Spirit, we know that those things are sinful.

That's why there's such an effort today, because it's such a battle over this among Christians.

There's an effort to not only redefine sin, but to redefine the principles of the interpretation of Scripture.

Let's change the way we interpret the Bible so now we're not appearing to be violating it.

We're moving the stakes even further.

We're going to arrive at it at a new place methodologically, at a different conclusion than the historic understanding of what the scriptures have always said.

And so scholars do this, they write journal articles and books, they teach in seminaries, they hold symposiums, and we do it down here at the local church level as well, in our small groups, in our conversations with one another.

But our conscience doesn't allow us to do it.

The Holy Spirit won't allow us to do it.

If He's truly resident in us, He never stops reminding us that we've moved the stakes, that we've changed the parameters.

We know it's sin.

We know when we've gossiped about someone.

We know when we've let our anger step over the line.

We know when we've drunk too much and are impaired.

We know when we've watched something we shouldn't have.

We know when our greed has gotten the best of us.

We know when we've been complacent about our worship.

We know when we've coveted and wanted things that others have.

We know because we have the word of God and we have the Spirit of God.

Later in chapter 10, verse 8, Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 30, he says, The word is near you, it's in your mouth, and it's in your heart.

If you're a genuine Christian, that's true of you, and you can't escape the reality of the sin that's in your life.

You can't escape the pursuit of God's Spirit as He convinces you and convicts you concerning the things of God.

Alright, living out the gospel is a struggle, not because I'm confused.

Hopefully we've arrived at a good place now, not because I'm confused about what's sinful, but because I'm at war with my own flesh.

I know it's sin, but I often give in to it because I'm weak.

And you can't say something like that without reflecting on the Garden of Gethsemane and when Jesus was in the garden and he was praying.

Remember, these disciples are with him, his closest followers are with him, minus Judas, and they've spent three and a half years with him, they've heard all his teaching, they've seen all the miracles, they've pledged their lives to him.

And he asks them a simple question on his most anguished night.

He asks them a simple question, a simple request.

He says, just stay up and pray with me.

That's it.

They fall asleep and they fall asleep and they fall asleep again.

And Jesus says his commentary on their inability to stay awake and pray with him.

His commentary on them is Matthew 26, 41.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is, what's the word?

Weak.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Man, that could be the motto for my life.

That could be the motto for my life.

So verse 13 here in Romans 7, did that which is good then bring death to me?

By no means.

It was sin, produced death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin.

So that through the commandment, the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

Again, that's the idea of me throwing myself into the sin.

Verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh.

I'm sold under sin.

I need to hear and accept the bad news that I'm a sinner before I can receive the good news before that has any benefit in my life.

But even when I become a believer and receive, start to begin, receive those benefits of salvation, of the hope of eternity, of the forgiveness of sin.

Verse 15, I still don't understand my own actions.

Like I'm saved, but sometimes I don't act like I'm saved.

I don't understand my own actions, verse 15, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

If I'm a Christian, why do I keep doing this repeated sin?

I love him, I serve him, I believe I would die for him, I love his word, I serve his church.

So why do I keep going back to the Same sins.

Why do I do the very thing I hate?

This is a great place to just insert a heavy sigh.

Because we understand this is every Christian's battle.

If there was ever a summary of the struggle that it is to live out the Christian life, this is it.

How many times after sinning the same sin that you've sinned a thousand times before?

Do you step back and say those very words?

How many times have you sat in this place hearing the word of God preached and receiving it and being so determined?

And I'm gonna live for Christ this week and I'm not going back to that.

How many times after repenting do we go right back to it sometimes by Sunday afternoon?

This makes his point, verse 16.

Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it's good.

This is proving Paul's point about the law that it just provokes, it increases sin.

So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin, residual sin that dwells within me.

One of the key church leaders who uh who said so much about this and helped us understand this in a greater way was Martin Luther, the great reformer.

And he was a key leader in the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, and his studies in the doctrines of grace led him to break with the Catholic Church, of course, and it was Luther and the other reformers like Calvin and Zwingli and Knox who brought us back to the simplicity of the gospel.

Simplicity of the gospel message.

That salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, through Christ alone.

And among the key statements made by Luther, maybe one of his most famous statements, was this one, and we're gonna have it up on the screen here.

Uh, this is in Latin in his own handwriting, uh simul justice at pecator.

Simul justice at pecator, and it means this, at the same time, saint and sinner.

At the same time, saint and sinner.

This describes every one of us who have Jesus.

We are at the same time, still while here on planet earth, we are at the same time saint and sinner.

We we've already seen, you if you if you read the early part of Romans, you see that we're already considered righteous.

We're declared to be righteous or justified is the word that Paul uses.

We're just at the moment of our redemption by Christ, the moment that we become saved.

God sees us as sinless because of what Jesus Christ did for us.

But we're still living out our lives down here on the timeline.

We're still grinding out our lives in the midst of a sinful, corrupted world.

We're awaiting our final redemption and we're exposed to the onslaught of temptation in this world, and too often our flesh gives way and we succumb to sin.

How then do we reconcile this?

How can we be declared righteous but still so sinful?

Well, Luther gave us the phrase Simuljustice at pecator.

We are at the same time saint and sinner, and that's what Paul's describing here, verse 18, for I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do its right, but not the ability to carry it out in his flesh, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, that's the thing I keep doing in the flesh.

Now, if I do what I do not want, it's no longer I who do it, but it's sin that dwells within me.

That's the whole battle in the flesh.

That's the sinner part of all of this.

And this helps explain without giving us license to sin, because that's the danger in talking about this and just saying, well, you know what?

I'm a sinner, I'm just gonna give into it.

I'm glad I'm saved.

But Paul leaves no room for that, the Holy Spirit leaves no room for that.

Go back to chapter six and verse one.

He says, What shall we say then?

Because grace is so amazing, which he's just spent five chapters building this case for grace, and he gets to chapter six, he says, What shall we say then?

Because grace is so awesome?

Shall we consider in, can should can should we continue in sin that grace might abound?

To that, Paul says, God forbid, may it never be.

No way should we continue in sin.

That grace would abound.

We can't give ourselves license to sin and say, you know what, it's not my fault.

Sin made me do it.

Nope, you're still responsible.

You still have your own sin.

You need to confess it, you need to deal with it in a way that is consistent with a Christian who's growing in their sanctification.

As you get into chapter 8, you see this increasingly.

You see the idea of us being conquerors and able to overcome our sin.

But let me just say this about it.

The fact that you're struggling, if that discourages you, I wish I could overcome it.

I wish I didn't battle this sin.

I wish that temptation didn't draw me in.

Here's part of the good news: the struggle is an indication of genuine salvation.

The struggle itself is an indication of genuine salvation, that you have the Holy Spirit in you that's convicting you of this sin.

Don't despair that you struggle with sin.

Rejoice that you do.

It's the person who doesn't struggle with their sin that ought to be concerned.

In fact, listen to this from Charles Cranfield.

Paul's words in Romans 7 depict vividly the inner conflict characteristic of the true Christian.

A conflict such as is possible only in the person in whom the Holy Spirit is active and whose mind is being renewed under the discipline of the gospel.

So, yes, it's a struggle.

Yes, I'm at war with my own flesh.

But, see this next.

But I win, I win when what Paul says next is true of me.

I can overcome sin, I can resist temptation, I can be victorious when, first of all, I delight in God's word.

Verse 21, so, in light of everything I've said so far, so I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

That sounds familiar.

Okay, most temptation comes when we are most vulnerable to it.

Temptation comes when we're most vulnerable, it comes at the most inopportune times.

He says, For I delight in the law of God.

I love the Bible.

I love and cherish the scriptures, I delight in the law of God in my inner being.

I love that the word is so forthright about this.

I love that it exposes my sin.

I love that it points out the way to God.

And I wonder if Paul had Psalm 1 in mind when he wrote this.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

It's a simple question, then.

If I'm going to get serious about this, in what way can I delight in God's word?

Taking in a sermon once a week can be part of that.

So the fact that you're here, taking in God's word is good.

The fact that you've tuned in on the live stream is great.

That's part of it.

But I feel like there's got to be more.

Do you have a plan for the reading of God's word yourself?

Not just, I read my three verses or I read my four chapters and I checked the box, but getting deeply into God's word.

Are you in a small group that looks into the word during the week?

And I know it's been harder.

I know it's summer, our small groups don't meet.

I know it's, I know it's, you know, during the pandemic it was so hard on Zoom, I just kind of bailed on it.

It is hard.

Get back to it.

Get with people and study God's word together.

Have you memorized any of the scripture?

Do you ever meditate on it?

Do you journal about it?

Do you study it for yourself?

Do you have a study Bible that just is going to help you as you read it to understand context?

And I'm not saying you have to do all of these things, but pick one you're not doing and start delighting in God's word in a greater way.

That's how you and I win.

Here's a second one.

I admit my frailties.

Now, the apostle, it's not good if you're just prideful and you never admit this to anyone.

And this is the Apostle Paul opening his heart up in this letter to a church he'd never visited, to people he didn't really know.

He's admitting his frailties.

There's no room for pride.

This is not the time, you know, to bring out those stock phrases that every public school teacher uses, you know, you have it in you and you can do it.

It's not the time for that stuff.

Just admit you don't have it in you.

Admit that you can't do it.

Recall back in verse 18, he said, I have the desire to do what's right, but not the ability to carry it out.

And here he says in verse 23, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind, makes me captive to the law of sin.

I know there's a war going inside of me.

You know, I had the privilege, we have three kids, they're all married now, they're starting to produce grandkids for us, which is awesome.

But our three kids, I was there for the birth of all three of them.

And you know, if you've ever witnessed that, you know that as soon as the child is born, like the screaming starts as they learn to breathe for the first time from the very first breath they take.

It's an absolute struggle.

And a year and a half ago, just before the pandemic really took off, I was in the room when my dad breathed his last.

And it was a struggle to the very end.

We struggle, we struggle from our first breath to our last breath.

We fight, we battle, we wage war to live.

That's the human condition, because the perfect creation that God gave us has been marred, terribly marred by sin.

And so the battle is in us and it is around us.

And Paul, sensing the desperation of his situation, cries out humbly here.

Verse 24 wretched man that I am.

No hyper-spiritual facade on Paul, no pretending to be something he's not, no hypocrisy, wretched man that I am.

Authenticity, transparency, vulnerability from the apostle Paul.

He cries out this question: Who will deliver me from this body of death?

How am I gonna find relief?

There's no holding back, there's no excuses, there's no explanations, there's no deflection, there's no reinterpretations of God's word.

It's just a heart ripped open in confession.

I'm a wretched man and I'm desperately in need of help.

You're gonna do yourself no good, and churches are notorious for this that we polish ourselves up for Sundays, we polish ourselves up for our small groups, we polish ourselves up and we put on a mask for all of our relationships, and we pretend that we're the greatest Christian in the world.

It's not doing us any good, it's not helping us.

I win when I admit my frailties and I allow the grace of God to flood over me and all around me.

Here's a third, I adore Jesus.

The question he asks himself in that last verse is answered in verse 25.

Thanks be to God through Christ, Jesus Christ our Lord.

See, Jesus is the one who will deliver him from his body of death.

In other words, though the gospel is a struggle, we need not cave into sin, we need not live defeatist lives, we need not be consumed by our sin.

We need not abuse grace by continuing in sin.

If only we would adore Jesus, if only we would love him more.

See, ultimately we sin against Jesus less when we love Jesus more.

We sin against Jesus less when we love Jesus more.

We give no occasion for sin to grip us if we fill our lives with worship, service, devotion, and love.

It's no secret that sin satisfies an itch, so to speak.

So if we remove the sin which ought to be our aim, the itch, the longings, the desires still have to be replaced.

The void left must be filled.

Verse 25, the latter part says, this is the conclusion.

So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind.

I know what's right, I know what's sinful, I know what's holy, I know how to eliminate sin.

The problem is not one of education, it's one of the will.

Because, like Paul, with my flesh I serve this law of sin.

Luther said something else that was so helpful.

He said, Sin is indeed always in us.

This fits with what he said previously.

Sin is indeed always in us, and godly people feel it.

But it's covered, he said.

It's covered, it's atoned for.

God's wrath over sin was appeased by Jesus' death on the cross.

We did nothing to deserve or earn that.

It's a gift of grace, freely given by God through his Son Jesus Christ.

It flows from his unconditional love to us, and it's received by faith alone.

The fact that Jesus did this for us and that it answers the question: who will deliver me from this body of death, who will save me, who will forgive me, the answer, listen, the answer is Jesus.

The answer is always Jesus.

The answer is only Jesus.

And so the gospel is a struggle.

But it's a struggle well worth having.

Amen?

Let me pray for us.

Our God and Father, I'm I'm grateful to have had this opportunity to open your word and uh Father, through the frailty of my words.

Father, I pray that you would break through by your Holy Spirit to change every one of us.

Father, your word is living and it's active.

It's sharper than any two-edged sword.

It pierces to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow.

It's a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And we have opened and read and studied your word here today.

And I pray that your Holy Spirit would take this now and discern our thoughts and our intentions.

Convince us and convict us of these things that we've heard.

And continue your good work in our lives to change us for your glory.

Bless this church and all it's seeking to do in this community to make more and better disciples in New Market and York region.

Father, bless them.

I pray in Christ's name.

Amen.