I Need You Jesus

Hey, look at your neighbor. Say Jesus, be the name. Jesus. What did they say? Jesus be the name ever on my lips. I love it. Oh, Jesus. Jesus, Jesus. When you know what to say, what do you say? Amen. Amen is a good one. I was going to think of Jesus, but, you know, I ask questions all the time. They're open ended. And then people I, you know. Anyways. Hey, I forgot my Bible sitting right here. Would you mind handing me that? I was too busy worshiping through the music. How many of y'all like our worship team? Yeah. Yeah, they're all right there. Okay, we're going to be in Romans chapter seven today. I've been practicing this thing where I just dive right into it, rather than vamping so much on the front end that ADHD gets me if I've amped too much on the front end. Amen. Somebody else with ADHD, that's a lot of people. Oh, yeah. Right before you coming to church, like, go take my my Vance or Adderall. Don't do it. If you're not prescribed, don't do it. It's it's not legal. I don't know if it's legal or not, but. Yeah. Gotta. You want to stay awake? No, I'm done talking about it. Stop vamping. Matt Romans, chapter seven. I'm going to start in verse 14. I'm going to read you something that I'm willing to bet you're not going to track with the first time I read it. That's okay. Okay. It's going to be on the screen for you starting in verse 14. This is Paul writing to the Romans. We spent the first six chapters. I've already preached on those. We're in chapter seven right now. Here's what he says. We know the law is spiritual. He's talking about the Torah, the Old Testament law. But I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. They'll try to track. I do not understand what I do for what I want to do. I do not do, but what I hate, I do, and if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good as it is. It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I knew no, that good itself does not dwell in me, that is in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out, for I do not do the good I want to, but the evil I do not want to do this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does everybody say amen to something they didn't track with? It's God's word. It's good. I got to figure it out for a second, though. All right. Like, I just want to tell you something. When you're reading the scripture, very rarely in your first reading are you going to fully track with what God is trying to teach you? So if I can help you in anything, this is more practical than half this sermon is going to be. It's when you're reading the Bible, give yourself a little bit of a break. You don't have to be a Bible scholar. You don't have to be perfect at understanding. You might even struggle to get through some of these passages. And at the end of it, you're like, I'm scared to say that. That sounded stupid when I read it, but it's okay. I'll read things. And I'm like, Paul, what were you thinking? God put it here. He left it here so that I would read it and be encouraged and inspired by it. But at the same time, it's like, bro, that was a whole lot of stuff you just put there, and I'm struggling to track with it. I want to break it down for you in a few moments. I just wanted to encourage you with this idea that when you read through scripture, if you don't understand it the first time, try it again. If you don't understand it the second time, try it again. You might have to do it five, ten, 50 times before you fully track. But I'm believing that as you continue to get God's Word into your mind, even if you don't understand it when you read it, you're going to be walking through life one day and all of a sudden you don't know how it happens, right? You read something that morning, and then later in the day you're like, oh, I didn't get it. But now I do. But here's what I pulled from this passage the first time I read it, way back in the day. Paul's a hot mess. Humanity is a hot mess because of sin. I am a hot mess. He's like, I don't do what I want to do. I do what I don't want to do. I have in my mind that I want to do one thing, but then I do the other thing, and even though I want to do that thing, I don't do it. And then what I want to do or what I don't want to do the right thing. Well, sometimes I do the right thing, but I didn't have the right mindset with it. And then sometimes I keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. And my mentality kind of impacts the way that I interact with that. And since my mentality is off now, that right thing is now the wrong thing. And sometimes the wrong thing is the right thing in the different situation. It's complex. And one thing I've said before from this stage is that sin increases complexity. And what Paul is doing in this passage right here is he is highlighting the complexity that sin caused. And I think when people come into church, they miss what Christianity is, often because of what happens right here in Romans chapter seven. Now Paul from Romans chapter one has told us that humanity is kind of in a screwed up state. We are all collectively a hot mess. And the whole point of Romans was for Paul to articulate God's major plan of two things first, progressive revelation about who he is and then his plan of salvation through Christ Jesus. That's what Romans is about. If you leave Romans and you don't think about revelation and salvation, you're kind of missing the overall point of Romans. And in Romans chapter one he says, hey, your hearts were darkened, just darkened. And I'm saying the same thing over and over, because that's what Paul's doing. Romans chapter 23456. He gives you metaphor after metaphor about how you, on your own, are incapable of coming to the saving knowledge of Jesus and living the way that God's called you to live. The examples. Right? I gave you a battle. I gave you kind of an expanding kingdom that we need to not flee from. I gave you husband and wife that when the husband dies, the wife is freed up. I didn't want to spend too much time on that illustration, because some of y'all, you're struggling in marriage and you're it's like. I mean, for me and my wife, sometimes it's a struggle and I just don't want her getting any ideas. So I'm not going to spend too much time preaching on the husband dying. But then there are other examples. He used the example in chapter six of slavery said you were formerly slave by sin, enslaved by sin, but now in Christ Jesus, you're a slave to God. And so here's what's happening. Paul is telling all of his readers and listeners in the ancient world and us, that you can't do anything to know God and to be saved. Can you do anything, yes or no? No, you can't do anything. It's a free gift from God. He says, all have sinned and fall short of the God of the glory of God. And nobody has an excuse to like, you know, I've got a good reason, Lord, for not knowing you. No one has an excuse. We've all fallen short. Nobody gets a shortcut. The only way to God is through His son, Jesus Christ. When you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. The Bible says you will be saved. It says it says it like throughout the scriptures. And. I think maybe his audience is struggling to comprehend all that Paul is talking about. And so they start asking questions. One says, shall we continue to sin so that grace may increase? Right. Because if if I can't do anything, then when Jesus died on the cross and I accept him into my life and I start following him, he's covered all of my sin. And if he's covered all of my sin, then if I sin more, he gets to cover more sin. Doesn't that give God more glory? And Paul says, make a noise. May it never be. That's his answer to one question. He said, you shouldn't continue to sin just because his grace is so good. The reason he died on the cross for you is so that you would live for him. That's why uses the slavery illustration. He says you didn't get get out of slavery, you were just traded. And now you're a slave to God. And we'll tell you this I'd rather be a slave to God guys, than on my own in the world. Amen. Somebody who he's helped me live way better than I would have done on my own. We want autonomy. You can have it all. Me living on my own, fully independent. I'm like Paul in Romans chapter seven. Like it's a bunch of do do do do do. You know it's not good for me? So I love the fact that I get to like, like, hitch myself to the wagon of Christ Jesus as he walks through with this fragrant aroma of Christ Jesus. I'm going to be a living sacrifice for him. I'm going to follow him. And and you know what? That that requires some things of me. It means that my life needs to look different. But my life is more abundant in Christ Jesus. So I'm going to keep following him. And then there's another question that's coming to people who he's writing to, because many of them are Jewish believers in Jesus. This is a real depth series, by the way, and sometimes I realize as I'm talking to you, it's like if they come in here for the first time, they're like, I'm gonna go to the easier church next time. This is real content from the scriptures, and a lot of them are Jewish believers in Jesus. And if you don't know anything about Jewish believers in Jesus at the time, there was one thing that governed a lot of their existence. Sometimes I'll call it their constitution. Do you guys know what their constitution was essentially called in the ancient world? For Jews, the law, the Torah? This is where they would say the Schimmel. They would put it in on their heads, they would walk around and they would memorize the Torah, not just the Ten Commandments, but they would go through what's called the Levitical code, which is the code of the priests. And they would understand all that God gave them through the law. And so Paul is talking to them and he's saying, hey, it's a new scale. You don't have to work in order to obtain salvation. You don't have to keep the law. No amount of keeping the law ever got you more saved. Jesus dying on the cross, fulfilling the requirements of the law. If you stand under his umbrella, you're going to be saved for all of eternity. Praise God! But the Jewish believers are like, yo, what about the law though? Are you saying the law is obsolete? Are you saying the Torah is not helpful? Now, Paul, presupposing that they would think that, answers it again. And he says in earlier part of chapter seven, and I'll read it for you right here. It says in verse seven of chapter seven, what shall we say then? Is the law sinful, right. Because if you continue to participate in the law, now that you follow Jesus, you're trying to rack up your own good works. But Jesus is good. Work was all that was necessary. So if you put yourself under the law, is the law now sinful? And he says this, what shall we say then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not. Absolutely not. Again, the Greek phrase may to the degree no. And he says, nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was. Had it not been for the law. Sin is a crazy thing. In that it caused us to be separated from God before we ever heard of a law. And then we hear about the law. You know, God's righteous nature, his attributes, his character, and about the things that we're called to live in. And then because of sin, when we look at the law, our perspective on the law screwed up, too. So when people come into church, they see us trying to navigate, hey, if the law is good, what does that mean for us? And some people will come in and they'll hear judgment. But then on the other side, there's there's the grace of Jesus that makes it to where we're not held accountable to the requirements of the law. And so that means I need to be full of grace and we develop some new values as a church. It's just like we're going to be a grace and truth church. The question that Paul's trying to answer now is, what do you do with this thing in the Old Testament that my entire brethren and family group believed in and lived by, and that was that. That was how they were going to be saved. What do we do with it? I hope to answer that question for you today. But first, I want to give you two ditches that we tend to fall into two ditches. Y'all know what a ditch is. A ditch is like a hole on one side and a hole on the nut on another side. We're trying to keep the straight and narrow, stay in our lane, go the right pathway toward God. We say trajectories in Christ Jesus because we're orbiting. We like the idea of orbital illustrations. We want to stay straight and follow Jesus. But there are ditches. The first ditch that will fall into is the ditch of legalism. Anyone heard of legalism before? Just say. Say yeah, if you've heard of it. Okay, cool. If you don't know what legalism is, legalism is somebody who still holds to the law. They say, hey, you need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this. And when you don't do this. That means you need to go get more forgiveness. Now, I am building kind of a straw man here and making it overtly simple, but in general, that's kind of what legalism is. We tend to use legalism to say, oh, they didn't like it that I did this. They're legalistic. It's like, okay, hold on with that one. Chill out. This literally means that you are trying to live by the law when Christ has died on the cross for your sins. And if you have accepted him and you try to live by the law, you're essentially trampling on his grace. That's legalism. On the other side, we have this thing, and I guess I'm using a bigger word go and love it. Antinomianism. I don't know what other term there is. Maybe there's a better term. Licentious can say license. I like antinomian because that's a real word, sweetie, I like it. Licentiousness is a real word. It's just not the correct word. Exactly. Antinomian says the law is gone. It's irrelevant. There's nothing good in it for me. There were actually theologies in the first and second century. One was called Marcion ism. And my kind of running joke is that Marcion took an exact knife to the Old Testament and said they were different gods. He said, The Old Testament God is different than the New Testament God. And Imma be honest with you. I've been a pastor for a while. I've been a pastor out here for about three years, and I heard a lot of people with this antinomian or licentious mindset that says the Old Testament is irrelevant most of the time it comes when they're talking about giving because it's like like the tithes and Old Testament thing. I can give cheerfully the way that I want to. And then I'm like, okay, so what's that look like? And usually it's zero, you know, just just throwing that one out there. I didn't mean to say it all like that, but that's like antinomian says, I can do what I want because Jesus died on the cross for me. Don't hold me to this law. The laws are relevant, and many of us forget that the law incorporates the Shema, which if you don't know what the Shema is, it's love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And then secondly, like it, love your neighbor as yourself. You know it's part of the law. It's the undergirding principle of the law. So when we throw away the law, we're missing the entire heart of God as expressed through the law. So so don't throw it away. This is this is Paul's conversation. If I live by grace, I can kind of do what I want, but I shouldn't. And. The law, to an extent, has been fulfilled in Christ. So so I. One of our other values is like, hey, we're willing to navigate tension here, and we're trying to find this wisest serpent, innocent as doves pathway. Because here's what here's what legalism looks like. You are holding a standard that is rarely the true biblical standard. And now you're putting that on other people. And when people come in for the first time and you're holding them to this standard, when you weren't held to the standard, you're holding to somebody else, holding somebody else to you. I mean, you want to know why they say we judge you at the church? It's because you think we shouldn't watch Disney movies or something, and now you're prescribing that to somebody else, right? I'm not saying you should. Not saying you shouldn't. Chill out. Don't be too legalistic here. Cocoa is a really good film, you know? So good film, but there's skeletons in it. I'm sorry, I don't know. It's a good film. I liked it then. On the licentious side, it's like morality almost doesn't matter anymore because Jesus died on the cross for you. And he did. But but he died so you would connect with him. And when you forget the law or the shaman man, it's like, do you love you with all your heart? Are you loving God with all of your heart? Which one are you going to? We gotta figure out this middle ground to understand. I don't want to be antinomian and I don't want to be legalistic. Those are the two ditches. But here's here's the cool thing, and this is something we got to keep in mind. The law was a different beast altogether than the Jewish believers in Jesus were taking it. And it's different than many of you are taking it. Because when you say, I don't subscribe to the law anymore, you're if you're saying something but missing the point when you say you don't subscribe to the law, you're saying the law doesn't save me. We agree the law was actually never meant to save. The law was meant for something completely different. It was meant to reveal not to save. Now, this is where a lot of people in Jesus's day were screwing it up. They thought the law was their salvation. But it was actually just part of progressive revelation, in other words. And Paul said this already very simply, he said the law and the prophets were witnesses. And so that's what I'm talking to you guys about today. What is the law? Do the law reveals something about you that enables you to recognize the value of who Jesus is and what he came to do? The law is crazy valuable, but it was never meant for salvation. It's simply part of the process of revelation. This is Paul's response he says, is the law sin? No, major. The law is good. Why am I harping on this? You might think he's talking about the law this entire time. When is he going to get to Jesus? Well, the law is good. The Old Testament law, that thing that was boring is good. It shows you something about God that you desperately need. Otherwise you're going to think you're good. And when the message of Christ is preached to you, you're going to be like, what do I need that for? The law is revelation, because part of sin in Romans chapter one is it says we have futile thoughts and darkened minds unknown. If you remember that anyone in this room want to tell me what this is, say it loud. It's concealer. I'm glad I heard no male voices. This is good. Not that you can't wear it if you want. I don't know this concealer. Someone say who's got a little common sense? What is concealer meant to do? Yeah. So what kind of stuff would you conceal? Somebody tell me what they're concealing today other than you guys with weapons. Okay, so. So someone you don't talk about. All right. Blemish. Okay. What else? Dark circles. Woohoo! Acne. Yeah. Okay. So what happened when Adam and Eve fell is our hearts were darkened and our thoughts became futile. And we were blinded to the things of God. It was concealed to us. This is what sin did. It covered us up to where we couldn't even understand who we are. That's why when people walk around and say, I feel this or this is just who I am, I'm like, is it though? And then y'all look at me and you're like, he's so judgy. I'm like, hey, I just know how dark in my heart was without Christ Jesus. And even now he's redeeming me, restoring me, and sanctifying me in the name of Jesus, I way better than I was. I'm excited about it. But if you know me, you know I'm still jacked up. I'm still a hot mess because there's still things concealed in my life that have yet to be revealed to me. That's what sin did, is it covered us up, just like Adam and Eve in the garden, when they put fig leaves on themselves to clothe their nakedness, sin conceals. And you can see where I'm kind of going with this. There's something that happens, and this is what the law was for, because the law is is it bad or good? Somebody tell me it is good. And, And it is meant to reveal that which sin concealed. I realize this because sometimes I, you know, we say grace and truth. He came full of both grace and truth, and body wants to grace. But when the truth comes out, it's like you're so judge mental. And there's some things that are interesting, right? Because again, the Bible says, do not let any wholesome word come out of your mouth except for that which is edifying and useful. Right? You know what I'm saying? Like it's say good things, right? Or don't use the Lord's name in vain. A lot of people think that just means you can't say the word that some of y'all be saying too much. It actually means that when you live your life and then you speak out loud. How are you living and how are you speaking? And what does that say about the Lord that you serve? And Imma be honest with you, when I first became a Christian, I didn't know I was listening to Eminem. And just like I don't remember, I just the only song I remember back then was like one called Superman or whatever by Eminem. I don't know, I don't know the lyrics anymore, but I just know how to sing it on a church bus one time and somebody, they must have been super legalistic or something. Somebody looked at me and said, hey, you shouldn't speak like that. And then when the Spirit of God got Ahold of me, he's like, I mean, she was right. You shouldn't speak like that. It's not about cussing. It's about how I'm living. You see, in that moment there was a law, if you will, that was made known to me, and it reveals something about me that God wanted to shift and adjust. The law is so beautiful. And when I say something like, I'm going to do a hard one, it's a hard word. Like, you know, cohabitation is that's when you're living with someone that's not your spouse, and you probably need to ask them to marry you if you can, because living together is something that the Bible says. It's like, no, that's not that's not a good situation outside of marriage. Oh, some people are. I'm leaving this church because of that. It's too expensive. It's all this other stuff. And I'm like, hey, it's just the truth of God. How it comes across to you. Just it's revealed truth. Why do you think we hate the law so much? Because it tells me something I gotta do and I don't want to do it. I don't want to do. But the law is good. It's meant to reveal. But as a reminder, it cannot save you. But it reveals. Like reading your Bible. It won't save you. Do you know that it can help? Should we stop reading the Bible? Make a note to absolutely read your Bible, but it can't save you. Only Jesus can save you when you confess and believe. Coming to church. As much as I love it, I love you all. Coming to believe. Come to church, I love it. It's fine. Can't save you. Serving on a team can't save you. These are things that we do because we think they're going to be effective. That if we look at them as salvation, that's problematic. But if we look at them as revelation, that's going to be helpful. You see, serving is kind of like a law that reveals that's why some people come in to serve and they have a great experience. They come in, they've got a connection with God, and they listen to the Spirit of God. And when they listen to the Spirit of God, there is an experience that follows because they see God when they serve. If you come in because someone told you to and you're just doing it because you think that's a good box to check, you're going to find yourself 12 weeks in. That's always our metric, 12 weeks in, 5:00 in the morning. If you come to the early crew, 130 in the afternoon, if you stay for the late one and you're like, yeah, I'm not healthy anymore. I used to sleep on Sundays. It was nice and now I'm just busy. What am I doing this for? See, without the Spirit of God present in you and without you really allowing that to reveal something in you that connects you to God. That same activity can either be life giving or problematic. So the law because of sin, look at your neighbor, say it's not you, it's sin unless it is you. I thought that would have been funnier, but y'all just quiet. I went to the 11:00 to make that joke. Or 1045. The law is really beneficial. And, I just want to show you exactly what happens with the law, because I've heard way too many people tell me they hate the law or that Christ fulfilled the law, so it's irrelevant, or that we're no longer held by the law. And I want you to note that it's a partially true statement, but the law is good. I've got to read my Bible and understand that what Paul is saying is this is a tension to manage that. If I am now holding myself to the standards of the law and seeing it as my salvation rather than revelation, I'm in trouble. But if I if I love God and I serve Christ Jesus, I then have a relationship with the law that says, God, reveal yourself to me by the power of your Holy Spirit. And if it's a if it's a gracious word, I'm going to receive it. If it's a truth that's hard, I'm still going to try to receive it. And so here's what the law does, just so I can show you guys you want to drop those lights for a second. All right. So what's the Bible say in Romans one? It says our hearts were darkened, our thoughts were futile. This is us. The blank slate, black sheet. We're living our life. And we're walking through, trying to figure out life. And then we hear about God. We open His word, and we start understanding a little bit about his attributes and how he's called us to live and take this little flashlight. It is like, let's just call this the law. This is the law, the flashlights, the law. It takes our dark hearts and it starts to reveal our sinful nature. For example, Paul says in Romans seven, I wouldn't have known sin or coveting was sin. This is the 10th commandment, by the way. I wouldn't have known either. It's like I'm just a little jealous. That's okay. Right? I just kind of like what they have a little bit more. And what Paul is saying here is, yeah, I knew honoring my father and mother was good. Everybody knew that. But the idea of thinking about somebody else's stuff and wishing that I had it, I didn't know that was sin. I didn't know it was the result of my sin nature. But the law told me this. Maybe I didn't know that sexual activities outside of marriage, like, I don't know. I listed it like adultery, cohabitation, exploitation, I didn't know, I mean, some of y'all did it, but like, I didn't know the full extent of it. Most of us knew this first one, but the Bible makes it clear that anything outside of marriage is not healthy. And then going forward to exploitation. I'm not even talking about the stuff that you hear about on those sex trafficking, videos or anything. I'm talking about the base level. What does it look like to exploit other people for your own purposes? I didn't know the Sabbath until the law told me that I needed to rest. Because my tendency because of sin is the work, work, work work, work work, work work. And then ultimately, our dark heart and our sinful desires are revealed by the law. I throw another one in here just in case. I just want to make sure y'all know that one's a sin. It's murder. Just making sure. All right. Cool. Y'all give it up for the blackboard right here. Yeah. You know, I'd already said the point. There ain't nothing like a metaphor. I don't know if I've said that before. Maybe last week I did the whole sermon on it. Okay. The law is good. It's not bad. The law reveals, and it doesn't save you. And what Paul then goes in to say, and this is the struggle, is that sin took that law that was good and convinced us in our own minds that either it was bad or that it was salvation. Salvation. And it is neither. It is but a witness that testifies to who God is. It was never meant to be your salvation. Now, how is this relevant to you? Because you don't hold yourself to the Old Testament law. But I've heard you. I've heard you say, all right, I need to show up this many times this month. I heard you say, I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to quit this. I need to do all this. Whatever your law is, you're holding yourself to it. And what sin does is it creeps in and it uses what's meant to be revelation as an opportunity to shove you back into your sinful state. Just like I said. Was serving some of y'all with worship. It's like, well, I got to raise my hands. No you don't. You can sit right there. What matters is a posture of your heart toward Jesus. It's not whether you raise your hands or whether you sit down or get on your knees up front. But that doesn't mean that's bad. It means you got to have a different relationship with it. Because all of those things, all those things do is they simply reveal. Right. Let's just simple raise your hands. Right. Everybody raise your hands real quick. Yeah. That's that's that's a that's an action an activity. And when you're in worship, if you feel compelled to raise your hands and you raise your hands that reveal something, it reveals to you that you're willing to receive what Jesus gives you. And if God's giving it to you and you don't, that reveals something. Or if you don't feel inspired to do it, but you look to your right and to your left and somebody else is doing it, then you raise your hand that reveals something to you about you, and it's beneficial because when that's revealed about me, then I get to take it to the Lord. And when I take it to the Lord under the banner of Jesus, who was already saved me, I get to say, Lord, help brighten my heart because it's still clearly dark. Thank you for the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Help me live differently. And the frustrating part of all of this is while the law is good, our sin still keeps us in this hot mess position because sin took opportunity through the law. And Paul goes forward into the in in this passage and he talks about this. This depth of depravity that he lives in. If you could jump to verse 21 and I want to read it to you quickly, Paul says this. So I find that the law or this law at work, although I want to do good because I know what the law is now, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law. But I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work in me. What a wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Here he says this in verse 25, thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. What he says here is that is that I. I now know the law, that black light or that black light flashlight has revealed all the dark in me. That's good, because now I know. But I'm still powerless. It's like a prisoner who's in their cell, and they can see a beautiful field through the bars, but they're incapable of getting there because they're stuck in a prison. This is Paul's like the apex portion of his argument. He's saying, because of your dark hearts, because of your sin, because of the struggles that we have, even though Allah came to reveal to us what our sin was. That law, though good, it could not save us. It could not rescue us, it could not redeem us. It couldn't take us where we were called to be. It couldn't introduce us to Jesus. It was simply revolutionary, not salvific. And so I am still powerless to get where God wants me to be. He says, wretched man that I am. It's like, I don't know if you've ever been to the doctor and had an MRI. Anyone had an MRI before in here? I don't know if you've. I had an MRI. I've only had one. It's on my shoulder. And in India, when I went and I took a long trip to get to the MRI place and actually hitchhiked with somebody else because I'd have a car. I didn't know this person. It was cool. It was just, you do that crazy stuff in India, and I show up to this place and I'm going to be honest with you, it didn't look like your top tier clinic, United States, but they had an MRI machine. So I went in there and I laid down and I was getting my shoulder tested and laying there for 20 minutes. If you've been in the MRI machine, you know what I'm talking about. It's like, don't move. It's real hard. Don't move. And so I'm laying there and I'm just waiting on them to tell me what's wrong with my shoulder. Some of you have gone in for much more significant issues. And what happens when you go in for an MRI or a CT scan or something significant is you're going in because maybe someone noticed something about you and they said you should get that checked out. Maybe over the last couple of years you had something wrong with you and you're like, I'm not sure what this is, but I should probably go to the doctor. However you arrived, you ended up getting to the doctor and you're getting this MRI, the CT scan, this test done, and what they're going to do is they're going to they're going to put you into this machine and they're going to they're going to essentially, for lack of a better term, they're going to put that black light to your body. And some of these tests will use what's called a contrast agent, so that the contrast will show up compared to the rest of your body. And they'll scan you, they'll see what's wrong, and then they'll pull up the film. And usually the doctor will go over that film with you and they'll look at it. You'll see the contrast agent before they tell you exactly what it is. But, you know, they're about to say something to you that's going to reveal to you. What's going on in you. And then they clarify. Was the MRI bad? No, it's just a test. That revealed something significant in you. But now it's like, dude, I didn't know what it was before hand. I was fine, but. But now I see it. I gotta deal with it. If you want to understand this message that Paul is trying to communicate, that is what the law came to do. It was a giant MRI machine. Machine to your spiritual walk. The law was the contrast agent put in to reveal to you what was dark in your soul, and it was put in you not to show you how bad you are so that you would feel judged. It was put there so that you would know that now you can't do anything about it. You have to put yourself on the table and let somebody else with the capability heal you. The law was never a healer, but this is how Paul ends it in verse 25, doesn't he? He says, thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. I don't know what life would have been like without the Torah, without law, without all of this other stuff. We've all lived in it. But I do know this. You can look at the law, something to hate, or you can look at the law as something to reveal. And when you look at what it reveals, you have a choice. Everyone in this room, you have a choice to take it to the Great Physician. Or to let it sit there. And you know what happens when you let it sit there spiritually. It ends in your death. Spiritually. It severs relationships. Spiritually it keeps you in dysfunction. Spiritually, it makes you live in scarcity rather than the abundance that Christ Jesus has called you to. And so for everyone in this room, I want to encourage you with this reality that if you hear God's Word, whether it's gracious or filled with truth, that's ultimately gracious in the end. Just receive it as a contrast agent meant to take you to your Savior. If I were going to give you a sermon title for today, it would be this I'm a hot mess, colon. I need you, Jesus. I need you to save me. I need you to do something with what's been revealed. I need you to, like, literally pull out the things that are dark in me and make me alive with your son. Jesus. I need you for this. Some of you, you're going to hear about the need. You're going to be like, I'm not going to do anything about it, all right? I'm speaking to the ones who will hold on. You'll hear about your darkened heart, and you'll see that there is no solution. We're all wretched in the eyes of God because of our sin. That's why he sent Jesus. So receive him, confess and believe and he'll transform everything in your life. Father God, be with those in this room. Reveal to them where they struggle. And help them apprehend your nature as we see it in Christ Jesus. God, we love you and we trust you. It's in Jesus's name that we pray in God's people said.