Romans – Law & Grace

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason Burns and Access Church in Lakeland, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

All right, I'm so glad you are here today.

We are in part seven, everybody, of a 10-part series.

This is the longest series we've ever done in the history of our church.

It is a Guinness Book of World Records for Access Church.

It's very niche, but it's the longest series we've ever done ever.

Ten weeks in the book of Romans, a really incredible book, one of the most meaningful, powerful books in all of Scripture.

And we started week one, if you missed it, with this simple idea.

The whole book revolves around one word.

It is the word gospel.

What is the gospel?

The gospel is simply the good news of Jesus.

It's the good news of Jesus.

You can't add anything to it, you can't take anything away from it.

It stands on its own.

It is the good news of Jesus.

That Jesus came, gave his life for you and for me.

And because he gave his life, we can receive forgiveness and salvation.

He can be our Lord.

It changes everything.

That's what the whole book is about.

And so for the last seven weeks, we've been digging into what this means chapter by chapter by chapter.

Today, I have Romans chapter seven.

And I'm going to be honest, as I read it, some of you are going to be like, what does that mean?

So buckle in, it's going to be a fun message.

Let's pray.

Then let's get to work together today.

Lord, we love you.

We invite you to speak to us, change us, challenge us, make us more like you, Jesus.

That's our heart.

And God, I pray that today, by the power of your spirit and on the authority of your word, that all of us will leave just different because we've encountered you.

We love you.

We dedicate this moment to you, and it's in your name we pray, Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Six thousand seven hundred and sixty-three days ago, my wife and I stood in front of a couple hundred family members and friends on a little church on Lee Road in Orlando.

We committed our lives to one another.

We exchanged vows and we exchanged rings, and then afterwards, we kissed each other.

It looked something like this.

And um, 18 and a half years ago, she still looks good.

Keep your eyes to yourself.

Anyways, and so it was a special moment, wonderful day.

And here's the funny thing.

As much as we were in love in this moment, as much as we cared for each other in this moment, we had no idea what marriage really meant.

Over the years, I've counseled hundreds of couples who were gonna get married.

And one of my favorite questions is why do you want to get married?

And the answers are so diverse.

I've gotten everything from, he just makes me feel a certain way, and I just love her dimples.

There's always these things.

And the funny thing to me is very often the reason people want to get married is not because they even love the other person.

The truth is they love themselves, and they want someone who makes them feel happy, and they want someone who makes them feel complete.

That's a really bad reason to get married.

You don't get married because you're in love with being in love.

You get married because there is a commitment attached to it, and you're committing for the rest of your life.

So we get married on this beautiful day, we drive off into our new life together, not knowing what marriage is or what it should be.

But I want you to think about this because Paul is going to use an analogy in a moment that will help us.

Here's what marriage should be.

Marriage, number one, should be covenantal.

What does this mean?

It means marriage is a covenant and it's not a contract.

Our world treats marriage like a contract.

Think about your cell phone contract.

A contract protects your rights and it limits your responsibilities.

A contract says I'm gonna pay$60 a month and I'm gonna get cell phone coverage.

And if I decide to end my contract early, what happens?

There's a penalty that I pay, and then we go our separate ways.

Isn't that how culture treats marriage?

As long as you're keeping me happy, I'll stick around.

But the moment I'm not happy, I'm gone, we'll divide our assets and we'll go a separate way.

That's what's gonna happen in marriage.

But that's not what marriage is, it's not a contract.

Marriage is a covenant.

Covenant's different.

A covenant is a holy, sacred, solemn promise between the two of you and God.

In a contract, you protect your rights and you limit responsibilities.

In a covenant, you give up your rights and you pick up responsibilities.

It's a covenant.

When you become one, this is so important, you cannot unwon what God makes one.

It's a covenant.

Number two, marriage is mutual.

It means it's you and it's me.

I'm serving you, you're serving me.

I'm not gonna make decisions that affect you without talking to you, and the same is true in reverse.

Number three, marriage is total.

It means all in, all the chips on the table, all pushed into the center.

You get all of me, my heart, soul, strength, you get my ideas, my dreams, you get my future, you get all of me, and I get all of you.

Number four, marriage is sacrificial.

Marriage is putting your needs ahead of mine.

It's you before me.

And in a world where it's a race to the front of the line to get your needs met, marriage is a race to the back of the line to see who can outserve each other.

Number five, marriage is fruitful.

And what this means is scripture teaches that the two of you together can do more than you could ever do on your own.

That there should be some fruit or there should be some results to your life that bring glory to God.

This is the idea of what marriage is.

And so we get married, and the truth is we know that we love each other, but we don't know all that it's gonna take and all that it's going to entail.

And I want you to think about this for just a moment.

I want you to think about marriage because I want to wrestle with a question before we get to Paul's words in Romans 7.

Ready?

When you think about marriage, is it good or bad?

Think about it.

Don't answer it, just think about it.

Is marriage good or bad?

The real answer is not good or bad.

The real answer is it, it depends.

Doesn't it?

It depends on who you're married to.

If you marry someone that keeps that complete list that they think covenantially, that they think sacrificially, and they think mutually, and they think it's total, and they think sacrifice.

If you marry someone like that, of course it's gonna be good.

Because they're gonna prefer you and they're gonna serve you and they're gonna meet your needs, and they're not going anywhere.

You understand all of this.

But what happens when you marry someone that's not like that?

Statistically, something like 50% of all marriages in our country end in divorce.

If this is true, that means there are probably some bad marriages, but the bad marriages because you maybe married someone that wasn't upholding their end of the bargain.

So is marriage good or bad?

The truth is the answer is it just depends.

So today, I want to look at Romans chapter 7 because Paul is going to compare two unique terms to marriage, and I want to ask this question: is it good or is it bad?

Romans 7 · chapter mention

Here's the two terms Paul is gonna use law and grace.

Now these words have different meanings.

I bet if we passed around a notepad, we'd get 50 different definitions for these.

Law, when we read the Bible, can mean a lot of different things.

To some people, the law means the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The ancient Jewish people called these five books the Torah or the law of God.

There's some 613 to 616 laws just in these first five books of the Bible alone.

So heavy, so much to try to keep up with that it was almost impossible.

Some people think the law refers to the Ten Commandments found in Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

These are the laws of God, these are the standards of God.

Some people think the laws is whatever our civil government gives us, like whatever our civil rules and laws are.

Maybe that's what you think of.

Today, when we read Romans chapter 7 and talk about law, I want you to think about law as the totality of all of God's rules and really what his standard is for you and for me.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

And then we have law and grace.

Now, these are not opposite ends of the continuum, but grace is God's unmerited favor towards us.

Different way to say it is it's the it's it's something from God that you can't earn.

You can't strive, you can't do more to get it.

It's a gift from God given freely by him to you.

It is his gift of grace.

It's when God lets you off the hook when you certainly don't deserve it.

And we're gonna read 13 verses today, but I want to break this up into three different chunks.

We'll start with this first part of the scripture, where we're gonna talk about living under the law, because this is heavy and this is hard.

Romans chapter 7, verse 1 says this.

Romans 7:1

He says, Or do you not know, brothers?

And we'll come back to that word in just a moment.

For I am speaking to those who know the law.

Here's what Paul comes out and he says.

He says, I want to talk to those of you who are religious elites.

I want to talk to those of you who know what the Bible says or what the law says, what all the words of the Old Testament say.

I want to talk to those of you who are striving to keep God's standard as best you possibly can, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.

For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives.

But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.

Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.

But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.

Anyone else glad you came to church today?

Okay.

Let me try to explain this as best I can, okay?

Paul is going to use this analogy of marriage to talk about law and grace, and the way he explains it is this He says, if you are married to another person, the only way out of that marriage is to fulfill the covenant.

Well, think about your marriage covenant.

When Liz and I got married, we said all the same vows, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health, till death do us part.

The only way out of your marriage covenant is for one to die.

So I was reading these verses this week and talking to my wife about it, and it drummed up a bunch of challenging memories for me.

Um, a few years ago, my wife and I did what we affectionately titled Death Day.

And we did a bunch of stuff on death day that nobody wants to do, but you should do some stuff to prepare in case you die.

So the two things that I really wanted to do is I wanted to get a big life insurance policy on myself, and then I wanted to have a will in case something happened to me.

So the first thing I did was I got myself a life insurance policy, and I got I got a big one.

I wanted to hook my girl up if something happens to me.

And if you've ever gotten a life insurance policy, a big one, here's how it works: fill out a bunch of paperwork, you get a quote.

But for them to effectively bind this agreement, they have a nurse come over and they do all these vitals.

They take blood, they check your heart, and all kinds of issues.

And so all this happens.

I go through all the process and get the physical done.

A couple months pass, and one day in the mail, I get a letter from the insurance agency saying, Congratulations, we're pleased to announce that you've gotten your uh policy binded, now it's in effect.

If something happens to you, you get this amount of money to your beneficiaries.

So I pick this up after work.

Now remember, Liz and I planned this together.

We agreed together.

I go to the mailbox, I get the letter, I'm like, oh, this is great.

I come into the house, Liz is in the restroom, touching up her makeup in the mirror, and I say to her, hey babe, hey, good news.

I got the letter in the mail from whoever the insurance company is.

If something happens and I die, you're gonna get all these millions of dollars.

I thought this would be a celebratory moment.

I completely misread this moment.

My wife starts ugly crying.

Anybody know what ugly crying is?

It's like you don't care what you look like, tears are flowing so fast, snob bubbles are coming up out of your nose, and you're you're breathing like you know what I'm talking about, like ugly cry.

She's ugly crying in this moment.

She goes, Don't die.

You can't leave me, please don't die.

I don't care about money, don't die.

I said, babe, come on, we've talked about this.

This just means if I die, you're gonna get all this money, and I kid you not.

She goes, Is it a lump sum or is it monthly payments?

Savage.

Savage.

So then we go and we get a will.

And I thought this will be easy.

So I sit down.

I'm gonna be honest, I was a little cocky with this guy.

I'm like, look, this is just a formality.

We love each other, we're in this till death do us part, we're not gonna get divorced.

If I die, give everything to Liz.

If she dies, give everything to me.

If we both die, give everything to our kids.

And if all of us die together, do a yard sale and give it all to Access Church.

I said, let's make it easy.

Make it easy.

He goes, okay, cool.

But a few questions.

If this was a movie, there would have been some somber music playing in the background.

He goes, okay, so hypothetically, say you die and Liz gets this inheritance of all this money, and then she remarries.

Does the money go to her new husband?

And I looked at Liz and I said, Who is he?

Have you already moved on?

Like what is happening in this moment?

And all of a sudden it gets tense.

We go through all these imaginary scenarios.

We leave angry at each other after this meeting.

Well, a day or two later, we are on our way to Orlando on I-4.

If you've ever driven I-4 to Orlando, you know it can take 45 minutes or 45 hours, and there's no in-between, and we're stuck in that godforsaken traffic on our way out.

And I don't know what happened.

I'm not emotional.

But all of a sudden, this wave of emotion just rolls over me.

And I think I should say something.

I said, Liz, hey, look.

We had that whole blow-up the other day at the will meeting.

But look, if something happens to me, if I die, probably defending your honor, but if I die, you have my blessing.

Like, move on.

I want you to be happy.

I want you to be taken care of.

I want you to have that in your life.

And I kid you not.

She doesn't even look up from her phone.

And she goes, thanks, but not you.

Don't clap.

I said, what does that mean?

What do you mean, not you?

She goes, I appreciate what you said.

I just don't want you to move on.

What?

Like, what do you mean?

I don't want you to move on.

She goes, wasn't it clear?

Like she's not even looked up from her phone.

She goes, just don't move on.

I don't want you to be happy.

I said, but did you hear what I said?

She goes, yes, I heard what you said.

Listen, my wife is so serious about this.

We've had this conversation with friends.

She has hired people on our church staff to keep me accountable.

They're her henchmen.

Like if something happens to her, they will make sure that I never smile again in my life ever.

Liz told me one time, she goes, if I die, people are gonna be lined up to try to get.

And I'm like, there's no line.

Like nobody wants this.

She goes, yes.

She goes, I will sit up in my casket at my funeral to make sure no one's rubbing your back saying, it's gonna be okay, sweetheart.

Like that's how serious she is.

Okay, are we on the same page?

I don't know if this has to do with the Bible.

I just wanted to tell you this story, honestly.

Now, here's what's happening in this moment.

Paul is drawing this line, he's using a simile here to help us understand.

Here's what he's saying.

In the same way that in a marriage, the only way out, the only exit out of the covenant is till death do us part.

In the same way, every single person on this earth is born into law.

All the rules of God, all the ways that we have to try to follow God, all the standards that we'll never be able to attain.

And so many people exhaust themselves trying to measure up to this.

Here's what I want you to understand about the law.

It's heavy.

You'll never be able to do it on your own strength.

In fact, I believe it's Acts 15, verse 10.

Acts 15:10

Uh the author Luke compares the law to a yoke.

Literally, a yoke is that wooden heavy device that they would strap around an ox or a cow to strap them to another one so that they could somehow do more together.

It was actually harder in some ways for them.

And this is how we feel: exhausting ourselves, nose to the grind, hands to the wheel, struggling as hard as we can to make some sort of sense out of trying to attain God's standard of excellence for our life.

Isn't it?

And he's like, the only way out of this marriage to law is for there to be a death.

Well, who has to die?

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

We read that earlier in the book of Romans, chapter 5.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Christ died.

And because Jesus laid his life down, now you have a choice as well.

What is your choice?

I make the decision to die to my sinful nature, to my sinful past.

This is the reason baptism is such a significant moment here.

It's because we take a person who says, I've made the decision to follow Jesus, to die to my sinful past, and we immerse them in water, which means we're saying to them, and they're publicly declaring, My sinful nature and past is dead, buried, and gone.

And when we pull them out of the water, we're reminding them and we're reminding the world that Jesus has made them alive in him.

So here's what happens.

If you find yourself married to law, what Paul wants you to understand is the only way out is for there to be a death.

Jesus did his part.

Now you die to your former self so that you can step into a new relationship with God, and instead of being married to law, you can be married to grace.

Here's his analogy, and here's the question.

The question is, are you married to law?

Or are you married to grace?

For so many of us, the truth is if we could just examine our hearts, we're married to the law, and it's heavy, and you'll never attain it.

And I want you to get this the law kills, and grace gives life.

So, what do we do?

We have to make this decision, we're gonna get out of that so we can live under grace.

So the second part of the scripture is all about living under grace.

But I want you to understand this.

When you live under grace, it doesn't do away with the law, you just have a different relationship with the law.

Look at what he says, Romans 7, verse 4.

Romans 7:4

Likewise, my brothers, and we read that word a moment ago.

Let me explain this to you.

This was subversive language.

In Jesus' day and in the time that this would have been written, the only way that the government knew who to pass inheritance down to was through the lineage of family.

So in our world, we have like family, family you're born to or family you're adopted into, but we have all kinds of other families, right?

We have your school family, church family, we have we have a neighborhood family, friends become family.

We see people that we love and we're like, what's up, bro?

But there's no blood relation, we just love them.

In fact, if you want to take it farther, maybe you have a contentious relationship with your family.

And there's been people who are not blood family to you, but you love them more as a brother or sister than you even do your own family.

We understand this.

So when Paul talks, he's talking to people who he understands the reason we can say brother and sister is because that we are all children of God, our Father.

So every believer is our brother and sister in Christ, right?

This is subversive language.

He says, likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

For while we were living in the flesh, and this word flesh is interesting, it's not a word we use very often.

We think of flesh as skin.

Flesh in Scripture literally means your sinful, carnal, natural desires.

It's the stuff that you want that wars against that which God wants for you.

So while we were living in our flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive.

We were once married to the law.

Now, because there's been a death in our hearts, death to our former self, we can marry grace, so that we serve in a new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

This passage is so hard.

Honestly, reading this, it feels like you're trying to bicycle through six inches of mud.

It's hard to get there.

But I want you to get this.

You have to understand this for you to understand where we're going next week.

In fact, my joke all day has been this is what I call an alley oop sermon.

If you're a basketball fan, an alley oop is when someone throws up the ball, another person catches it and slam dunks it.

Romans 7 is so critical because it is the past that sets up the oop for Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

Romans 7, he's wrestling with this idea: are we living in the law?

Are we living under grace?

But to understand grace and what we just read, you have to understand this.

There's two ways to interpret law.

Here it is.

The first is law in the word, the second is law in the world.

Now, why do these matter?

There is a chasm of difference between these two.

Law in the word of God is simply this.

You can know it's the law that comes from the word of God because you'll understand, first of all, that the law reveals the heart of the lawgiver.

Okay, if you ask my wife and kids, what are our rules as a family?

We have two.

We don't have a list.

We have two.

Rule number one, always tell the truth.

We can work through anything else.

Just keep telling the truth.

If you tell a lie, it fractures our relationship.

Just tell the truth.

Number one, tell the truth.

Number two, always honor your mom.

As the dad, that was my rule.

Because if my kids can honor their mom, they'll understand what it means to have right and proper perspective in their relationships.

They'll honor friends, they'll honor future girlfriends or boyfriends, they'll honor future engaged partners, and eventually honor their spouse, and then they'll keep honoring us.

It's it's a win.

I'm teaching them the principle of honor.

Why do I only have two rules?

Because I want them to have freedom and I want them to have delight and joy.

Okay.

Why does God have rules?

You ever thought about this?

Is God a cosmic killjoy looking to zap you for having fun?

God has rules to keep you safe.

God has rules to protect your heart.

God has boundaries to protect your soul because He loves you.

He loves you.

Number one, it reveals the heart of the lawgiver.

Another thing is it causes us at times to resist things that are evil.

Because now we're starting to know right from wrong.

The third thing it does is it reveals to us.

Us, our own sinful nature that maybe we didn't even know was there.

Last summer, my son Joey was playing football, and uh he was a quarterback for his team, and one day he was under center taking snaps, and I don't know what happened, but like a snap was awkward, and it hit his finger, his pinky finger, and it jammed it really bad.

And he came home and his finger was all swollen and bruised, and I was like, Joey, you're a man.

This is awesome.

His mom's like freaking out.

I'm like, this is the coolest moment ever.

His finger's all black and blue.

And I said, it's probably just a jam.

Just pull on it a little bit and just rub some dirt on it and get back out there tomorrow.

So we went back the next day and it kept hurting.

The third day, I was like, fine, let's go to the doctor.

Let's go to the doctor, right?

We go to the doctor and they x-ray his hand.

And what the x-ray did was it showed that there was a small fracture right here on one of his knuckles, and it wasn't that big of a fracture, but it was right on what's called a growth plate.

And if we didn't cast it, it could actually cause all kinds of problems in that finger for the rest of his life.

Let me ask you a question.

Did the x-ray machine do anything to fix his finger?

No.

Did it do anything to help his finger?

No.

All it actually did was reveal the problem that was inside the whole time.

Having a right relationship with the law, understanding that the law of God comes from the word of God, which reveals the heart of God, shows you that there are parts in our lives that need fixing.

But the word of God doesn't fix it.

You have to put the application in, but it shows you where you can work on it, where you can fix it.

That's law in the word.

Law in the world, however, is very different.

Law in the world is condemning.

You're gonna feel guilt.

Law in the world causes you to want to fight and to rebel against the law, because isn't there this part in all of us that doesn't want to be told what to do?

Like law in the world reveals something so different in us that we were never intended to understand.

Here's what I want you to get.

Paul starts this chapter with the language of marriage.

So I want to go back to the language of marriage for a moment so we can see, once we understand what it means to live under grace and to live under the law, how do we become the kind of people who live under grace?

Well, let's use the same marriage analogy.

He starts with this.

First of all, in every marriage ceremony, there is what I would call a holy moment.

There's a sacred moment.

Number two, there is a new legal status.

And number three, you get a new name and a life together.

In a wedding ceremony, first of all, there's that moment where you exchange vows, you kiss.

That is a holy, sacred moment.

God takes two individuals and combines them, joins them together as one.

It's holy and sacred.

In your relationship with God, there's also that holy sacred moment.

It's the moment when you say, Jesus, I decide to let you be my Lord and my Savior.

A lot of us are really good at letting Him be our Savior.

What does it mean?

He saves us from our sins.

He forgives us of all of our wrongdoing.

But we struggle with the Lord part.

Lord means you're in charge.

Lord means you call the shots.

Lord means I'm not in control anymore, but I follow whatever you say.

When you make that decision, what you're doing is you're dying to your former sinful past and you're becoming alive in Christ.

It is a sacred, holy moment.

Some of you, we've had people all day making this decision.

Some of you, I believe, will make that decision in just a few moments.

The second thing is now you get a new legal status.

When you get married to someone, if you were single before, single, widowed, divorced, whatever, and you get married, all of a sudden you go from that status to married status, to legal status.

In the same way, when a person becomes a follower of Jesus, we've been talking about this term called justification.

Justification means at one point, because of your sin, you were guilty in the eyes of God.

But because of your moment of salvation, you are now seen as righteous, which means in right standing with God.

Legal status changes.

And number three, in the same way that a woman gets a new last name in a marriage, in a new life together, because of these first two things, when you have that encounter with Jesus, you now carry a new name.

Ready?

Christian.

What is the root of Christian?

Christ.

You carry his name.

You are a son or a daughter of God.

You are a follower of Jesus Christ.

You are a Christian.

You have a new name.

So then he ends this section of Scripture with five or six verses that are really weighty, that honestly they're challenging to get through.

But here's the question he's asking in really simple terms.

Are we now going to live knowing what we know under the law or in the spirit?

And let me explain this to you.

We are instructed to live our lives in the spirit of God.

But let me explain this to you.

You can't do anything in your own strength.

Period.

Like I don't care how good you are, how moral you are, you can't live God's standards in your own strength.

I don't care how strong you are, I don't care how dedicated you are, I don't care how confident you are in your own abilities, you cannot live the life God has called you in your own strength.

But here's the good news: you're not asked to.

He never asked you to live this life in your own strength.

Think about the way Jesus talks about the person of the Holy Spirit.

He is our helper.

Acts 1.8, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.

He'll help you in your life.

He gives you power to live the life God has called you to live.

He is the one that brings the power you need to do all that God's called you to do.

You can't do it in your own strength.

So are you going to exhaust yourself trying to live under the burden and yoke of the law?

Or are you going to walk in the grace that God gives, but in the power of his Holy Spirit?

Okay, listen to these verses and try to understand as best you can.

Here's what he says.

Verse 7.

So what then shall we say?

That the law is sin?

By no means.

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

So like the law is going to reveal something in him.

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

We'll come back to this word in just a moment.

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 to be death to me, for sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment deceived me, and through it killed me.

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

Did that which is good then bring death to me?

Once again, by no means.

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

Anybody else understand all that?

Let me try my best to explain it.

He says, when you live in grace by the power of God's Spirit, now you have a different relationship with law.

Here's what it looks like.

Here's what happens.

Number one, the law names our sin.

He uses coveting.

I don't know if you've ever stopped to think about what coveting it is, but coveting is wanting something that doesn't belong to you.

It's wanting something that someone else has.

Number two, the purpose of the law is it aggravates our rebellious and sinful nature.

Let me try to explain these to you.

He uses coveting, and coveting is such an interesting one because coveting is not an external sin.

Coveting is a sin of your heart.

It's a sin of your mind.

And a lot of people hear that and they think, well, I don't really covet.

I'm very content and very happy.

Do you have social media?

Think about your social media.

If you have Instagram, Facebook, whatever, TikTok, whatever you've got, don't you post your best moments?

It's Father's Day.

I'm gonna post my best picture with my kids.

I'm gonna post my best picture with my dad.

I'm not gonna post a picture with my kids where they're freaking out and I wanna sell them on the side of the street.

Right?

You always post your best moments, your highlight reel of moments.

You don't post the moments where you just rolled out of bed, you feel like you got run over by a truck because you had a busy day yesterday.

You post your highlights.

But conversely, what do we do?

We live in all of our moments and we compare our normal moments to everyone else's highlight reel.

So if you've ever thought to yourself, I want what they have, I want their life, their house, their spouse, I want their kids, I want their success, I want their income.

I want what they have, I want their influence.

If you've ever thought that, then you've coveted.

And we all do this.

Have you ever looked up someone's address on Zillow to see how much their house costs?

You ever clicked through the photos and you thought, they don't deserve that house.

I deserve that house.

I need a three-car garage.

You got one car, but you think you need three cars.

You know what I mean?

Like, we do this, we all do this.

And here's what he explained.

He says, when I compare my struggles and to the law, I understand that maybe it's possible that there's some things that the law revealed in me that I didn't even know were sin.

Let me try to explain it to you like this.

He compares them to the commandments.

He's referencing the Ten Commandments from Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

Let's read the Ten Commandments very quickly together.

Here's the ten.

Number one, you shall have no other gods before me.

Like, don't worship any God other than our one true God.

Number two, you shall not make idols.

And we think of idols as like sculptures or trophies or some sort of like a statue.

It's none of those things.

An idol is anything that takes the place of God in your heart.

So nothing wrong with loving stuff.

I love football, I love a good meal, I love time with my family, I love a good movie, I love a good uh song, I love all kinds of stuff.

Nothing wrong with loving things, just none of them can get God's place in your heart.

Number three, do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

He's not saying if you hit your thumb with a hammer, don't say a curse word, though that's probably good advice.

This one means don't put God's name on something that God had nothing to do with to get people to do what you want.

That's manipulation.

Number four, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

It's like, are you resting?

Is there a day in your week when no one can get a hold of you?

Is there a day in your week where you devote the day to pleasure and delight and joy?

Do you do things to refuel your soul?

Well, what kind of mean God is this?

He's a God who doesn't want you to waste your life by working it all away.

Honor your father and mother.

This is one that as a kid, you're like, what's the big deal?

And then you get older and realize honor says more about you than it even does to the recipient.

It's about your heart.

You shall not murder.

Hope you're all not struggling with this one.

Number seven, you shall not commit adultery.

Your wife or your husband is your spouse.

Do not sleep with anyone other than the person you're married to.

You shall not steal.

Pretty self-explanatory.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

Don't lie.

And number 10, ready?

You shall not covet.

The one Paul said, if I didn't know it was in the list, I wouldn't know I struggled with it.

It reveals our heart of sin.

Why does this matter?

The first nine, if you were to look at them, you can see all of them in yourself or in another person.

If a person murders, you can tell.

If a person lies, you can find out the truth.

If a person steals, you can find out what happened.

But the tenth one, coveting, it happens in our minds and in our hearts.

It is possible for you to live your whole life appearing holy, appearing to follow all of the rules, but really the point of the law is it becomes a mirror that shows you that there are areas in your heart where God doesn't have full and complete reign.

So what do we do?

What do we do?

We make this decision today to be the kind of people who are going to be characterized not as married to the law, but who understand the point of the law.

But we're going to be people who are married to or who walk in grace by the power of God's Spirit.

If I summarize the whole message, which would be this in Christ, I am dead to the law and alive in the Spirit.

I'm dead to the law.

I am no longer exhausting myself, depleting myself, trying to attain something that I'll never attain in my own strength.

But the law has a point, the law reveals the areas of deficiency in my heart where I desperately need God.

But how am I ever going to accomplish those things?

In the power of God's Holy Spirit.

Can't do it in my own.

But God needs you.

Need you.

So here's how I want to end today.

Started with the question: Are you married to the law?

Are you married to grace?

Would you take 10 seconds to answer that question for yourself?

Do you find yourself constantly struggling and fighting to attain something?

To earn God's blessing, his favor, or his approval?

Or do you walk in grace knowing you can't earn it?

It's a free gift.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this room?

As you think on that question, I want to pray for you.

In fact, let's all do this together.

Let me pray.

God, we just ask you in this moment to do what only you can do.

For those of us who have exhausted ourselves, we're dying under the weight of the law.

Forgive us.

May we die to our sinful past, our sinful nature today.

So we can take hold of the life you have for us.

God, I thank you that all of the law, the point of it, is to reveal your heart, which is for us.

And it's to reveal our areas where we need you to step in, to reveal in our hearts areas where maybe we're sinning and we don't even know.

So, God, we ask you today to help us to die to ourselves so we can step in to the relationship with you characterized by grace.

God, for those of us today who find ourselves trying to do all this in our own strength, may we be reminded that it is our own strength that exhausts us, but it is by the power of your spirit that we can live the life you've called us to live.

We thank you for it, God.