Today we are in Romans chapter 7. I'm going to read verses 7 through 12. I was going to also include verse 13, and I'm going to save that for a couple of weeks from today. So today's sermon is not titled, The Sinfulness of Sin. It's titled, Why the Law? And so let's hear now the word of God from Romans 7, verses 7 through 12. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law, sin was dead. I was alive once, without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and it killed me. Therefore, the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. This is the word of the living God. May we hear it faithfully. May God write it on our hearts. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for the inerrant word of God. We thank you that it is a powerful thing. Lord, it is through the word that you give us faith and thereby we are saved. It is through the word that you sanctify us. Jesus, you prayed. and said, Thy word is truth, sanctify them by the truth. That's our prayer today, in Jesus' name, amen. Almost every time that the Apostle Paul makes a point of doctrine, which he does often in Romans, it is a very doctrinal book, he immediately has to defend that point of doctrine from abuse such as the sinfulness of our hearts is that we will take a truth and quickly twist it and pervert it. Satan will come along and suggest a different way to look at what we plainly read in the Bible. Well, Paul knew this tendency that we have and was always ready to defend the truth, to guard it against error. And this is a very important lesson. Paul's example is an important lesson for how to interpret the Bible. Almost every bad interpretation, erroneous understanding of scripture comes when it's taken out of context in the book it's written, in the chapter it was written, in the whole Bible. So we, in seeking the meaning of any verse or passage of the Bible, need to compare Scripture with Scripture and we need to look at its context and let the Bible interpret the Bible. Most false teaching in church history has occurred when this rule was not followed. Most error has taken out of context or out of balance Other truths of the Bible And and that's how error creeps in well for example as we've been looking at as Paul has been dealing with this issue of the law in verse 6 he says we've been delivered from the law and And he said, you know, we're no longer under the law, we're under grace. Well, some would take that statement and twist it and say, well, see, you don't need to worry about keeping the law anymore now that you're a Christian. And that would be an unbiblical conclusion. Sum up on hearing, we've died to the law, we've been married to Christ, that the law has nothing to do with us anymore. Well, that would be another error. Well, in verse seven, again, Paul asks a rhetorical question. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Is it a bad thing then? Because it seems like a lot of bad things have come from the law. And he says, certainly not. Certainly not. That's an unbiblical conclusion. The law is not sinful, nor is it responsible for sin. And so, Paul so far has talked about the law, and it's been mostly negative. But that doesn't mean that the law doesn't have a positive role. We need to look at it positively, really. It's a blessing to have the law of God. Even though the law cannot save you, it cannot offer you mercy, it has a place. And Paul in this passage defends the law and shows us some of its positive functions. And he does so by the use of his own personal example. So there are three points this morning. And the first thing about the law, why do we have the law, why do we need it, is that the law reveals sin. That's why we have a confession of faith every week and we read scripture. And once a month we read the Ten Commandments, because the law reveals sin. Paul said, is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law." Now, there's an underlying assumption about that statement, and that is that it's a good thing. Well, first of all, it's a bad thing that Paul didn't know his sin. They didn't see his sin and that is a good thing. It's something he needed and something he was later grateful for that the law did reveal his sin. It made it known to him. It was there, but he didn't see it. So of course he was writing here mainly about his pre-conversion state. before he came to know the Lord. And that's, you see, the most immediate need of every lost sinner is to first hear what the law says to them so that they can know that they are sinners. It's only those who know themselves to be sinners who are in a position to be saved. You know, Jesus once said, he said, I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. And what he meant by that is I didn't come to call those who think that they are righteous, but I came to call people who know that they're sinners because by nature we think we're good enough and we don't really think we're that bad. Before his conversion, Paul didn't see himself as a sinner, a transgressor of the law of God. He thought he had kept the law, actually, And he thought he did a very good job of it. Philippians 3, 6, Paul said, concerning the righteousness of the law, I was blameless. And that sounds very boastful, but that's what he thought at one time. One translation of that verse says, I kept all the righteousness of the law to the last detail. And that word detail really describes the Pharisaic mindset. that they were concerned with keeping the minutia and the detail of the law. They were very fastidious and they were known for that. So Paul was the model Pharisee. He was known for keeping the law, not leaving anything out. Now that's, in a sense, that's a good thing to at least, to want to do that. The thing is, he might have been blameless in his own eyes, he might have been blameless before men, but he was not righteous before God. And he would later write, he wrote the words, didn't he? By the inspiration of the Spirit in Romans 3, there is none righteous, no not one. He didn't know it before, but later he did. There was this one commandment, somehow, that he had overlooked. The first nine commandments we can look at and say, well, I haven't killed anyone. I don't steal. I haven't committed adultery. You could go down that list and think we're righteous. But when we get to the 10th commandment, we can't really do that. And Paul finally came face to face with the 10th commandment He said, I would not have known, which says, you shall not covet. I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet. Would not have known what the coveting was even a sin if the Bible, if the law of God had not said it. So he quotes the one commandment of the 10 that is very explicit about dealing with the internal workings of the heart. And really none of the Ten Commandments are merely external. All of them apply to the heart. Jesus taught that clearly in the Sermon on the Mount. But it's easy to look at the commandments and only look at the external. You can't do that with the Tenth Commandment. The Tenth Commandment has to do with the heart. And Paul couldn't get around it. When the Holy Spirit showed him that he had coveted in his heart, even though externally he was blameless, internally he was guilty. Let me read to you the entire 10th commandment from Exodus 20 verse 17. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's. To covet means to have an unlawful desire for what you do not have, coupled with a discontentment over what you do have. To covet means to desire more than enough, never to be satisfied, but always wanting more, to have an inordinate love of the things of this world. And we can use the things of this world, we can even enjoy them. The mindset in some places, we call it asceticism, that says you shouldn't enjoy anything in the world. All right, no, no. He's given us all things richly to enjoy, but it's this inordinate love of the things in the world and this lack of contentment. It's really a form of idolatry because it puts the object of our desire in the place of God. And so it really ends up being a violation of the first commandment. You shall have no other gods before me. Ephesians 5, 5 says, for this you know, that no covetous man, no covetous person who is an idolater has any inheritance of the kingdom of Christ and God. Wow, that's powerful. No covetous person can get into heaven. Paul had not seen that he was a sinner and a commandment breaker, but again, the 10th commandment was what God used to show him that he was, to show him his heart, show him that he was guilty of coveting and that he didn't deserve to enter the kingdom of heaven. So the Ten Commandments and all the laws of God, all the Word of God, really, is a diagnostic tool. It's more than that, but it is a diagnostic tool to reveal what's wrong in our lives and what's wrong in our hearts. Hebrews 4.12 says, for the word of God is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing apart of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. I have no idea what is in your heart this morning. You don't know fully what is in your heart, but God knows completely what is in your heart. God uses his law to reveal some of what is in our heart and life. He uses his law like a cardiac MRI. Some of you may have had a cardiac MRI, I'm not sure, but a cardiac MRI, it's a non-invasive way for a doctor to see inside the heart to see detailed pictures of the heart and to reveal any damage that may have taken place in certain areas of the heart shows you how well your heart's chambers and valves are working and how well your blood is flowing. You can diagnose what's wrong with your physical heart. We need a diagnostic tool and God's given us one and that's his law and God by the work of the spirit causes it to penetrate into our heart to show us what is there. And so we need a diagnosis of our true condition before God. That is the only way we can go forward. And if you don't have an accurate diagnosis of your spiritual condition, how will you ever seek the right solution to that condition? And so we have to, in essence, put our heart on the table and let God's word scan it and tell us the results. We know in the physical realm, these are things, especially men, we don't want to have to do that. We don't want to know. We just want to skip right along thinking everything's fine. Well, it may not be. And I'm one of those men, sadly. But when we put the heart on God's table and let the law scan it, what do we find? Well, the diagnosis for sinners is that the heart is wicked. deceitful above all else who can know it but God knows it and God reveals it that's the natural state of man we have an incurable heart disease in fact the heart has stopped beating and it's died in our natural state the only cure for that is to have a new heart and to have a resurrection spiritual resurrection along with it. The only cure for a sinful heart is a heart transplant. You ever ask God to give you a new heart, a heart transplant? That's what you need. That's what we all need. If you don't know Christ, God said in Ezekiel, I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit within you and I will take away this stony heart the heart that's been hardened by sin and has died. I will, and I will give you a heart of flesh. That heart will beat again, will beat in your heart, in your soul and give you life. So to get a new heart, well, it's the same as being born again. Jesus said, unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. So have you seen your need for the new birth? Have you experienced the new birth? The law of God, you see, shows you, first of all, that you need it. Shows you that you are dead in sin and you need a new heart. But even after you become a Christian, and this is important for us today, most of us here are Christians, maybe all of us, I don't know, probably. But even after you become a Christian, you still need the law to reveal where you have gone astray. Why? Because the Lord calls you and I to repent and to confess our sins daily. We're called to walk with God. When we sin, we leave that path. We start walking on our own. We need to know that so that we can come back and see where we have gone astray. Another function of the law, not only does it reveal sin, the law stimulates sin. It stirs sin up, if you will. Paul said, but sin taking the opportunity by the commandment produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law, sin was dead. So, the law identifies what sin is, and then the law functions as a stimulus. It incites sin. Now, that doesn't sound, you know, it may sound weird to us, but it's not the law's fault, as we will see. When our sinful desire is confronted by the law, we naturally rebel against it. If I came up to you after service today and say, I've got a bone to pick with you, and I start criticizing you for something you've said or done, immediately, you're going to be defensive. You just are. I would be. But this is what the law does. It's not that the law makes us want to sin. It's that when our sinful hearts are confronted with the law, We want to sin more. It stirs us up. He said sin, it wasn't the law, but it was sin taking opportunity by the commandment. Sin takes the opportunity when the law comes to advance, to be stirred up. And that word, opportunity, in verse 8, is an interesting word. It was used of a military base, of a starting point for a base of operations, for an expedition, a springboard for an advance, if you will. And so sin uses the law as an opportunity to establish a base for more sin. That's how bad and sinful we are. So we hear the law saying, do not covet, and we immediately want to break that law and think of ways to break it. We want to think of ways to do what the law has forbidden us to do. There's nothing so attractive to a sinner than that which is forbidden. Even Adam and Eve in their state of innocence were drawn to the forbidden fruit. How much more so in our state of sinfulness are we drawn to the forbidden fruit? Well, the law then, it acts as a stimulant for sin. It stirs sin up within us and though it's not the fault of the law, it's the fault of indwelling sin. There's a passage, you may know it if you've studied or read The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. And in his book, in this particular passage of the book Pilgrim's Progress, he describes Christian, the main character in the book, who is making his journey to the Celestial City. And early in his journey, he stops at the house of a man named Interpreter. And Interpreter takes him around from room to room and he teaches him many things. He took Christian into a large parlor. Now this parlor must have been a room that just wasn't used very much. And it was full of dust and it had never been swept. So the interpreter calls for a man to come in while they're in the room and to sweep the room. And the dust began to be so stirred up that Christian began to choke and was coughing and choking. And so the interpreter calls for this young girl to come in and sprinkle water in the room. And so the dust settles and the room was cleaned. And Christian asked interpreter, what does this mean? And the interpreter answered this way. He said, this parlor is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the gospel. The dust is his original sin and inward corruptions that have defiled the whole man. He that began to sweep at first is the law, but she that brought water and sprinkled it is the gospel. You saw that as soon as the law began to sweep, the dust did so fly about the room that it couldn't be cleansed and that you were almost choked. This is to show you that the law, instead of cleansing the heart by its working from sin, revives and puts strength into and increases it in the soul, even as it exposes and forbids it, for it does not give the power to subdue it. So the law stirs up sin. You say, well, what good is that? It shows us the power of sin. Again, it shows us how pervasive it is and that the way to be cleansed of that sin is not in us, and it's not in the law. Only Christ can cleanse us of the sin. Only the gospel can settle the dust. So it's necessary to see, for the law to stir up and to show us the real strength of sin. So that we realize, first of all, what Paul said in Romans 3.20, therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, but by the law is the knowledge of sin. We will never be justified by our own efforts from start to finish. Never. And neither can we overcome sin by way of the Christian life in our own strength. Sin can only be forgiven and overcome by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. So we've seen two things now, that the law reveals sin, and second, that it stimulates sin. Lastly, the third function of the law here in this passage is that the law condemns sin, or that the law brings death. Verse 10, and the commandment which was to bring life I found to bring death. In other words, the law condemned him and it condemned him to death. The commandment actually would have brought him life, but only if he had kept it perfectly. Here's what Leviticus 18 verse 5 says. You shall therefore keep my statutes and my ordinances, which if a man does them will be life to him. If we could keep the commandments of God perfectly, they would bring life. That would indeed have happened with Adam and Eve. If they had not sinned, if they had kept the commandments of God, they would have lived. But since the fall, we all break his commandments, and therefore they do not bring life. They bring the opposite. They bring death and condemnation. In verse 9, he says, something very difficult for us to understand, but he says, I was once alive without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. What does it mean? I was once without the law. Actually, Paul grew up hearing the law from day one. He was never really without the law. He was taught it as a youth. He sat at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel to study the law. Again, he was a Pharisee, he was a stickler for the letter of the law. But see, that was the problem. He had the letter of the law before he was converted, but he didn't have the spiritual and true understanding of that law. Before the Holy Spirit revealed to him the wickedness of his heart, he was alive. He thought he was alive. He thought he was doing just fine. But when the commandment came, he died. He died. He saw that he wasn't alive. So he was alive in his own opinion of himself, but in reality, again, he was dead in trespasses and sins. You know how many people today think that they are spiritually alive and are not? There are many self-righteous people, and they think they're alive. They need this commandment or some commandment to come to them in power like it did with Paul. Paul said when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. When sin came alive, then he died. This was a sweeping action of the law. Paul began to choke on the dust and he realized he was far from the righteous man that he thought he was. He died. He lost the good opinion of himself. Have you lost the good opinion you've had of yourself yet? You need to. I need to. He saw himself as a sinner condemned by God, and you and I need to come to that place, really. And you say, well, I'm saved. I know the Lord. But did you ever come to grips with that? that you were a sinner condemned by God, condemned by the law. Have you ever felt that? And you might think, well, I'm a good, I'm a decent person. But if you really let the law do its sweeping work, there's a lot more sin in you and me, even as Christians, than we know. And when we see that, when we see that sin, for what it is and how we have offended a holy God who loves us and cares for us and that by every sin we are saying, we don't need you God, we don't want you, we don't love you. Even as a Christian, that's exactly what sin, every sin means. That we have offended God, we fail to glorify him, we fail to honor him as we ought. When we get to that point, then we're ready to hear the gospel. And that's why we also need to hear it over and over again as Christians. And what is that gospel? That gospel is that God saw the sinfulness of man. Genesis says that the sin of man was great on the earth that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And God saw that and he did end up destroying almost everybody on earth. And with the flood, he saved Noah and his family. That was it. Just a few souls were saved. But then the population began to multiply. And of course, God looked at the sinfulness of mankind, and he could have justly said, well, it's over. I'm going to destroy them all. Send them all to an eternity of punishment. But he sent his own son from heaven. He was born of a virgin. He became a man. God, the eternal son, became a man. And he was crucified for us. He suffered in our place. He became sin for us. He was buried. On the third day, he rose again. And this is the promise of the gospel. This is the good news of the gospel. that He did it for us and we can be forgiven and we can be saved. But the good news of the gospel is not good news until you're ready to hear it. You know, often we won't do anything about a problem until it gets really bad. And so until you really see how bad sin is, you're normally not going to turn to Jesus Christ Because if life's going along pretty well, why do you need good news? I'm good. I'm good. I don't need it. That's what we think. So sin, you know, if we're still stuck and dead in our sins, we won't see our need. We won't be ready to hear the gospel. Don't be deceived, because in verse 11, Paul said, Sin, taking the occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and it killed me. will lie to you every time. Sin will deceive you again and again and again. And you'll fall for the temptation to engage in it, but you'll also fall for the pride that says that I'm a good person. Sin deceives. It promises what it can't deliver. Sin, like the devil in the garden, says, go ahead. You're not going to die. The consequences of you doing this little thing, eating this fruit, it's a good fruit. Just eat it. You're not going to die. Your life's not going to be over if you commit this sin that you or I are contemplating, right? That's the devil speaking. We know that. But we are often deceived. Like Paul was but the law doesn't lie the law says and a lot, you know is a standard It's a perfect standard. We try to lower it and We can't can't do it. It will not be lowered And it condemns us If we don't keep it Paul said it killed me and if the law killed Paul then Wow Then then the law is bad. We so what we do. We're the guilty ones. It's our fault and But then the law comes and it condemns us, it stirs us up, and it tells us all these bad things. Then we want to blame the law, don't we? Do not do that. Do not blame God's law. Do not say, God, you're too strict, you're too holy, you're too perfect. You see, God's law and God are so closely connected that you can't separate them. You're saying that God shouldn't be holy, that God shouldn't be God. I'm saying that when I sin, when I give in to temptation. But Paul sets the record straight. God's law is not bad, it's good. Verse 12, therefore the law is holy, the commandment holy and just and good. You see, the law of God is a reflection of the character of God. That's why the moral law of God is unchanging. It's unchangeable. Because God is unchanging. And so the law is holy because it's a reflection of God's attribute of holiness. Because God is holy. It's an expression of His holy will. And the Bible says, be holy. God says, be holy as I am holy. Would you be holy? Then you must obey the commandment. Not in your own strength, but But you must run in the way of his commandments. God is just. And his law is just. It can never be unjust, unjust. It is always right. It can't be charged with wrongdoing. And whatever God does is always fair. It's always right. It's always just, whatever commandment. And the law of God is good because God is good. That's what we need to see, I think, the most. in our lives as Christians, the law of God is good for me. Because God is good and he wouldn't give his law and it not be good. There's nothing in the law that will harm you. It will bring blessing in your life if you know Jesus Christ. It's only as we break it and sin against it that any harm comes to us. And again, it's our fault. So Paul is defending the law against any charge that we might bring or that the devil might bring against it. The problem is not with the law, but with us. And the law didn't create the problems. It only revealed them, it only stirred them up, and it only properly condemned them as deserving death. So like Paul, you see, Paul is actually offering his praise and thanks to God here in this passage for the law, because that's how he knew he was a sinner, and that's how he knew he needed a Savior. So it is good, because it brought him to the Savior. And you can say that, too, if you know Jesus. Thank God for his law to show us our sin, to stir up our sin, to condemn our sin. But you know, we think of the condemnation that the law brings to those who break it. We are lawbreakers and we deserve to die and be condemned forever. But you know what Jesus did? He took our place and was condemned instead of us so that God can be gracious to us and forgive us. all our sins. God is serious about punishing sin. Either you suffer the punishment for your sins for all eternity in hell or you trust in Jesus who suffered the full punishment of our sins on the cross. If you want to be delivered from the curse of and the punishment of the law, then turn to the one who kept the law, but then died as a lawbreaker in your place. And then turn to keep the law as a way of thankfulness for your deliverance. See, even as Christians, we need to constantly see our sinfulness in need of grace. The law still has its place in our lives. Again, you cannot separate Jesus and his law, but the law has a place. It's a mirror, it's a rule for our lives, and we still need to be reminded of when we fall short of the glory of God. Why? So we can come back to Christ and see our need, our continual need of fresh cleansing and forgiveness. So the law should drive us back into the arms of our bridegroom, so that he would not only forgive us, but produce the fruit of the Spirit. You know, it's such a struggle. And we're going to see more about this struggle that we have with sin in Romans 7 as we go through it. But the more we struggle with sin, the more we see our sin, the worse we feel most of the time, much of the time. But that's to drive us back to Christ so that we see how much we owe to him and to renew our love for him. And then that's how he works. You say, I'm trying to be better, I'm trying to do better, but I'm getting worse. No, God's working. God is working through that process to make you better. You may not see it, you may not feel it, but believe it. The law will show us there's yet more work to be done in us, but only by Christ and only by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's all too easy for a Christian, you see, for us as Christians to become complacent about our sin, but we need to see sin. And again, we're going to look at verse 13 by itself in a couple of weeks, because we need to see the exceeding sinfulness of sin. Because if we do, we'll not only see how wonderful our salvation is, but we will hate sin all the more. You say, I'm struggling. I feel like I'm getting worse. And I hate it. I hate this sin. Yes, you should hate that sin. You should hate it more and more and more. Each time we sin, though, we must come back to Christ. Thank him for his work on the cross. Rest in his finished work. Ask him to cleanse us and pray that he sanctifies us by the truth for his word is truth. Let's pray.