Heavenly Father, we ask that you would guide us through this passage, that you would give us an understanding, Lord, illuminate it to our hearts, our minds, that your Word, Lord, would saturate our all to your glory. And so we ask you to put a blessing upon this service, Tony, and receive our worship to you today. Thank you in Jesus' name. All righty, Romans chapter seven, if you want to turn there. As a way of introduction, there's a part of the passage The text there from verse 15 on, that is somewhat controversial. It's not a big deal. It's just that one of the things is that some Christians believe it's Paul's experience as a believer after his conversion, and some would believe he was talking about before he was converted, before his salvation. And the different views are supported by various texts versus in the text itself. And then there's a third view that it's used as a literary device and it's not intended to be an autobiography at all. So I thought that was interesting. talk a little bit more about when we get to that. One of the things that I would probably present it as, I tend to believe it was after he was a Christian, he was expressing his experience after his conversion. And one of the things I had, took a note of a few years ago, was that if you think about the epistles, which are, for the most part, they're instructions to the believer. A lot of them start off with theology, and then it goes into a practical application. But the writers of the epistles, the various ones, they do spend quite a bit of time telling us, basically, stop sinning. you know, that was your old life, you know, start living in the newness of life. And you would think that why would they have to give us that admonition and constant exhortation to live out our faith and live as we should as a Christian if there wasn't a tendency to not do that, right? That was some sort of a logical thing I came to. I did want to bring up, there are a couple of extremes that might come out of this text. One would be that after we are saved, there is no more remaining corruption. It is called holiness perfection is one name for it. Basically, we don't sin anymore. I view it as an extreme. I've ran into a few people that have believed that way. I don't have time to share the experience with that. The other extreme would be what they call antinomianism, which means without law, which means that once you're saved, you can basically do whatever you want, and it's OK, because you're forgiven, and you don't have to regard the law in any aspect. You can just sort of do whatever you want. So I think those are two extremes. I would say that we always would, if you want to use the term, strive. I don't like that term because part of the problem in the struggle that Paul describes is that we cannot obey God's law in our own efforts. And so striving almost makes it sound like, well, just try harder in your own strength. I can't do it in my own strength. Well, try harder. But that's not what I mean by striving. What I mean is to, under God's means of grace, we should aim to live a holy life and a practicality. We shouldn't take it lightly. Even though we can fail, we shouldn't reserve ourselves to that and just sort of succumb to it and say, well, we'll always stand, so why try? We should always make every effort with the power of God to try to live as he would have us live, make our walk worthy of the call of Christ. I do have a few correlating scriptures I want to read before we get into the text. In 1 John 2, verse 1, It says, my little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ who writes us. So we have a protection that if we sin, we have an advocate. We have forgiveness as the scripture was read earlier about being forgiven of our sins. But the idea is that John writes so that we won't sin. And so, I heard one time that if we find out why the book was written, and we read that book, and saturate ourselves with it, we start to take on those things. One of the things in 1st John, he'll say, I write these things so you may not sin, so we would probably be living pretty holy after reading that book, because that's what it's written for. Or he says, I write that your joy may be full, Some people would say, well, I experienced more joy after reading that book specifically. But 2 Peter, chapter 1, verses 9 and 10. You can just listen or you can look them up if you want. For he who lacks these things is short-sighted. Now, I should have included the verses before. He was giving us these virtues that we are to add to our faith, that we weren't to be stagnant, but that we're to grow by adding all these things to our faith. And then it says, but he who lacks these things is short-sighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he's cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brother, be even more diligent to make your call on election sure, for if you do these things, you will never stumble. And so there is this potential to stumble in our faith. We forget that we are cleansed from our own sins and we can kind of just sort of drift away from that and start to maybe live as an unbeliever. Galatians 6.1, Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in spirit of gentleness, consider yourself lest you also be tempted. Apparently, there's the possibility, one, to be overtaken, which sounds like it was more than just having a momentary thought. That was a short account with the Lord. It sounds like it was something that was maybe more of what we would call a setting sin. And this man was overtaken in it where he was practicing it. And then, of course, the idea is that he's to be restored. Now, one of the protections that we have as believers is that if we do get overtaken in a sin, God is faithful to discipline us. And he has built in this idea of discipline because there's this Sort of a debate if you were to read through the book of 1 John where it talks about the difference between a child of the devil and a child of God is that a child of the devil is someone who practices sin as a way of life and that's how you can tell. And then, of course, the believer doesn't sin anymore, not literally, but they don't practice it. If you start to practice it, someone may say, I don't know if that person might be saved because they're living this, but if you are saved, God's faithful to discipline you, and as it describes it in Hebrews, it's not pleasant for the time, but it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained in it. So, of course, he has church discipline, but he also has a way to through circumstances, take the believer out of their situation, and almost make it think it was your idea. He rescues you out of it, makes you think it was your idea to repent of it, and then he restores the person. The last one I have is, as I dug into it, I thought, wow, this is pretty important passage. In James 5 verses 13-16 it says, Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing songs. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." And so, I think that it would include anybody that's sick that needs healing could call for the elders. But the way it's laid out here, it almost sounds like this could be a serious sickness. a sickness that could possibly cause your death. And then it says, if he's committed sins, he'll be forgiven. Well, we know in the Gospel of John, chapter 5, there was a man at the Pool of Bethsaida, paralyzed for 38 years. The Lord heals him. The guy takes off, has an encounter with a Pharisee. Jesus catches up to him later and says, stop your sinning or a worse thing will happen to you. So it's apparent that his paralysis was probably a direct result of his personal sin. Now, I think that we can have personal sins that cause illness, but I would caution, of course, that not all sickness is from personal sin either. There's other things. But it is a possibility, and in the case here, you know, and I'm thinking, you know, what would I use as an example? And I thought of AIDS. I thought of someone who had AIDS that was practicing, well now apparently it can spread to people that are sort of innocent, but initially, It was a manifestation of a disease caused by the lifestyle of that person, which was a sinful lifestyle. And so they got something that will kill them. They go to the elders, they get prayer. If the prayer will save them, save their life, they will be forgiven of those sins as well. But regardless of that, it goes on to say, confess your trespasses to one another. And so sometimes that is, you could say, well, we can develop to where we're committing trespasses. But having said that, that the possibility that Christians still sin, maybe a case like an attorney, going through all these scriptures. Let's go ahead and start with our text. In Romans 7, verses 1-3, I'll read that as a section there. It says, Do you not know, brethren, for I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband. So then, if while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. And so, I believe Paul here, of course, he's not taking this opportunity to teach on marriage, per se, like in 1 Corinthians 7. I mean, in 1 Corinthians 7 is probably one of the go-to texts to look up things about being married and singlehood and remarriage and that sort of thing. I think here, he's trying to just establish this as an analogy, using it as an example, because he goes on in verse four and says, therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ that you may be married to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that you should bear fruit to God. And so, like a person that would be married If the spouse dies, then they're free from that obligation. They can then remarry, and it's legal. Otherwise, it's illegitimate. They'd be called an adulterer or adulteress. And that's Paul's point, is that we are dead to the law. Now, like so much of the language in Romans 6, and by the way, I believe Romans 6, 7, and 8 kind of go together there, is that being dead to the law, it's something that we have to apprehend by faith. Because it's one of those things where it sounds too good to be true. And I think that's where we really need to exercise faith. And we'll get more into that later. But there's guys I've met, for example, that will say something like, they'll bring up lust, lust of the eye. And then everybody sort of laughs because they know that that's something all men seem to have a problem with. But they almost resort themselves to, accepting it. Instead of acknowledging, no, you can get victory over that. It's much easier, I guess, to say, well, we'll always be this way. And they're content with sinning, confessing, and then the cycle. Sinning, confessing, and then doing it again. Sinning, confessing, and then doing it again. and they're content with that, I think that's very dangerous in a way, but I don't think that is something that, again, yeah, we acknowledge we have that, but there is victory. There is victory in Christ, and we talk about praying, praying the will of God for our lives, we can be rest assured it is God's will that we have victory over these things. We don't have to wonder. many things in life. We ask the Lord, where should we live? Where should we go to school? Those aren't concrete. You can't go to a verse exactly. You may be able to use biblical principles in your decision, but it's something that you may have a little reservation. I'm not sure if that's God's will or not. So you wait on the Lord, you pray. But with something like getting victory over sin, I think it's safe to say that we can trust that's the Lord's will. Some things, some sin, it seems to fall off at conversion. You hear testimonies of different, it might be an addiction, it might be all kinds of things in a lifestyle that they immediately are able to get victory, they stop doing it and never deal with it again. Other people, they seem to struggle. They may seem to get seasons of victory in their life and then somehow it creeps back in and they find themselves in bondage again. There was a gal my sister used to babysit many years ago. At the time she was nine years old. Her name was Carrie. My sister lived close to me. So often I'd go by after work and visit a little bit before I went home. And I remember one day, My sister was in the other room, and I was talking to Carrie about the Lord, and I basically led her to the Lord. She received Christ. Well then, several days went by, I go back over to my sister, so my sister comes up to me and says, wow, you won't believe this, there's something really strange going on. Carrie listens to me. I mean, before she would disobey, she wouldn't listen to me. Now she listens to me. She's like a different person. Well, I'm ready to fall off my chair because I'm thinking, yeah, she got saved. I mean, she's already bearing fruit. She doesn't even know she's changed, probably. But there's an evidence there. So I tell my sister that. Of course, she goes, oh, no, that can't be it. But I believe that that was. In Ephesians 4, 22 through 24, it says, that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. And of course, you have the same language in the book of Colossians, where the idea is, it's starting to distinguish that there is an old man that is still somehow active, or can be active in our life, and we are to put away that, put on a new spiritual man in Christ, and crucify the flesh, and that sort of thing. The idea is to mortify the sinful flesh that wants to raise its ugly head, and that we are to keep it at bay by putting on the new person. So there's that language there. In verse 5 it says, For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. What I told people out there on the street sometimes, I'll talk about how we cannot work our way to heaven, and that sort of thing. But I'll talk about this idea that I said, you can't even keep a law you put on yourself. Because what happens when you say you're going to go on a diet, and so you say, I'm going to start my diet tomorrow, And maybe it's one of these diets where you're not going to eat carbs. Let's say it's that diet. So what do you crave right away? Carbs. I've done that where I've said, OK, I'm going on a diet tomorrow. I normally don't eat donuts or sweets too much. But as soon as I say I'm going on a diet, then it's almost like that's all I want to eat. And I think it's that same principle. it tends to arouse that flesh. In verse 6, it says, but now we have been delivered from the law, having dead to what we were held by, so that we should live in the newness of the spirit, not in the oldness of the letter. And it made me think of Galatians 5, 16 through 18, where it says, I say then, walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under law. And then of course it goes on to describe the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit there. In verse seven it says, what shall we say then, is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law, for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet. Now, I'm not sure if Paul, maybe that was a sin he had a problem with, or he just picked one of the Ten Commandments and just decided to use that and could have used any one of those. But I think of the example of of an x-ray machine. An x-ray machine can diagnose the problem, but it can't cure the problem. You can go and get an x-ray of your lung and it can show up a black spot and the doctor says, you know, you've got cancer in there. But the x-ray machine is in no way going to be able to cure you of that cancer. It's only going to be able to diagnose it, examine it would be inappropriate for us to be mad at the x-ray machine, because it points out something that is bad to us. In Romans 3.20, of course, it says, And so that was one of the purposes of the law. It talks about it being a schoolmaster in Galatians. One of the purposes is to bring us to the knowledge of sin. And so that's why Paul in several verses he's going to mention that the law is good. There's nothing wrong with the law. Verse 8 it says, but sin, taking opportunity by the commandment produced in me all manner of evil desire, for apart from the law, sin was dead. I had a question mark. I thought, ignorance is bliss, right? It's almost better not to know than we're not aggravated. But sin is more attractive to the rebellious nature when it says don't or no. I've been on the streets over the years. I've noticed that people that are they may be, it's usually like I say, homosexuals. And as soon as they find out you're a Christian, they start kissing in front of you. I don't know if they're trying to get your goat or, but it almost like it, there's something that in you is saying, you know, what you're doing is wrong, so they're going to do that. Now, before the law, death still reigned. We know that in Romans, from Adam to Moses, death still reigned before the law was given. And then, when it has a statement, apart from the law, sin is dead, it's not that it's lifeless or nonexistent, but the idea is that it's dormant. It's dormant until activated by the law. Verse 9, I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. It's kind of like children, you know, that they're innocent before they know or understand certain rules or law. You know, these tend to, it doesn't bother their conscience necessarily if it's something they don't necessarily know what's wrong. I think of a keep off the grass sign. And I can just see kids purposely seeing that sign and then going walking on the grass. I did a lot of stuff like that when I was a kid. In verse 10 it says, and the commandment which was to bring life I found to bring death. And this of course is a producing of the guilt And that cycle just ends up bringing more sin and death. And in verse 11, for sin taking occasion by the commandment to deceive me and by it killed me. Sin is deceitful. In Hebrews it says, do not let your heart be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. And so sin is very deceitful. It's like an entity of itself that has the capability of being deceitful. And of course it's working in unison with the devil and our sinful nature and the world. And they're working as a unit to bring us down. In verse 12 it says, therefore the law is holy, the commandment holy, just, and good. because he doesn't want us thinking like that x-ray machine that somehow that's the fault. The fault doesn't lie with God. The fault lies with our sinful nature, tendency. Because the law that is holy, just, and good is a reflection of who God is. It's a reflection of his nature, of his character, his attributes. So that's why to bring about this idea of how that would activate our sinful nature. It doesn't want us walking away thinking that there's something wrong with the law. In verse 13 it says, Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not, but sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. I remember when I was a brand new believer, I read the Living Bible and that verse says, it adds, it says, it's devilish stuff. So I found that interesting. But let's see. Paper. Again, sin is the cause of spiritual death, not the good law. It's an awareness of the true nature of sin and its deadly character, which ultimately should bring the sinner to see his need of salvation. 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, soul under death, I understand. This is one of the verses that a lot of people think that that's why Paul was probably writing this before. his conversion talking about the carnal, but carnal just means fleshly. And again, it's just the spirit versus the flesh. Now, the next set of verses is the struggle and defeat. Now, I took this paragraph I'm going to read off of a man named David Gusick. And I met him back in I guess it was in the 90s, at a Calvary Chapel conference up in Washington. And he was one of the speakers, and he would talk to people in between sessions and whatnot. At the time, he was a Bible teacher in a college they had set up in Germany. And since that time, he has come away with, he has a lot of commentaries that are on the Blue Letter Bible. I don't know if you've ever seen that website. But anyway, here's what he says about the next passage, which we're going to read. Some look at his struggle with sin and believe it must have been before he was born again. Others believe that he's just a Christian struggling with sin. In a sense, this is an irrelevant question, for this is the struggle of anyone who tries to obey God in their own strength. This experience of struggle and defeat is something that a Christian may experience, but something that a non-Christian can only experience. So I thought that was pretty good, because it kind of covers, you know, either view. And of course he goes on with these, a series of laments. Starting in verse 15, for what I am doing I do not understand, for what I will to do that I do not practice, but what I hate that I do. If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me." Now, he's defining the battle, recognizing that the law is good. I think where he says, it's no longer I who do it, I don't think he's trying to, and I read that in the commentary, He's not trying to have an attitude like the devil made me do it, kind of reshirking his responsibility by saying that. What he's doing is he's acknowledging that there is another component in his members that's causing him to sin, even though his new man, his spiritual man, doesn't want to. And I think that it would be safe to say that the new man, the spiritual man, however you want to word that, the part of us that's born again, the real us now, we would never do anything that would be against God's will. We wouldn't sin, we wouldn't like to sin, but it's this other thing dragging us down. In verse 18, I know that in me that is in my flesh nothing good dwells, for to will is present But how to perform what is good, I do not find. Many years ago, I was involved in this. It was a morning devotional for some of these guys in a rehabilitation center. And most of them were unbelievers. And some were probably believers, but maybe Christians. But we were going through this psalm, taking turns reading it. in Psalm 16, and this was the psalm, it said, O my soul, you have said to the Lord, you are my Lord, my goodness is nothing apart from you. And sure enough, right after we read that, some guy pipes up and says, well, I think that there's a little good in all of us. And it's like, what is it with fallen man that he can't seem to get it, right? We're always saying, well, I think I'm pretty good. Just ask me. And until God reveals this to us, I guess that's how we all were, you know? And maybe there's a few exceptions, people that have really done maybe a lot of evil things that they wouldn't say that, although a mass murderer could say, well, you know, there is a number of people I didn't kill. So based on that, I'm not so bad. I'm not as bad as that guy down on cell block D. That sort of thing. Also, the desire, when he says, how to perform what is good, I do not find. So the desire is there, but he's lacking the power. So we definitely need desire and power. And in some cases, I think a safe prayer is, that God would give us a desire, that God would give us a desire, but also the power, the power to overcome, and he has given us that. At this point in his dialogue here, his discourse, he hasn't come to that conclusion yet. Verse 19, 20, and 21, for the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now, if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find a law that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. So again, he's mentioning this continual lament for his condition, and not trying to get out of the responsibility for his sin, but pointing out that the sinful, and we've called it different things, remaining corruption, old man, that sort of thing. In verse 22, for I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. Now, this phrase, inward man, I found it to be one other place in the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 4, 16 where it says, therefore we do not lose heart even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. I mean, we think of the physical outward man that's perishing, that each day is closer to death, it gets older, the corruption of the curse is starting to deteriorate the body, and you're on a downhill slant towards the grave. And in that, the sinful nature of being still present is also there, but it says our inward man is being renewed day by day. I guess with the assumption that we are using what many people would call the means of grace to make that happen, you know, through prayer and Bible reading, worship of God, and maybe singing songs and hymns or spiritual songs, these sorts of things that Christians would do, fellowship even, but we do to strengthen the inward man, and it's getting stronger. In verse 23, it says, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. So again, reiterating what's going on there. The remaining corruption. Many years ago, there was a man named Wayne Taylor. He was a pastor. I don't know what he's doing now. He might be retired, but he's getting up there in age himself. But he is a pastor for many, many years there at Calgary Fellowship in Seattle. Anyway, he wrote a book, and it was a real short, small read, and it was called The Civil War Within. And based off of this, and of course, the passage in Galatians there in chapter five. And I thought, wow, you know, it really, I like the title. I like that it is, it's like a civil war within. I thought, you know, as Christians, we're truly schizophrenic. You know, we're unique. And, but it is, it is an interesting thing to experience this. And of course, the solution now given in the last couple of verses, it says, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of death? Now, when I was a brand new Christian, I stumbled onto, so to speak, you want to call it that, as I was reading through the Bible, I started with a new test, and I just was reading. I read the whole thing eventually, and then I'd keep reading, but no one said, hey, you should read Romans. I just started reading it, and I came to chapter seven, and I was going, man, that's me, that's me. And I thought, you know, what's the solution? I kept, I'm hanging on every verb, you know, everything, reading. I never read it for the first time. I'm going down the thing, and it's like, yeah, who's gonna deliver? And then in verse 25 it says, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And so then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin. And of course his wretchedness could be the fact that he's sinning, or it could be that he is wretched because of the battle and feels unclean or something because his inability to do what he really wants to do by following the law of God. But at Hallelujah, through Jesus Christ, we have the victory. And I believe in the here and now. Obviously, in the resurrection, there will be a total eradication of the sinful nature. And I think to myself, you know, if you were to ask the average Christian, why do you want to go to heaven? the correct political correct answer is, well, to see Jesus, right? And that definitely should be first and foremost. But admittedly, the thought of having normal pain is pretty high on the priority list. It's something we're focused on because we feel it. But then I go one step further and I thought, what about the temptations will be gone? there'll be no more battle, it'll totally be gone, there'll be no more, there'll be total rest because we won't be bombarded with temptations, evil thoughts, our conscience accusing, whatever it is, that'll be totally eradicated. Now, until we get to that point, our victories, again, they may be, short-lived, they could be temporary, and we could struggle with something for a long time, or more than once. But, again, I believe in faith that the victory can be won through the Lord Jesus Christ, by asking Him for that power. Now, in conclusion, whether this struggle is before conversion or not, I think the focus is that we're dead to the law, and then we can't have the victory. I think that takes us off that focus if we get too worried about, well, was he before he was saved? I remember as far as faith, I remember one time I had a, I was a brand new believer for the most part. And I was going to church, and I had a real revival, I guess, a personal revival at the time. And I just shut off for no reason. That's the problem with those things. But anyway, I was fairly new, and I was struggling with an addiction to pain pills. I stopped using them, and then what I did was, I may have been claiming victory too soon, because I told everybody, God help me, I'm done with them. And then about a week after that, I was tempted and I started taking them again. And then I was too embarrassed to say I did, because after I told them I was not taking them, So I was really embarrassed, and I remember my sister-in-law, she knew what was going on. And so what she did was she went and told some people at my church. Now, she wasn't Christian. In fact, she did it, I'm convinced she did it out of spite. She just wanted to see me get in trouble. But I couldn't get mad at her because God used that to bring it to light. And I remember some men came from the church and I missed them. That was back before cell phones and all that. Anyway, they came to my house and I knew what they were there for. But I went into the pastor's office and I said, you know, I had this struggle and back on it. And I said, a lot of people think I should go to rehab. And he said, He said, well, I don't think you need to go to rehab. I think God will just deliver you. And so what he did is he took me through Romans 6, and wherever it said sin, he replaced it with the word pills that I was doing. Pills will not have dominion over you. And he went through the whole thing. And so I walked out of the office, and I felt like, yeah, yeah. And I went to my sisters, and she goes, She goes, are you going to go to rehab? And I go, no, I believe the Lord Jesus Christ is going to deliver me. I don't need rehab. And I don't know that that was a statement of faith I had, but at that moment, it was like I was quickened. And that urge for those things totally, it just went away. And so I truly was delivered at that point. And so I think that's where where faith comes in, because we're so used to failing, and if we take God at his word, and then he can infuse us, if you will, with his power and his strength to do that. But I think that that's the key, and sometimes we have to pray, because our tendency And this was something you could take a principle out of the Old Testament, where they kept the good stuff from the war, right? If they were supposed to get rid of everything and destroy everything, they destroyed all the stuff they didn't really like, but they kept the stuff they liked. And it's kind of like our sin. If there's some sin that detests us, or we don't have a problem with it, we have no problem forsaking it and we don't engage ourselves in that. But there are certain sins that somehow we like and of course those are the hard ones to get rid of because we like them. And so I think that is part of the process is to pray for the desire to get the victory as well as needing the power for it. But even to the point where we would ask God to give us hatred for that sin and to see it as something loathsome instead of something enjoyable, right? It's kind of like a food that you don't like. Well, you're not apt to eat it because it doesn't appeal to you. I remember using canned spinach. I used to hate it when I was a kid. And I thought, you know, you could store a bunch of canned spinach in the cupboard. I'm not going to get into it, believe me. You don't have to worry about keeping me away from the canned spinach. But I think if that's how the sin is to us, that we're dead to it, that it has no... We're dead to it through the power of Christ. We're married to another. then it doesn't have that same effect to us because it doesn't arouse us like it would before because we've gotten past it through Christ giving us the strength. So, let's go ahead and we'll close in prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you this afternoon Lord, we thank you, God, that you went to the cross and died on the cross to deliver us, Lord, from the penalty of sin, which is hell. And you've also delivered us from the power of sin and in the future, the presence of sin in our environment. So we ask you, O Lord, that you would give us, for those sins that seem to be attracted to us still, maybe they're just thoughts, maybe that we haven't followed through with actions, maybe they're fantasies or whatever it might be, Lord. We ask that you would give us a holy hatred for those sins and see them as you see them. and how deceitful sin is, that these are destructive. It promises great pleasure and enjoyment, but it'll produce death. And we can know that factually, and still, that isn't necessarily enough to get us past it. Lord, we need your power. And we ask for your power. to be put into our lives even today, but to give us that, the victory, and knowing that we are dead to the law, that we are alive to the body of Christ, and that we are married to you, Lord, and being married to you, that we can have and enjoy the newness of life. So help us to walk in that and continue in it all of our days until you call us home. We pray in Jesus name.