The War Within // Romans 7:14-25

Amen. Good morning to City Church across all of our campuses. We just want to take a moment and celebrate the blessing and favor that God has given us at Butner. And particularly, I want to be just publicly grateful and thankful for the Mitchell family who didn't just point the way, but they led the way. They are leading the way. Can we give them one more round of applause? The Mitchells and the teams of people that go with them. Guys, I've got some pictures from Butner. We're not even allowed to put these online yet. But look at this. This is from our campus at Butner over the last few weeks. Guys, here's what they've done. Let me give you a little background. We're just so grateful for God behind bars. We're so grateful for just the leaders at Butner Prison because they've given us a two-hour window. So if you're ever like, when do they have service? 1.30 to 3.30 this afternoon. Okay. And here's what's great about this. Because they gave us two hours and because we cut the announcements because they don't need all of our announcements. Our service is about, when they get it, it's about an hour and 10 minutes, worship and word, which means they have 45 or 50 minutes to meet together as men with our leaders in groups. Here's what this means. Even in Butner Prison, we don't just have a worship service.

We have community groups. Amen. Guys, and here's the thing. This is a, we have a marathon mindset, not a sprint mindset on this. And we're dreaming big. Okay. We're starting small. We're going deep. And I'm excited. We're going to pray for that in a second. You can type to turn to Romans chapter seven. If you're new, I want you to know we're spending, because, you know, it's a great time to be new here. We're spending an entire year, 12 months, 365 days in Romans. Okay. And it's a big book. And here's why I want to tell you that. If you're new, okay. And we always have new people. And maybe you're even new to Christianity. Maybe you're friendly to faith, but you're not sure what you believe. Romans, you couldn't be in a better series. Okay. Because this, more than any book in the New Testament, any book in the Bible, it explains what Christians believe. And if you've been a believer for a long time, two, three, four decades, this is the book to take you deeper. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to pray. And then we're going to dive into Romans chapter seven, verse 14,

where today Paul's going to talk to us, not just about being set free from the penalty of sin. He's been talking about that. But how are we set free from the power and pollution of sin? It's probably the most, I think it's the most honest, heart-oriented passage. One of them, for sure, of the apostle Paul in the whole Bible. So let's pray. Lord, you repair our hearts as Paul shares his heart, as he opens up and shares about his struggles, about the war that is going on within. And I know that in a room this size, across all of our campuses, there are some people who this week, the battle with sin was very, very real. And maybe they felt like they lost. That they've been fighting against their flesh. They've been struggling against sin. They've been trying to fight the war within. And they feel like they're losing. And we today just want to look at what the Bible has to say. And we want to be honest. But more than that, or alongside that, not just honest, but hopeful. Would you help us to do that? Holy Spirit, you are the one who inspired scripture. Would you now illuminate it and open it up so that we can understand it can transform our minds and our hearts? We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, if you've been coming around for a while, you know that I like golf. I kind of just got back into it after kind of not playing for 20 years because I had a family and playing at church and anyway.

So I'm getting back into it. Here's what I've realized. This probably works with any sport. But if you know anything about golf, this is how this works, okay? When I play golf, I feel like there are two Kyles, okay? If you, okay, there's Kyle on the range. And I've got to be honest. There's been a couple of times where I've been on the range hitting balls. And I've thought, just for a moment, about quitting this job and going on the tour, okay? Just like, I'm just, I'm hitting it so well. I'm like looking around, has anybody seen me doing this? And then what's interesting is, in most places, the range is right next to the first tee. And it's not a long walk, but something, I transform. And I cannot hit it well. And I'm getting anxious and I'm hitting it over here and I'm hitting it over there. Here's what I'm trying to tell you. That when I'm on the golf course, it feels like there's two Kyles. And I think that's a good description of the Christian life. In fact, I think this idea that there's like two of you. Maybe if I say there's two Kyles, you go, there's like seven of me. That's what you're thinking, okay, some of you. Here's what's interesting. Think about this. What's one of the most famous stories? Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. It's an old one. It's about a doctor who's a great guy. And he's got this, I can't remember. He takes some potion or something. He becomes Mr. Hyde and this evil murderer.

It shows up in superhero movies. There's Bruce Banner and there's Hulk. There's Venom. There's Spider-Man. Then there's Spider-Man who wears the black suit or something. You know what I'm talking about? In fact, have you seen this show? This is the number one. show ever in the history of Apple. It's kind of a cult classic. You either, like, watch a couple episodes and you like it, or you don't get it at all. But here's what the show's about. You can take the picture down, but the show is about a bunch of people who can't handle their work life and their home life. So it kind of takes place in the future, and they have this surgery done on their brain to when they go to work, something happens. They walk through the door, actually get on an elevator, and something happens to them where they can't remember anything that happened at home. In fact, they get in one of the scenes, the guy falls in love with a girl at work, and he goes, am I married outside of work? And the whole question that you're supposed to be asking throughout this entire show is which one of them is the real one? Well, guys, today, Paul's going to talk about the war within. That sometimes, and I know you, not even sometimes, this week, okay, now some of you probably had a better week than others, but you're going to feel this battle within yourself. And so what I want to do is I'm going to read you, I think I told you this at the beginning, this is the most, one of the most honest passages from the Apostle Paul that it actually makes people uncomfortable. I'm going to read, I'm going to do something I don't normally do. I normally read a verse, talk about it, you know, read a verse, talk about it.

Some of you like that, some of you don't, but this week, I'm going to read the entirety of the text, verses 14 to 25, and I want you to just feel this with Paul, and then we'll talk about it. This is the lived Christian experience. Here's what he says, for we know, verse 14, that the law is spiritual. We'll talk about what that means. But I am of flesh, so he's comparing himself with the law, sold under sin, for I do not understand my own actions. I won't ask you to raise your hand, but I think we can all relate to that. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. That's confusing. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good, so it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. Look at this. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. That probably describes all of us at some point this week. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, look at what Paul says. He doesn't say, is what I do one time. He says, is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law, now look how often he's going to use the word law here. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. He says, basically every time I want to do the right thing, there's also the option to do the wrong thing, and they often come at the same time. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members, that's his way to say his body, another law, so there's the third law, waging war against the, here's the fourth law, the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death, thanks be to God

through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. I'm really grateful for this passage. Even though it's honest, it's dense, it's confusing, I'm going to try to unpack it for us, but I appreciate it because Paul doesn't say, I've arrived, Paul doesn't say, I'm living the victorious Christian life, and the victorious Christian life is a life where I just don't struggle with sin anymore. I mean, Paul says, I struggle with this constantly, and it's probably encouraging because that probably is how you feel about yourself if you're honest, or at least you could say this, okay? If you can't say like you feel like you're two different people, you probably do. You're like, there's public me and private me, and there's work me and home life me, and there's vacation me, and all that. There's church you and there's outside of church you. You could at least admit it here. Don't we feel this about each other? The closer you get to know somebody, every once in a while we'll say something like, I've never seen that side of her before. It's probably most pronounced in parenting and in marriage. Someone told me when I first became a dad, which was both encouraging and discouraging, I said, in your parenting, you will see the best of yourself and you will see the worst of yourself. This passage is so explosive that it actually has three different interpretations. So I'm going to give you... So all three of them, okay? But then I'm gonna tell you the one that I believe it is, which is the correct one, okay? I'm in good company. It's what John Piper and Tim Keller and those guys also think.

But let me give you the other two first. So some people really struggle with this because they wanna have such a high view of walking in freedom as a Christian that they say, you know what? This has to be Paul talking about his life before he was a Christian. But that doesn't sound like Paul. That doesn't sound like what I just read. I delight in God's law. I see myself as wretched. I desire to do the right thing. I hate it when I sin. So I don't think this is, and plus it's just the language is present continuous as he's talking. So some people go, okay, and that would be a small group that would say, hey, this is Paul before he's a Christian, but it doesn't really sound right because he's using the present continuous tense. The second group of people say, this has gotta be Paul as an immature Christian. This is Paul before he gets to Romans 8. And in Romans 8, which we'll get there, actually next week, we'll start it. He said, in Romans 8, Paul understands the Holy Spirit. There's only one mention of the Holy Spirit in this passage. The rest of the time, he's talking about the law and the flesh.

And this was Paul early in his Christian life. He came out of Judaism. He was a Pharisee and he was naive. He didn't know the Bible, the gospel. And so that's it. But then there's a third view, which is what I subscribe to. And it's that this is Paul as a mature Christian, decades into his life. And part of what I hope this does, guys, by the way, is part, it's like, you know, sometimes I'm wondering, what do I hope comes out of this passage? Like, what do I hope? And one of the things I hope for this week is that it would give some of you the permission to be honest. You don't need to pretend. You don't need to perform. You don't need to minimize. You don't need to rationalize. You don't need to hide. I mean, you know, if Paul can come out and go, guys, I still struggle with sin a lot. Maybe we can do the same thing. This is, because this is so helpful for us, because we don't want to see our heroes this way. We like to see our heroes as like, they've reached some status above us. They're better than us. Therefore, they can lead us somewhere we've not been.

And again, I do think there's victory in the Christian life. I do think there's obedience in the Christian life. Even though we're not ever going to be sinless, I do think we could sin less. But I think this is a helpful passage. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to explain verse 14, which sets up the whole passage. And then I'm going to give you the five struggles that every believer in Christ has. Hopefully you'll see it right out of this text. I mean, that's the goal of the sermon. You read the text, you go, I see the sermon in the text, but let's go to verse 14. I'll show you the first thing. Here's what he says. Verse 14, for we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin. So he, Paul can't help himself. He has to always talk about the law. Now he's getting really personal. Now so far, by the way, he's used three words to talk about the law in Romans. Okay. He said, the law is good, the law is just, and the law is holy. Okay. So here's the teaching of the law so far. The law is just, but can't make me just. The law is good, but can't make me good.

The law is holy, but can't make me holy. That's the whole teaching. Now he says the law is spiritual. Now, what does that mean? Because when we use the word spiritual today, right? What do people say? I'm spiritual, not religious. Most people use the word spiritual as a euphemism for emotional. Paul says, here's what he means by spiritual. He means the law is spiritual in its origin and in its reach. What he means by the law is spiritual in its origin, it means it comes out of the mind and heart of God. Like the law is, so in the Old Testament, so how do we get to know God now? Like how do we as Christians, we're New Testament Christians, okay? We have the New Testament. How can we have the clearest picture of what God's like? We look at the person of Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, the way that they understood what God was like, they could look at his acts in history, but they looked at his law, because the law was a reflection and a representation of what God is like. So its origin is from God. Okay, sometimes people say, well, could there be a different law outside of the 10 commandments?

Could God have created a different law? He couldn't have, it's always the hard, couldn't, wouldn't, he wouldn't do that, okay? Because he wouldn't create something that was the opposite of what he believed, loved, felt, valued, but it's also spiritual in its reach. Here's what that means. The law speaks deeply to us. Like it deeply convicts us. Here's what Charles Spurgeon said though. Charles Spurgeon, he was the first mega church pastor ever in the history of the world. He pastored a 5,000 person church in London in the 1800s. What he was known for, he was an orator, he was known for his illustrations. And every time I just want to be discouraged, I just read one of his sermons before I preach on the same text, okay? It's very discouraging. But what he said about this text is he said, the law is like a needle, like a sewing needle. And he said, what it can do is it can penetrate the skin, it can penetrate the heart, but if it does not have attached to it the thread of the gospel, it cannot mend what has been broken. What I want to show you today is Paul says, the law is spiritual, he says, but I am of the flesh. Now, by the way, if you have a KJ, I don't know if anyone here has a KJV Bible,

okay, the King James Version. In the King James Version, the word, and it was translated this way for a long time, the word flesh used to be translated carnal. Here's what I'm trying to say, you know this, but your flesh, when the Bible says flesh, it's not talking about your epidermis, it's not talking about your skin, it's talking about your fallen orientation that makes you wanna do the wrong thing. And here's what's interesting, the Bible says we have three enemies, we're gonna talk about the first one today, the first one is we have an internal enemy, our flesh, we have an external enemy, the world, and we have a spiritual enemy, the devil. By the way, when we say the enemy is the world, we don't mean the people of the world, the Bible says we're to love the people of the world and hate the value system of the world. But don't we do the opposite? If you're not a Christian, I'll let you know, Christians are tempted to hate the people of the world, but secretly love the value system of the world. We wouldn't wanna tell anybody that. So here's how it works, your flesh sees something, your internal enemy sees something in the world that it likes, and then the devil tempts. You have a spiritual enemy. Here's the interesting thing about the devil,

so Romans, I've told you, is like the theological treaties of the New Testament, of the whole Bible. Guess how many times Satan is mentioned in Romans? I mean, how would, you know, 16 chapters is great, you'd probably think like, I don't know, 10? He's mentioned one time in the last chapter at the very end, chapter 16, verse 20. Paul's main focus in Romans, and particularly in Romans 7, is fighting against your flesh, because you know this, you have been, this is so hard to admit to yourself, you have been a part of every bad decision you've ever made. And you were driving, you had the steering wheel. Nobody has lied to you more than you. So what I wanna do with our time left is, what Paul does, and this is, I wanna do this, there'll be a lot of questions, probably out of this passage, that you guys can walk through as a community. I wanna try to get the spirit of this text into our minds and hearts, which I want you to know, here's what Paul's saying. This is what it feels like when you're fighting sin. This is what it feels like to struggle with sin. This is what it feels like to have the war within. So I'm gonna give you five struggles. Okay, let me show you the first one. The first one's in verse 15. Here's what he says. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

For if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. Okay, here's the first struggle, okay? Here's what Paul's, I kind of put him into a phrase for us. I don't understand myself. Or you could, if you take notes, the mystery of me. You know, often when you're growing up, you're a teenage boy, you know, you think, I don't understand women. Or when you get older, you go, I don't understand this younger generation. And the younger generation doesn't understand the older generation. I'm telling you the hardest person for you to understand is you. Think about this. Why do we have, isn't it interesting that you can get your PhD in psychology? That's like, basically, why do you do what you do? Or sociology, why do we do what we do? Or anthropology, why have we done what we did? I mean, you know, if why you do what you do and how you act was obvious to you, you wouldn't need counseling. You wouldn't need therapy. You wouldn't need friendships to talk about your life with late at night to try to piece it all together. You wouldn't need self-awareness tests and distests and Myers-Briggs tests and Enneagram tests. I mean, right, you wouldn't need all that.

Listen, here's what Paul's saying. I don't understand why I do the things I do. Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever, I don't know, you're going to bed at night and you think back over your day and you just, in an honest moment, which maybe doesn't happen very often for you, but it's just in an honest moment, you're like, why did I do that? Sometimes it's right after you experience. some kind of sin in your life that had an intense pleasure, as soon as that pleasure's over and you kind of come down off that high, what's the first thing you think? Why did I do it? Or then you start that, why did I do it this time but I didn't do it last time? Have you ever done something and you didn't just say, why did I do that? Have you ever done something and while you're doing it, you go, why am I doing this? You tell yourself you're going to eat healthy and you watch yourself walk to the freezer to get ice cream, like, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? And you get more and more scoops, why am I doing this, right? And then you get hungry and you go back, you're like, why am I doing this? Here's what Paul's talking about.

He's talking about, we'll call it the gap. He's talking about the gap between who he'd like to be and who he is. So when they do studies on regret, which I'm very interested in, okay, because I would like to not regret my life. When they do studies on, they did this study on people at the end of their life, what do you regret? And I've told you some of this before, but this is good to know. People do not regret so much what they did. They don't look back and go, I did all these terrible things I should have done. People regret more what they didn't do. And then when they go deeper into, well, why do you regret what you didn't do? I didn't ask her out. I didn't start the business, right? I didn't share Christ with my dad before he died. They said the reason that people regret that more is because what just bothers people more than anything is the big gap between who they are and who they could have been. If you think about this, actually every parent knows this, and I don't mean to put this on kids, okay, but this is true. Nothing will bother a parent more than their child not reaching their potential. It will drive, they may not say anything.

And it doesn't mean you have to take this exact path your parents want to, but nothing will be like some parent in their 50s or 60s whose kid is living way under what they could be and what they could be doing. It'll make you mad, it'll drive you insane. Paul goes, I've got this huge, and here's what I thought before. I don't know, look, God gave us a mind so that we could imagine as well, okay? I don't wanna go beyond scripture, but I've wondered if the final judgment won't in part be God showing us what could have been for our lives. The marriage we could have had, the generosity that we could have given, the influence and impact on others that we could have had. Well, there's an encouraging word here. We're gonna move on and we got five of these to get through, but I want you to see in the three of the five struggles, Paul just drops an encouraging word. Did you see it? The encouraging word in the first struggle is I hate my sin. He said the things, let me read it because I want you to actually see this. I want you to see the text. For I do not understand, verse 15, my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but the very thing, but I do the very thing I hate. In other words, if you are a Christian,

be encouraged if you hate your sin. It sounds strange, but the Bible's full of a lot of strange different emotions. It's like, if you're miserable when you sin, rejoice. Because that means your conscience hasn't been seared and your heart hasn't been hardened and you still wanna do the right thing. See, Christians are not, I mean, I think the only thing, you can read the whole Bible. It's like, what are you supposed to hate? It's like, you're not supposed to hate the opposite political party. You're not supposed to hate, I don't know, your neighbor. You're supposed to hate two things. The devil, because he's a fallen judge creature already who's bringing destruction. And you're supposed to hate sin. Some of you are hating the wrong thing. Here's the second struggle. The first struggle is I don't understand myself and we can all relate to that. We can all relate to that. Here's the second one. I don't obey myself. Wouldn't it be amazing? How awesome would your life and my life be if we were a good boss and a better employee to ourselves? I mean, how awesome would it be if you could just wake up on January 1st and say, you're going to read the entire Bible this year.

Done. You're going to eat healthy and you're going to exercise and this is gonna be the year you're gonna get in shape. It's like, you say it, but we just don't get to do it. Well, here's what Paul says. We'll get there in a second, but here's how Paul introduces. Look at Paul's self-awareness. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. Now, when you read that, you go, Paul, come on, man. That is not gonna be good for your mental health. It is not good for, you are a snowflake, okay? Every snowflake is unique and you are unique. Listen, Paul's not saying that he's completely worthless. Paul understands and teaches that people are made in the image of God. He's just, Paul's basically saying, I don't have too positive view of myself. There's a guy named Daniel Kenneman. Daniel Kenneman, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, okay? They don't give those away easily. Daniel Kenneman decided to do all of his research on human decision making. And he did it for several decades, okay? And he got a Nobel Peace Prize. And one of the things that he discovered, doing lots of research, interviewing lots of people, all that kind of stuff, is here's what he said about human decision making.

Humans overestimate their willpower to do the right thing. And humans underestimate all the blind spots in their life. Paul's like, look, I'm just, I wanna, he'll say this in Romans 12, to think about ourselves rightly. Paul's like, I just, I have a high view of God, I have a low view of myself, especially when it comes to me morally being able to do the right thing. What Paul's talking about here, I've told you this before, it's called total depravity. It just means that every part of you, total depravity does not mean you are as bad as you could be, thank God. It doesn't mean we're all like secretly serial killers. It means that every, it doesn't speak of intensity of sin, it speaks of the extent of sin. Sin has infected and affected every part of you. So if you ever hear an older person, if you ever see like someone, and they appear really godly, and they're in their 60s, and they're like, or I said older person, they're 80s, okay. However, whatever an older person is, okay. And so if they say, if you look at it and be like, they're so godly, but they say, you know what? I feel more and more sinful. It's because the more of life you live, the more situations you put yourself in where you realize you're a sinner.

Young people don't realize how sinful they are because they live alone. You, it's like, if you think you're a good person, you only think you're a good person because you live alone in a temperature controlled room. And you're never hungry, because you can eat, there's plenty of food for you to eat. It's like the environment that we're in doesn't even let us see ourselves rightly. So this is why as you get older, and you get married, and you have kids, and you make some money, and you lose some money, and you bury your parents, and your sister gets cancer. It's just, you know, and your friend at work gets the promotion, and you don't. You're just like, dude, I didn't even know there were all these parts. I didn't even know I could feel all these things. I didn't even know I could be bitter at someone from high school. You just see all these different parts of sin. Here's what Paul, let me read the key part, though. So that's how Paul introduces it. Then he says this. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. Okay, it's actually a second encouraging thing at the beginning. He says, I desire to do the right thing. That's another sign that the Holy Spirit lives inside of you.

You desire to do the right thing. Let me encourage you. When you have the right desires, make the right decisions. So part of what we're doing here, I mean, we're doing a lot of things when we gather. Like we're worshiping the Lord, okay? That's primary. But part of what we do with video, unapologetically, what I'm trying to do in my preaching, what we're trying to do with the worship music, what we're trying to do with the videos, with baptisms, with Lord, with everything we do here is we're trying to stir your affections. So that you, and this happens, right? Some of you men, when you were at Clayton King and you were like, I need to go home and apologize to my wife. I need to reprioritize my, you'll be worshiping. I need to reprioritize my travel schedule for my kids. The problem sometimes is between what happened at 6.30 on a Friday night and you making it home at eight o'clock that night. And in between that right desire that showed up at 6.30 and the reality of your life at 8.30 when you got home, you didn't make the right decision even though you had the right desire. So part of it is like, when you feel like I need to confess this sin to somebody, text them right now. You know, if you're like, I wanna begin

to be a generous person, give when you have that feeling. I need to call my mom and apologize for something. It's like, when you have the right feelings, make those decisions. But here's what Paul says. Here's the reality for all of us. Paul goes, I have the right desires, but I don't often have the ability. You know, when I thought about that, you know what I thought about? I thought, is there an example in our culture today where a large group of people have the desire, but they don't have the ability, so they do something about that? Ozempic. I'm not making, I'm not a doctor, obviously. I'm not making a moral judgment. I'm not judging you. You don't need to be embarrassed if you're on Ozempic. I know many people are on Ozempic. In fact, what's interesting is when I started to write this in my office this week, I wrote in my notes, thousands of people are on Ozempic. I thought, that's gonna, then I Googled, actually, then I talked to AI, and I found out 30 million Americans are on Ozempic. One in eight Americans are on Ozempic. And 45 million Americans have tried Ozempic. 15 million aren't doing it anymore. I don't know why, but they're not.

Okay, listen. But think about it. And there's many reasons you can be on Ozempic. I'm thinking about a certain type of person, and they know what they need to do to lose weight. It's been the same for all of human history, how to lose weight. Eat less, move more. Four words. And there's a large group of Americans who can't do it. They have the desire. They have not had the ability. Listen, you don't know how bad you are, by the way, until you try to be good. That's, you know, a lot of people, they think they're a good person because they live in a temperature-controlled room by themselves all the time. But a lot of people think they're a good person because they've never tried to be good. You know, so it's like, go ahead and read, you know, if you're married, go ahead and read Ephesians 5. If you're a husband, just do the things that it says the husbands are gonna do. And if you're a wife, just do the things, don't worry about the other person. And you go ahead and try to do that for like five days. You try to sacrificially love your wife as Christ loved the church. You're gonna be like, I am a,

like, I don't even wanna watch her show. Like, that's how, like, I'm supposed to die for her, but I don't wanna watch her, what is wrong with me? You know, just go ahead and try to be a really great parent. Go ahead and try. Or just try to do something more simple, like try to read your Bible every day and have it mean something to you. Try to pray in the mornings and have your mind not be distracted or fall back asleep. Try to do that for a week or two. And you try to be a generous person and see if the love of money doesn't kind of come in and tempt you. Paul basically says, guys, here's the, he goes, I don't understand myself, I don't obey myself. And here's the third one, I can't change myself. Look what he says. He says, verse 19, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want, I do not want, is what I keep doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me, okay? So basically, Paul's gonna say he can't change himself because he's got this intrusive house guest called indwelling sin. So I wanna give us the category of indwelling sin, which is something believers have dealt with. Here's how indwelling sin works. So there's a guy, I think you'll find this interesting.

There's a guy named John Owen, okay? He's very difficult to read. People say he writes with the grace of an elephant. That's what they said about him. He lived in the 1600s, he was a pastor, but he was also the Dean of Oxford. Now, at the time, it was mostly teenagers. I don't know the background on this, I was reading about it, but there was younger people were going to Oxford at the time like it was more like 13 to 19 year olds were at Oxford at this point in time, 1600s. He, John Owen, who was a pastor, but the Dean of Oxford, he was concerned about the moral and spiritual condition of teenagers. So he started to teach out of Romans 7 and Romans 8 how to fight indwelling sin. It became a very faint, maybe the most famous book ever written on fighting sin. It's called the Mortification of Sin in the Life of the Believer. I find it interesting that the number one work on fighting sin was written to teenagers. Because whenever, by the way, whenever I speak to middle schoolers, I'm like, guys, everything that I've ever struggled with as an adult, I started as a middle schooler. It's like, well, you got to deal with it. Well, anyway, so he writes this and he writes about indwelling sin and here's what he says.

We tend to think of sin as external, right? Like even when we sin, we're like, I said something I shouldn't have, or whatever. I looked at something I shouldn't have. And what indwelling sin is actually says, sin is not first and foremost external, it's first and foremost internal. And it's not neutral, like we wish it was, it's actually active. So here's what he says. I'm gonna give you the two words, which I think is really helpful. He gives the words mortification and vivification. I know, big words, but like I told you before, if you're gonna be a Christian, you need to learn a new vocabulary. So mortification means to put something to death. And what he said is, there's a violence to the Christian life. You can't read Jesus saying, pluck out your eye and cut off your hand and not think Jesus is serious about a violence toward our sin. So here's the thing, mortification of sin in a person's life often starts with extreme measures. In fact, my guess is if there is a besetting sin in your life, you haven't taken an extreme measure yet. I know guys that have dumb phones. Some of them have dumb phones

because they struggled in the past. Some guys have never struggled, but they don't wanna struggle and they just preemptively they have a dumb phone. You know how hard it is to have a dumb phone in 2026? No internet on your phone? No email on your phone? Some of you go, that'd be nice, right? But it's an extreme decision that I know certain men have made as an extreme measure to keep them from sin. Mortification is putting sin to death. Vivification is to make things alive. Here's the illustration that John Owen gives. He said, when it comes to fighting indwelling sin in your life, he said, you can't just pull the weeds. You have to plant flowers. You can't just, we've been talking about this for weeks now. You can't just take something off in a way. You have to, you can't just say this way. You can't just repent. You have to replace it. This is why cultivating spiritual disciplines, cultivating new relationships, pursuing good works are all part of it. So here's what Paul says. Paul goes, I don't understand myself. And I don't obey myself. And I can't change myself.

By the way, the Bible doesn't just say we have indwelling sin. More on this as we get into Romans eight, we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit never works against us, but never works without us. See, salvation is monergistic. God does that. Justification saves us. Sanctification, putting sin to death, is synergistic. In some mysterious way, we work together. We'll see in Romans eight. But if by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. I don't understand myself. I don't obey myself. I can't change myself. Here's another one from Paul. I don't trust myself. Okay, let me show you this. Paul goes, I don't even trust myself because there's all these different laws working within me. I'll show you this. Look here. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. But this is an interesting principle. Paul basically says, every time I have an opportunity to do the right thing, the wrong thing's right there as well. You know, maybe you open up Instagram

because you want to send an encouraging message or share something with your friend, but you open it up and all of a sudden, 20 minutes later, you've been doom scrolling and you just watched someone deep fry a crumble cookie. You're like, what did I just do? In fact, this is interesting. Not now, because it'll be distracting, but next time you open up your phone and look at it, see what app is next to your Bible app. Because what you'll find is in every environment, there's just as much an opportunity, and they come, I think this is true, they come in equal measure. So sometimes when you see very famous people, very rich people, very powerful people, and they do something terrible, it's like, dude, that's the level at which they lived. They constantly had the opportunity to do something very good or to do something very bad, and that's just how they come. It's like, well, you could forgive somebody, but the same moment you could decide not to forgive them and still hold it over them, and then you get to feel good for making them feel bad. You could decide to be an incredibly generous person or you could decide to keep saving more for yourself. They always come in equal pairs. He says first, and by the way, he says there's a law in the world

that's good and evil come together, come at the same time. Look, verse 22, the third encouraging thing he says, for I delight in the law of God in my inner being. He goes, there's a law in my soul, which says even though good and bad come at the same time, I desire to do good. But then he says, there's a third law, a law in my body. But I see in my members, my body, another law waging war against what? The fourth law, against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. What John Owen noticed is sin attacks us through our minds. So in other words, what sin does is, the only good thing we can say about sin, the only good thing we can say about sin is it's predictable. So whatever sin you're struggling with, okay, it always does the same three things to you. First, it lies to your mind. God wants you to be happy, so that's why you can do this. Nobody will find out about this. It's the oldest lie, surely you will not die. You know, well, he's been being a jerk, so it's okay for you to do this. It's okay for you to have this relationship. We have a lie. It says it lies to your mind, and then through the mind,

it says it entices your emotions and affections. So we tend to think like our emotions are, you know, out of our control. No, our emotions are deeply connected to what we've been thinking about. And then it captures the will. In fact, the best definition I've ever heard of the will, which the will is a complex idea. You know, what is the will? We talked about it a couple of weeks ago. But if you think about it, the simplest version, the simplest definition of the will is the will is the mind choosing. Your will is your mind choosing, often after your affections have been stirred by what your mind's been thinking about. So we have to fight the battlefield of the mind. You know, John Owen was really big on be careful of unguarded thoughts. You just think about the podcasts we listen to, the shows we watch, the YouTube videos, the social media. I mean, all of this stuff, it just entices our mind. To where Paul says, I have to fight the battlefield of the mind. I have to, and this is why the Bible says that we are not to be conformed by the world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. So Paul goes, I got all these laws inside of me.

He says, first, I don't understand myself. Then I don't obey myself. Then I can't change myself. Then I don't trust myself. And then Paul gets the most negative and the most positive at the same time at the end with his final struggle. I'll show it to you. Here's Paul's final struggle. Here's what he says. I can't save myself. Verse 24, wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Now, it's interesting. Paul doesn't say, man, I'm having a bad week, right? Have you ever watched yourself minimize your sin to yourself? I'm having a bad day. Well, that was unique. That's not me. I need to quickly move on and not think about that. Paul's like, I'm going to sit in this for a minute and just say, I'm wretched. Now, wretched doesn't mean worthless. Wretched means at its root, I know that I have evil in my heart. And actually, as I was reading about this this week, it's wretched is this idea of I feel evil, but I also feel exhausted. They say when he says wretched,

partly he's like, man, I am such a sinner. And part of what he's saying when he says wretched is like, and I'm so tired of fighting. I don't know if you've ever felt that. If you've ever been like, dude, I've been struggling with this since middle school. If you ever felt like, dude, we've been having the exact same conflict in our marriage for eight years. We can't even, there's a couple of things in our marriage we don't even talk about because she gets emotional and I get angry and we're up till three in the morning and we just can't even, it's just, we've kind of given up on that. Paul goes, wretched man that I am. He goes, who will deliver me from this body of death? Now this is kind of gruesome, but it's what Paul says. So I'll explain it to you. The body of death was a torture the Romans did to murderers. Here's what they would do. Romans were, they were, that's why they also created the crucifixion. They were very good at killing people and they liked to do it slowly. And so what they would do to somebody who murdered somebody and often they would, so if you murdered someone and you were the murderer, they would chain the murdered corpse to you.

You just imagine that. You got the chain on you and you're in a prison cell everywhere you walk, you have to drag a 200 pound male body with you. And obviously it smells and it's decaying and it's decomposing. And obviously back then they didn't understand germ theory, but they understood if we tie you to a dead body, you die. And Paul goes, guys, I, sometimes I feel like what I'm doing, I don't know if you've ever felt this, you're like, I feel like I'm dragging the old me behind me. You might say, man, I felt like three years ago, I came to Christ, I got baptized and I really do love the Lord. I delight in the Lord, but there's like this thing that I carry with me behind me. And you know, by the way, Paul says, who will deliver me? I love that Paul doesn't say what will deliver me. Is there a new New York Times bestselling book? Can you get me a podcast? Is there a program? Are there 14 steps? He doesn't say what can deliver me. He says, who can deliver me? You know, it's interesting as I was reading this week, Paul's despair is so different from the world's despair. Cause you can actually look at verse 24 and go, Paul's in despair. And we know that our world's in despair, but when the world's in despair,

they tend to despair about everything around them. They tend to despair about where, you know, the condition of the economy or the environment or the government or whatever else. And they don't despair enough about themselves. Here's what Paul does. Paul's like, I despair of myself, but I don't give up all hope. In fact, he ends, look what he says in verse 25. He says, my despair turns into doxology, which means worship. Look what he says in verse 25. He says this, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh. I serve the law of sin. Here's what Paul says, when I think about how sinful I am, it makes me super grateful for Jesus. And really, we did spend the vast majority of our time talking about how sinful we are. And when you read that passage and you look at yourself, you need to look at your sin, okay? And you need to be able to say, I am wretched. You need to say, nothing good dwells in me, but then you can't just stare at yourself, you have to stare at Christ. Every one time you look at yourself, you have to look at Christ.

In fact, in a minute, we're going to end with a song, I'm going to read you some of the lyrics, called Come to the Altar. Because part of what we do when we think about our sinfulness is we are so grateful for Jesus. We're so grateful for his sinless life. We're so grateful for his substitutionary death. We're so grateful for his resurrection. And in response, here's what I want to do. I just want, and I said this at the beginning, but I'll say it again, I just, I want to give our church permission to be imperfect. I want to give you, I want to give husbands and wives permission to go, you know what, I'm a sinner and I'm still struggling with something and I've been afraid to tell you, but it's like, I want us to not be surprised when we sin, and I want us to not be surprised when other people sin. Guys, we should be the last people on earth to go, I'm surprised you did that. It's like, no, we have a doctrine of sin. And we understand that it might be different in dwelling sin that's in your heart than that's in your heart that's in my heart, but we all have it. That's why I love the song we're ending with. Let me read you some of these lyrics. This is the song you're about to sing.

Sometimes, this is what we have to do. We have to, in the middle of the war, we have to worship. Because the truth is, the way that we worshiped our way into sin, we need to worship our way out. In a minute, I'm going to ask you to stand, I'm going to ask you to come forward, and maybe here's what you want to do. Maybe you want to come forward, because did you see Paul, at the end, he has this thing, he says, thanks be to God for Jesus Christ. And then he says, you know, I serve, at the very end, he says this. So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin. Here's what Paul's saying, I'm not giving up. Paul goes, I may, this is the difference, Paul goes, I may struggle, but I'm not surrendering. I may fall down, but I'm getting back up. I may sin grievously to where I'm crying, he goes, but then I repent, I wash my face, I get back to work. So I want to read you this. This is a song we're about to sing in just a minute. And I want you to sing it from the deepest part of you. Here's what it says. Are you hurting and broken within? Overwhelmed by the weight of your sin? That sounds like Paul in Romans 7. Jesus is calling. Have you come to the end of yourself?

Do you thirst for a drink from the well? Jesus is calling. Oh, come to the altar. The Father's arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Leave behind your regrets and mistakes. Come today, there's no reason to wait. Jesus is calling. Bring your sorrows and trade them for joy from the ashes, a new life is born. Jesus is calling. Oh, what a Savior, isn't he wonderful? Sing hallelujah, Christ is risen. Bow down before him, for he is Lord of all. Sing hallelujah, Christ is risen. Let's pray. Lord, across all of our campuses, we just want to take a moment and just be so grateful for Jesus Christ. None of us are where we would like to be in our life in regards to fighting sin, but I think we can all say, if we're Christians, by the grace of God, we're not where we were and we're not who we used to be. Why don't we just take a moment? We are thankful for Jesus because we think about where our life would be apart from Christ. We think about how we would have probably given ourselves

totally over to certain sins in our life, Lord. And I pray for both the spirit of honesty in this room about sin struggles. And I pray for the spirit that gets up again, that says, even though I struggle, I will never surrender because my hope is in Christ. He will deliver me. Lord, help us not to look to a what, but ultimately look to a who. That's you, Lord. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Please stand, please come forward.