Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast,
where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to
this podcast.
I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen
you in the word of God.
Now, come along.
Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here Today
we're going to be in the Book of Romans.
I know it's been a few weeks since we've been here, but we're
going to continue our series in Romans.
And this week we're going to be in Romans chapter seven.
We're going to start in verse number one.
Romans, chapter seven, verse one.
The title of the sermon this morning is the Limitation of the
Law.
We're going to speak about how, even though so important, God's
law that he extended in the Old Testament had limitations, even
though it was important, even though it's vital for us to understand
the law, there is limitations to the law.
And what we've been looking at through Romans chapter one through
six, is this the.
The essential aspect of God's grace, let's put it that way, the
essential aspect of our life.
In the desperate need of God's grace.
All of us are in desperate need of God's grace.
Why?
Because we cannot perfectly keep the law.
None of us can keep the law.
Even though the law tells us what God's standard is, even though
the law tells us what we should strive for, we can never keep
the law completely.
Romans has told us that.
Romans has told us that for all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God.
The Bible says that for the wages of sin is death, but the gift
of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And so chapters one through six has, I think, at some degree,
hopefully to.
To a serious degree, have taught us that we all need God's
grace.
We.
We all need God's forgiveness.
Because none of us, with our religious strength, with our power
of our own life, can reach the pinnacle of what God has called us
to live.
None of us can be perfect.
There's only one that's been perfect.
The Bible says the one who knew no sin became sin for us.
That's 2 Corinthians, chapter 5.
And so what he's been talking about in the first six chapters is
what Jesus Christ has done for us and the need for salvation.
And I want to talk about two words here this morning that again,
I think I need to define so that we can understand the context.
There's a word in relation to justification called sanctification.
And there's two words, justification.
Sanctification.
Justification is the declaration of righteousness that
God gives us when we trust in him in faith.
That that's the word that describes what God does when he saves
us.
He justifies us.
He declares us righteous even if we are not righteous.
He looks at the righteousness of His Son and our identity in His
Son and says, you know what?
You are saved.
That's a positional thing.
That's a from darkness to light, that's from death to life.
But that's not the end of our salvation story.
That's just the beginning.
So our salvation story continues on.
And there's this word called sanctification.
Now, positionally, we are sanctified at the moment of our justification.
We are saved.
And God has taken us from darkness to light, from death to
life, and so we are sanctified.
Now, that word sanctified means to be set aside or to be separated
from something.
So when we are saved, we are separated from a life of sin and
death and punishment.
But that's not the end, because the Bible says that now that
we are justified, we are on the sanctification process.
Not that we are getting more and more saved, but we are growing
more and more like the one who saved us.
And so we could phrase it this way.
Sanctification is growing in the Lord.
It's spiritual maturity.
And so we are saved not by the law.
We are saved by God's grace and by his power.
But many people are tempted to think, yes, I'm saved by God's grace,
but I grow by following the law, by doing good, by becoming a
better person, by trying harder, by.
By just trying to get myself to a place where I can follow the
checklist of religion.
But no, I'm going to tell you here this morning.
The Bible tells us that we are saved by his grace, we are sustained
by his grace, we are matured through his grace, we grow through
his grace.
And so it's not a matter of trying harder.
It's not a matter of doing more.
It's not a matter of reaching this pinnacle in our life where we
say, you know what?
I think I'm a pretty good person.
No, it's realizing every day that we are saved by his grace, and
we are sustained by his grace, and we are sanctified in his grace.
And so in chapter seven, he's going to speak to the limitation
of the law.
He says, know ye not, brethren?
So he's speaking to believers here.
Know ye not brethren, for I speak to them that know the law.
So he is assuming here that the reader understands the law.
He's talked about the law.
What's the law?
What is he talking about here?
He's not talking about the law of the land here in America.
He's talking about God's law, the Mosaic law that was given back
in the Old Testament.
Many of you know that the folks that were living at the time
of the Old Testament lived what we would call under the Old
Covenant, the law.
There's 613 of them we know really well, but 10, and I think
of all of us were able to go back in time and even today realize
that none of us, no matter when we lived in old times or new
times, none of us can keep the law.
I'm going to give you a little bit of understanding here that even
the people back in the Old Testament didn't live under the law
perfectly.
No one could live under the law perfectly.
A lot of people think that people were saved back then through
keeping the law.
The Bible says no.
Hebrews chapter 11 says every individual that has salvation has
never found it through works.
It's always been found through faith.
Read the whole book of Hebrews and specifically go to Hebrews chapter
11 and you can see that Abraham was saved by his faith.
All of these folks that were what we would consider to be under
the law were still saved through faith.
Their faith was looking to a savior.
Our faith is looking back to what Jesus Christ has done for us.
And so here he says this is the law that he's talking about.
I'm speaking to those who know the law.
I. I'm speaking to those who are religious people.
I'm speaking to those who are understanding that, hey, you know
what?
I think I can do this, but really, at the end of the day, I
can't.
Why?
He says that how?
That the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth.
Meaning this.
The law can only be effective in our life when we are alive, right?
When we die, the law is over.
When.
When we die, it's.
It's specifically ending that dominion or power over us when it
comes to the law.
When we die, we've got to pay for what we have done.
When we die, we have to be standing before God and saying, this
is what I have done.
And all of us, if we stood before God, would realize that we
all have fallen short of the glory of God.
All of us have limitations.
All of us have fallen short of his standard of perfection.
So he's making a point here and he's going to make this point
in a very clear way by giving an analogy, but by giving an example.
And he's going to speak to the example of a married couple.
Now this, this passage of scripture is not an exhaustive passage
of scripture dealing with marriage.
There's a lot more to deal with when it comes to the idea of
marriage and what that means.
But he's using marriage as an example here and he's talking about
how marriage.
In scripture God teaches that marriage is for life, that that someone
is bound to their spouse by the law.
They are bound to their spice, their.
Their spice, their, their spouse by, through, throughout their
whole life.
And so in verse 2 he says for the woman, for the woman which hath
a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth.
So what he's explaining is something that they would have understood,
that a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
But when he passes away, we understand till death do you part.
She's no longer bound by law to be married to her husband because
of this death says, but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from
the law of her husband.
So then if while her husband liveth, she be married to another
man, she shall be called an adulteress.
This is specifically speaking about the context of hey, if she's
married to this man, she's married to this man, she can't go
marry another person, she's bound by law to that man for life.
And in this case he says, hey, you would know, you would understand
that if there was a husband and a wife, and the wife just said,
you know what, I'm going to go marry this person over here.
She's breaking the bounds of marriage.
He's breaking the law of marriage.
Because in that culture and even in today's culture, you're married
to one person.
And that's what he's saying here.
This is not an exhaustive topic about marriage.
He's just explaining this idea that if you are married to someone,
you are bound to them by law for life.
But then when death happens there, there's, there's the loosing
of the law.
It says, but if her husband be dead, she is free from the law, so
that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another
man.
So he's making an analogy here to the law and the law's relationship
with the believer to someone who is married to an individual,
that we are bound by that law in this life.
But Then he says in verse 4, Wherefore, my brethren, ye are also
become dead to the law by the body of Christ.
Meaning this.
He says, when we identify ourselves with Christ in salvation,
we saw this in Romans, chapter six.
We are buried with him in baptism.
We are.
We are dead in him, and then we are raised to walk in newness
of life.
So he says, when you identify yourself with Christ, you are dead
to the law because you are dead in him, and you are alive in
the newness of life.
You are alive in his identity.
And so, ultimately, what he's saying here is this.
The law was only good for us before we came to know Christ.
The Law was there to show us that we are wrong.
The Law is there to show us what we need to change.
The law is a mirror that shows us all of our flaws.
But the moment that we identify with Christ, we are dead
to the law, and now we are married to Christ.
You could put it this way.
Before we came to know Christ as Savior, we were married to the
law.
That's all we could live by.
We live by the law and we die by the law.
But the Bible says that when we become Christians, we are now
dead to the law.
Now we are free to be married to Christ.
We know that the picture of the salvation experience is this
eye picture of Jesus being the groom and the Church being the bride.
And he says, now you are married to someone else.
Now you are united with somebody else, and that is Jesus
Christ and what he brings us in faith.
And he says, wherefore, my brethren, you're also become dead
to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married
to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we
should bring forth fruit unto God.
Meaning, if you want to be a fruitful Christian, if you want to
know what it means to walk in spiritual growth, we cannot walk
by trying to follow a list of rules.
We walk by walking in fellowship with our Savior, the One
we are now married to, the one we are united with.
And so you might.
You might say, I'm not tempted to fall into the trap of the Mosaic
Law.
I. I don't even care about that.
I. I like to eat pork, okay?
It's no problem with me.
Okay?
I. I like to do all these things, and.
And so it doesn't really matter for me.
I'm not tempted to fall back into the Mosaic Law.
Well, what we can see in our life is that maybe we're not tempted
to follow that law, but maybe we're tempted to follow the law that
we have created either within our church or within our own life
to say that, you know what I'm growing through what I do, I'm growing
through how different I can be.
And it's very Pharisitical to say this.
I'm going to add to Scripture.
And, and that's really what the Pharisees did.
The Pharisees added to Scripture.
And so what we're seeing here is that the real hope that we have
is not in our goodness.
The hope that we have is in our relationship with Christ.
And so, so many people think, well, I'm going to grow if I just
do this.
I'm going to grow if I go to church, I'm going to grow if I read
my Bible, I'm going to grow if I serve.
And those are all wonderful things.
And in done in the right fashion, in the right Spirit will
bring fruit.
But we all know, I think that if we can go to church, we can come
to church in the Spirit or we can come to church in the flesh.
We can come to church for the wrong reasons.
Now, I'd rather you come to church for the wrong reasons and
not come to church at all.
But what I'm going to say here this morning is that we all know
that we can waste our time when it comes to coming to church,
when it comes to reading our Bible.
If you're not reading your Bible for the simple purpose of knowing
God more and growing in faith with him and growing in your love
for him, if you're just reading your Bible to check a box,
folks, that's empty, that's hopeless.
Because anything that we do in the flesh will eventually come back
to the law and will eventually come back to our failure.
And eventually we'll come back to the place in our life where we
will have hopelessness and emptiness and no fruit.
So if we want to be fruitful Christians, what do we do?
Well, we don't just work harder.
We, to be a fruitful Christian means to walk with Christ and allow
him to be the driving force in our life.
Read John chapter 15.
Reference John, chapter 15.
The Bible says that he is the vine, we are the branches.
It's not the other way around.
Sometimes we think that we are the vine.
Sometimes we think that we are the driving force in our spiritual
growth.
Folks.
No, spiritual growth comes through obedience and dying to ourselves
and becoming more like Christ and allowing the Spirit to guide
our lives.
And so what happens is, is that people try to just stop doing
bad.
The Bible says that's never what it means.
To be a Christian, that never is what it means to live a life that's
growing in Christ.
Yes, it means stopping the bad things, but it also means infusing
our life with the good, infusing our life with the Spirit.
And that's what he says here.
He says, you are married to another.
You're walking in fellowship with the one who was raised from
the dead.
And you are raised from the dead in your salvation.
Verse 5.
For when we were in the flesh, for when we were working in our own
good, when we were trying to be our own Savior, when we were trying
to be our own religion, says the mode.
I like the way that this says it here.
The motions of sins which were by the law did work in our members
to bring forth fruit unto death.
So he says this.
We're going to have fruit no matter what we do in our life, but
it's either going to be good fruit or bad fruit.
When we live in the flesh, what comes, it says, the motions
of sin, the actions of sin, the pattern of sin.
When we live in the flesh, inevitably we will come into the
motions.
And the pattern of sin which were by the law did.
And what, what did that bring?
It worked in our members to bring forth fruit unto death.
Work in our flesh always brings empty fruit.
It might be fruit.
It might look like something good.
It might have a result.
But that result is not what we want.
We don't want to have success in ourselves.
We don't want to have people praising us for how we have grown
in the Word, how we have grown in our walk with Christ.
No, it's all about exalting him.
He is the source, he is the change.
None of us want to stand before the law in our sin.
None of us want to stand before the righteous judge and say,
hey, look, this is what I have done in my flesh.
Because the Bible says, what is that going to bring?
That's going to bring judgment.
That's going to bring hopelessness.
So, so what he.
What he says here is this.
We don't want to be the sinner who's standing before the law.
What do we want to stand before the law.
We want the substitute.
We want the Savior standing before the law.
Because the only one who can respond perfectly to the law is Jesus
Christ.
And so we want the Lord to be seen through our lives.
We want to give him the credit.
We want to give him the direction.
We want to give him the wheel, so to speak.
And so what we see here in this case is he says, you're going
to have fruit, no matter what you do in your life.
But the fruit that comes through a relationship with Christ
is the fruit that was going to last.
Matthew 5:16 says, Let your light so shine before men that they
may see your good works and glorify your Father, which is in
heaven.
We don't do things for God.
We don't follow his word so that people will praise us, because
that's empty, that's.
That's hopeless.
And he goes on to say this, verse six, but now we are delivered
from the law.
We are no longer under the law anymore that being dead, wherein
we are held that we should serve in newness of spirit and not
in the oldness of the letter.
So essentially what he's saying here is that we serve and
we grow and we love and we forgive for a different purpose.
It's not the purpose of the law.
It's not about keeping a list.
It's not.
It's not about having people notice us.
We serve in newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.
It's not the law that motivates us anymore.
It's not fear that motivates us anymore.
It's not judgment that motivates us anymore.
The Bible says that the motivation is not the motivation
of the flesh, it's the motivation of the Spirit.
Which.
Why?
What does that mean?
That means this.
Why we serve is because the Spirit has changed me.
God has changed me.
God loves me, and I serve out of love and devotion to him and not
out of fear of judgment from man or for others that might be causing
me to have some type of peer pressure to.
To follow some type of list.
And so the problem with the law is this.
We are under the flesh, under the law.
We can't bear fruit to God.
It's impossible to bear fruit to God in our flesh.
Instead, we bear fruit to, as the Bible says here, death.
Because the law, as it.
As it's going to say here in verse five, it essentially arouses
our passions to sin.
That that's what it's saying there in verse five.
It says, for when we are in the flesh, the motions of sin is.
The arousal to.
Is the law arouses sin.
So what does that mean?
It means this.
Okay, so some of you, some of you understand that when someone
tells you not to do something in our flesh, it makes us want to
do it more.
Some of you might say, well, that's not me.
Well, in some cases in our life, what happens is that we focus
so much on the thing that we don't want to do or that we can't
do, so that we're so focused on that it's all we can think about.
It's all we're focused on.
And when we're focused on that, you know what?
We're not focused on doing the things that God has called us to
do.
We're focused on just not doing this, not doing this.
I can't do this.
This is bad.
And he says, when we live in the flesh, when we live by the law,
we are inevitably always going to be turning back to that.
That sin if that's all we're focused on.
It's like, you know, we're showing a child how to ride a bike,
right?
We say, okay, get on the bike.
And what we're going to do is we want you just to ride down this
road, but don't hit that tree.
Whatever you do, don't.
Do not go towards that tree.
Do, do, do not hit that tree.
If you hit that tree, you're going to be hurt, okay?
It's going to be bad.
It's going to be the worst thing that you could ever do.
You know what's going to happen is that child might start
saying, okay, I don't want to hit that tree.
So I'm going to start focusing on that tree.
Well, if any of you ever have ridden a bike, especially in the
early stages, whatever you're looking at is the way you're going
to go.
And so that child might be on the bike and, okay, I don't want
to hit that tree.
I don't want to hit that tree.
That tree's bad.
And he's looking at that tree, and all of a sudden he's going to
start going towards that tree.
Because when we focus on the sin that we're supposed to stay away
from, sometimes when we're in our flesh, that's all we can think
about, and that's where we're going.
He says, no, the law always brings the motion to sin.
The law is always going to bring you to the sins that you're
trying to avoid.
Why?
Because that's all we can think about.
We just try to think about working harder.
I've got to work harder.
I got to get up earlier.
I got to do all these things.
Got to make sure I don't think about this.
Don't think, Tell.
Tell yourself not to think about something constantly.
What are you going to start doing?
Thinking about the thing that you're telling yourself not to think
about.
Right.
We tell our kid, we, you know, let's say we, we have a, a jar of
cookies at our house and we say, okay, kid, don't eat those cookies,
whatever you do.
They're the best cookies by the way.
You're going to enjoy it, but don't, don't eat it.
That say no, no, we're, we're, we're causing, we're, we're setting
them up for failure right now.
The law is not a bad thing, by the way.
A lot of people think that people teach that we should just
destroy the law, tear the law away.
No, the Bible says that Jesus came to fulfill the law.
The law shows us what the standard is.
The law shows us what God intends to be good.
Now there are certain aspects of the ceremonial law and the dietary
law that we believe in the New Testament that God abolished.
But God never abolished the moral law and the concept of the
importance of it.
Right?
Thou shalt not kill.
I think that's an important thing to think about.
Think that shows us the heart of God.
But what the Bible is telling us in the New Covenant is that the
law can never save us from the problem of sin.
It can only show us what sin is.
Think about it from this perspective.
We can put every law in this country, we do, we have a law in
this country not to kill people.
Right.
Last time I checked, murder, murdering is against the law.
Does that stop anyone from murdering?
It stops some people from murdering people.
But, but it doesn't stop everyone from murdering people.
We know that.
Just look at the news.
Look at the news.
There's hate in this world.
There's murder.
People are being gunned down in broad daylight.
So the law doesn't stop an individual.
Why?
The law just shows us what's wrong.
But the law can't fix a heart.
We can, we can make a thousand more laws in our country.
More and more laws, more and more laws.
That's still not going to change the heart of man.
Going to tell you, hey, I'm all for laws that are for good things.
I, I, I'm all for laws that reflect the goodness of God in accordance
to his word.
But we all know that if we just throw more laws out there in
this world, it's not going to make people change their hearts.
So what is he saying here?
He says the law doesn't change the heart.
The law just shows us what's good and bad.
So some people might follow the law for other reasons.
There are some people that don't speed because they don't want
to pay for the ticket.
It's not a moral thing, right?
Sometimes we don't.
Sometimes we don't do things because we just are afraid of what
might come.
It's a selfish thing.
It's not a matter of a moral conviction that we have in our hearts.
So what does he say here?
He says, there might be some people that can look good from the
outside, but the law will never change the heart.
He says the law is, is not going to bring us to anything.
It's going to bring us just back to the motions of sin.
So what's the answer?
Just think about.
Just don't think about sin.
No, he says, remove the what.
What we believe is the necessity to think about the evil
and replace that with good.
What does he say?
How do we find good?
Well, verse four.
You are married to another.
I'm married to my wife.
We had our marriage night last night here at the church.
It was awesome.
It was a good time.
Some of you that are there, you had some good laughs.
We had a good time just fellowshipping with one another.
I had a great time being with my wife.
If I'm married to my wife, I'm not married to somebody else.
If I'm truly walking in fellowship with my wife, I don't
say, hey, honey, I'm gonna go and, and spend time with this other
person and have a good time with her and love her.
That's, that's not me walking in fellowship with my spouse.
If I'm married to my spouse, it's all for her.
It's, it's.
It's to edify her.
It's to build her up, to show her love.
I don't want my affection to be stolen by anybody else.
That's what's happened.
That's what he says here.
He says, you're no longer married to the law anymore.
You're married to Christ.
So therefore, the answer to the sin problem in your life is not
just trying to follow more rules.
The answer is being more devoted to the one who you are connected
to in salvation.
And that's Jesus Christ.
It's growing to know him more.
So the more we know him, the more we love him, the more we want
to please him, the more we want to serve him, the more we won't
want to do those sins.
And so it's that idea that I. I want to die to those things in
my life.
I want the Spirit to guide my life.
I don't want the flesh to dictate to me what I wanted before.
I want to have The Spirit dictate to me what my new desires
are in Christ Jesus.
And so therefore, he says here the answer to the sin problem in
our world, the answer to all the things that we look into our
culture and say, this is sinful.
This is evil.
Right.
I'm just going to say marriage.
The definition, the biblical definition of marriage is under attack
today.
It has been for many years.
And we're seeing the fruit of not defining marriage as God defines
it.
Identity is being defined in this world today by culture.
And what culture is going to tell us is that we can be whatever
we want to be.
God designed you wrong, and so you can just go be whatever you want
to be.
Do you see now the fruit of that movement, the fruit of selfishness,
the fruit of trying to do it our way, trying to define things
our way is always going to be punishment.
It's going to be separation.
It's going to be darkness.
It's going to be confusion.
We live in a world today that there's so much confusion, people
are confused about who they even are.
A Christian cannot be confused because God is not the author of
confusion.
We might have temporary lapses of confusion of something that we're
dealing with in our life.
Last night, after the marriage night, there was a leak over in the
building.
And obviously we got to take care of the leak.
We got to figure it out.
And all the guys are looking at it, and I'm.
I'm like, I don't know anything about this, but I'm going
to pretend like I do.
I'm going to start looking at that pipe and go, oh, yeah.
Yep.
That's.
That's your problem right there.
Yep.
I'm not talking about that type of confusion.
I was confused.
I'm like, I don't know.
Water's dripping.
Figure it out.
They figured it out.
We had some smart people at the church.
That's good.
That.
Not that type of confusion.
I'm talking about confusion of who.
Who am I?
What's my purpose?
What defines me as a human being?
You know what?
When we remove the value of life, when we reduce the value of
life to what does that person bring us?
We all going to have different opinions.
Right.
If that person isn't making me happy, they have no value anymore.
And we're seeing the product of that.
We're seeing the product of when we look into the world and say,
well, my law is the law of the land.
And the law of the land is this.
If you're not bringing forth any productivity, you're out.
You're bad.
I don't want you anymore.
I'm going to write you off.
Why do we believe that people have value?
Why is there sanctity of life?
Why do we want to preserve life and protect life?
Not because, hey, they're valuable to us, so we're going to
protect them.
I agree with them.
We're going to protect them.
No, what do we do?
We believe in the value of life because the word of God says
that every individual that is born is in the image of God.
Born in the image of God, marred by sin.
Never perfect, but there's value to that.
When, when we say that this person is an inconvenience to me,
and we look at individuals that say, well, you know what?
We're just going to terminate life because that person's not.
That.
That's going to be an inconvenience to me.
That's saying, my life, my value is more valuable than that
person.
The truth is, is that every life is valuable.
And when we live by the law.
So the law of the land, the law of the land says it's okay.
Oh, then it's okay.
No, because we don't live by the law of the land.
We live by the truth of God.
And so if we want to see our culture change, we don't just make
more laws.
That, that's a, that's an immediate step.
That's a, that's an initial step to the flesh.
And I'm saying, okay, fine, but if we want to see true change
in our world, what brings that, we'll go to that.
Verse 6.
But now we are delivered from the law that being dead, wherein
we were held that we should serve in newness of spirit.
Newness of spirit.
Now how do we receive the newness of spirit salvation?
The gospel of Jesus Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
comes through faith in him.
So if we want to see people truly change their life and have
a new identity, a new direction, a new sense of morality
that comes through a change of heart, that is changed through the
Spirit.
A heart of stone toward a heart of flesh.
Folks, we have to be presenting the gospel.
We have to be preaching the gospel.
We have to be living the gospel unashamedly.
By the way, there are so many people today that are afraid to speak
the truth because of the outcome that might come through that.
We can't be afraid to preach the gospel.
We speak the truth in love, but we cannot be afraid to preach
the gospel.
The gospel is the first thing.
Jesus is the answer.
And so he Comes here and he says, okay, Christians, you want
to see spiritual growth.
It's not by the law.
It's not by following a list of rules.
All right?
I could sit here today and say, hey, you know what?
To be a good member of Middletown Baptist Church.
Here's your list of rules, okay?
This whole book here.
Read this book and go home.
Okay?
Let's pretend this book doesn't say living hymns.
Let's say this book says the rules of Middletown Baptist Church
written by Pastor Josh Massaro.
And I said, okay, these are all the things that you have to follow
to be a good Christian.
That could be something that you could try your best to follow,
but none of us could probably follow perfectly.
There could be things in here that are my preferences.
There could be things in here that don't matter in the grand scheme
of eternity, but I think they're important for you to grow.
No, that is not how we change hearts.
How we change hearts is we lead people to Christ and we say,
hey, you know what?
Let the Holy Spirit change your life.
I can only lead you to the truth.
And so that's what Paul is saying here.
He says, you want to see spiritual growth?
Don't just try harder.
Rely on God more.
Trust in him more.
It's that change of heart.
It's that change of spirit.
So verse six, he says, we.
What are we serving in?
We're not serving in.
I have to do this or someone's going to get upset.
That's the oldness of the letter of the law.
He says, no, we serve in the newness of spirit.
Folks, if you're challenged in your life to do the things that God
has called you to do, whether it be serve, whether it be read the
Bible, whether it be praying, whether it be loving others, forgiving
others, it's not a matter of trying harder.
It's a matter of trusting in him more.
It's not about trying.
It's about trusting.
If I trust God enough, I will allow him to direct me in my life.
I will trust what His Word says.
I will trust when it says that, you know, what, I'm to love
my neighbor as myself.
Well, that sometimes doesn't make a lot of sense.
So am I willing to trust what the word of God says, or am I going
to be willing to trust what I think is the best answer?
Am I going to be willing to trust what the world says about marriage,
what the world says about sanctity of life, what the world
says about identity, what the world says about someone being good
or evil?
No, I'm going to trust what God says about it.
Because you know what?
People will fail me.
Media will fail me.
My family could fail me.
The Bible says that that's the case.
You know who's the one person that will never fail you?
That is Jesus Christ, your Savior, the one who took you out
of bondage and moved you to marvelous lights.
So here this morning.
Justification, sanctification.
How are we justified?
We're justified through Christ, faith in him.
How are we sanctified?
How do we grow through Jesus Christ?
It's not a list of rules that brings us to a place of spiritual
growth.
It's the newness of the Spirit, that we don't walk in that
sin anymore, that we don't walk in that letter of the law.
So Paul summarizes the theme of verses 1 through 5 and verse 6.
He says, we're delivered from the law, that being dead, wherein
we are, we are held that we should serve in newness of spirit
and not in the oldness of the letter.
So how do you serve in the newness of the spirit?
Well, we don't serve sin.
We don't serve legalism.
It's not devotion to a person, it's not devotion to a pastor, it's
not devotion to a movement.
It's a devotion to Jesus Christ.
And so it's unfortunate that churches over many years have used
fear to motivate people for doing good.
Control is sometimes easier, right?
If we can control people by causing fear in their life and following
rules, that so should never be the fear of man.
It's the fear of God that drives us to Him.
So, so if I get up here and I say, know what?
I'm going to be very upset with you if you guys don't show up
to this event on Saturday where we have a big service event
in our community.
And if you guys don't show up, I'm going to be really upset and,
and I.
And I'm going to really feel like you let me down.
That's control, right?
That.
That's putting guilt in people's minds.
That shouldn't be there.
So we are, we should be driven by fear, but not the type of fear
that that is.
We should be draw, drawn to God through His love and understand
that we fear him out of that respect.
Respect that awe, that powerful nature that, that who he
is and what he has done for us, that drives us to service.
Some of us have been tempted in our lives to say, you know what?
I'm burned out with church.
I'm Burnt.
I'm, I'm burnt out with service.
I'm burnt out with showing up to church.
I'm burnt out with all the things that are happening.
If we go back and we explore that trail of being burnt out, it
usually stems from something in our flesh because we never get
tired of God.
We shouldn't be getting tired of God.
We shouldn't be getting tired of his Word.
What we usually end up saying is it's because that person over
there said this about me.
And you know, if they don't want me to be serving here, that's
fine, I'm done.
Question is, who are we serving?
Who are we serving for?
I'm serving for Jesus Christ.
I don't care what you say about me.
If I'm serving for Jesus Christ.
I don't care if people accept me or like me because I'm serving
for the audience of one.
And what we can see here in this case is he says, hey, it's not
about just doing things out of, out of the motivation of fear
of others, the motivation of.
And I would even say this, the trap of success or acceptance that
people will think, I'm a good Christian.
You know what?
I think we should have a great testimony.
I think we should live for Christ.
But at the end of the day, there's what other people say about
me is not going to matter.
It's what God says about me.
I don't want to hear well done, thou good and faithful servant
from anybody else outside of my Savior.
And that's really the goal.
That's the motivation we serve out of that spirit.
So if some of you are dealing with that burnout right now, I understand
there's physical burnout.
I understand that.
I'm not talking about that type of burnout.
I'm talking about spiritual exhaustion.
If you're dealing with spiritual exhaustion right now, go
back to what he says here.
Don't do things just because that's what we're told to do.
Do it because God has called you to do something.
I have a lot of people come and ask me, pastor, what should I
do in this situation?
And there's some situations that hey, frankly, there's no Bible
answer for.
The Bible answers for is, how is God calling you?
Where is God leading you?
Where's the conviction?
Where's the comfort?
Where's the open door?
Where's the closed door?
We have to, as Christians know that it's more than just being spoon
fed.
Answers, well, what is, what does the Bible say about this?
Well, the Bible might not Mention the iPhone.
But the Bible mentions principles of how we're supposed
to interact with media, right?
And so as a pastor, what's my role?
My role is not to get up here and say, all right, here's the letter
of the law.
Here's the letter to the law.
That would be easier.
That would be easier in our fleshly sense, because I can keep
tabs on everybody, but I can watch what you're watching at home
when you're by yourself.
I. I can't control what you're thinking in your mind and what you're
believing in your hearts.
I can't follow you everywhere you go and say, oh, that's wrong,
that's wrong, that's wrong.
No, no, no, no, that's not good.
And it might only be something that God sees you doing in your life.
And so the reason why we do what we do at Middletown Baptist
Church is not so that we can keep up appearances.
The reason we do what we do is so that people can come to know Christ.
My role as a pastor is not to spoon feed you answers constantly,
even though there are times in our life where people have spiritual
questions.
And I need to give spiritual answers as a pastor.
But there's.
I use this example in our Bible study here this morning, this
past week.
Micah's.
Micah's a. Micah is a picky eater.
Okay, just gonna say that.
He's not in here.
Don't tell him I said that.
Okay.
Mike is a picky eater.
So we're like, okay, you gotta start eating some.
You gotta start eating some real food, Sonic, you gotta start
getting stronger.
You're playing football now.
You're doing all these things.
You gotta start eating.
So he says, all right, dad, I'm gonna try a steak.
So.
Steak.
All right, all right, we're gonna try a steak.
All right.
So we're at a restaurant.
I'm like, oh, man.
He's gonna.
He's gonna buy the steak and not eat it.
But that's okay because I would have eaten it if he didn't
eat it.
But what did he do?
He grabbed that steak and he's like, all right, I've watched dad
do this a lot of times.
So he grabs his steak knife and he grabs his fork and he starts
cutting into it, taking.
Am I doing it right, dad?
I'm like, yeah, I did do right.
Make sure they're cut right.
And he ate the whole steak.
And he was like, I did it.
I did it.
I ate it.
It was great.
I love it.
I'm like, good, we Got new food.
You can eat now.
It's going to cost dad a lot of money to eat that every time.
So we're gonna.
But no, he did it.
And, but, but Silas was sitting on the other side of the
table.
Silas is not even two years old yet.
I didn't hand him a knife and go, son, start cutting up the steak.
He would have probably done other things to that knife.
He probably would have thrown that knife.
I don't know.
Do you see at that point, like, the way that Micah could understand
eating that and grow?
He watched, he watched dad do it.
And there was a time and a place where he needed to be spoon
fed.
But as his physical growth happened, there was time in his life
where he's like, okay, I can start doing this.
I can start figuring this out.
I can start being more, more independent in that sense.
But what we can see as Christians is that so many times
within our culture, people are just wanting to be spoon fed, bottle
fed.
And there is a time and a place for that.
A new Christian needs to be bottle fed.
But there is a point in time in our spiritual life that we can't
just give you a list of what it means to be a Christian.
It's about having the Spirit guide my life.
And as you get older and as you become more mature and you are
growing in that sanctification process, you able to discern things.
I. I'm totally fine with someone coming up to me and say,
pastor, should I listen to this speaker, this person on YouTube?
I'm fine with giving you advice on that.
But there's a time and a place, maybe as we spiritually mature,
that we can identify those red flags in our own life as the Spirit
guides us.
Nope, that person's not good.
Because I've read the word.
I know that that's contradictory to what God's word
says.
I don't need pastor to tell me that that person's good or bad.
You.
Even though, again, let me preface that I love to help you with
that.
I'd love to do that.
So it's not saying I don't want to do that, but just as I don't
want to be feeding Micah a bottle for the rest of his life,
I want him to grow and I want him to trust and I want him to be
able to flourish in his relationship with God, just as all
of us should be doing.
And so that's what Paul's talking about in that sanctification
process.
I don't need someone else's approval.
I don't need a list of rules.
I use the Word of God, and I use the conviction of the Spirit
and the guidance of the Spirit to make decisions that honor God.
I serve in the motivation of newness of life and newness of Spirit.
And so here today, this is something that's dangerous for us
to preach in the church, but I think it's.
It's very important that we don't just preach.
Hey, it's a list of rules, but it's a.
It's.
It's following in a devotion to the Spirit.
Now, let me just retrack just a few moments here.
Let me just go back a few steps.
I'm not saying that the Word of God is not our guide.
Some people might be hearing me say, well, you're.
You're saying that there's not a list of rules.
So I don't have to live by the Bible.
No, but if the Spirit's guiding you, you will align yourself
with His Word.
The Spirit does not contradict himself.
The Spirit's living within me.
I'm not going to want to avoid the Word of God.
I'm going to want to be in it more.
You know, the remedy of wanting to read your Bible more is
to love God more.
Alicia wrote me love notes when we were in high school, and
I. I keep those to this day.
They're precious to me.
This is God's love letter to you.
And if you love him, you'll want to know what he told you.
You want to know more about Him.
Are you going to understand everything?
None of us do.
I'm a pastor.
I read my Bible every day.
I study His Word every week.
I still get to portions of scripture that I'm like, lord, give
me wisdom on this, because I have no idea what this is saying.
But that's okay, because he gives us that wisdom and he says,
ask of it, and he'll give it to us.
And so I'm going to tell you here this morning as we close.
The Spirit of God is a powerful tool.
It's a powerful way in our life to identify what we should do
and what we shouldn't do.
I'm going to say it's not just a powerful tool.
It is the tool for us to understand from the Word of God what
it means to walk in obedience to Him.
And so spiritual growth, just as salvation does not come from following
a law, because the law is only good till we.
Till we're dead.
The truth is, is if I just try to follow a list of rules, I'm going
to die.
And those rules are dead with it.
And I'm dead with it.
But if I want eternal life, what do I trust in?
Not the letter of the law.
I trust in the truth of Jesus Christ and the Gospel of Jesus Christ
that says when I believe in him in faith, when I trust in him
and him alone for my salvation, we when I trust in him
and him alone for my forgiveness and my eternal life,
that the moment that I trust in Him, I am dead to sin.
I am dead to the law.
And I'm born in Him.
I'm walking in newness of life in Him.
I'm walking in fellowship with him.
And he's the one that's going to stand before me and be the advocate,
to be the propitiation, the payment for my sin, so that one day
I don't stand before the law.
The only one who can stand before the law fallless, and that
is Jesus Christ is standing before me.
And he's the one that is going to stand before the law.
I want to read one last verse for you and then I'm done.
Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 10.
Hebrews chapter 10, verse 10.
Lest we think that it's anything more than the sacrifice
of Jesus Christ that gives us salvation and sanctification, let's
see what the Word of God has to say here.
And Hebrews chapter 10, verse 10.
We don't need to add to what Jesus has done.
We.
We don't need to infuse our own spin on things.
Many of you know that when Jesus was on the cross, he said a
statement.
He says, it is finished Tetelestai, which means it's like
the debt has been paid.
You don't have to pay any more debts.
Hebrews chapter 10, ver.
10 says, by the which will we are sanctified through the offering
of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
You don't have to keep getting resaved.
You don't have to keep trying to perform in the law.
It's a complete and total submission to the work of Jesus Christ.
So some of you might say this.
I'm confused now, Pastor.
You're telling me to live a righteous life, but you're telling
me that it's not about trying harder.
You're telling me to follow God's word, but it's not about the
letter of the law.
What I'm telling you is this.
The Word of God is God's complete, authoritative guide for
faith and practice.
Faith and practice.
Not just what we believe, but what we do.
But if we reduce this down Just to a letter on a page, we're
missing the spirit of what God's trying to teach us.
He's trying to teach us this.
This is how you follow me.
But we don't worship this.
We worship Him.
This is His Word to us.
And so if we try to go to this without going to him, we're missing
the point.
It's going to seem crazy.
It's going to seem.
It's going to seem unreasonable.
It's going to seem too burdensome.
So he says it's not about keeping this.
Because the Hebrews says more about this.
He says the blood of bull and goats cannot completely save us.
Animal sacrifice cannot keep saving us over and over and over
again.
The Bible says it's that once for all sacrifice in Jesus Christ.
And so if you want to grow in his word, if you want to live a life
that's more righteous, that's a good endeavor.
But the way that we do that is not by trying harder, following more
rules, letting other people give us approval.
The way to live a righteous life is to live in the righteousness
of Jesus Christ and allow him to guide us, to allow him to convict
us, to allow him to allow us to walk in newness of life, walking
in his identity.
So, Christian, here's the action item this morning.
The action item is this.
What are you relying on in your life for spiritual growth?
Well, I've got my.
I do my morning devotions.
That's great.
But go deeper.
Why?
What is your morning devotion all about?
What's your motivation behind it?
I serve at the church.
Great.
What's your motivation behind it?
Is it the letter of the law?
Is it the fear of man?
Or is it the newness of the spirit?
You might say, well, you know what, Pastor?
I don't have the opportunity to serve the way I used to serve.
That's okay.
Maybe physical ailments or circumstances in your life have allowed
you to not get to a place that you used to be in.
That doesn't mean that your spiritual life goes back.
It just means that God has me in a different capacity in a different
way.
But God still calls me to walk in fellowship with him.
If a church is all about what we can get from you, that's the wrong
point.
The wrong point is this.
Hey, you know what?
You're bringing me value.
At church, you get honor.
The Bible says no.
The Bible says there's gonna be some people in the church that
have different seasons.
There's gonna be different opportunities.
But church is not about lifting up one individual Person,
that is the pastor.
The church is not lifting up a name, a program.
The church is about lifting up Christ and actually allowing the
other way around.
We lift up Christ as he lifts us up.
He's the chief cornerstone.
He's the sure foundation.
He's the head.
And so what we must do is have more Jesus and less of us, more of
the Word and less of what we would consider to be just people's
opinions.
I love people's opinions.
They're all different.
And that's okay.
But the idea would be this.
The only opinion that matters is what God believes.
And what we would say is this, Lord, what do you want from us?
And he says, you know what?
That is the ultimate goal for you to walk in fellowship with me
next week.
We're going to talk more about the law and the more about how sin
corrupts the law and.
And how we can, as Christians, deal with that struggle that happens.
Because some of you might say, you know what, Pastor, I want to
do good.
I really have good intentions.
But why do I just still struggle with that sin?
Well, I'm glad that you asked that, because Paul mentions that
next week.
Paul says, you know, there's things that I struggle with still,
because a lot of times people will think this, well, if I'm a Christian,
why do I still struggle with these temptations?
Why do I still struggle with sin?
Why do I still struggle with these thoughts?
Why do I still struggle with all this?
The Bible speaks of this idea of the spirit in the flesh, is they're
at war.
And next week we're going to talk about the true battle that we
all fight.
And Paul describes his battle.
And some of you might be shocked by what Paul says.
This idea that, hey, you know what?
I have this desire in the Spirit, I have this desire in the
flesh.
They're at war with each other.
How are we gonna rectify that?
So come back next.
We can see, because this is all the.
The big idea stuff in verses one through six.
And then Paul starts getting down to the minutia, the.
The very micro level of how this looks like within the Christian
life.
When we're warring against evil, when we're warring against
darkness, when we're warring against our own flesh.
How does that look?
And what do we rely on in that process?
And what do we have in forgiveness in him?
And he's gonna tell us more about that when we study Romans,
chapter seven next week.
But I'm going to ask for you, if you're able to stand with me.
Every head bowed, every Eye closed as the music plays this morning,
I want to ask you just a few questions about what we've talked
about here today.
The idea would be this.
Number one, what are you trusting in for your salvation, your.
Your justification?
How can you justify yourself?
Let me give you a little hint.
Biblically speaking, you cannot justify yourself.
You must have someone who is righteous declare righteousness in
your life.
And God doesn't overlook sin.
We know that God never can, never will never overlook sin.
But what he can do is he can look to his son Jesus and his perfect
sacrifice for us.
And when we trust in him, that is what justifies us.
That is why God can declare us righteous because of the payment
of Jesus Christ.
So this morning, I don't care if you've been a church member for
decades.
I don't care if you're someone who serves.
The true question I would ask you is, what are you trusting in
for your justification for your salvation?
It cannot be the law.
The law does not justify.
It cannot be my good works.
It cannot be the way that I look.
It cannot be where I sit on Sunday mornings.
It cannot be what ministry I'm in.
Matthew chapter 7 says, There was a bunch of people, there will
be a bunch of people to take the next step in your spiritual walk,
the next endeavor in your spiritual growth process.
And sometimes that takes faith.
Sometimes that takes sacrifice.
Sometimes that takes being able to say, you know what?
I no longer want to do those things.
I want to do the things of God.
Where is your desire this morning?
Question would be this.
If you're trusting in anything else outside of the grace of Jesus
Christ for the sanctification process, we're trusting in the wrong
things.
So maybe you just want to come to the Lord this morning and say,
lord, I'm sorry for trying to do this in my own strength.
I'm sorry.
I apologize for trying to be a good person in my own flesh and try
to keep some type of law that maybe I've even created in my own
life.
Lord, I want you to be the one who grows me, who changes me, who
gives me that place of spiritual maturity in my life so
that I can show others what it means to have that spiritual growth.
Lord, I pray that you be in this time of invitation, working
hearts and lives speak to us this morning through your word, through
the conviction of the Spirit, through the guidance of the Spirit.
Lord, I pray that we can follow you, Lord, not follow anything
else outside of your grace and your forgiveness and your love and
your comfort and your guidance.
So, Lord, I pray that you be in this time of invitation.
We thank you for your love and grace.
Jesus name.
Amen.
As the music plays, some have already come.
Follow as the Lord leads here this morning.
Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church
podcast.
I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.
If you would like to find out more information about our church
or this sermon can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find
us on Facebook or YouTube.
You can also email me directly at Josh Massaroiddletownbaptistchurch
dot com if you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and follow
along for future podcast and updates.
Thank you so much.
God Bless.
Have a wonderful day.