The Law is Not the Problem, Sin Is

, well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans 7 for Our time of study, In the word this morning, we're, we're doing a verse by verse study through Romans 567, and 8. This is a journey that we are taking to the heart of the gospel. And I don't know if there's any other section of scripture that is more loaded with like gospel thinking than we find here in these four chapters. These are chapters that have meant a lot to me over the years.

And I wanted to do a series through these chapters because of what I have come to understand from them that have meant so much to me, but I also wanted to study through these chapters because I really want to understand them, and there's a lot about these chapters that I did not feel like I had a great enough understanding of. And so what a journey it's been just taking me and all of us deeper in our understanding of these wonderful things that are true. of us. And as we, study through this section, we come this morning to Romans chapter 7, verse 7, and we'll be looking at verses 7 to 13 this morning.

And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it's different than, maybe what's in your bulletin. By the way, there is an insert that's in your bulletin. that you can use to follow along this morning, but the title could be The Law Is Not the Problem, sin is. The Law is not the Problem.

sin is, that is essentially Paul's burden in verses 7, through, 13. let's, set things up this way., let's start off by having you imagine something. I want you to imagine that you are a parent and that you have a child, which I guess most parents do, and And that your child has gotten to know a new friend that your son or daughter is now spending a lot of time hanging out with. Let's call this friend Lawrence.

And I don't mean to offend anyone whose name might be Lawrence. I just, the first three letters of that name is L A W for law, OK, isn't that clever? But imagine that your son or daughter has developed this very close relationship with Lawrence, but you notice that, your child is beginning to change. And you notice that Lawrence seems to have a certain and growing effect upon your son or daughter.

You observe that Lawrence and the relationship your child has with Lawrence seems to be causing sin to increase in your child. it seems that Lawrence has a way of arousing sinful passions in your son or daughter, and just whenever Lawrence comes around, it just seems that sin springs to life. In your child. If you observe that happening, just a couple of questions for you.

First of all, what would you conclude in terms of how to interpret what is happening in this relationship? What would you conclude or decide is the source of the problem? Would you decide, well, Lawrence is the problem. My child is a good, good son, good daughter.

They would never do these kinds of things were it not for the influence of Lawrence. So Lawrence is the problem. Or would you conclude that maybe the problem is with your child, or maybe it's a combination of both. So how would you interpret what's going on, number one, but then the second question would be, what would you do about that relationship?

Well, I suspect that all of us here who care about the holiness and the godliness of our children would feel very strongly the need to step in. And either bring this relationship completely to an end, or at least step in, intervene, and significantly alter the nature of the relationship. Correct? I think we would all do one or two of those things, and this hypothetical scenario that I've just painted is, is really exactly the situation that God had on his hands looking upon us outside of Christ.

Everything that I've just described that Lawrence did to your hypothetical child, Paul says that's the effect that the law was having. Upon us and has upon all mankind. In Romans 5:20, we learned that the law came in so that the transgression would increase. The law actually has the effect of causing sin to increase.

Romans 7:5, we learned last week that our sinful passions are aroused by the law, and we'll observe today that when the commandment came, sin became alive. Sin just snapped to life. It sprang to life as the commandment approached. And so this is the effect that the law has upon those who are living under the law.

And what we began to see last week in verses 1 through 6 is that one of the most wonderful things that makes the gospel truly good news is that we have been delivered from the law. We have been delivered from the dominion. Of the law. We're not gonna rehash verses 1 through 6, but let me just point out how relentlessly Paul is trying to make this case.

in verse 2, he says, released from the law, verse 3, freed from the law, verse 4, made to die to the law. Verse 6, release. from the law, verse 6, having died to that by which we were bound, speaking of the law. Paul is going to great lengths here to speak to us about the fact that when we became believers in Jesus, not only were we delivered from sin, and the dominion of sin, but we were also delivered from the law and delivered from the dominion of law.

Now let me redefine law for you. You'll see this on your insert that's in your bulletin, and I'll, I'll show this to you also on the screen. We're going to add one element to the definition of law, and that is that law, as Paul speaks of it in Romans 7 and often elsewhere, is this. It is the written commandments of God.

couched within a system of blessings and cursings, and standing with God based on one's performance. So it's the commandments and the prohibitions of God that are delivered to us within a system. of promised blessings and promised cursings, and right relationship with God based upon one's performance, or right standing with God based upon one's performance and obeying. Those commands.

That is what Paul is speaking of, I think, when he uses the word law in Romans 7, and his point in Romans 7 is that God has delivered us from this dominion of this law, of this system of commandments couched within a system of blessings and cursings and right standing with God that's based upon our performance. That's what we have been delivered from the system. Of law. Well, having made this case to us, In verses 1 through 6 that we've been delivered from the law, and then he even talks about how that we in verse 5, our sinful passions were aroused from the law.

Paul is speaking of the law in such a way that raises in verse 7 a very logical question that I think just about anyone who's thoughtfully reading his words would be inclined to ask, and that is this What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Well, Paul, if, if we got to be delivered from the law and it arouse sinful passions in us, does that mean that the law, therefore, is a bad thing? That's a legitimate question, because he takes the time to answer it.

He says in verse 7, he says, what shall we say then? Is the law sin? Look at the text in verse 7 may it never be. So he says here, the law is not sin.

And then jump to verse 12. He says, So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. And then in verse 13, twice he refers to the law and its commandments as something that is good. So in this passage, he's trying to say the law is not sin.

And it's not even something that's neutral, but not sin. The law is an active, positive good. The law is holy, it is righteous, and it is good. And so we're left with the question of how can the law be righteous, holy, and good, and yet be something that we need to be delivered from.

That's the question. And so in verses 7 to 13, Paul has a few goals. Two of them is to explain, number one, how the law can be both good and something that we needed to be delivered from. He's going to explain that in this passage, and in the process he's going to explain.

The relationship of the law to sin, the relationship of the law and sin within us and how that works and how it is that the law is something good. And yet it has an aggravating effect upon our sin problem. And so we're going to frame things this way as we work through these verses. There are 4 facts or truths that Paul is going to give to us in order to explain the role that the law plays with regard to our sin problem.

Fair enough? Does that make sense? You tracking so far? OK.

here's the first truth or the first fact that he gives to us, beginning in verse 7, regarding the law and its relationship to our sin problem, and that is that God uses the law to give us understanding. Of our sin, God uses the law to give us understanding of our sin. What is the relationship of the law to our sin problem? Well, first of all, God Himself actually having delivered the law, actually uses the law as a tool to help us to understand the fact of our sin problem and the magnitude of our sin problem.

Look what he says in verse 7. He says, What shall we say then? Is the law sin? May it never be.

On the contrary, he's saying, Here's a good thing about the law. I would not have come to know sin except through the law, for I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, you shall not covet. He's going to elaborate on this, but what he's saying right now, at this point is that the law is specifically given, specifically crafted and designed by God as a means by which we can understand ourselves as a means by which we can understand and be able to quantify our basic sin problem.

And it provides for us a vocabulary.

That we can use in terms of giving expression to our sin problem. One writer says this, the, you think about it, apart from the law, all of us, if, if the law never existed, we would all be living from day to day with a sense that something's wrong with us, but we wouldn't have the vocabulary or the ability to even be able to quantify that, right? But the law is given to provide that vocabulary and to provide a framework for this understanding of ourselves. One writer says this The law stands in a similar relationship to sin as a physician does to illness.

The patient may sense a loss of vitality. The patient, I've not been feeling well lately. I need to go to the doctor. But not until the disease is diagnosed does the patient know the full extent of the problem.

The diagnosis, of course, is not the illness. Nor did it cause the illness, but neither can it cure it. Does that make sense? So someone is sick, they go to the doctor.

The doctor identifies what the problem is, and the doctor provides vocabulary and an understanding for that person to be able to understand what's going on in his or her body. But that person having received that diagnosis doesn't say thank you very much, doctor. I feel better now, and then go home and think that he or she is cured simply because a diagnosis has been delivered, right? Neither does the patient go home mad at the doctor for giving him the illness, right?

So the doctor's not giving the illness, nor is he curing the illness, but he is diagnosing and providing an understanding to the patient of the illness, and that's basically the role that the law plays. Paul says, I, I would have never come to know sin were it not for the framework of the law that helps me with that. And then he says, I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, You shall not covet. and Paul is referring to the 10th commandment of the 10 commandments as we call them.

And just for the sake of understanding the law about which Paul speaks, let's just take a minute to review what the 10 Commandments are and let me show you these on the screen. We find these in Exodus as well as in Deuteronomy. And here's what the 10 Commandments are. Never have any other God before me.

Never make or worship an idol, and by the way, let me say something about never. Like in Hebrew, in the Hebrew language, there were two negative particles that would be attached to the beginning of a negative command. There was a particle that's pronounced L. and that's called immediate prohibition, meaning right now, don't do that.

So if I were speaking Hebrew and my wife is fixing dinner, we're 5 minutes away from eating dinner, and one of my kids is going into the kitchen to grab some cookies out of a cookie jar. I would deliver this immediate prohibition. I would say don't touch those cookies. Don't eat those cookies.

I am not saying never eat those cookies. I'm saying right now at this time, do not eat those cookies. You can later after dinner, right now don't. So I would use the L particle for immediate prohibition.

That's not what God uses in these 10 Commandments. He uses the particle which is pronounced low, which is permanent prohibition. God is saying never have any other God before me. It's a command.

It's a life command. It's basically live your whole life and never ever put anything before me. It's a life command. A permanent prohibition.

Never make or worship an idol. This is a life command. Live your whole life in such a way that at the end of your life, you will be able to look back and say that you never once did this. Never take God's name in vain.

He's not saying try not to do this, or try not to do it as much as other people around you, or, or it's OK if you fail a few times. No, the standard by which human beings will be measured is did you live your whole life and never once take the name of God in vain. You see, a failure to obey this command, never take God's name in vain. If you fail one time, it's a whole life failure.

You have failed to live a life. Having never taken God's name in vain. Remember the Sabbath, honor your father and your mother, and then here come more prohibitions, never murder. And John says anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.

So embodied in this is never hate. Jesus applies this to anger. Never be angry against somebody or hate another person. To do that is tied to the sin of murder.

Live your whole life and never murder anyone in your thoughts or in your deeds. Also, never commit adultery. Never commit adultery. Live your whole life in such a way that you will never one time commit adultery.

Jesus applies this to our thoughts. Even if you look upon a woman with lust for her, you've already committed adultery with her in. Your heart. Jesus would say, God is saying, live your whole life and in your thoughts or in your deeds, never, never commit adultery, never steal, never bear false witness, never covet.

This is the standard by which the human race will be measured. Did you live your entire life and never commit these sins? And see, the law begins, even the 10 Commandments. God is saying, I am the Lord your God who delivered you out of the land of Egypt.

He's saying to the children of Israel, what we realize is without the law we would have this sense something's wrong with us, but now that we have the law delivered to us by a lawgiver, by God who created us, and he delivers these kinds of commands to us, now we have an understanding. Of what our problem is. If God did not provide this for us, we would have been incomprehensible to our own selves. Pascal said this.

Certainly nothing offends us more rudely than this doctrine of sin. Yet without this we are incomprehensible. To ourselves. God says, here's my absolute standard, which means your sin, your failure to obey these is a relational failure.

You have disobeyed me. You have failed to live in the goodness of my heart as I've expressed it for your benefit and these laws. You have sinned against me, and the message of Scripture that confronts all of mankind is that everybody has sinned. Everybody has sinned and fallen short of truly appreciating the glory of God for who he is as a God and even the glory of God revealed in His, His law.

We need to grow accustomed to understanding ourselves in the context of law, in terms of quantifying our sin problem. We need to use the vocabulary that's provided here. We have people nowadays who know nothing of the written law of God, who go, 1st 23 decades of their life and they never open a Bible once. They've never heard the law declared, and so they have this sense something's wrong.

But they don't know how to quantify that. They have as much of an awareness of sin as maybe their religious ancestor might have had, but they don't know how to give expression of that and how to understand that and then what to do about it. And as one writer I was reading this week says, sometimes to make matters worse, such a person will go to a dictionary of psychology to try to understand what his problem is, and that only aggravates the problem. There are many resources that abound in our culture that are providing a different way for man to understand himself other than what's provided here in this grid that we call the law, and they'll attach different labels to what the Bible identifies as stealing and as murder and as immorality or adultery and lying and coveting.

Almost weekly, some celebrity's apologizing for something, right? Listen, read the apologies. I, I, I want some time to collect all of the apologies that I read and even this week, there was a celebrity that was apologizing and they're just so deft and skilled at like delivering an apology, but they're basically apologizing for people's response. To what they did, and you don't see this terminology.

That I've sinned. I've sinned against God. I have murdered with my actions. expressing a thought of anger and of hate, but we need to grow accustomed to that.

And Paul is saying that the law is a gift by God that provides a way for us to understand ourselves and to be able to quantify our sin problem. And once we arrive at that, Christ is the solution to that. But we're never gonna see Him as that solution. The solution won't fit the problem if we're not quantifying and understanding that problem correctly.

We need to allow the Bible to criticize us. And allow God to use His law to give us this understanding of ourselves. It's not an understanding we would prefer to have, right? It's, it's rude almost the way the Bible just confronts us.

Here's God's standard, and you've sinned against the law of God. You've fallen short of His glory, and therefore you deserve death. That doesn't make us feel good. But we need to allow the Bible to criticize us.

RC Sproul says this, he says at a visceral level, just almost a physiological level to where he feels the blows. At a visceral level, I cannot deny how acutely the scriptures criticize my own human character flaws and corruption. The Bible pierces my soul with its moral criticism. It criticizes me far more effectively than I can hope to criticize it.

I was just reading this week from another writer who was talking about there was a time in his life where he didn't even believe the Bible. He was reading the Bible more as a critic, but the deeper he got, it started criticizing him, and he ended up just submitting to that critique that the Bible provides, surrendering to that and then surrendering to the solution that is provided through Christ. Paul says, I'm not knocking the law. The law is a wonderful thing.

And it provides a way for us to understand and speak of and to be able to quantify what our basic problem is, and it is sin, sin against God, and therefore it's a death problem because the consequences of sin, the wages of sin is death. So that's the first thing he tells us by way of expressing to us the relationship of the law to our sin problem. There's a second thing though that he tells us. And that is that sin, though God uses the law, it came from God.

He uses the law to give us an understanding of sin, and that's a good thing. The second thing he wants us to know is that sin misuses the law to reproduce itself in us or to produce many different kinds of sin in us. God uses His law for a good purpose, but sin, sees that law and says, I can use this. And it takes that law up and sets up a base of operations inside the very commands of God.

Look what it says verse 8, but sin, taking opportunity through the commandment. That expression taking opportunity, it's like a military term meaning setting up a base of operations, setting up a military camp. It's almost like sin takes a particular command and it sets up camp inside that command and says I can use this and I'm going to launch my attacks from here. from this particular command or series of commands.

Sin taking opportunity through the commandment produced in me coveting of every kind, for apart from the law, sin is dead. Paul says, I myself was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive. He's probably referring to the fact that when he was a young man up to the age of 13, he was alive apart from the responsibility that was imposed upon him at whatever the equivalent of a modern day bar mitzvah was when he became a son of the commandment.

Around the age of 13, and that responsibility was now put upon him.

And he's now entering into this covenant, into this situation where there's promise, blessings and cursing and right standing with God, that's based upon his performance. When he assumed that responsibility when the commandment came on that particular season of his life, he says, I had high hopes for my life after that. But it seemed like when the commandment came, And was put upon me, sin became alive in me. One writer says, like, like gasoline, sin is something of a theoretical hazard until a match is struck and the match which ignited sin was the law.

Paul had this, these gaseous fumes just in his being and, and the law comes and it's like a match and sin just explodes inside of Paul. Paul says, that's my personal testimony. And it's a testimony of, of anyone who, apart from Christ would look at God's standards, God's 10 Commandments, and say, I'm going to live according to these, I can do this, I can do this. And And they try to obey the commands of God in their own strength.

And apart from Christ, they'll notice not only do they fail, but it seems like their life is more full of sin. than it ever used to be before they tried. Now it might seem weird to us to hear Paul say that sin uses the commandment. The commandment is good, but sin uses the commandment to produce sin in us.

And we can look at that and say, well, maybe there's a problem with the commandment, and Paul says, no, it's sin that's misusing the commandment. Probably the best way to go to understand this is first of all, to the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. Did that the devil quoted scripture to Jesus? I believe it's Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12.

And no doubt the devil looked at Psalm 91, 11 and 12, perfect, inspired scripture, and said to himself, I can use this. And he sought to use those verses in his endeavor to get Jesus to fall into sin. Then go to the Garden of Eden. God is speaking to Adam, and he says to Adam, of every tree that's in the garden here you may freely eat, but of the tree that's in the middle of the garden, you shall not eat.

There's a prohibition that God delivers, and And imagine the serpent. Hearing that prohibition, and snapping to attention like coming alive, like, what, I can use that. I can use that. Was there a problem with the prohibition?

No, it was from God. Absolutely perfect. It was the right thing. It was for Adam and Eve's ultimate good.

But the serpent decided, I'm going to make use of this prohibition. I will set up camp inside this prohibition, and I will launch my attack from here. John Stott says sin, the serpent. however you want to look at it, was in the garden even before man.

But God, or but had no opportunity of attacking men until the command, thou shalt not eat of it had been given. And the serpent comes to life as it were, and snaps to attention and lays hold of this perfect prohibition and says I can use this and sets up a base of operations and through that commandment, through that prohibition. The serpent launched his attack, and that leads to the third thing that Paul wants us to know, to help us to understand the relationship of the law to our sin problem, and that is that sin misuses the law to deceive us and kill us.

Sin misuses the law to deceive us and kill us.

Again, go back to verse 9. Paul says, I was once alive apart from the law. But when the commandment came, sin became alive, and I died. And this commandment, which was to result in life, as in God giving the command, it's, it's the love of God.

being expressed in those commands, saying, do this, and don't do this. God is expressing the goodness of his heart. And even God expresses in the Book of Deuteronomy, looking at the people of Israel, he says, oh, that there was such a heart in them that they would love me and obey my commands so that it might be well with them and with their children forever. That's the heart of God in giving these commands.

But he says in verse 10, but this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me, for sin, here we go again. Taking an opportunity through the commandment deceived me and through it killed me. We want to think carefully about what Paul is saying here because we all know sin deceives, right? We all know that.

But have we pondered specifically what he says here at the end of verse 10, that sin through the commandment deceives us. Sin doesn't just deceive us, it actually uses the commandment. Through the commandment, it deceives us. And that raises the question of how does sin deceive us through the commandment.

It takes the commandment and then launches its attack from there and deceives us with the commandment. How does sin do that? Well, there's probably more ways than this, but I just threw down 4 ways that sin actually uses the commands of God to deceive us, and the first is the most obvious one, and it's what we find in the garden, and that is that sin deceives us into suspecting God's motive in giving the command. Right?

So the devil will, the devil doesn't mind totally accurately quoting a particular command of God, but then he'll get us to suspect the motive of God in giving that command, and he'll say, God's keeping this from you because he's trying to hold you down. He doesn't want you to be like him. He doesn't want you to truly be actualized in your life and, and experience joy that you are entitled to. And if the devil If sin can get us to suspect the motive of God behind the command, then it can deceive us.

That's exactly what the serpent did to Eve. The serpent ends up conceding, OK, God did say this. But when God said, you will surely die, he's lying to you. And the only reason God gives you this command and delivers this threat is because God knows that in the day that you eat of this, you're going to be like him, knowing good and evil, and God's trying to hold you and Adam down.

And Eve ended up partaking of the fruit partly because she bought into the lie of sin. That caused her to suspect the motive of God behind The command. We honestly, we need to be honest about this, guys. I, I think at the root of all of our deliberate, willful, sinful choices, at the very bottom of it is a profound suspicion of God.

Does God really have my best interest at heart when he gives me his commands? Is he holding something back from me that I would be better off having? Whether we consciously ask those questions or not. Something of that sensibility lies underneath many of our acts of disobedience.

So sin will use the commandment. And deceive us through the commandment by deceiving us into suspecting God's motive in giving the command. But not everyone looks at a command and says, I'm going to flagrantly disregard this command and disobey it. So how does sin on other levels accomplish this deception?

Well, one of the ways that sin will deceive us through the commandment is to deceive us into thinking that we're doing well enough in keeping the commandment. So, God says, never, never steal. And Sen says, Well, you're, you're doing well enough. You're doing well enough.

You don't steal as much as other people, and you're not committing these kinds of theft. You can take pride in the fact that you're not doing these other things, but meanwhile, everyone's level of obedience to any of God's laws laws is woefully short of the perfect standard, but sin will deceive us into thinking we're doing well enough. Jesus basically quotes some of the 10 Commandments to the rich young ruler, and the rich young ruler says, Been there, done that. I've done all these things from my youth up.

Had he obeyed perfectly? No, he was deceived in thinking that he had done a great job, a sufficient job in obeying God's commands. And that's why Jesus, the, the first commandments are have no other gods before me. And Jesus says, I'm going to show this guy that he has not been obeying these commands.

And Jesus says, Go sell everything you have and then come follow me. So I'm the God of the universe standing right in front of you. You go sell everything you have, get rid of it all, and then you get me. And what did the guy decide?

He's like, no, I would rather have my money than you. He was disobeying. The first two commands of the 10 Commandments, but he had been deceived into thinking he was doing well enough. Read the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus says, Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you can't enter into the kingdom of God. The scribes and Pharisees looked at themselves and felt really good about their level of obedience to the law, because sin had deceived them into thinking that they were doing well enough. And they even came up with gimmicks to get around having to obey the law and gimmicks on how to get around having to honor your father and mother when they have financial needs.

Well, you can just pronounce the word Corbin over your stuff, and now it belongs to God and you don't have to help your parents with that.

They came up with all these ways around the law, but meanwhile, sin had deceived them into thinking that they were doing well enough. Jesus showed up on the scene and crashed their righteousness party. And showed them how woefully short they were falling. Another way that sin deceives us through the commandment is it deceives us into thinking that through our obedience to God's commands we can thereby control God.

This is a big one. That, if we, sometimes people look at the commands of God, and they're like, what, I will do these things, not because I love God, but deep in their hearts, they're trying to obey God's commands in an attempt to control God and Says do these commands and you can get what you want from God. You can get blessing from God and someone who comes to the law with this mentality, and they try to obey the law and they think they're doing well enough and therefore they think God owes them something.

God owes me blessing because of what I've done.

And, and, and I should not have adversity. I should not have hardships in my life. And then that person's living according to that standard. And then they just start noticing, wait a minute, I'm not being blessed to the degree that I feel like I'm worthy of.

And so now they're getting angry with God. And then, and we see this in the Old Testament in various places, such a person looks around at wicked people, and they're being blessed materially. And in other ways, it seems far beyond what they themselves are being blessed at. And they get angry.

And read Psalm 73. Asaph was a godly man, but he fell into this mentality of, I've been keeping my heart pure, God, I've been doing this, I've been doing that. I've been abstaining from these sins and trying to obey you. And I look at the wicked and how they prosper, and it makes me angry.

He says, during the season where he was thinking this way and angry at God, he says, I was like a, I was embittered. I was like a beast before God. I was so angry. Because it was obeying the law, he had allowed it to become a control thing.

If I obey, I'm entitled to blessing, and the people that are not obeying the law, God, I sure hope they don't get any blessing. Another way that sin deceives is it deceives us. And to being proud of ourselves and feeling superior to others because we can keep God's commandments better than other people. So a person's trying to obey the law of God and, and, and it seems like they're doing OK, but then they start feeling smug and superior comparing themselves to other people.

And that's a sin. So you see how sin just latches on to the commandments of God and just, it just complicates things. How many of you have read the story Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde? A few of you, I've been rereading that. novel by Robert Louis Stevenson because a lot of the language you find in there is similar to the language of Romans 7 and the battle that That the Dr. Jekyll character describes going on within him.

He, he just, it's remarkable. There was something of a Romans 7 sensibility that was informing Robert Louis Stevenson as he was just expressing, no doubt somewhat autobiographically, his battle with sin. But long story short, Dr. Jekyll had developed a potion that he thought would separate the good and the evil.

And that during the daytime that potion would allow him to be fully good without the hindrance of evil, but at night he could be fully evil without the constraints of conscience. And so he starts taking that potion, and it's such a thrilling, exhilarating thing to be Mr. Hyde, which was the evil side of him, but over, over time, he begins to act out in the Mr. Hyde character in ways that frighten him, horrify him, and long story short, he reaches a point where he's like, I can no longer take this potion.

This is gaining control of me. This is ruining my life, and And so he locks the potion away in a cabinet. He takes the key, throws it to the floor, grinds it into the floor to where he cannot get access to that potion anymore, and he just resolves, I'm going to be a good person. I'm going to make up for the bad stuff that Mr.

Hyde has done. And he says this, he says, I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past, and I can say with certainty that my resolve was fruitful of some good. And in his letter to a friend, he says, how earnestly in the last months of the year I labored to relieve suffering, and that much was done for others. So he's doing deeds of charity and and being kind and generous and just trying to live an upright life once again.

But then, He tells about very powerful moment in the narrative. He, he goes to a place called Regent Park and he sits on a bench in Regent Park. And he starts contemplating all the good. that he had done The way that helped other people and How he had been kind and generous and charitable.

He starts reflecting on all these good deeds. And listen, listen to this guy. He says, but as I smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my active goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect. At the very moment of that vainglorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and the most dreadful shuddering.

I looked down. I was once more Edward Hyde. Timothy Keller in his book, The Reason for God says this, why would Jekyll become Hyde without the potion? Like so many people, Jekyll knows he is a sinner, so he tries desperately to cover his sin with great piles of good works.

Yet his efforts do not actually shrivel his pride and self-centeredness. They only aggravate it. They lead him to superiority, self-righteousness, pride, and suddenly, look, Jekyll becomes Hyde, not in spite of his goodness, but because Of His goodness That's the deception of sin. Sometimes sin will use a commandment and say, God's holding out on you and just break this commandment and follow your own rules, and you'll find happiness and joy and pleasure that God's trying to keep you from.

But other times sin will try other deceptions and say, Keep this commandment. You're doing a great job. Look at you, compared to other people. And you're like, yeah, and you start comparing yourself to other people, feeling superior, you're criticizing other people in your mind.

You may even open your mouth and voice those criticisms because we all, we don't like to go around saying, hey, look at me, I've been doing this and this and this. But one of the ways that we do attract attention to ourselves, we'll just run other people down. And if we run other people down in our thoughts or in our words, Then that's, that's this very sin of superiority, pride and arrogance. Sin is very sophisticated, very nuanced.

And these are just 4 of the deceptions that sin will happily make use of. And if you in your life are living under the law, and you're like, I'm trying to please God, I'm trying to be righteous, I hope when I die, and I stand before God, he'll say, that's good enough, you can come in. If you're living under the law, God looks at you and he's like, I want to deliver you from this. Because as long as you are under the law, you are a slave to sin.

Sin is just going to chew you up and spit you out. And it'll use the commandment, you'll be so confused, you won't even know what's going on. Well, there's a final fact that Paul gives us, and we'll have to just mention this and then Wrap up that See, all of this that we've looked at, God's not up in heaven going, Oh, I wish sin didn't misuse my commands. I didn't anticipate this.

What do I do? No, it's all a part of the divine strategy. Look at this by abusing the law, the way that we've looked at, Sin overplays its hand and exposes itself for the awful thing it really is. Paul says, so then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Therefore, did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be. Rather, it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment, sin would become utterly sinful. God in His good providence allows this to happen, so that a person becomes so embroiled in these patterns of sin, that they see sin for the awful and ugly thing that it is.

They see their sin problem for the awful and ugly thing that it is. And they come to a place where they finally agree with the divine diagnosis of their problem, and they desperately come running to Jesus. That's God's plan. In Galatians, we learned that the law is a tutor that brings us to Christ.

It is a severe tutor. That brings us to Christ. But as we flee from the dominion of law to Jesus, As we're embracing Jesus and receiving salvation from Him, we hear someone clapping. Joyfully and we turn around and it's the law.

This is exactly what God commissioned me to do. And God in His sovereignty, just like we see throughout the Old Testament, He allows evil to commit suicide on itself just like at the cross. He allowed evil, as John Piper says, evil committed suicide at the cross. God did not just overcome evil at the cross, he used evil to overcome itself.

And that's exactly the dynamic of what's happening here in our own individual autobiography. So the law is good, righteous, and holy. And yet We learn here it shows us our sin. Sin abuses the law, but even in its abuse, that's within God's providence to show sin for the ugly, despicable thing.

That it is So if nothing else, guys, walk away and say, I do not want to live under the dominion of law. I want to live under grace. I don't want to get caught up in all this tyranny. As Paul says in Romans 6:14, sin shall not be master over you who believe in Jesus because you're not under the law, but you are under grace.

Let's pray together. If you're here today, and you've never put your trust in Jesus, if you've never fled from sin and even fled from the dominion of law, and given up this This battle, all these deceptions and the ways that sin is killing you and even using the law as an instrument of death, just run from that to Jesus. Talk to anyone around you, come up afterwards. I would consider it a wonderful honor to be able to.

To point you to Jesus and answer whatever questions you have. Let's pray together. We're going to take up an offering in just a moment. Just feel free to give as the Lord leads you.

To give Father, we thank you for the gospel. The gospel is, it's amazing, it's sheer genius. Lord, just as we're looking under the hood and looking at the intricacies of of sin and the law, and then how you use all of that to bring us to Christ and, and then the essence of what the gospel is and delivering us from sin and also from the law and why that is. Lord, thank you for this self understanding that you provide us.

An understanding of ourselves and our problem and an understanding of you and your grace and an understanding of the gospel in which we live and move. Keep our hearts open, Lord, take us deeper. In the coming weeks as we seek to understand these things. We thank you for the privilege of giving of our offerings to you, Lord, receive these funds, do much with them for the glory of Jesus.

We just commit ourselves to you, Lord, in the name of Jesus. And all God's people said, And then,