If you will, please turn in your Bibles to Romans. We're in chapter 7, beginning at verse 21, and we'll read through chapter 8, verse 2. Don't miss the glory and the text we're about to read that we will confess to the very things we don't want to do we will do. And then Paul segues into the fact that there is no condemnation for us. It's an amazing thing to read the Word of God where we confess our wretchedness and our uncondemnableness in the same breath. You hold in your hands the very words of God, verse 21. So I find this law at work when I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I find, so then I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. The grass withers in the flower spade to the Word of our God stands forever. The passage we read was drawn just a moment ago from Romans down strange, didn't it? Romans, chapter 7 and 8, instead of the gospel according to Luke, if you're visiting with us we've been in the study in the gospel according to Luke for over three years. Last Sunday we ended that study. We are not going to move into a study of Romans, at least I don't think so. This is a message. This is a subject which I've been trying to address in my own life and this is one of those mornings when one of these days I took a special privilege and said this is something with which I've been concerned in my life and so I'm preaching to myself this morning and on a subject which has been in front of me the last few weeks. Before we look at this passage I would encourage you to open your bibles. This is a powerful, powerful, profound passage, strong passage. Let's pray and ask the Lord who sput these words to Paul and who's here this morning that is the same Lord Jesus, the last ask Him to teach us. Our Father in heaven, nothing I say is going to change anyone here. Nothing I say can even cause Christians to grow in Christ and we cast ourselves helpless upon your grace. Our Father we desperately need to hear your voice in our lives and we need to hear your message and your gospel repeated in our lives. Father we pray that Jesus Christ will speak to us in the next few minutes by the power of His Holy Spirit and that we will adore. We will hear the gospel and be strengthened or maybe hear the gospel really for the first hand and be changed in Jesus' name. How do you keep the fire burning? Burning out the legacy, praying for a friend or neighbor who is not a professing Christian or who is unchurched, reaching out to that person and bringing them to a worship charged by the Holy Spirit. Last January when we talked about doing that we focused last January about praying for someone in our lives that was not a Christian and said I'm going to pray daily for them. I want to bring them before the throne of grace daily and now we're talking about okay we invite someone with us, we don't tell them about Christ, we just invite someone to church. I hope you'll sign that place to do that, don't make a huge difference if you do in your life as you see you bring someone you expose into the gospel and just see what God does. But those two actions whether it's praying or inviting someone those two actions have a presupposition and we talked about that presupposition last January. The presupposition is this, that we will only persevere in prayer like that, that we will only persevere in seeking someone out and bringing them will only do that because there's a spiritual fire within us. It was something about being an Ole Miss yesterday. What's the presupposition that you're there and you're stomping your feet and you're yelling until you lose your voice for Ole Miss? What's the presupposition? And don't say and almost even don't go to Ole Miss don't say I can say don't raise your hand, you wouldn't say nice things. What's the presupposition that they are turned on about Ole Miss? Well thanks, how do you keep the fire burning for Christ? When we are spiritually athargic, when we are dominated by selfishness, materialism, hedonism and sexual immorality, the truth is we're not going to be zealous in our prayers for someone who is without Christ. We will not care about the people around us that are lost, we'll not be eager to expose them to Christ. That's the problem, how do you keep the fire burning in the face of our own personal sin? And that is a gigantic problem. Paul was addressing that very problem in the passage we read this morning. Look at verse 21, so I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. But go back to Romans 7 and 15. I do not understand what I do for what I want to do, I do not do and what I hate I do. Now folks, there are Christians in preach and teach and imagine that in the Christian life we can reach some kind of moral nirvana where we don't struggle with sin. This passage destroys their thesis because here is Paul, a writer of scripture, the great missionary, an apostle, and yet he is still engaged in a struggle with personal sin. These folks who are striving to reach some kind of moral perfection in this life, to at least come to a point, and there's Christians all over. There was a friend of mine who kept coming to me and coming to me and coming to me, and it was strong. I keep struggling with his sin. I keep struggling with this sin. I keep struggling with this sin. And he said, I must not be a Christian. Why did he think that because he had heard a gospel preach to him that said, you reach some kind of moral nirvana where you don't struggle with. Here is Paul. And if anybody should have been beyond struggle on a apostle, you know of this conversion story. He saw Jesus himself. He had seen Jesus himself. He was an apostle, a writer of scripture, a great missionary, a great preacher, a great Christian. He taught theologian, and yet here he is crying out about his own struggle with sin. There are some people who just don't want to buy that. They want to say, Christians don't do that. And they try to twist this passion and say, well, Paul is talking about pagans, but he was not. He was not talking about when he was a pagan this page. He was talking about when he was a Christian. Look at verse 22. For in my inner being, I delight in God's law, and a pagans don't delight in God's law. They don't delight in Christ. That's what he was saying. I delight in Christ. I delight in Christ's way, and yet I do that, which I don't want to do, and that which I should do. I left undone. Only a Christian say, in my inner being, I delight in God's law. Paul had taught that the man without Christ, the man whose heart had never been changed, never, ever, ever delights in God's rule, and in God's way, and here he was, I delight in God's way. Paul was saying in this passage, there were two factions that worked within him as a Christian, the force of Christ who had invaded his life, and the force of the old sin nature, the remnant that was left within him, of sin, the force of Christ drawing him to the word of God and the way of God, the remnant of that sin nature that yearned to be free from Christ. This great missionary was just closing the inner workings of his own soul. There was a battle going on in sound. It didn't seem to be always powerful in presence. Go back into it. Evil is right there. What is evil is right there with me all the time. I wake up, it's there. I go to bed, it's there. I eat it's there. Wherever I am, there's always this nature to sin within me. He was saying in the presence of such sin, how do I keep the fire burning? He cries out, look at him in the middle of that verse, he cries out, who will deliver me from this body of sin? He wants to be free from it, he wants to have that body that he's going to have in heaven where there will be no power of sin at all, no inclination to sin, no power of sin. He said, who would deliver me from this life in which I'm living where sin is always present? So how did Paul keep the flame going? How did he keep from slipping into years of lethargy caused by the constant presence of sin? The message this morning is a one point message. However, I want to walk around that point and see it from different locations, see it in different ways. In the first and the last and the only point is this, God keeps the fire burning by continuing to bring the sinner to the cross. Now that doesn't seem like much to you but face this is huge. Let's look at it for a minute. Look at verses 24 and 25, what a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body of death and in existence. Thank you, God. It is through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who will rescue me from the daily pull of sin. I'm rescued through Jesus Christ. He just wasn't saying here now that I'm rescued for an eternity, you know, that I come once to Christ and it's all done and it's all done forever. Of course, that's true. If you're here in Christ this morning who died this morning, you would stand before God, you would stand before God pure and holy and just without sin because Christ did that. It means additionally at one point takes all of our sins but he's saying, who will rescue me from the daily pull of sin, it will pay Jesus Christ. What does he mean? How does Christ, how does the cross daily rescue us from that present power of sin? Remember that the chapter breaks in Scripture are not inspired. There's some about the Scripture being inherent this morning and infallible and it is. And those, the Scripture verses the numbers and the chapters were added later. And sometimes, quite honestly, they were added in bad, bad places, you're going on, it's right in the middle of subject and they changed the chapter and you think it's a new subject when it's not. The verses of chapter 8 are just a continuation of what Paul was saying at the end of chapter 7. Look at Romans 8 3. Well, what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sin nature. Paul did sending his own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. Now, where was he a sin offering? Where was Jesus, he was a sin offering on the cross as our sin and our guilt and our punishment fell on him? Now, you get the connection, I just want you to see it simple, I ran over this for years and I didn't see it. Get the connection. Paul is there struggling in his daily Christian life, who will deliver me from this body of sin? And where does he go? He goes to the cross. He begins to talk about the cross. You know, I began to look through scripture and this is consistent from Genesis to Revelation. How does God keep the fiber and God keeps the fiber burning in us by continuing to bring us to the cross? Let me ask you a question. Let's just let our minds run through scripture for a minute. In the Old Testament, what happened in the morning at the temple? There was the morning sacrifice for sin. What happened every evening in the temple? There was the evening sacrifice for sin. What happened all during today? Individuals brought sacrifices for their sin to the altar. Why were the sacrifices endless? Why were the endless? They were endless because everywhere the individual turned, everywhere the nation of Israel turned. There was sin in their lives. There was the morning sacrifice. There were sacrifices all day long. There was the evening sacrifice. Next day it started all over again. There was the morning sacrifice. There was sacrifice all through the day. It just kept going on and on and on. I was thinking about this one day and I just started laughing. You know, it wouldn't have done any good for me. It would have been awful for me to own a sheep ranch in the Old Testament and live near Jerusalem. That's how it would have gone backward. None of those lambs would have ever grown up. I would have been saying I'm going to Jerusalem today while I better take a lamb. I would have done this to better get a lamb. I wouldn't have had any sheep left. They would have all been altered, offered on the altar. When anyone went to the temple to pray, maybe they weren't going to offer sacrifice. They were just going to the temple to pray. Maybe they were going to the temple to sing. Maybe they were going to take part in the rituals of worship. You know what happened? When you walked through the tabernacle door or the temple door, what was the first thing you saw? It went stuck off in the corner. It went in the back. It was right there in front of you. That bloody altar. The altar for the sacrifice of sin. You had to pass by every time you entered the door to worship. What was going on? In their daily battle against sin and their own personal life, God kept bringing them to the altar. He kept bringing them to the place where the sacrifices were offered for their sins. God keeps the fire burning by continuing to bring the sinner to the cross. That's the thing. He said, we live in the New Testament. Let's think about it in the New Testament. We have that one huge sacrifice to which all the other sacrifices pointed. You know, all the sacrifices and no testament. They pointed toward Jesus. They were just symbols of the Savior who was coming. You know what a John the Baptist called Jesus. You know when he was the one that pointed and he told the people, there's a Messiah. He not only said there's a Messiah, one day Jesus won't buy. And John said, there goes the Lamb of God. Why did he call him the Lamb of God? He made no sense. It was the Lamb of sacrifice which God was bringing. And he was the once and for all sacrifices. I want you to turn to a passage with me. And we want to say that once for all done, completed. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter 9. You'll turn through Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians and Galatians and Ephesians and the Lithians and Galatians and Timothy and Thessalonians and Types in your come to Hebrews. Rather large book, Hebrews and look at the night chapter and he's talking about the death of Christ. He's talking about the cross of Christ. Now look at the verse 25 and we read this. Now he's talking about the cross and this is what he says. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself a gang and a gang. The way the high priest enters the holy place every year with the blood that is not his own. Where's he? Christ didn't give his life over and over and over again. He's verses this in verse 26. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he's appeared once for all at the end of the age just to do away with sin by the sacrifice himself is the once for all sacrifice. Look at verse 28. So Christ sacrificed once to take away all the sins of many people. What was they saying? No more lambs, no more bulls, no more birds, no more sacrifices on the altar. He's done. It's over. He said, well, but he does not say come to the cross. It's a once for all. So come to the cross. Be forgiving and go your own way. It's not what he says. It is a once and for all sacrifice. Let's look at it. Let's think about it. In the Lord's suffer, Christ is not offered up a gang for our sins. This is a symbol of that once for all sacrifice. It's the remembrance of the great sacrifices was made. But the table does keep bringing us back to the primary message of the cross. What's the primary message of this table this morning? And we're returning to it. Christ died from my sins. This is his body broken from my sins. This is his blood shed from my sins. We keep returning to the gospel message. The apostles you see could never get over the Jewish custom of coming to the altar continually. They no longer needed to come and bring their sacrifices, but they did need to come and bring their sins and confess their sins. And keep confessing their sins. Remembering that they did have a sacrifice for their sins. They battled the continual sin, the apostles battled the continual sin, and their lives by continually returning to the cross. They have once come to the altar continually, and they just kept coming to the cross continually. Now, I want to prove this to you. You can go home and do this on your own. I did it this week, but I'm only going to read three passengers, not going to ask you to turn to them. Most places where the apostles, where the writers of scripture, talked about personal sin. The daily struggle with sin, they always went from the sin to the cross, from the sin to the cross. Let me give an example. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6, at the end of the chapter, Paul is speaking to the Corinthian people about, to the Corinthian Christians, about sexual immorality. And what is he said? How do they keep the fire burning? How do they keep away from sexual immorality? Here's what he says. In chapter 6, verse 19, the end of verse 19, you are not your own. You were bought with a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. How do you push your way from sin? He says, you keep you, you come back to the cross. Realize you were bought with a price. In Corinthians, in the chapter 7, he's talking about how men live their lives, not trying to please God, but to please people, and to satisfy what people are thinking. And he's trying to tell them, don't live for people. And he says this, you were bought with a price. Don't become the slaves of men. When he talks about not living and conforming to the world, what does he say? He says, you were brought with a price. He keeps returning. And that daily struggle, he keeps returning to the cross. Now, first Peter, 113, you may want to turn to that, and see if you understand if you don't. It's near the end of the New Testament. In first Peter, in chapter 1, he's talking about being holy. Peter, now not Paul, is talking about being holy and living holy life in this struggle against personal sin. And he says in verse 13, in chapter 1, prepare your minds for actions. Be self-controlled. As obedient children, do not conform. Verse 14, as obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. He's talking to Christians. He said, you're still struggling with sin. Don't conform to those desires. And then he goes on and says, so be holy in all you do. Be holy because I'm holy. Well, how do we do that? How do you keep the fire burning, God? Look at verse 18, for you know. For you know that it is not with perishable things, such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your four fathers, but you were redeemed from that life with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb, without blemish or defect. Thanks. It really came out to me. When they talk about personal struggle of sin, go to the cross, personal struggle of sin. Go to the cross, personal struggle of sin. If they kept going, you're redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. God keeps bringing, keeps the fire burning by continuing to bring the sinner to the cross. Listen. This morning, Jesus does not look at your sin. He didn't bring you in here and talk about your sin and then talk about morality. That's not the message of Scripture. Whether we've been Christians for 50 years or 15 minutes, Jesus always, always, always looks at our sin. And he may say, turn from sin. And he may say, be holy. But then he talks about the cross. He says, go to the cross. That's where the strength is. That's where the power is. That's where you keep the fire burning. Take your sin to the cross. Keep going back. You know, I love those bracelets. And please, if you've got them on, don't hide them. Wear them. You know, they're wonderful bracelets. WWJD. What would Jesus say? That comes, by the way, a guy named Sheldon, a minister, about all things. He was a liberal minister of all things. At the end of the 19th century, wrote a book called, when I was in college, changed my life. Made a huge impact on my life. It was titled, Any Steps by Rowan Sheldon. And he tells the story of this community that started asking, what would Jesus do? That's where that bracelet came from. But I want to tell you something. You got that bracelet on? What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do? That's where that bracelet came from. But I want to tell you something. You got that bracelet on? You got that bracelet on? What would Jesus do? You can't do what Jesus would do. You just can't. An hour from now, you'll be engaged in thoughts and activities that Jesus would not do. Even while you're wearing the bracelet. You can't do what Jesus would do. But you can't go to the cross. That's the gospel. What if every time you send, suddenly they're stood Jesus saying, look at my hands. What if every time you lusted in your heart, right then there, time is stopping. You had a vision of Jesus on the cross. And you looked at him, and that he realized that that lust was on his shoulders. And he was bearing that sin. What if every time you gossip, he was speaking of someone you're standing there thirsty and you're telling a story in the soul person, the story you can catch at Harry you want to. But you're talking about someone else, and you're saying bad things, and you mean to do it. Whether it's to pull that person down or elevate you. I don't care, but it doesn't elevate Christ, and you know it. And you're standing, well what if Christ is at that moment? Suddenly you're beneath the cross, and you're looking up at him and he's dying. And what if he says, I love you anyway. What does that do to you? Jesus stands before us when we sin. Whatever specific sin is the gossip, the lust, the material, what a reason. He says, you know, I took that sin, and I walked into God's courtroom, and that sin became my sin. I took your lust, and that sin fell on me, and I became guilty of it, and I was punished for that specific sin. God keeps the fire burning, but continuing to bring the sinner to the cross. A young man doing the Vietnam War was from a town in the Midwest, and he gave his life saving a fellow soldier there in an open rice paddy in Vietnam. And of course his parents were notified that he had been killed, and didn't they found out how he had been killed? They'd actually given his life to save another soldier, and they became curious, and they wanted to know the situation, and they actually were able to find out the young man's name, and he had lived through the war, and he was back home, and they contacted him, and they said, you know, did you know so, and so he said, yes, he said, he died saving me, and they said, would you come visit us? We just want to meet you. And so he was to be there at a certain time on a certain day, and they were to eat dinner together, so about seven o'clock in. He arrived late, he didn't get there to late 30, and when he arrived he had been drinking, in fact he was drunk, and during the evening he was rude, he was coarse, and they were relieved when he left, but they were also depressed, because you know what their thought was. That's the man our son gave his life, trying to save. Now folks, if we don't see ourselves in that picture, we don't understand the gospel, and we're not the mom and dad. I think sometimes we hear that, and we think we're the mom and dad, and we're watching the pagans walk by, you know, and saying, isn't it cross-mink? No, we're not the mom and dad in that story, and we're not the son who died. We are the rude, coarse drunk, for whom the son died? You know something, that's what Paul was talking about. Paul was saying, that's me, and that's how we are when we come to this table. But when we come to this table, and we see again the price that was paid once more, what does that do to us? This morning as we come, and we bring our son in this struggle, what is it dead? Does it say, does it encourage us to go out in the line? Again, does it encourage us to go out and gossip? No! We walk away with a new reason. That's where we're different. The world comes to this table, and they don't care. The world walks by the cross, and they don't care about their sin, but we come to this table, and once more, we start to turn away from that sin. I've got to push away. We come as sinners, and once again, we're broken. We're broken as we look at ourselves, and we're broken as we look at Jesus. We're broken because we see Him once more burdened down, with the very sins that we have loved and valued. That very day. Amen.