More on the Law

Romans 7:7-12

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I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Romans chapter 7. I uh had I had thought anything about something like this going on, this is probably the last sermon I would have picked. So I don't know if this is just God's way of uh saying, yeah, let's let's plow through this. We we need this. And um so I'm sure he has something in it for you. Um for for those of you that are not here all the time, we are in Romans 7, and most of you probably know we we generally just go systematically through scripture. We we'll do a chapter at a time, pretty much, or maybe a couple chapters sometimes. We began a study back in Romans 7 last week. That's where we're at in the book. Um I won't rehash our plans for Romans for this year and the next. If you weren't here last week, you can't get the details about that at the beginning of last week's sermon. I'm gonna attempt to set the stage at what Paul is on about. And again, this book is very theological, and this particular section is probably it may be one of the more difficult ones, although there are a lot of difficult ones in Romans. But um last time we said in Romans 6, as we were concluding Romans 6, Paul told us the Christian is not under the law but under grace. He then goes on to give some practical implications of what it means to be under grace and not under the law. And he tells us that just because we are under grace, it does not mean that we're free to sin. Rather, we have been set free from sin and now we have become enslaved to righteousness. And because we are now enslaved to righteousness and ultimately to God, we have fruit, which results in sanctification. And what that means is we've been set apart not only for eternal life, but to live holy lives. And so then, as we came to chapter 7 last week, Paul goes on to explain more completely how it is that we are no longer, we said, under the dominion of the law. He doesn't use that word, but that's what he's getting to, that we're we're just not under the law's authority anymore. Paul says we've been released from the law, we are dead to the law. However, the law still has purpose for us. We considered some of that last time. It helps us to understand God's moral will, gives us guidance really about what he's thinking or how he thinks, and therefore how we should live. We just need to make sure we approach it with a New Testament lens. Also, as we noted last time, Paul is summing up the negative effects of the law, and that really reaches this crescendo, we might say, when we get to verses 5, 5, and 6. He accuses the law of arousing sin. And he's also made clear that those who are under the authority of the law cannot at the same time be under the authority of Christ. So you can't be under the law and under Christ. And if you're not under Christ, you won't experience the newness in the Spirit. So, having done that, what's prompting the discourse that we're looking at today, starting in verse 7, is that Paul has just indicated that really the believer's release from the power of the law is just as much good news as being released from the power of sin. So he's made that point, and now he's anticipating a question. When you read through Paul, you know he does this quite a bit. He'll say, Okay, I've made this statement. So you're anticipating a question now, and here's what the question will be. And so that's what he's saying. Paul is going to begin here by asking, Well, since I've said you've been freed from the law and you've been freed from sin, and that's great. Is that the does that mean the law is sin? He's anticipating this logical conclusion the readers of Romans may make, given what he's just said about the law in the first six verses of Romans. So let's let's go ahead and read and then we'll pray. Romans 7, verse 7. I'll be going through verse 12. What should we say then? Is the law sin? Absolutely not. But I would not have known sin if it were not for the law. For example, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, do not covet. And sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me coveting of every kind. For apart from the law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life again, and I died. The commandment that was meant for life resulted in death for me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you again for your word. We thank you for Romans and the book that Paul wrote, and we know that it's it's very doctrinal in nature, and we also know that you inspired him to write it. So we will need your inspiration to better understand it. And we do pray for guidance and clarity as we consider your word together. Amen. Um, okay, so so if you were here last week or if you heard the message, you'll recognize we're repeating some of the same things from last week. And that will be a bit of a refrain, I'll say, well, as I mentioned last week, that sort of thing. But what's happening now is that Paul is going deeper to discuss sin's relationship with the law, if we could call it. I couldn't really think of a good way to express what he's doing. But it he he's he's basically describing the relationship between sin and the law, and then how that relationship ends up impacting us as believers. And again, as we start to study this, I'll just remind you what Peter said about Paul uh elsewhere. He says, uh, Paul writes some difficult stuff. It's hard to follow. Even Peter was aware of it. He was like, uh so this or some of the this passage or some of those things, no doubt. It's it seems to me the fact that it's here in the Romans is written the way that it is. And I talked about some of this last week, so I won't rehearse it again. But it seems to me that God really wants us to think these things through, wants us to have a good grasp of how we are saved and really what we're saved from. Because again, what he's saying is we're not only saved from sin, we're saved from the law. So to repeat from last week, the most practical aspect, I think, or issue for the Christian is how much of the Old Testament and the Old Covenant are we specifically obliged to keep? Now, when I say Old Testament, Old Covenant, most of you know what I'm saying, but Old Covenant is referring to that Mosaic law that was given in Exodus 12, Ten Commandments. The Old Testament is the broader book as a whole that chronicles um the time up to Israel and then Israel and what happened to them going into exile and those sort of things. So the Old Testament is just broader, but it's it's a reference. A lot of times it's put together. So the question then is how much for the Christian are we obliged to keep the Old Testament and Old Covenant? And for instance, someone might say to you, Well, you uh seventh, the seventh-day sabbatarians will say this, you keep nine of the commandments. Why why don't you you appear to keep the nine of the commandments, why don't you keep the ten commandments? Why don't you keep the Sabbath? And the answer you you can give is, I don't keep any of the Ten Commandments. It may appear that I do, but what I do is keep Christ's law. And those other nine indicated are indicated in the New Testament, I should phrase it that way, I guess. The Sabbath is just not. The Ten Commandments themselves were given to the nation of Israel under the old covenant. We are no longer under that old covenant. That was the law. I died to the law, you died to the law. Now, in effect, that's analogous because we were never under the law, but Paul is saying specifically he died to the law, he was under the law. Um, it's like, and I won't go back over this, but you can look back up in the earlier part of the chapter, he gives an analogy from marriage. And basically he says, if a first husband, a lady's married to a husband and he dies, that's similar to what's happened as far as us dying to the law. And so if the wife marries a second new husband, uh, she is in one sense under that bond, under that authority. And that is similar then, um, in the sense that Jesus Christ is now our new authority. Uh now things may be similar in the second marriage than there were the previous marriage, right? They could go to bed at the same time, they could eat at the same places. Some of that stuff is just analogous to being married or typical of the marriage itself. And so we think about that God gave the law to the old covenant, we would not be surprised that now we as Christians, some of those things are going to be reiterated for us to do. That's not, that's really not surprising. But just as the wife is not bound at all to her first husband because he died, we are no longer bound at all to the law. And what keeps us from sinning or keeps us trying to obey God is Jesus. We're bound to him. Okay. So since we're being saved then from both sin and the law, Paul says, Is the law then sin? And he's his answer then is, oh, absolutely not. That's not what I'm saying. And then he's going to go on to explain this. Thus, he has said grace frees us from both sin and the law. Now he is saying that is not to say the law and sin are synonymous. They are not. So here he explains what we might call the distinctions, I guess, between the law and sin. And he does so in such a way that does explain why we need to be saved from both. Um, and here I'm going to interject a rough outline. I I've I've wrestled with this text all week long. So this outline is not a smooth one, but I finally settled on it, I guess, this morning. Um it will hopefully help us to understand what Paul is getting to. First, he will say the law reveals, and this is again how their relationship is with each other. The law reveals sin. Okay. Then he's going to say sin corrupts the law. Then he'll say sin uses the law. And then finally, but the law remains good. Okay, so the law reveals sin, sin corrupts the law, sin uses the law, but the law remains good. So first the law reveals sins. We see that to sin. We see that in verse 7. I would not have known sin if it were not for the law. And he gives an example. I would not have known to not covet if the law hadn't exposed that sinful tendency in me for what it is. Paul probably goes to the tenth commandment. Some of you may have heard. The Jews looked at the tenth commandment as pretty much summing up the Mosaic law as a whole. You can understand that. You think about the idea of coveting is an improper desire. And if you think about the commands of God and especially the moral laws, so much of them have to do with improper desires. As we said in our first study of 1 Thessalonians, and I'll come back to this in a little bigger way in a moment, but it's not that the desires themselves are wrong, it's that we end up seeking to fulfill them in a wrong way. Um so what the law does then is it's it's kind of like an x-ray machine. Um, it reveals what may be otherwise hidden. You can't blame the x-ray machine for what it exposes, right? I mean, you may not like what it what you find out from it, but it's just bringing the truth. That's the law. And further, as Paul is indicating here, and also mentioned, I think, in the overarching idea last time, the law sets the speed limit, we could say. When there's a speed limit of 55, I know I'm not supposed to go 56. Well, in our culture, you're not supposed to go 65, right? We realize there's some built-in flexibility there, but you get the point. So anything over the 55 is too fast. If we were, imagine if you're on a road where there was no speed limit, like the Autobahn. I mean, it sounds fun to imagine, don't it? But uh, if that were the case, uh, we would be apt to endanger ourselves and others more quickly. And in the moral realm, to use Paul's analogy, we might never know we are sinning in many areas, like covetousness, it's hard to say that word, if the law didn't tell us specifically. So that's the first point. The law reveals sin. Law reveals sin. That one's not too bad. Then we come to verse 8 and we see that sin is not simply exposed, and that's the end of it. No, we might say sin punches back. Sin corrupts the law, we could say. Sin sees the opportunity to create wrong desires of every kind. Now, he's already mentioned the flesh in verse 5. Some translations will say sinful natures. It's the same idea. He he mentions that as the reason this dynamic occurs. He doesn't explicitly say how it occurs. But we can take from it, I think, that the power of a definite prohibition, you know, don't do this, stimulates people with a sinful desire to do that, to rebel. We're inclined to do what we're told not to do, and we're inclined not to do what we're told to do. And we talked about this last time, some too, but you know, in American history, for instance, it's known the Prohibition Act did not stop drinking. In fact, it seemed to increase drinking. Um, Augustine, I mentioned him sometimes not favorably, but he he was a very good theologian. And he actually has a comment from his personal life that speaks directly to this. In his book Confessions, he described being a young man and writes, quote, There was a pear tree near our vineyard laden with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spools away. We took off a huge load of pears, not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs, though we ate just enough to have the pleasure of forbidden fruit. They were nice pears, but it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted, for I had plenty better at home. I picked them simply in order to become a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and that I enjoyed to the full. What was it that I loved in the theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law? The desire to steal was awakened simply by the prohibition of stealing. And we all understand this. You know, on a mundane level, if you see something that says, don't walk on the grass, I'm going to go walk on the grass. I can't remember, I should have written it down. It was, I don't know if it's one of the Queens or somebody in England when they had asked them about, they were trying to get the Ten Commandments posted back, and they said she said, No, we shouldn't post the Ten Commandments. It gives people too many ideas. So it's it's that's what Paul's saying. The warning to not do that can so easily become a call to action to do the very thing we've been warned about. Because, again, of our flesh. The point he's making about the law not being sin is that he's saying, while sin takes the opportunity from the law, it's actually not the law's fault. It's really our fault, our corrupted selfish desires and our selfish nature. Now, admittedly, the end of verse 8 through the beginning of verse 10 uh gets more difficult to understand. There's further elaboration on what sin does to the law, and this is where I'm gonna say, and these will overlap some, but it basically he's describing here how sin uses the law. I'm gonna read that read that part again. The end of verse 8. For apart from the law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life again, and I died. Um what does that mean? Well, I I definitely wasn't sure. I I've thought about it, prayed about it this week. I read commentaries, I came across at least four different explanations, so they're not real sure either. I'm going to go what I think is the most straightforward. It's also probably the most controversial in our day, but it's also, I'd say, the most traditional understanding of it. Um, we'll come back to the controversial part. Basically, it says apart from the law, sin was dead. We've identified how sin corrupts the law, but this is a different emphasis. This seems to me to be indicating, again, that sin uses the law to make a distortion of good things. This is what I was talking about when we talked about desires. Have any of y'all read the book Screw Tape Letters? Ever read that? Um, it's really a good book. If you haven't read it, I would I would encourage you to. It's it's funny. Um Seth love that book. In his book, Screw Tape Letters, C.S. Lewis is in effect, the writer, is in effect saying evil has no power to create anything new. And the demon screw tape, that's the name of the demon screw tape, is frequently making his point in some way or another that sin is just the twisting, the distortion, the misdirection of good things that God originally created. He tells the senior demon, or the senior demon tells his nephew Wormwood, who he's trying to get to tempt these people. He says that all healthy normal pleasures belong to God. Demons cannot invent pleasure. They can only encourage humans to enjoy God's gifts at forbidden times, in forbidden ways, or in forbidden degrees. I don't know if Romans 7 is where Lewis got that from, but it explains it well, I think. Verse 9, then, once I was alive apart from the law, what is that? Now, this is where it gets a little controversial. There are different ideas about this. Many try to make the alive here a kind of quasi-I don't I don't know how to describe it. Like um, he wasn't really alive, but he was he wasn't, he didn't know sin, so he kind of had life and and that sort of thing. I I'm gonna give you what I think is a controversial take a little bit. I I didn't go to church much growing up, but when I went, I went to a Baptist church uh with my cousin Russell, a lot of you know. And this the Baptists came up with this idea, and I think there's scriptural back and forth. It's called the age of accountability. Um, most of you probably heard of it. Uh I believe what this is here, that that's what this is referring to, that it's quite possible he's affirming that since Christ's death really was for all, all really are alive before they sin. Um people struggle, you know, when they're thinking about what happens to infants or or young kids when they die. And how does that work? And I think most Christians come up, try to come up with some way that God is merciful, but they're not sure how it all works. Well, this would explain that. And there are other Old Testament passages that support this idea of children not being accountable until a certain age. Now some of your minds are going to original sin. I'll come back to that. That has, again, we've been inundated with reformed, it's really Presbyterian thought, and and so I want to discuss that for just briefly. But um, so Deuteronomy, I should have wrote it down, but I'm pretty sure it's 1 verse 39. Um he says, Your children who you said would be plundered, your sons who don't know yet good from evil will enter there. And what he's talking about is who's going in the promised land. And basically he said Jacob's gonna go, and I think Caleb will go. But he says also that the children don't know the difference between right and wrong. They're they'll go in. Um, and then he also over we see a very similar passage, even a little more forceful in some ways, over in Isaiah. I can find Isaiah. Um in verse 7, chapter 7, sorry, and verse uh 15. By the time he learns to reject what is bad and choose what is good, he will be eating curds and honey. For before the boy knows to reject what is bad and choose what is good, the land of two kings will be you dread will be abandoned. Um that's there's a prophecy there about Christ, but he is also dealing with the context immediately in Isaiah. And he's basically saying the person doesn't know good or bad yet. And so I do believe this explains, this would indicate that people are alive before they commit sin. The reason that may sound foreign to you again is because we are steeped now in reform theology. They've moved in, they've taken a big chunk of the Baptist church, and so there they have this idea of original sin, and by it they mean not only do we have a sinful inclination, which basically everybody teaches in every denomination and in every branch of Christianity for that matter. We also have original guilt because Adam was guilty, we too are guilty. Now, I don't believe that's what the Bible teaches, and in fact, it was not part of the Baptist understanding of what the Bible taught, it was never part of the early church fathers. Again, this came from Augustine and and then filtered down through John Calvin. So this would be a confirming passage, then I think, for the traditional view. Paul is indicating he wasn't born dead, rather, he was born alive. In other words, he wasn't born a person guilty. The baby's nature affected by origin is affected by original sin. We all understand that. Babies can be really they can get they can get selfish early on. We know that. So they they have that sinful tendency, of course, but this is not say they're not guilty until they actually sin. And even, you know, there's passages in scripture that make claim that you're guilty when you sin, and you're not even in Deuteronomy, part of the law is the child is not um guilty for the sin of the father. That's made clear throughout. So it seems a little strange then to take this idea that we're now all guilty of Adam's sin. Um so anyway, I and I would even say this. We use the term born again. Well, actually, that may be a reference that's suggesting we're being restored to what was lost from the first birth after we actually sinned. So Paul says confrontation with the commandment led to his death. Why? Because once the law came, sin came to life and he died. When we come to know the law, the law shows us our guilt, excites our rebellion, brings forth really more sin, and of course, ultimately death. And along these lines here, and I know this is theological, so I'm trying to get through it a little quicker, but what is meant by death here? A lot of people will say spiritually dead. So you're thinking, I I use that term, I've used it before, spiritually dead. That term is never used in scripture. We see the phrase dead and trespasses in sin. And all this is what reformed theology will say that we're all born guilty. It leads to the idea of total depravity. Um, and so when you think about total depravity, most everybody teaches that. But the difference is how it's defined. So, like traditional Baptist theology or Protestant theology would define it as that, again, our sin nature has been affected, our nature has been affected. We're inclined to sin, but Reform took it a step further again and said, Oh, you have a total inability to respond. You can't respond to anything. Again, that's not a biblical concept. Biblically, to be dead is also the same as being lost. You remember the story of the prodigal son, the father says, My son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is now found. So to be dead in sin and trespasses doesn't obviously mean we're immediately physically dead, neither does it mean we're somehow dead to all things spiritual. People are made in the image of God. And um the fall corrupted that image. Everybody will agree to that, but it didn't destroy it. People are not mentally dead, they're not incapable of reasoning, unbelievers are not. Uh, they can understand their sinners. We all know unbelievers who do good things and they're kind and those sorts of things. So, and we can see it all through scripture. Why does God call a sinner to repent over and over in the Bible if they can't? The Bible says, if you declare with your mouth, if you believe in your heart, you will be saved. To all who did receive him, he gave the right to become children of God. In other words, we believe and then receive Christ. Uh, we are not first regenerated because we are completely spiritually dead. No, we are dead in the sense of being lost outside of Christ. And also here, I could just I'll mention this. Paul could be nuancing it a little bit further from Romans 4, because he said something like this similar similarly. Romans 4 and verse 17. He says, as it is written, I've made you the father of many nations in the presence of God in whom he believed, the one who gives life to the dead and calls things into existence that do not exist. He, meaning Abraham, believed against, believed, hoping against hope, so that he became the father of many nations according to what had been spoken. So will your descendants be. And now notice here, he did not weaken in the faith when he considered his own body to be already dead, since he was about a hundred years old. So Paul could be very possibly in Romans 7, speaking the same sense he is in Romans 4. In Romans 7, he died because of the law, and in effect, he'd be saying, I'm as good as dead. That's what the law does for us. It's just like we're on a plane and it's going down, so we're as good as dead. You may remember Pa God said this to Abimelech. Yeah, and he said the same thing. Like Abraham and Sarah were lying and saying they were siblings. Well, they were half siblings, but they weren't saying telling they were married. And Abimelech, like the look of Sarah, and he said he would take her, and so he went and got her, and God came to him at night and said, You are a dead man. And Abimelech, what are you talking about? He said, They are married. And uh Abimelech was like, Well, I didn't have any idea, I didn't know, they didn't tell me that. Don't do anything to me. And God was basically like, Well, you know now, and you're a dead man, so you better fix it. So that's the idea. Um, so Paul is likely saying he's dead in the sense he's lost, he was lost. So then the second part of verse 10 through verse 12 just sums up that sin has corrupted the law, and so its life-giving purpose has been defeated. After law is corrupted by sin, it only brings death, just like sin, the commandment brings death instead of life. But Paul wants to make this clear as he wraps it up. The law itself is holy, it's good, and it's just. Sin has caused the problem within us concerning the law. Sin killed me. It's like it used the law as an accomplice, but but sin did this by deception. Sin used the law to whack me over the head. It's not that the law deceives us, it is sin that deceives us. It just used the law as an occasion for a rebellion because sin, we understand sin deceives us. It falsely promises satisfaction. It says, oh, the law doesn't want you to have fun, the and all fun is wrong, or or you can have the law only wants you to have a little fun. It won't let you have the real fun, it restricts you too much. So I know the law says don't do this, but you'll have pleasure if you do all those sorts of things. Sin falsely tells us it's okay. There's a reason for you to break the law. Nothing's gonna happen if you do. After all, sin is not that bad, just do it. But of course, we know sin which follow leads to death. One of Satan's greatest deceptions to get us to think of sin as something good that an unpleasant God wants to deprive us of. When God warns us away from sin, he warns us from something that will kill us, which is why, of course, Jesus said, You shall know the truth, the truth will set you free. Now, to wrap it up, then Paul wants us to understand the sin and law, even though he said all this, they're not in the same boat. And I think that's why he's going into such detail. He was trying to help also, I'm sure, the old covenant-keeping Jews who had become Christian to understand the problem of the Mosaic Law. They've been brought up in it. So he's having to spend some time just to explain it to them. And he said, I've said all this, and I understand you may be thinking, oh, the law of sin, it's bad. He says, No, it's good, holy, and just. But yes, we have to die to the law just like we had to die to sin, because sin has so corrupted the law in us. Now, just briefly again for further application, as far as the law remaining good. And last week I tried to address this some about how the law might be applicable for Christians. We said it gives us guidance in God's thinking. Paul reminds us here the law comes from God, bears his own character of goodness, holiness, and righteousness. So reading the Old Testament, the Old Covenant law, is definitely can be a benefit for us. I know the last time, you know, a personal application where I was reading back. And you can do that. You get there's a lot of narratives. So if you read that narrative, it it can speak to you in a way. You know, the old David was going through this, so it kind of relates to what I'm doing. I can see how God might be telling me to do this in this situation. And then there's also some more general uh commands, I think. I mentioned Leviticus 18 last time when James talked about no, the Gentiles don't have to keep the law, but tell them to refrain from sexual immorality and from eating food sacrificed to idols. Well, as far as the sacrifice to idols, we understand that really was just to protect the, to keep the Jews from being offended. He later says, it don't matter what you um, but when he's looking at Leviticus 18, which I think is what James was doing, there's a lot of specifics there about sexual immorality. And the part he was probably concerned about was the inner marriage, but the Greeks would allow for marry, you know, a little marriage a little closer. You could probably marry a second cousin or something like that. And um maybe first cousin, but whatever. The things in Leviticus 18 would make that clear, and it wouldn't be offensive. They wanted them to hold to that so it wouldn't be offensive to the Jews. The point is there's a term in the New Testament for sexual immorality, it's pornet, it's very broad. And the Old Testament and the New Testament writers very rarely expand on it. So basically, they're probably thinking you can look at it in the Old Testament, it's very detailed there, and so that would be that would be fine. Um this week I saw a minor league baseball team in Pennsylvania in the in the thick of the hunt in the pennant race for the minor leagues. They ended up the forfeiting a game in their run because you know we're in Pride Month, and and they were supposed to wear these jerseys that celebrated the LGBTQ lifestyle. And there was enough of them that said we don't feel right about that. And so they they wouldn't do it, and they had to cancel the game. And management was furious. I don't I don't know what they'll end up doing to him. They issued a statement that said this was deeply troubling. We are profoundly disappointed by a decision of these few players, which I learned later is more than a few. It was several of them apparently. Um, but I thought how deeply troubled would they be if they read what God says about some of these things in the Old Testament? And what it'll be even worse if they wait to find out about what he thinks when they return. When he returns. So along these lines, we can see in the law how God blesses people, but like we're saying with all of it, with the Old Covenant, Old Testament application, we've got to be careful. We do it with the New Testament lens. We don't fall, we don't want to fall into some health and wealth approach, but again, we don't want to give the impression that everything God said there is no longer valid. No, it's God's word. And it demonstrates how he's acted in history. And he acted to give the Israelites a nation. He protected them, showered them with blessings. In return, he requested they obey the law. So if he gives life, we should not be surprised, gives life to us, we should not be surprised that he expects us to live in a certain way, even if that way is not what saves us. So I'm gonna wrap it up. We could say Israel was a test case. Faced with the undeniable evidence of God's reality and power and blessings that attached to obedience, they did not keep their end of the covenant. Israel kept turning away from God and kept not just breaking the law, but totally disregarding what God said about it. And so eventually God sent them into exile, judgment. And I'm just gonna say, incidentally, the nation of Israel still rejects God. I they reject Christ. We'll talk more about the different view of the promises because God makes a lot of promises to Israel in the Old Testament. We'll talk more about that when we study prophecy in a few months. But suffice it to say, there's no doubt about this. We only get to the Father through Christ. Period. The old covenant is dead, it's no longer good. It's a little bit striking to me how much evangelical support there is for Israel. And I support Israel too. I just think we need to think about and do it for the right reasons. We have much more in common with Israel as a nation than many than many other nations because of our shared Judeo-Christian values. But there's more Christians in Palestine than there is Israel. There's almost no Christians in Israel. So again, we can talk about what the Bible is saying about Israel in the future. Just understand that the Jews' rejection of Christ brought severe judgment against them in AD 70. And what God promised in the Old Testament was this: a new arrangement for people in which He Himself would enable their obedience. And that, of course, only comes through Christ and the Holy Spirit. We have to have a change from the inside. And this text suggests our fleshly state renders it impossible for us to obey. Paul will stress this all the more in the next section. We always fall short in the law. Always. That's why Paul says the law reveals the power of sin. It also reveals our own helplessness in keeping it. And therefore, it does also show our need for someone to liberate us from our miserable state and ultimately death. So, in that sense, again, as we think about the law and realize the commandment was meant, that was meant for life, yet resulted in death for me and for you. As such, we can appreciate and praise God all the more for the gospel. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you again that we can be here. Just thank you for our time together. And thank you for church family here and for family that's come in, and we're all family really, Father. You've made us that way. Thank you so much for it. Thank you for the uh for letting me make it 60. And uh we'll uh enjoy some food here. We ask for your blessing on it and our time together as well. Just pray you will give us wisdom and we praise you, Father, for the gospel. We know that we can't work our way to you. We know that we can't keep anything close to you, but we want to follow you, Father, because you have brought us close through Christ and the Holy Spirit. We thank you so much for that. And praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.