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[0:00] Well, gravity is something that you can't really avoid, is it? Which is a lesson that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe learned not long ago when he was getting off a plane in Harare and he tripped and fell.

[0:15] He wasn't watching his step on his fancy red carpet that was rolled out for him and he tripped on a bump in it. And, you know, these things happen.

[0:25] And he should have just understood that gravity sometimes has its way. But he didn't. Instead of shaking it off as an accident, Mugabe decided to fire 27 of his security staff for allowing him to fall.

[0:40] But the fact is, it wasn't really their fault, was it, Robert? It was gravity. It was gravity's cause. That was the cause of it. And gravity always wins.

[0:50] That's a rule in life. Gravity always wins no matter how many security staff you have. And that's why we call gravity a law of nature. Okay? It's called a law because it's always true for everyone.

[1:03] It always wins. And there's always consequences to ignoring it or disobeying it. You know, if I decided to ignore gravity or I decided maybe for a day that I didn't believe in gravity and I went to walk off the edge of a cliff, then no matter what I believe or no matter what I choose to ignore, I will face the consequences for walking off that cliff.

[1:26] God, the creator of our world, has established certain laws of nature, which there are consequences to if you ignore them or you disobey them. He established the law of gravity.

[1:37] But also in the same way, just as he established physical laws in our world, he also established moral laws, which are also laws. Laws of right and wrong, ways to live.

[1:51] Laws which are instructions by our creator telling us what he wants us to do in our lives, how he wants us to live. And they're summarized in the Ten Commandments, but they're much more than the Ten Commandments.

[2:03] But that's a really good summary of God's kind of user manual for life, his instructions for what he wants his creatures to do and how he wants them to live. And just as any other physical laws that he made, these laws have consequences which are just as certain as any other laws.

[2:21] Lots of people, though, might decide to ignore these laws and not listen to what God has to say and not open his word and not care. But that doesn't change the fact that these laws exist and that there is a consequence for disobeying them, which is God's judgment.

[2:37] As certain as the law of gravity says that if I walk off a cliff, I will eventually hit the bottom and it won't be pretty, so certain is God's moral law that says if I disobey it, I will eventually suffer the consequences of judgment and it won't be pretty.

[2:53] And the Bible makes that quite clear. There are consequences to breaking God's moral laws, just as much as there are consequences to breaking his physical laws, which I must say is bad news for all of us, isn't it?

[3:08] If we kind of just drift our eyes over to those Ten Commandments, which are written up there on the wall, the summary of God's law, and we just kind of look over them and ask ourselves, have I kept those?

[3:20] Have I never ignored God's law? Have I lived according to what my Creator wants? And if you ask yourself that question, what's the answer? Or have I ignored God's laws for the majority of my life, the majority of my days that I live on earth?

[3:37] Am I listening to what God wants of me, or am I listening to what I want? Am I ignoring God's laws? And if that's the case, I'm afraid there's a consequence.

[3:48] And the Bible tells us that. There's a consequence to disobeying God. There's a consequence to ignoring our Creator in the world that He's made. Whether you like it or not, there's a consequence to ignoring His laws.

[4:00] And that's bad news, I'm afraid. That is bad news. The thing about gravity, though, going back to gravity, is true as the law of gravity is, there is a place that you can go where gravity doesn't apply to you, where you can escape its consequences.

[4:21] Anyone want to know where that is? What's that? No, well, Jupiter's got its own gravity. But if you go to space, right, outer space, nice try, even.

[4:32] If you go to outer space, there is no gravity. You actually, gravity is still true, and it still applies, but because you're out there, you don't face its consequences. If you step outside of your spaceship, you won't fall.

[4:45] You will float around. Okay? Gravity doesn't have a hold of you in that place. And in the same way, and this is good news for any of us who have broken God's law. If you haven't broken God's law, then you can go to sleep or you can go home.

[4:57] That's fine. The church is a place for people who have broken God's law and need help, need a solution to the consequences of that. So if, I must say, if you've always lived the way God wants you to, then you don't need to be here this morning.

[5:11] You're free to leave. But I don't think that's any of us this morning. And the good news for all of us who stay here is that the Bible says there is a place that you can go to escape the consequences of God's moral law as well.

[5:25] And that place is not outer space. That place is in Jesus Christ. And it's in this chapter, Romans 7, that Paul wants to explain just how that's possible.

[5:37] How you, a sinner, a creature of God, can actually escape the consequences for you breaking his law. And it's amazing news. It's good news. And it's in Romans 7 that Paul actually describes to us, explains to us just how that's possible for you and me.

[5:52] How it's possible to be free from God's law. That's the first theme I just want us to look at as we study this passage. Freedom from God's laws and the consequences of them.

[6:06] So turn with me to Romans 7 in your Bibles. And as we open Romans 7, we see that Paul starts talking about marriage, which is quite strange. But what he's doing, he's using the principle of marriage to make his point about our relationship with God and our relationship to his law.

[6:24] So let's see what he says from verse 1. Do you not know, brothers and sisters, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has authority over someone only as long as that person lives.

[6:35] For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. Okay, let's just stop there for a second.

[6:47] So basically, Paul's saying there's another law that God has established in this world, which is the law of marriage. By the way, marriage was not invented by humans. Marriage was invented by God right from the beginning.

[7:00] And while the world is trying to redefine marriage to suit what we want, God's laws about marriage never change. They've been the same from the beginning. They're constant. They're unavoidable. And they basically say a woman and a man get married according to God.

[7:15] And when they do, they are bound to each other for life. The two become one flesh in God's own words. They don't, therefore, have the freedom to go off and be intimate with other people.

[7:26] And there are consequences if that law is broken. Both immediate consequences in our own lives, broken relationships, broken homes, and ultimate consequences when we stand before God one day and answer for how we've lived.

[7:38] And he'll ask us, did you listen to me? Did you walk according to my ways? And so there are consequences if the law of marriage is broken. But Paul's point here is that just as a wife is bound to her husband in a marriage agreement, and vice versa, the husband is bound to his wife, so too a human being is bound to God's law.

[8:05] We're obligated to it. We're connected to it, and there are consequences for breaking it. That is his point here. A human being is bound to the law of God like her husband and wife are bound to each other.

[8:16] So let me ask you, how is your relationship with God's law? How is your relationship with his law over you? You see, for most of us, that's quite an unhappy marriage, isn't it?

[8:29] Think about it. It's got a lot of tension in it, a lot of guilt, a lot of baggage. It's like a marriage where the husband is constantly demanding things from the wife that she can never quite fulfill, and the husband's never satisfied.

[8:44] That really describes our relationship to God's law, doesn't it? It seems to keep on asking us to live ways that we just keep on falling short of, and God's law is never satisfied.

[8:55] I wonder if anybody here has actually been in a marriage like that, a marriage with a spouse, where there's constant demands, and the spouse is never satisfied.

[9:06] It's not a happy marriage, is it? It's a tense marriage. It's a horrible marriage. And what makes a marriage like that worse is that you can't escape. You're still bound to that person under God's law when you got married.

[9:19] You can't just leave, even if it's tense, even if there's issues. Unless, of course, one of you dies. That is a way that you can end that situation.

[9:30] And that is, in fact, the only way, according to God's law, to get out of a situation that's not working. Now, I'm not suggesting that if you're having marriage difficulties, you should kill your spouse.

[9:42] At least come to me for marriage counseling before you consider that option. But seriously, that is quite a common solution. Did you know that one of the prime suspects in any murder investigation is the spouse of the victim?

[9:58] Because statistics say that a majority of murders happen by a husband or a wife. So, guys, I think maybe you want to get your wife some roses this afternoon after being reminded of that.

[10:10] But anyway, Paul's point here, he's not talking about marriage. There are other passages that teach us about marriage and how to be married the way God calls us to, which we're not looking at this morning.

[10:23] Paul's not talking so much about marriage, but he's talking about God's law. He wants us to understand something about God's law. And what he's saying is that your obligation to God's law, which is binding, also only lasts until you die.

[10:37] Death severs that obligation to the law like it does in marriage to a spouse. Now, here is the reason why Christians can celebrate this morning.

[10:52] If you were here last week, we looked at Romans 6, and you'll remember the incredible truth we discovered in that passage, which is if you are truly a Christian, if you're truly a Christian, not just call yourself a Christian, but if you are really a Christian, you have already died.

[11:08] That's what the Bible says. You have already died and you've begun a new life, which lasts till eternity. And you died when Jesus died on the cross. That's what being a Christian is.

[11:20] It's dying with Jesus and being raised to a new life with Jesus. Because by faith, you were in him there. Which is an incredible thing that before we were even born, if we're Christians now, we were in Jesus on the cross 2,000 years ago, and we died there.

[11:39] And the moment you put your faith in Jesus Christ and decide to follow him, you die to your old life and you start a new one. For more on that, listen to our sermon from Romans 6 last week. But that's the point.

[11:50] If you are a Christian, truly a Christian, you have died already, which means that your bad marriage to the law is finished. It's over. Death severs that marriage relationship.

[12:01] And you don't have an obligation to that demanding spouse anymore. You are truly, if you are a Christian in Christ, you are free. You are free from the obligations of God's law. You are free from the guilt that that law can put on you.

[12:13] Look at verse 4. That's exactly what Paul goes on to say. So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

[12:32] You see what that's saying? You see what that verse is saying? If you are in Jesus, and this is God's word. This is not something that some man invented to make us feel better. This is God's word.

[12:43] He wants to tell us how it is. And what he's saying to us is, if you are in Jesus, if by faith you died with him on that cross, all your sins, past, present, and future, died there with him, so that you are no longer under obligation to keep God's law.

[12:57] Because it can no longer condemn you if Jesus has already paid the full price for you breaking it. And so you're released by death from its obligations.

[13:08] Jesus' death on the cross, which is your death, if you're a Christian this morning, which is an incredible truth. I mean, just let your mind grasp that for a second.

[13:20] You need to grasp this truth that if you are in Christ, you are severed from the obligations of the law. There's nothing you can do wrong now, essentially, because Jesus has already fulfilled God's requirements for you.

[13:35] And it's there, and it's only there that you can ever find true freedom. Freedom where you know, where you know that there's nothing more you need to do to earn God's favor.

[13:46] You can come into a free relationship with him because of what Jesus did for you. If you trust in Jesus, he has kept the law perfectly for you already. You've died to your old spouse who pressured you with demands that you could never keep.

[14:03] And notice verse 4, that was in order to belong to another. You see, whenever you get freed from something, you also get freed to something. And what we are freed to is our relationship with God, to belong to him.

[14:18] A new relationship with God where you have to bring nothing to the table because you're already unconditionally accepted. And so you serve him joyfully and willingly, but not because you're told to.

[14:29] Do you see the difference between what Christ has done for us and what everybody else in the world who doesn't come to Christ is trying to do? They're all trying to earn God's favor, but if you are in Christ, then he has already done it for you.

[14:43] And that is a true free relationship where you can love God and serve God, not because you want him to love you back, but because he already does. Because he's done everything for you.

[14:54] And you can serve him joyfully and willingly and freely. Now let me ask you, is that what your relationship with God is like? Even if you have a relationship with God at all, which you were made to.

[15:07] You were made to enjoy your creator for eternity, to be in true relationship with him. And instead, you know what we're doing? We're typically, by default, we find our enjoyment and pleasure in all the things that God has given us, which are only ever meant to point us to God.

[15:24] But we don't seek him. And so, do you have a relationship with God firstly? And if you do, what is your relationship with God like?

[15:35] Is it bound by law? Is it a relationship where you constantly feel that you have to fulfill demands that you can never quite fulfill? Or is it free? Have you experienced the freedom of right relationship with God that Jesus came to give you?

[15:50] Or do you constantly feel like you must earn his love by doing things? Because if that's the case, then I just want to tell you, you're still bound to your old spouse. If you still feel like you need to do things to earn God's favor, Jesus came to free you from that.

[16:04] You don't need to be bound to that anymore. And perhaps this morning, for the first time, he's calling you to die. Maybe you've never done that. Maybe you've never entered the new life that Jesus died to give you.

[16:16] Or maybe this morning, he's calling you to do that. Maybe this morning, he's calling you to taste the freedom, the true freedom of life. Where you know that you are right with God through him. And you know where you are going in eternity.

[16:29] That is true freedom. That is the greatest joy and experience you can have. And if you haven't had that yet. If you haven't taken that step and died and started a new life in Christ.

[16:40] Come speak to me. I'd love to pray with you after the service in private. But nobody else needs to know. But you can come to me and you can just come through that door that God is inviting you to. To come into a relationship with him.

[16:52] But in the meantime, what we've got to do. So that's the first point that Paul's making in this passage. You're free from the law if you're in Christ. Realize that. Live that out. Don't feel that you have to fulfill obligations anymore.

[17:05] And that will truly free you to serve from your heart. But in the meantime, we move on. And what we see next is Paul addresses this idea that, well, what is the point of God's law then?

[17:16] I mean, why did he give it to us in the Bible? If we're free from its obligations as Christians, why do we have it at all? The Ten Commandments, for example, should we just ignore them? And that's the question Paul goes on to answer here.

[17:28] By showing us just why God gave us his law. And this is very interesting. And I do encourage you to pay attention for another couple of minutes. As we discover what God's law is really all about.

[17:40] And God's law, when we open it up and we read what Romans says here, we read that God's law was never actually meant to make us right with him. God's law was never meant to be something we must do to be right with God.

[17:53] Rather, its purpose, like everything else in the Bible, is to lead us to Jesus Christ. To help us to understand what Jesus did for us. And in this case, specifically, God's law is in the Bible to show us why we need Jesus so much.

[18:08] God's law, when we start reading it and we see how far we've fallen short of it, is there to convince us that we need a Savior. It's there to convince us that we can't ignore Jesus. And so, I just want us to see how the law shows us why we need Jesus.

[18:23] And the first way it does this, we see from verse 7, is that it shows us what sin really is. So, have a look from verse 7. Paul says, In other words, what he's saying here is that the law of God, when we open His Word and we read His standards for life, His law, it helps us to identify sin in our life that we wouldn't have noticed before.

[19:00] Okay, it's like a mirror. When you look in a mirror. We, at the rectory where we live, we recently had our bathroom refurbished, which is a great blessing.

[19:11] And it was really in need of it if you ever saw the old bathroom. But, for a couple of weeks, what that meant, as the bathroom was being refurbished, is that we didn't have a mirror in the bathroom.

[19:23] We couldn't essentially see ourselves. There was one in the lounge, kind of by the wall. But, in the bathroom, we didn't have a mirror. And it's then that I started to realize the usefulness of a mirror. Because, without a mirror, I could have walked out of the house with any number of things on my face without knowing about it.

[19:41] I could have had a big pimple on my nose and not known about it. I could have had a Tinkerbell sticker that my daughter had stuck on my forehead when I was sleeping. And I wouldn't have known about it. You see, I would have never known unless, of course, someone had told me, which would have eventually happened.

[19:56] Especially if I came preached with a Tinkerbell sticker on my forehead. I'm sure, I hope one of you would have told me. Or, if I had looked in the mirror, I would have found out about it. And you see, that's the purpose of a mirror.

[20:07] It's to make sure that you look the way you're supposed to. And in the same way, you see, God's law acts as a mirror. It helps us to see what part of our lives are not the way they're supposed to be.

[20:18] What part of our lives are not right. What part of our lives are not actually meant to be there. Without God's law, without opening the Bible and understanding God and His holy standards, we would never notice those things.

[20:30] We would never know whether we're living the right way or not. It's God's law, which is a mirror of our hearts. It helps us to see what part of our lives are not meant to be there.

[20:43] And if it wasn't for that, then we would go through our lives oblivious to the things that we're doing wrong. Without even knowing it. And so Paul says in verse 12, as a conclusion, So then, the law is holy.

[20:59] The commandment is holy, righteous, and good. Don't think that God's law is bad because it condemns us. You see, in a way, that's its purpose. It's meant to act as a mirror.

[21:10] It's not meant to cleanse us from our sin. Just like a mirror is not meant to clean you, you're not going to clean yourself with a mirror. The mirror's purpose is only there to show you what's wrong.

[21:20] And it's the same with God's law. And there are lots of laws in Scripture. Don't ignore them if you're a Christian, just because you don't have to keep them for your salvation. Because they are there for you to spot what's wrong.

[21:34] But you see, that's the reason people don't like the law of God. People don't. I mean, as human beings, we're independent. We don't like laws over us anyway, let alone laws from our Creator.

[21:48] And we ignore those. But the main reason we ignore God's law is because it was designed to show us what's wrong with our lives. And we don't like to see that, do we? We like to think everything's fine.

[22:00] But the moment we open the Bible, the moment we examine God's law, we realize that's not the case. People don't want to know what's wrong with them. And they ignore God's law.

[22:11] And what we see next, which is even a further reason why we tend to ignore God's law, is because not only does it expose to us what sin really is, what it does is it exposes to us who we really are.

[22:27] Look how Paul goes on from verse 8. This is a very interesting little passage. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting.

[22:39] For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive, apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

[22:52] For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me. And through the commandment, put me to death. Okay, so it's quite a complicated thing that he's saying.

[23:03] But what this passage tells us is that not only does the law show up our sin in our lives, it actually stimulates our sin. It wakes it up.

[23:14] You see what Paul says there? Have a look again. Sin, seizing the opportunity, deceived me. Earlier on, he said, I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, verse 9, sin sprang to life when the commandment came.

[23:28] God's law inspired him to sin. That's what he's saying. Which sounds crazy, because you'd think that if the law shows us what sin is, then we would identify it and stop doing it.

[23:40] But actually, the Bible tells us the opposite is true. When we see what God wants of us, it makes us sin all the more. When we read about what God doesn't want us to do, it makes us want to do that all the more.

[23:55] It's a very strange concept. It's a shocking truth, and it exposes something about our nature, our hearts, who we are, something that we don't like to hear, something that if I was preaching for popularity, I wouldn't mention at all.

[24:09] But my job is not to be popular or to be liked. My job is to expose the truth of the Bible. And one of the truths is that this very passage tells us something about our own hearts, your hearts, my hearts.

[24:22] And namely, what it tells us is that it is in our nature, it is in our nature, without even thinking, to rebel against the authority of God in our lives.

[24:34] So that when God specifically says something in His law, you will in fact want to do the opposite without even thinking about it. That's how our nature works. Because we hate to have an authority over us.

[24:47] We want to be our own authorities. We want to call the shots. And so the moment God establishes His authority by giving us something to do or not to do, we will automatically want to do the opposite.

[24:58] That's how the Bible says, your heart and my heart works. I mean, think about how it all started. If you go back to Genesis, you don't have to turn there now, but Genesis gives us the account of our first ancestors, Adam and Eve.

[25:10] Think of how sin came into the world, if you remember. Now there were tons of trees in that garden. And God gave Adam and Eve everything they needed for happiness and health and prosperity, whatever.

[25:25] And there were tons of trees that they could have eaten any types of fruit from that they wanted. Now let me ask you, why did Eve choose to eat specifically from the one tree that God told her not to?

[25:40] Have you ever thought of that? Why did she choose to eat from that one? She had hundreds of others to choose from. Why that one? Well, the reason is because God said she can't. That's why she wanted to.

[25:50] You see, if God didn't give that law, if God never said to Adam and Eve, don't eat from this tree, the knowledge of good and evil, she probably wouldn't have eaten from it. She wouldn't have even known about it if God hadn't given her the law.

[26:03] But because God did, because God said that she and Adam mustn't eat from it, then Eve, not wanting someone else to rule over her, she asserted her own independence by specifically eating from that tree when there were tons of others she could have chosen from.

[26:18] You see the concept? You see how our heart works? Because it's the same for you and me. We're all descendants of Adam and Eve. We've inherited that same trait from them, which is that we all subconsciously resist God's rule over us.

[26:36] And so when he gives explicit laws or instructions, our nature is to do the very opposite of what he says. It's like a rebellious child. You know, if you tell a rebellious child not to jump in the puddle, what's the first thing he's going to do?

[26:50] He's going to jump in the puddle. Not even because he likes jumping in puddles, just because you told him not to and he wants to assert his own independence. He doesn't want someone to tell him what to do. And we, the Bible says, we are the same with God, which is not a good thing.

[27:05] Because the only way to have any kind of joy or happiness or lasting satisfaction or eternal life is to be who God has called us to be.

[27:15] And yet, the Bible says our nature subconsciously is to do the opposite, which is to do the worst thing for us. We are like that rebellious child towards God. And we can't control it.

[27:26] We will always, by default, resist God's instructions. But God knows that. God knows that about us. And the reason he still gives us his law is to show us that about ourselves.

[27:41] It's to teach us a thing about ourselves. It's to show us that we are far worse. We are far more rebellious against God. We are far more deserving of his punishment than we think. You know, people walk around the world and they don't know the danger that they're in, that they're going to have to stand before a holy God who they've rebelled against for their entire lives and face his perfect judgment.

[28:02] They don't know that. They're walking around oblivious to it. It's when we open the Bible, we see what danger we're in. We see what trouble we're in. And that's the reason God desperately wants us to see the trouble we're in.

[28:14] Because then we start to see the significance of Jesus. And we stop ignoring him. That's the reason God's given us his law, to point us to Christ. And that's exactly Paul's own experience.

[28:26] Now he goes on in this chapter, the last half of chapter 7, with this quite famous passage of his own kind of autobiography, his own testimony of his struggle to be who he knows God has called him to be, but realizing that his sinful nature is stopping him from being that.

[28:45] So from verse 15, you can read it. I'll just read an excerpt. He says from verse 15, I do not understand what I do. I wonder if you can relate to this.

[28:55] I wonder if as Paul's speaking, you can see this as your own experience as well. He says, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do.

[29:07] But what I hate, I do. You know, as an example, you know, if you've got someone you love, a spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend, why do you fight with them?

[29:18] Because, you know, fighting with them and asserting your own kind of selfishness only ruins the relationship. And yet we do it anyway, don't we? And we don't want to.

[29:28] We don't want to fight. We don't want to be unpleasant. We don't want to, if you think of hatred or lust, or, you know, those things that we don't want in our lives and yet we can't help it.

[29:38] You see, Paul's describing this battle that we all go through, this battle with sin's control over us. And he says, I do not, I do not, for what I, this is called the do be do passage because it's very confusing to read out loud.

[29:53] For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And then he goes on and he concludes in verse 22, for in my inner being, I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.

[30:12] What a wretched man I am. That's his conclusion. So do you see now, as we conclude this morning, this passage, do you see what God's law did for Paul in his life?

[30:23] I mean, he was a Jew. He kind of, he was brought up learning God's law, which is, which is a great thing. He knew backwards what the standards are right and wrong, what God expected of him. And he had this, the more he learned about God's law, the more of a struggle he had inside him to actually keep it.

[30:39] Because in trying to keep God's law, Paul became aware of how sinful he actually was. What a wretched heart he actually had.

[30:50] But if it wasn't for God's law, he would have never realized that about himself. He would have gone through life thinking, you know, I'm quite a decent person, aren't I? I'm quite good. And lots of people, we laugh, but lots of people go through life that way, thinking I'm quite a decent person.

[31:05] You know, I give to charity, I recycle. I helped that little old lady across the street the other day. I'm very good. And they think that when they stand before God, that's going to impress him.

[31:17] And they ignore the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of sins they've done against him in thought and in deed and in word, in rebelling against his rule over their lives. They totally ignore that. That's why we have God's law to show us how sinful we actually are.

[31:33] That's what God's law showed to Paul, that he's not the decent person he thinks he is. And that's why we have it as well. Why we have God's moral requirements in scripture.

[31:44] It's not a tick list for us to go, yes, I've done that. Yes, I've done that. Oh, I'm quite a good person. That's not the purpose that God's given us his law. It's meant to show us what we haven't done. It's meant to expose our true natures, to open up our hearts and to destroy this idea that we're decent people and God will accept us because we've lived half good lives.

[32:04] No, the truth is what the Bible shows us is that we are rebels against a holy God and we deserve his judgment for eternity and he gave us his law to prove that to us and the more we go into it, the more we realize, like Paul, what a wretched man I really am.

[32:21] But ultimately, God gave us his law to show us how much we need Jesus, to show us how much we need the man who died to give you his righteousness and take your sin upon him and him taking the punishment for that.

[32:35] I hope you see this morning that you need Jesus. If there's one thing I want you to leave with this morning, I want you to leave this church going, you know what? I so need Jesus. I so need Jesus to take my sins because there is no other way because I'm a wretched person without him.

[32:51] That's what I want for you this morning. And the reason that God wants us to see how much we need Jesus, how much we need salvation from our sinners because that same God who gave us the law is the God who gave us his son to die for us, to take all our sin away.

[33:11] And that's why Paul ends by saying, verse 24, what a wretched man I am, who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

[33:25] You see, it was God's law that led Paul to value and embrace Jesus Christ. And you will also only value and embrace and love Jesus when you realize the seriousness of your sin and the wretchedness of your heart.

[33:38] And so don't ignore God's law. Don't ignore his requirements in scripture. Don't ignore them because they make you feel uncomfortable. That's the point. That's the point. Let them expose your sin and make you feel bad.

[33:50] Let them point out those parts of your life that are not the way they're supposed to be. Don't sweep your sin under the carpet and convince yourself you're some kind of decent person. Rather, confess your sins because when you do, you can bring them to the cross.

[34:04] You can bring them to Jesus. You can put them, you can place them on Jesus and he died for them. And when you place them there, you don't have to worry about them anymore. You are free from the law when you come to Jesus Christ because it's then, like Paul, when you admit your wretchedness and the sin of your heart, it's then that you will really love Jesus.

[34:24] And embrace what he's done for you to take your sin away and it's then that you will die again daily and truly live for him in joy and in service for what he's done for us.

[34:37] Is that you this morning? Well, I challenge you to go home and think through what we've learned this morning and think about your relationship with Jesus and come to him.

[34:49] Lay your sins on him and start the new life that God sent his son to give you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for your amazing word that makes us feel uncomfortable when we open it.

[35:03] We thank you that, Lord, you give us truth. We pray that you would help us not to ignore your word, not to ignore your law, but help us to realize how much we need Jesus.

[35:14] Thank you so much for sending your son to die for us, to give us new life, eternal life. And we pray, Lord, that as we leave this place this morning, you would help us to die to ourselves and follow him and that you would fill us with the joy of knowing you and knowing where we're going one day.

[35:31]  We pray this in Christ's name and for his glory. Amen.