08-04-13 Knowing Him Pt 5

A day will come

in the life of every true child of God

when we will glance into the kitchen

and suddenly see our own personal rats

crawling out from under the sink.

We will discover the existence of evil

or the potential for evil within ourselves

and shudder at what we see.

How we view those rats,

how we relate to that potential for evil

will ultimately determine

the course of our Christian life from then on.

The concept we will look at during the next few minutes

is one I have taught

and written about numerous times

in the past 30+ years.

Obviously I consider it to be a crucial

and essential area of understanding

for the Christian.

The Apostle Paul was the first

to present the concepts we will look at,

and we will allow his writings

to guide us through our thinking this morning.

During the past 2000 years

countless other believers

have dealt with the same issues

and flavored their presentation of them

with their own unique personalities.

I will do that as well.

But the concepts are not mine.

They are imbedded in Scripture

and revealed to us by our Lord

to equip us for our life with Him.

We ended last week

by talking about the three most common wrong responses

to the Christian’s discovery of evil within him or herself.

I mentioned them because

unless we first recognize the lies we are believing

we are sometimes unable to hear the truth.

If we attempt to paste the truth

on top of an existing lie

it will not stick.

Rather than driving the lie out

we are more likely to attempt to somehow integrate the two into our thinking,

and it will not work.

The first lie I mentioned last week

that is a common response

to the discovery of evil within ourselves

is to deny that the evil really exists.

Sometimes the horror

or the shame we feel when we discover evil within ourselves

is so intense that mentally we attempt

to just run away and pretend

it doesn’t exist.

How could a child of God

think that

or do that

or feel that?

It cannot be!

And we try to close our mind to its reality.

The problem is that

when we deny the existence of the evil within us

we also slam the door

on the healing program Christ offers us that can bring us true freedom

from the power of that evil in our lives.

We will either develop a thick protective shell around our emotions

that keeps everything packed tight inside,

making us insensitive both to ourselves

and to those around us,

or we will reach a point

where we can no longer keep the evil

crammed down inside

and it will explode and consume our life.

2. Then there are those Christians

who handle the evil

by proclaiming to themselves

and to others that it doesn’t really matter.

A few rats running around the kitchen

helps keep the floor clean.

The death of Christ paid the price

for all my sin,

and now it just doesn’t matter.

But sin always produces slavery.

It produces slavery in the life of the Christian

every bit as much as it does

in the life of the non-Christian.

To proclaim that the evil doesn’t matter

is to live forever in the slavery

and bondage it brings into your life.

3. And the third incorrect answer

to the discovery of evil within us

is to believe that the evil tells the truth about who we are at the heart level.

We see ourselves as a miserable failure

in our Christian walk.

We may decide the evil proves

that we really aren’t even a Christian,

because a true Christian

would surely never think or feel

the way we do,

or we may decide that we were a Christian

but surly God has now kicked us

out of His family in disgust

because of the corruption inside us.

And if we fall victim to any of those 3 lies

it will have a devastating effect

on our walk with the King.

We are going to spend

the rest of our time together this morning

looking at Paul’s words

in Romans 7:14-25.

But before we move into the passage

I want to prepare you

for what the truth contained in these verses

will equip us to do.

Outside of Christ

and a correct understanding

of the recreative work

He seeks to accomplish within every person who comes to Him,

the discovery of evil within ourselves

forces us into one of two cages -

either we will attempt to run in terror from what we have seen,

or we will allow what we have seen

to define for us who we are.

But the truth that God shares with His people

in the verses we will look at here in Romans

allows the Christian to do

what no other thought framework in the world

can equip us to do.

It allows us to be brutally honest

about the reality of the evil within us,

not running away from it,

not denying it,

but facing it honestly

and calling it what it is,

and yet,

at the same time,

to live with a clear, correct, healthy concept

of ourselves as a new creation in Christ,

with a pure heart

that longs to please God.

I am convinced that the main reason

many Christians never dare face their own inner dragons

is because they are terrified

that if they acknowledge them

and bring them out into the light

those dragons will shatter their own frail,

pain-filled self-concept.

What Paul does in these few verses

is designed to free us forever

from that fear.

And I need to warn you -

as much as possible we need

to approach these verses

as if we had never heard them before.

We need to allow them to say

exactly and only what they really say.

OK, the key passage in this whole thing is Rom. 7:14-25.

And in verses14-15

Paul begins his presentation of this truth

exactly where we all begin

when we first discover the reality of evil within ourselves.

“For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.”

Now, there is a tremendous amount of honesty in that opening statement,

the honesty of recognizing there really is a major problem.

But there’s also a sense of helplessness

and obvious self-condemnation.

But then in verses 16-17

Paul takes the next crucial step,

a step that begins to offer a glimmer of hope.

Paul stops his self condemnation long enough to listen to what he’s saying:

“But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me.”

And in that statement

he suggests that there may be more involved in what’s going on inside himself

than he first realized.

It’s as if he’s saying that the problem is not ME,

but rather it’s SIN within me...

I'd like you to picture for a minute

a man who has decided to build his own house.

This guy is a real perfectionist.

He has no intention of just slapping up a few boards and calling it good,

he’s determined to build the best house he can possibly build.

He begins by studying for months.

He reads books,

he asks advice from builders he respects,

he studies all of the codes involved in plumbing and framing and wiring.

Then, when he’s completed all of his preparation, he begins to build.

He pours himself into this project like nothing else he’s ever done in his life.

He greatly exceeds code requirements in every area of construction.

He strengthens

and blocks

and reinforces far beyond normal construction techniques.

Finally his new home is completed and he moves in.

Then, about three years after he moves into the house,

one day he goes to open the bathroom door and it falls off the hinges in his hand.

A few days latter he enters the kitchen and his foot suddenly goes right through the floor.

Then he begins to notice that all of the door frames are sagging and some of the windows have cracked...

his house seems to be completely disintegrating.

Understandably, the guy is deeply depressed.

He’s got two major problems on his hands.

First of all, his house is falling apart -

doors won't close,

windows won't open,

and there are some nasty holes in the floor.

But he has even a greater problem than that.

He has a self-concept that leaves him feeling

like there is no sense even trying to pick up a hammer to fix anything.

"I'm such a lousy builder!

I did the very best I knew how to do, and look at this thing!

It won't even last three years."

As a last resort, our builder calls in an outside expert

to examine the structure and tell him where he went wrong.

The expert takes several hours, digging around in the basement and poking around in the attic.

When he finishes, he meets with the man and says, “Sir, I have two things to tell you.

First of all, this is the best constructed house I have ever seen in my life.

Second, you have the worst case of termites I have ever seen in my life.”

Now do you see how that information will affect our builder?

It will come as tremendously freeing news.

“Hey! The problem isn't really me, its the termites that dwell in me!”

True, he still has a major problem

and his house needs a great deal of work.

But the truth allows him to face and fight the problem

without the destructive self-condemnation that paralyzed him earlier.

This is exactly what’s happening with Paul in this 17^th verse.

“No longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.”

He is not saying the sin is no problem,

but he is saying that, finally, he’s freed from that paralyzing feeling

that the continued presence of sinful impulses means he is a failure in his Christian life.

He no longer has to burn out his life and energies

trying to deal with all of the self-condemnation he has been heaping on himself

for the wrong impulses that continue to be present within him.

He now understands that he truly is a new creation in Christ,

and that the real Paul is not the source of the evil.

That is what he’s saying in Rom. 7:17

“...So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me.”

Then - Rom. 18-21 we see Paul do something he almost never does -

he REPEATS WHAT HE HAS JUST SAID...

For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good.”

So what has Paul told us so far?

1. Paul does have a heart that longs to please God.

2. He does wish to do good.

3. Somehow evil is still present within him.

But how could this be?

That’s the question Paul answers for us in Rom. 7:22-23

For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.”

OK, there are two distinctly different elements that Paul points out in these verses.

#1. INNER MAN = that new inner spirit

that was created within Paul by God Himself

at the time Paul came to Christ.

#2. THE MEMBERS OF MY BODY =

the literal physical body in which his new spirit now lives.

And it’s important to note

that Paul is not saying the Body itself is evil,

but rather he’s saying that it has the ability to contain evil.

We won’t spend a lot of time on it now,

but I’ll just tell you that consistently throughout the New Testament

Paul traces the source of sin in the Christian

to our physical bodies.

In Rom 6:6 he talks with us about “our body of sin”.

In Rom 6:12 he calls us to “... not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts.”

In I Cor. 9:27 he says, “I buffet my body and make it my slave...”

In Rom 12:1, when he offers his great plea for purity in the life of the Christian

he says, “ I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

So what in the world is he saying?

I have found that five drawings

will help us understand what he’s saying.

When we enter this world

we are each given a tiny baby body.

It’s equipped with a brain,

a remarkable emotional system,

and reasoning system,

our own personal on-board living computer

to train and operate that body.

And it’s important to realize that

though our body trains easily,

once programed it does not retrain easily at all.

But there is something else we bring with us when we enter this world as well.

We also enter world with an inner control center in rebellion to God.

At the heart of that control center is our determination

that, “I can and I will run my life...”

And anyone who has ever spent more than 10 minutes with a group of toddlers

knows that this self-centered spirit

is built into us from birth.

One toddler sees another toddler playing with a toy

and walks over and tries to take it away.

Certainly we do our best to try to socialize our children

by stepping in and saying,

“No! No! Don’t grab the toy away,

ask nicely if you can play with it.”

But the underlying intent is the same - we want what we want.

The result is, before we come to Christ

we have a physical body

totally trained by a spirit in open rebellion against God as God.

Then, for those of us who come to Christ and bow before Him

a major change takes place within us.

That old rebellious spirit

is replaced by a spirit in total submission to our God.

But that new spirit doesn’t get a new body to train.

It is has to take up residence

in that old body that’s already been totally trained

under the leadership of that old rebellious spirit.

And the Result is exactly what we have Paul describing for us in Rom 7:22-23.

Now, Paul’s first response to this situation

is given to us in verse 24.

He cries out,

Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death?” YUK!

But then he goes on to complete the picture.

He says,

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Right! - I’m not in this alone.

And then Paul’s summery statement is given to us in Rom.7:25

“So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.”

And then immediately following this

he goes on to give us God’s perspective

on this warfare within us between our spirit and our body.

Rom. 8:1

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

He wants us to know with absolutely certainty

that God fully understands what’s going on within us

and between our spirit and our body,

and that He has no illusions

and no condemnation for the sin impulses that still remain within our bodies.

And He can and will guide us through

to bring our bodies into grudging submission

to the new spirit within us.

But the key in this whole process

is our learning how to live

with a me-and-my-body approach to life.

It’s not me and my sin on one side and God on the other,

but rather it’s me and my God on one side and my body on the other

warring against both what He and I truly want.

OK, we’re about out of time,

but let me just say

that God does have both a short-term

and a long-term victory plan for us.

The short-term is captured nicely by Paul in I Cor. 9:27 when he talks about our,

“buffeting our body and making it our slave”.

Clearly he is talking about an approach to living each day

in which we realize that this day, once again, is a day of internal warfare

between our body and our spirit.

We have no illusions about the battle ever going away

as long as we remain in these physical bodies.

But neither do we continue to heap condemnation upon ourselves

when we see those continued wrong responses coming out of our flesh.

That’s all the flesh will ever produce - wrong responses.

And when we see another wrong response intrude into our life,

another rat crawl out from under the sink,

and Satan is right there in our mind

telling us what a wretched excuse for a child of God we are because of it,

tell him you totally agree that it’s a nasty rat,

but that you are not the rat,

you are the child of the King

and His Spirit within you can and will keep that rat in submission to the truth.

It is part of what your God within you does,

equipping you to hate the rat

and rejoice in your true purity and righteousness of spirit at the same time.

And the long-term victory is given to us in Rom. 8:23

we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”

That’s at the heart of why the first thing we get

in the new creation of God

is a new body,

one that we will then train perfectly under the leadership

of that new spirit that already dwells within each child of God.