Derek Grier - Getting Over Myself - Part 1
Today we're gonna talk about freedom. Harriet Tubman said, "I've freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more, if they only knew they were slaves". So as we talk about freedom, it's a powerful assignment and we're gonna back into our focus. And many of you are going to be quiet and that's okay because it's hard to talk with food in your mouth and you're gonna be chewing on God's word and that's okay. But if you can gimme an amen every now and then to remind me that you're in the room, I won't get mad at you.
But in verse 12, Paul, by the Holy Spirit... begins with therefore. Therefore is a conjunction connecting what has already been said with what is about to be said. And the fact that we're beginning this verse with a therefore at the front indicates that we are jumping into something midstream. You know, change is hard at first, messy in the middle but oh it's so beautiful in the end. And we can get the first things right the first chapters right, but still lose if we give up in the middle and don't endure to the end.
Again, we're beginning in verse 12, with a therefore. So this argument has been building for six... chapters. And actually right now we are stepping into, in the movies what we would call the chase scene. So he says by the Holy Spirit, "Therefore the law is... holy". The law given to Moses at Mount Sinai which is designed to reveal God's character the world up to that time only knew the gods. The gods were highly immoral. If you know anything about the Greek gods, you know most of the other gods in other place were very similar. They, they, they didn't really know about the nature and the character of God. They were kind of willy nilly.
You didn't know if they were mad at you, not mad at you. So God had to come to reveal his character. and the goal of the law... was holiness. But God knew only one man would be able to fulfill all the claims of the law. Let's go to Matthew five and 17. Listen to Jesus. "Do not think...", like some folks do think, "that I came to destroy the Law of the Prophets. I did not come to destroy," but to what? "Fulfill". Only Jesus would embody and achieve all that was written in the written law of Moses. One church father summarized it this way. He said, "the the son of God became a man so he can enable men and women to become sons of God".
Now this is the whole gospel message and today we have a lot of church messages. But today we're gonna get back to the gospel message. Jesus paid the penalty for our sins, so we could receive... gift of righteousness. He paid a debt he didn't owe because we owed a debt we couldn't pay. Forgive me if you're getting a little tongue tied. This is the definition in my mind of God's grace. While we were sinners, Christ died for us. Now it's gonna take a little more unpacking for light bulbs to go off, so stay with me.
Romans 7:12, let's go back. "The law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good". God knew that we'd all fall short, but he was gracious enough to give his people something to aim at. Where there are no standards, there will be no efforts toward improvement. The problem was not that the law was bad, its weakness was that it didn't help. Stay with me, Romans seven and seven let's go back a little bit to understand the therefore and then we'll move forward again. "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary I would not have known sin except through the law".
How many you know, a speed limit doesn't help you slow down. All a speed limit does is... make the fact you're speeding harder to ignore. So the law of Moses all it did... was post the legal demands and what God required in his nation. And we're grateful for that. But the reason the old covenant is old and God had to bring a new, is because God wanted to do more and he wanted to do better. Jesus came, to not just point out... the laws and the demands and the character nature of God. He came to open a garage shop and give each of us a spanking, brand new engine fully equipped with cruise control.
So now each of us can drive past the police with confidence. When we see popo we don't have to, we don't have to get nervous, because God has put something on the inside of us that aligns ourself with divine authority. Are you still with me? All right. "For I would not have known covetousness" He didn't change the subject, pay attention. "Unless this law had said you shall not". What? "Covet". So the problem was the law brought the knowledge of sin but not the power to stop... sin. Just like you know, you shouldn't eat that cupcake, but knowing right and doing right are not the same... things. And what I wanna say to you today, I want to challenge you.
There's a whole segment of the body of Christ that think that gets this piece wrong. Don't focus so much. Now there's a place for it. And I believe in these things on the big gospel power items like casting out demons, raising the dead, healing the sick. And speaking of bascots, all those are great things and and thank God for them. But, but, but but don't focus on until you first get enough Holy Spirit power in your life to control the small things. Like your tongue. Like your attitude. And find enough power in your life and from God to be nice.
Back to Romans seven and 13. It'll hurt a little bit, but it'll get better. And and he is explaining 'cause 'cause people don't quite understand the relationship between, you know, the law of Moses and the New Testament. So he said: "Has then what is good become death to me"? He said: "Certainly not!, certainly not"!
The speed limit is a good thing. The speed limit protects children while they're playing. The speed limit makes it possible for us to stop at red lights. The speed limit actually protects us with all the risk that comes from, from the higher speeds. The speed limit is not the problem. The issue is the rebellion, the selfishness in our hearts that it exposes when we violate it. I didn't get a lot of amens. Breathe, breathe. I speed sometimes too. But I do take advantage of that five to 10 miles an hour the police officers do give us. I know about it and I do take advantage of it. "But sin, that it might appear sin".
So the problem was sin wasn't appear in a way, but, but we we are gonna digress in a moment. Let's not do that. "But sin that it might appear sin was producing death in me through what is what? Good". In other words, the speed limit, because of the speed limit, I kept having to pay money on tickets that I could have paid on food. I, I kept having to hire lawyers to defend me and and I kept having to take time off work to to tend to these issues. Also, each time the cops pulled me over they also found other things. Did that get too real?
You see hiding underneath the front seat, now they came because you were speeding, but often it's those other things you got in the car. Mm-hmm. Y'all act like y'all don't know what I'm talking about. I'll talk to this side of the room. But hiding under the front seat. The front seat of your impatience, was pride, attitude and a hundred other illicit, illegal... spiritual items. So behind that thing you keep getting caught at, is a hundred other things... connected. "So that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly what sinful".
You see, it's one thing to trespass when there are no signs posted because you say, I didn't know I didn't know this was someone else's property. I didn't, I thought it was, was, was was public lands. But when they read the law out loud and and you know later when they went to the synagogue, they heard the law they knew the law and the law became a neon sign. Don't go there, don't do that. This is not the way. So no one in Israel could say that they didn't know the speed limit was 65 miles per hour. You're like, Bishop, I don't enjoy this mess. Stay with me. "For we know that the law is spiritual, but I... am carnal".
This is the whole problem. Without God's help you and I... are carnal. Carnal literally means of the flesh, sarkikós in Greek. But it just simply means of the flesh. And by the time Paul wrote this in the first century, the term flesh was was associated or represented human weakness against or contrasted by God's strength and God's spirit. So you had the flesh, which that was weak and the spirit that was strong. But he wasn't saying... please people misinterpret the scriptures sometimes. He wasn't saying the body or our bodies are evil. Because elsewhere it says our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. He's talking about something else.
"For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal". I am susceptible to self-centeredness, short-sightedness. Paul was one of the greatest apostles who had ever lived, wrote much of our New Testament. But I need to tell you something. Your title, how long you've been in church does not protect you from being a human being. Everyone has a few chapters in their lives they don't want anyone to read out loud. Everyone has a battle they're still fighting in areas of our lives that we are not proud of. Even... Paul. And we could put people on the pedestal And we could start thinking, well they don't have my struggle, they don't go through... Yeah, they go through exactly what you went through.
That's why they can preach to us because they've been there and they got the t-shirt and all the rest. "But but I am what carnal, sold under sin". What he was saying is, without the help of the Holy Spirit we are sin's slave. We are the puppet master's puppet. We are the devil's doormat. A life ruled by the flesh is absolutely frustrating, because it's completely dependent on finite human effort and inadequate human resources. and that frustrates because, you know, we we want our wife, we want our husband, we, we maybe if I make enough money or maybe if I get this nose job and I look a little bit better, you know that would fix me and I'd be okay with me. You will just end up more frustrated, because flesh can only go but... so far.
"For what I am doing," this is the apostle though please understand, it's the apostle. "For what I'm doing, I do not under", it makes no sense. You know, I'm deep and I'm smart and everything, but but this defies me. I plan to do one thing with my mind but I do something else with my mouth and with my body. I don't understand it. "For what I'm doing. I do not what understand". Life in the flesh is a constant street fight with condemnation and personal disappointment. "For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do".
Now we're getting to a key because I want you to notice in these... I think it's 14 to to 25, he uses the word "I" 24 times. Then he uses "me", "myself" and "my" 13 times. More reference to self, than any other place in our Bible. You see, the more you try to live for God in your own strength, the more exasperated you're gonna be. So he continues. "If, then, I" Again, you see this I. "Do what I will not do". Or or what I really don't wanna do in my heart, but there's still something in me, that wants to move in that direction. "I agree that the law is good".
In other words, what he's saying, the fact that we struggle within ourselves to do what's right reminds us that we're not always naturally noble. And I know some of you were born wonderful. But for the rest of us sometimes we gotta struggle to do the right thing. We gotta push ourselves to do the right thing. And when we push ourselves we're admitting that we're not a law unto ourself that there's something higher outside what I feel like doing, that's worthy of my... attention. "But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me".
So his born-again spirit, we are new creations in Christ Jesus. We, all things become new. So in his spirit, he wanna do what was right but the unrenewed part of his soul tugged constantly in the opposite direction. And then he says in verse 18, by the way, do do you understand that? Okay, you see when, when you're born again your spirit saved, but then you have this soul, your mind, your will and emotions. That's your human personality. So your spiritual part: made like Christ looks like Jesus, it's wonderful. But then you got this soul the soul remembers when you were 15.
Also, the soul often reverts back to when you were 15 when you're in trouble. But, but it remembers, you know everything that happened and it's limited. It got this, this pull towards selfishness and frustration, all those other things. It's just this gravitational pull, pulling in the wrong direction. And then we have the body. So whatever your soul focuses on, is the way it will go. So if your mind, will and emotion is focused on what you feel like doing you just going to do what you feel like doing. Not gonna be much different than an animal. Might preach it too hard there, forgive me. Do you hear what I'm saying?
But if your mind, will and emotions, your soul, is focused on spiritual things, he said, my word is spirit. This is why we don't, every Sunday that we come together to get in the word, so I can engage your mind and your thinking and and get you renewed into that higher and newer self. So you can leave here with that focus. That's why often you leave here feeling good until you start getting all that flesh stuff in you right, right after you leave here. Because your focus at that moment in your mind, will and emotions is the spiritual things. I mean, you focus on God and his faithfulness and his greatness. But then we go back out there and everyone's pointing at you and pointing at your circumstance and it's challenging.
And in everything in your soul, you need to do something, you need to fix it. And you gotta, you gotta fight that good fight of faith on the inside. No, I'm gonna look to God. God's got this all the way. But, but you hear what I'm saying. So, so, so the issue was not that Paul was not a Christian. He was a Christian. He's an apostle. But he fought the same fight each of us... Fight. "For I know that is in me, that is, in my flesh". Watch this. "Nothing good dwells".
Our problem is we don't believe this. We are constantly trying to improve our flesh. Excuse our flesh, rationalize our flesh. We'll hire psychologists to, to justify our flesh. Why? Because we are incessantly trying to find some characteristic in us, worthy of God's love, worthy of existence. We want something in us to cause God, to love us. You see, we wanna say God loves me because I'm special. God loves me because I'm good. God loves me because I'm kind. God loves me because I'm white. God loves me because I'm black. God loves me because I'm a Democrat. God loves me because I'm a republic.
We're constantly looking for things in the natural to explain... God's love for us. But as long as you put the nexus of God's love on you, you live with a burden. I don't care how often you come to church. As long as it's based, his love is based on how good you are, how good you've been, how right you got it in your head. The weight is constantly on you. No wonder you're tired. God loved me before I was me. So there's nothing after becoming me that can stop him from loving me. Let me say that different, God loved you before you were you. So there's nothing you can do after becoming you that can stop him from loving you.