Two Journeys

Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 13. The focus of the sermon is spiritual gifts.

I want to step back a little bit. We've been looking at 1 Corinthians 13, but we'll be able to get through that relatively quickly. But I want to set before you again, the image of what it is that's happening and what God is doing in this world so that you would know how spiritual gifts fits in. God is building his church in this world. Jesus Christ is building his church. Remember what Jesus said in Caesarea Philippi, very first sermon I ever preached to you, Matthew Chapter 16, Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” And so Jesus has been building his church for 2000 years. And it's not finished yet, is it? What a project. But he's working on it and he's building and it's rising to be a holy temple in the Lord.

Take a minute and look at Ephesians 2, and we're going to see that again. I want to put that image ever before you so that you know every day that you wake up when the sun comes up in the east and you draw your first breath and put your foot down on the ground for the first time that day and you begin to serve, why you're here on earth. It's the reason that God has left you here on earth, namely to build his church in the ways that he has appointed for you. If you look at Ephesians 2:19 and following, there the apostle Paul speaking to the Ephesians says, “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” I cannot stress enough how important that foundation is. That foundation, the foundation of the apostles and prophets is the Scripture I believe. You have in your hands now, as you're looking at the Bible, the apostles and prophets, that's a good summary for the Scriptures.

And so we have the New and the Old Testaments, we have the word of God and all of it testifies to Jesus Christ, doesn't it? The old covenant testifies to Christ, the new covenant testifies to Christ as well. He is therefore the chief cornerstone of that foundation; it all points to him. And so this household that he's referring to is built on a solid foundation that cannot be moved. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” And so there's this solid foundation, and we've got this household, this structure being built on this foundation with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. And then in verse 21, “In him,” namely in Christ, “the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.” That is what is going on in this world right now. Whether you're an inner varsity staff worker or you're a church member here at First Durham or a missionary in Papua New Guinea, no matter what you're doing as a Christian, you are building this holy temple that's rising in the Lord. And it's far more glorious than Solomon's temple ever was. Nothing, no earthly structure can compete with it. Doesn't matter how magnificent the cathedrals were in medieval Europe, it doesn't matter what kind of stained glass graced their walls, it doesn't matter what kind of carved wood, it doesn't matter how glorious was the temple that God himself commanded Solomon to be built, inlaid and covered with gold and with ivory and decorations. None of it compares with the glory of this temple. This is a spiritual structure being built together and rising to become a holy temple in the Lord.

Verse 22, “And in him you too are being built together.” So the building materials are people. “You too, the Ephesians were building materials for that holy temple,” “you too, are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” There's no temple in the new Jerusalem because we are the temple. We are the holy dwelling place for God and he will dwell in us and with us and God himself will be with them and be their God. And so that is the temple that's being built. And it's not finished yet. There is a blueprint for it. He is the architect of that structure and he's also the builder of the structure. And everything's going according to plan. The structure is right on schedule. It cannot be derailed in any way. There's no way that it will not be finished. There's not going to be any cost overruns either. You don't need to worry about that. It's going to cost just as much effort and blood of the martyrs and witness and sacrifice as he ordains. “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” And, “Unless the kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it bears many seeds.” And so they also fall to the ground and die. And the thing just keeps building and growing, and day after day you die to yourself and serve him and the church grows and it rises. So you have this sense of a holy temple structure being built on this foundation and it's growing and it's rising. And that gives value to the work we do, doesn't it? Everything we do has eternal value.

You get the same image over in 1 Peter 2. Take a minute and look over there. 1 Peter 2 the sense of the temple. Remember what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well? They were having a dispute over what the proper place of worship was, the Jews and Samaritans were. Samaritans said that they should worship on Mount Gerizim and the Jews on Mount Zion and Jerusalem; and there was a controversy. And Jesus said, “Woman, believe me, the time is coming when neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. God is a Spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” There wouldn't be a temple in the new covenant, not that type, but there is this kind of temple, the spiritual temple of people who come to faith in Christ. And so Peter picks up on the same image here in chapter 2:4, “As you come to him, the living Stone- rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him- you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house” just stop there for a minute. You're a living stone in the wall of that temple if you are a Christian. If you come to faith in Christ, you are set into that wall and nothing can remove you. You're there eternally. Isn't that marvelous? But you're living stones. And so the image gets a little complex here because not only are you a stone in the wall of the temple, but if you keep reading, it says that you are living stones, “being built into a spiritual house,” we already had that image in Ephesians 2, “to be a holy priesthood,” so now what is it, Peter? Am I a stone in the wall or am I a priest in the temple? Well, you're both. You're both. We are a kingdom of priests therefore we have a priestly ministry in this spiritual house, “you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” So the smoke of the sacrifice just rises day after day. And it's a pleasing aroma to God. Just like when Noah got off the ark and built that altar and offered the clean animals as a sacrifice to God. And it said that God smelled the aroma and it was pleasing to him. Well, this is even more pleasing. That was just old covenant sacrifice, even pre-old covenant, before the law of Moses. But now all that's finished. We don't have animal sacrifices anymore, book of Hebrews tells us very plainly that for all time Jesus Christ has done away with those animal sacrifices, but not with sacrifice. There's still a sacrifice to be offered, and it's by us. Day after day we have a priestly duty, don't we? A priestly ministry to offer up to God these sacrifices to him. And the scripture talks in many places about it. Paul talks about his evangelistic ministry in Romans 15. He says he has the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God to the Gentiles. So every day that he went out to evangelize his priestly duty was to proclaim the gospel. And it was… it's just such a beautiful thing. He just went out and laid his life down. And it wasn't a matter of results, it was a matter of his heart of sacrifice to God. And he left the results to God. And they were great results. Churches planted. And he wrote letters to them and we have them, the churches in Ephesus and Philippi and Colossi and all these places that he was praying for and ministering to in mighty ways. So there was fruit. But for himself, he was offering himself every day to God as a sacrifice. And his evangelism was a priestly offering to God. He saw it that way. And also it says in Hebrews 13, that we should offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess his name through Jesus Christ. So we praise Him, and the smoke from our praise just rises up like a pleasing aroma to God. Isn't that beautiful?

There's lots of ways we can offer sacrifice. And I think our spiritual gifts is a conduit or an avenue in which we consistently are offering up these sacrifices to God. That's our priestly duty, our administrations. And as we do it, the holy temple rises even a little bit more. If the Lord doesn't come back in our generation, we will die and we will go and face him, and he will test the quality of our work, 1 Corinthians 3, he'll see what we've done with that work. And if what we have built is gold, silver, and costly stones, if the work that we've done has been, as it says in Titus according to sound doctrine, it's been built solidly, built to last, then it will survive judgment day. If not, it will go away. And I actually want it to go away. I don't want my straw to come with me into Heaven. I don't want it there. I only want those things that were glorifying to God to come with me into Heaven, purified by the fire of judgment day and brought on through by his grace. But I want there to be a maximum of that. I want to maximize that, right? And so there's a daily administration, a daily offering as a priest in the temple of God. And we all do this. It says, “you, also like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Now, if you put it together as we offer our priestly sacrifices, as we evangelize, as we disciple, as we pray, as we work, what happens to the walls in the temple? They keep getting higher, don't they? More living stones come in, more people come to Christ and they grow up in maturity. And so no one image can handle this. So Paul actually gives us the image of the body growing up into maturity as well. So both of those have the same image, namely of an unfinished work. It's not done yet. And so we have work to do here at First Baptist, don't we? It's not finished yet. And we are called to use our spiritual gifts to build this body up.

Now, what builds it up? I'm going to say to you right now that it is not spiritual gifts per se that builds the body. We know it's Christ that builds. And of course the Holy Spirit builds, and what they do is perfect and flawless. But he has involved us in the building. So from the human perspective, what is it that builds the body of Christ or the temple? It is not spiritual gifts, but it is love working through the spiritual gift that builds the body. You can use your gift in an unloving manner and you didn't build anything. That's the point of 1 Corinthians 13: that the use of a spiritual gift in an unloving manner doesn't build anything at all. And so it is love through the channel of the spiritual gift that builds the body.

Look at 1 Corinthians 8. 1 Corinthians 8. We've looked at this before, but let's look at it again. 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that we all possess knowledge.” I'm not going to discuss that in context. We'll get to it another time. But then Paul makes one of these statements that stands alone. It's got its purpose in context, but it's also one of those kind of timeless statements as well, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” You see? Or another word for builds up is edifies, right? So there's this edification going on. There's the sense of the building being built up, and according to 1 Corinthians 8:1, it's love that does it. Love builds up the body. And so I want- as we come to the idea of spiritual gifts, I want you to think of it this way: It's not your gifts that build up the body. It's love that builds up the body. And love frequently uses your gifts to do it. So this way, if your gift isn't encouragement, you can still encourage a brother or sister. Love will use encouragement to build up that brother or sister. May not be your spiritual gift, but you can still encourage, please do, actually. Could be some time that in God's sovereignty it'll orchestrate that you are the only one that can encourage this brother or sister at that moment. May not be your spiritual gift, but it's your work to do.

And so it is love that builds up the body, not spiritual gifts. But spiritual gifts are these kind of conduits, and then the love just flows down them again and again. And so you find yourself using that particular manner. My gift is teaching. And so it's just a pipe through which that love for the body just flows. It's my desire to build you up. I want you to go into this week and just have a harvest. I want you to have seven full days of harvest. So I'm standing here to teach you like this so that you're really motivated to go build the body through evangelism and discipleship and prayer and through all the things that God may call you to do.

Isn't it amazing? Look around the room. Take a minute now and look around. Look at each other. You're all going to go off into amazing things. Go ahead. Look. People, right? Created in the image of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, going to spend eternity with these people. They'll look a little different at that point. Resurrection body. Who knows what that'll look like? Better, I hope. But we'll be together. But each one of us is going to go off in lots of different directions this week, aren't we? And we're going to go off into a bunch of good works that God has ordained in advance that we should walk in them, Ephesians 2:10. And you've got your own good works, and nobody on the face of the earth can do your good works for you but you. And so you're going to go off and you're going to do your good works, right? And oh, wouldn't it be great if you hit a hundred percent of them this week? If you did them all. All of the good works that God has ordained, that you should walk in and that you do them all. And if you do, you're going to be doing them through love. And it's love that builds up the body. Love first and foremost for God, love for God's glory and his name and his radiance and his reputation in this world. Love for God above everything. And the love for your neighbor is yourself, a desire to build up and to care for your neighbor.

Well that's a setting in context. Look at 1 Corinthians 13. And we should be able to finish the rest of this chapter because we're almost done last time. But there Paul speaks about gifts and the relationship between gifts and love. And if I make it hard for you to hear 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings for the rest of your life, I'm sorry, it's not my intention, but this is really about spiritual gifts, isn't it? Okay, as you look at it and how love and gifts work together. But don't worry about it when you hear that that beautiful wedding poetry just enjoy it. Weddings are beautiful, and just let it come over- and then it's great, that's fine. But in context, we're really talking about spiritual gifts, all right? Let's read it again, 

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now, we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I am fully known. And now these three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Now, we've already seen in the first three verses that spiritual gifts, and this is a list of spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues, right? Gift of prophecy, right? Gift of faith, the gift of giving. These are spiritual gifts. But what he's saying is that it's possible to use the spiritual gifts without love. And if you use the spiritual gift without love, you have not built the body. “Knowledge puffs up, but it is love that builds up.” And so it's got to be love moving down through the spiritual gift that builds the body. So he says that love is indispensable to the proper use of your spiritual gifts. And actually it is really, that the spiritual gift is a tool in the hands of love to build the body.

Okay, so we've got to have love. So then he tells us what love is. It's a series of character traits. It's a way of carrying yourself. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy,” as just as we just read. This is what love is like. Now as you read through these, how often would you say that these adjectives characterize you? That's a challenge, isn't it? I find 1 Corinthians 13 to be one of the toughest chapters in the entire Bible. It's way beyond beautiful poetry to me now. It's saying, “God, is it really possible that I could end up like this? Is that really possible at the end of sanctification that I could end up like this? Andy is patient. Andy is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast. He is not proud. He is not rude. He is not self-seeking. He is not easily angered. He keeps no record of wrongs. He does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, trust, hopes, and perseveres. Is it really possible that I'll end up like that?” Well, it's not just possible. It's promised to me. It's promised that I'll be glorious. I'll be as morally perfect as Jesus and so will all of you in Christ. That's incredible, isn't it? But still a daily challenge as you take your life and line it alongside what it should be in scripture.

But then the third section of this, basically he's saying that spiritual gifts are temporary. They're temporary. They'll come a time that we don't need them anymore. Isn't that remarkable? Now, think about what I've been saying so far this evening. What is the time? When will the church no longer need spiritual gifts? What's that? 

[Audience speaks]

Well, yeah, when it's finished, when the building project is done, do you think it'll ever be finished? Of course. It's not one of these endless kind of boondoggle type things that God just wants to keep going and going. He's got an omega day, doesn't he? “I'm the Alpha and the Omega.” There's an Omega day. There's going to be a final day of human history. And then the work's going to be done. The temple will be completed, and then we won't need spiritual gifts anymore. But also for us individually, we personally won't need spiritual gifts anymore when we die and go to the Lord. Because spiritual gifts give us a source of information now about God, don't we? We're talking about God now. Secular people or atheists say that God talk is foolishness, right? It's just a human phenomenon. We know better, because we have prophecy, right? We have a word from the Lord, and he's told us about himself, self-revelation. And so it's not nonsense or foolishness for us to say God is love or God is light because he told us about these aspects of His character. But we only know in part, prophecy does not give us the whole picture, does it? Not even the apostles and prophets put together gives us the whole picture. The Bible's incomplete. It's perfect and yet incomplete. But there'll come a day that our knowledge will be complete. And it's not going to come to us through spiritual gifts, but through a direct mediation of God himself when we see him face to face. When we see him face to face we won't need the pipelines of spiritual gifts anymore. We won't need it. We'll be beyond that. We will know fully, even as we have been fully known by God. We will all know God. We will see him face to face. We'll be in his very presence. And we won't need spiritual gifts anymore.

And so don't stress out about whatever your spiritual gift package is. It's temporary anyway. You're going to use it for a while until God takes you home. So just use those conduits, whatever they are, and then others that aren't your spiritual gifts, use them too. Encourage even if you're not gifted with the gift of encouragement. Use those gifts and use other opportunities when you can to build the church up in love. Build the church every day of your life until God calls you home. And then you will leave these tools behind you. You'll leave the tools that have been in your hand called spiritual gifts behind you. But love will come with you, won't it? Love is eternal. The love for the body of Christ is eternal. That's never going to go away. It's going to be perfected in heaven, but it's going to come with you.

And so spiritual gifts are temporary. That's the whole point of the third section. Very poetic. And we get more things in here than that and we could meditate on it. But that's the central lesson of the third section of 1 Corinthians 13. Spiritual gifts are temporary, but love is eternal. So don't be discouraged or covetous or yearning or envy filled about somebody else's gifts, whatever. Do your gifts. Do them to the glory of God. Use your gifts in love to build the body of Christ every day of your life. And you as a faithful co-laborer with Jesus Christ will be fully rewarded. God is not unjust. He will not forget your work or the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them, Hebrews 6:10. He's not going to forget. He will fully reward you. But do it. Go out there and do it. Use your gifts to build the church this week and pray for each other that they would use their gifts. We are still, as a church, not using our spiritual gifts fully, not the way we should. We need to keep growing in this. But realize the superiority of love. It is love that builds the body and not the spiritual gifts.

Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 13. The focus of this sermon is on the topic of spiritual gifts.

Now, we're going to continue our study in spiritual gifts tonight, but first I have some things on my heart that I'd like to share just about the nature of the body of Christ from the Book of Hebrews. Recently, I've been reading through Hebrews and I'd like to share a couple of things from that with your permission and then we'll go on to 1 Corinthians 13 again and look some more at spiritual gifts. But look with me if you would at Hebrews 3. What I'd like to do is talk a little bit about our covenant fellowship together as Christians and just how it protects us and helps us in this world. We spoke this morning about God being a covenant making and covenant-keeping God, and we talked about the marriage covenant and how that's the covenant that we are most familiar with. It's a binding promise and commitment that a husband and a wife make to each other. But so also we believe as Baptists is our covenant fellowship as members of the body of Christ; that we make a commitment to one another and it really does fit in very well with our understanding of spiritual gifts. Basically, what we're saying is that we as individuals need the body of Christ and we need to receive spiritual gifts from one another, don't we? And that we are all dependent on each other. I personally, individually, as a Christian, need what the body of Christ brings to me. I cannot be mature. I cannot grow on my own.

Have you ever talked to somebody that says, "I don't need to go to church on Sunday. God is everywhere and I don't need to be there on Sunday morning." To some degree, that passage I cited this morning in John 4 about God being spirit and those who worship in spirit and truth could tend in that direction. You're not going to worship either on this mountain in Jerusalem. That's not a matter of the location. But the funny thing is that that just doesn't work, does it, in the Christian life? We really do need the church and we need to receive spiritual gifts from one another. We need the benefits of the teaching and the preaching and the exhortation, the admonishment. We need the gifts of encouragement. We need all the gifts functioning if we individually are going to be maximally mature and fruitful in the Christian life. Conversely, we also pledge as individual members to give our gifts to the body. So, there's a mutual covenant relationship there. And so, our church does in fact have a covenant and it's got many things in it. We read it every time we have a new member Sunday. But I want to share with you a few things about that from Hebrews 3 and Hebrews 10, the negative side and the positive side, and both of them very useful and powerful for us.

Let's begin at Hebrews 3:7, I'm going to be zeroing in on verse 13, but I want to understand it in context. So, let's look at 3:7. Hebrews 3:7 says, "So, as the Holy Spirit says: 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for 40 years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation. I said, "Their hearts are always going astray and they have not known my ways." So I declared on oath in my anger, "They shall never enter my rest."' See to it brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." But here it is. Look at verse 13, "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if," that's a big word, isn't it? "We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly to the end, the confidence we had at first." Okay. There's what we would call a warning passage in the book of Hebrews. And the book of Hebrews is full of these kind of warnings. But I think that Hebrews 3:13 is all about the body of Christ. Now, the church isn't mentioned. Spiritual gifts aren't mentioned in 3:13, but it's there, isn't it? Look at it again. "But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." Now, the context here is of a verse that the author to Hebrews is citing concerning the Jews in the Old Testament who refuse to enter the Promised Land; you remember the story. They would not enter the Promised Land, they were afraid; there were the 10 spies that brought that negative report. There were the two faithful spies, Joshua and Caleb, who said, "No, it's a good land that God is giving us and God is faithful and if he's pleased with us, he will bring us into the promised land." But the 10 spies who are faithless, who are unbelieving, who are cowardly, would not believe the promise of God. Though God had promised to Abraham that this would be his land, the land of his descendants, they did not believe that promise, but incited the whole group to rebel and to turn back and to want to go back to Egypt. So, they shrunk back. In effect, the author to Hebrews is picking that up and saying to this Jewish community that's had the gospel preach to them, some of them have come on into faith in Christ. Some of them are lingering there. There's persecution involved. They're afraid. They don't know if they want to come on into a full embracing of Jesus as their Messiah, they might get de-synagogued, there might be some persecution, there will be some persecution. And so, they're shrinking back. They're hesitating. He's picking up this scripture and he's saying, "Today, if you hear his voice." Look at that, by the way, in verse 7. You just can't get away from it. It says, "So, as the Holy Spirit says," and then what follows after that? Scripture. What does that tell you? The Holy Spirit speaks directly to you through Scripture. This is not the word of man, it's the word of God. The Holy Spirit says this. "So, as the Holy Spirit says," and then a quote from scripture, wow, could it be this Holy Spirit speaking through Hebrews as well? Absolutely. The Holy Spirit speaks through Scripture. "So, as the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.'" Isn't that so important?

The author to Hebrews talks about this phenomenon called today. Today and today and today, to paraphrase Shakespeare. Didn't he say, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?" Well, we get today and we get today and we get today, a series of things called today, don't we? We can't do a thing about yesterday. We can't do a thing really about tomorrow. We can only ever do something about this thing called today. So, as long as we've got this thing called today, let's not harden our hearts. That's what he's saying. As long as we're in this era, this new covenant era called today, we must not harden our hearts as they did at the brink of the Promised Land and shrunk back. We must not do that.

So, it says in verse 12, "See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." Be sure that your heart doesn't turn away. When the Spirit speaks to you, you must listen, you must follow, you must obey, you must walk. Don't turn away, but stay walking with God. Then verse 13, it says, "But encourage one another daily." Who is that speaking to? Huh? To us. What's another word for us? The church. It's speaking to the church, isn't it? Are your coworkers going to be encouraging you daily so that you would not be hardened by sin? I worked for 10 years as an engineer, nobody ever did that for me. They don't care. Who cares in your life whether you're hardened by sin or not? If it's not the church, I know of no other group. And it says, "We're to encourage one another," what? "daily." That talks about regular what? Attendance at church, involvement in church, all the time, consistently involved in covenant faithfulness, in covenant fellowship with a group of people who knows you well enough to say, "You know something, I sense that you're drifting in your Christian life and I'm afraid for you. I'm seeing some things that cause me concern and I'm afraid for you."

So, as long as we're in this period call today, let's encourage one another. Encourage one another daily, or else what? You might be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. Is sin deceitful? Is it tricky and treacherous and vicious? Oh, yes. Roman 7 is all about that. Yeah, we've got this thing called sin. Paul says, "It's no longer I who do it, but it's sin living in me." It's like this vile tumor that lives within me. It's strong and powerful. Do you feel its force, Christian man and woman? Do you feel the force of sin? It's there and it fights everything that God wants to do in your life. And what is, according to this verse, one of your prime protections from sin's deceitfulness? The body of Christ, right? And if you're not in good, faithful, consistent covenant fellowship with the body of Christ, you might be deceived by sin, you might be hardened by it, you might turn away from the living God. So, we've got here a negative impetus to regular faithful fellowship in a good Bible preaching church. What is that? So that you'll be protected from yourself, protected from your own sin. We all have it. We've all got that cancer, don't we? We've all got that tumor. You know it's true. And so, we need help. We need people to rebuke us from time to time or correct us, adjust us, challenge us, notice us, be aware of us. Well, that's the negative side.

“Encourage one another daily, as long as...” The early church, they did meet daily. Did you know that? Nowadays, we have this sense, just like in Malachi, "Oh, what a burden." They didn't see it as a burden. They enjoyed being together. So, also in times of revival, they met every day. There's this sense of yearning for the word of God, a hungering and a thirsting for it, got nothing to do with this timepiece thing. It had nothing to do with that. It's just I want anything and everything I can get out of the word of God and from the body of Christ, I want to be ministered to by the spiritual gifts. I want to grow and I want to give what I've got as well. But I sure do want to be protected from my sinfulness. It's there and I need help.

So, encourage one another daily. Encourage doesn't just... It's stronger than just encourage, isn't it? It's a matter of loving each other enough to tell the truth. "As long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness, we have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly to the end, the confidence we had at first." That is a very interesting verse. We have come to share. What tense is that? Think about that. That's past tense, isn't it? Past completed action. If we do something in the future, hold on to the end. Isn't that interesting? The proof of something that happened in the past is present and future faithfulness and consistency. You see, constantly walking, obeying, living, breathing as a Christian. You're grafted in the vine and you're bearing good fruit. That is genuine Christianity. We need each other, don't we? We need a vital fellowship. That's what churches are for. That's what a good church is for. That's the negative side. Let's look at the positive side, Hebrews 10, a familiar verse. Hebrews 10:24-25, there's lots of let us in there. Let us this, let us that. What's that? 

[Audience speaks]

Christian's favorite vegetable. Yes, salads, lettuce. That's right. Let us this, let us draw near, let us hold unswervingly. Then, in verse 24, "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing. But let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching." Now, here we've got another day. We already talked about one thing called today, as long as it is called today. So, that's one thing, this day called today. We had it and it was Sunday and it's got a date. God willing, you'll have it tomorrow. But we can't be sure about that, will we? We should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live." We've only ever got today. But then there's another day coming and we've got that day too, don't we? What is that day? Judgment day, and it's coming for us all. It is appointed unto men to die once and then comes that day, judgment day, right? That day is coming. Do you see that day coming? Yeah, it's coming. Are we in the last days? Yes. Hebrews 1:2 says we are, "That in these last days he's spoken to us by his Son." Right? Yes, we are. And the people say, "Oh, pastor, do you think we're in the last days?" Yes, I do, have been for 2000 years. We're in the last days. But we see the day approaching, don't we? Maybe if you're aged, if you're elderly, you see your day approaching, maybe you already see it in your body as it breaks down and you see the aging and you see some friends that have died, who knows? But you see the day approaching. Even if you're young, the day is approaching. It's coming, isn't it? It's that day and it's coming and it's certain and there's no avoiding it. God has promised it. He's told us 100, 500 times that day is coming. There will be judgment day. It's coming. What should we do? Well, we should be the church together about it. Isn't that what it says? "Let us consider how we may spur one another on," that's all about spiritual gifts, I think.

Let's think about it. Let's lay on our beds or sit on the couch with nothing going on, no electronic things coming in. Let's just think about how we can build each other up in the body of Christ. Let's think about how we can encourage one another. In the Hebrews 3, it's negative, "So that we won't be deceived by sin." Here, it's positive, "So that we'll crank out tons of good works," lots and lots of them. Let's encourage one another, consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let's have lots to show on that day. Let's have lots of good fruit for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God laid out in advance that we should walk in them. But we need our brothers and sisters to exhort us and spur us on to do them, because we get weary, don't we, in the ministries that God's given us.

So, if you want maximum fruitfulness, you need to be in a church that's going to consider you. Consider, we're not a very thoughtful people anymore. Stuff just washes over us. We just accepted and it just washes over us. We ought to stop and think. You ought to think about your sister in Christ, your good friend at the church, or your brother in Christ. How can I spur him or her on to love and good deeds? What do you think about the word spur? "I've got spurs that jingle, jangle jingle." What are spurs? Wow, just gets the horse moving. It's a timely word. It's an exhortation. It's something that's spoken and it causes you to move with new energy, like a horse that gets spurred and off you go, and you're re-energized in your service to God. Does this not speak about the church? Aren't we talking about regular, faithful covenant fellowship with a Bible-preaching church? And if you're not in that fellowship, you're not going to be doing love and good deeds. You're not going to be maximally fruitful. "Let us consider how we may spur, let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing." Isn't that sad? Isn't it dangerous? It's not just sad, it's dangerous, Hebrews 3, it's dangerous to give up meeting together. "We have come to share in Christ if we hold on to the end." You see, it’s dangerous, but here, we're speaking positively about fruit. We've got the negative side in Hebrews 3, regular fellowship in a good church so that we don't get deceived by sin. We've got the positive side in Hebrews 10, regular fellowship in a good Bible-teaching church so that we can be maximally fruitful for Jesus Christ. I'm speaking to you, because you're here tonight. You came. But I've learned in the ministry there's no guarantee that if you're here tonight, you'll be here a year from now. I've learned that, because sin works, doesn't it? And we start to drift away, we start to drift away. So, what I'm urging you to do is do not underestimate the importance of a good Bible-preaching church and regular, faithful attendance in that church. It's part of our covenant promise to one another.

All right. That's one thing, but I think it seems to fit in together. Let's turn, if you would, in 1 Corinthians 13 and find out about love and good deeds. We're supposed to spur one another on more to love and good deeds. What we're learning about through about spiritual gifts is that one of the maximum ways that love speaks through you is by your spiritual gift. It's your way of loving the body of Christ. It's your way of loving Christ, but it's your way of loving each other through the body of Christ. If your gift is encouragement, your way of loving the body is by encouraging as much as you can, like Barnabas being a son of encouragement, giving as much encouragement as you can. If your gift is serving, that you would serve as much as you can and that you would love the body that way. It's a conduit or a pipe of love. Love just flows through that spiritual gift to the body, to individual people in the body, but to the body corporately and collectively.

And so, what Paul is saying here in 1 Corinthians 13, he is really talking about love expressed through spiritual gifts and how, if we use our spiritual gifts in a way that's unloving, it doesn't make any sense, because the spiritual gifts are less significant than the love. And that's what he's saying here, that the spiritual gifts are going to go away, but love remains, love is eternal. So, we must use our spiritual gifts in a loving manner. Let's read this chapter. I know it's not a wedding tonight, but we're going to read 1 Corinthians 13 anyway. And if it causes you to think better about your wedding and your marriage, great. But I think the context here is the body of Christ, isn't it? It's the church and how we are to love one another. So, let's look at it, 1 Corinthians 13:1.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

Now, in context, 1 Corinthians 12, 13 and 14, discussing spiritual gifts. We know that because of the beginning of chapter 12, he says; "Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant." So, he's instructing about spiritual gifts and that continues through chapter 14, when he talks about prophecy and how it's to work in the church, and the relationship between tongues and prophecy in a local church. So, we're in a context here of spiritual gifts. And right in the middle of it, we have a digression, and that's what this is. But digressions are not unimportant. Paul, under the inspiration of the Spirit, put it in here. It's okay for this digression to be taken out of context and used at weddings and other things, or written in Christian cards, and that's fine. The problem is though, if you do that too much, you may shrink its meaning and its application and not see how it connects to its context and see how it relates to spiritual gifts. The bottom line is that how you use your spiritual gift matters a lot. It makes a difference how you use the gift of prophecy, your gift of tongues or the gift of teaching or any of these things. All of these gifts must be used to serve love. Love builds up the body. What he's saying here is he's urging the Corinthians to think about their spiritual gifts properly.

Now, as we read between the lines in the Corinthian church, we see that there were some problems in that church. It was a very gifted church. He said, "You lack no spiritual gift. You've got it all. You're fully equipped. You've got everything you need." The problem is that they were not mature. They misunderstood what it meant to be truly spiritual and they misunderstood the purpose of the spiritual gifts. The purpose was to build up the body of Christ until it reached maturity, until it reached maturity in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God and became mature. That's what the gifts are for.

So, the gifts are to build each other up into doctrinal and practical Christ-likeness, that we think like Christ thinks, and that we live like Christ lives. So, the body of Christ is for that purpose. Is the church finished? No, it's not finished yet. It's not finished yet. The church is still growing. It's like a temple rising to full size in the Lord, it's like a body that hasn't reached full maturity yet. But it's growing day by day, and it's only growing by the exercise of these things called spiritual gifts. As the missionaries and the evangelists use their gifts, people are being added to the number. They're coming to faith in Christ. As the teachers are using their gifts, the people are being discipled and brought up to maturity. As the encouragers and the givers and the prayers and the faith-filled people and the servers are all using their gifts, the whole body grows to full maturity. That's the purpose of the gifts. The problem is the Corinthians were impressed with a certain category of gift. The showy sign gifts. You know what I'm talking about? Speaking in tongues and miracles and other things that were really quite spectacular, realize they didn't have 287 channels on their television stations. So, they needed to see some things at the local church. When stuff was flashy and dramatic, it was exciting and that was going on. So, they tended to put up on a pedestal certain gifts like speaking tongues, for example.

Paul begins in 1 Corinthians 13 by zeroing in on the speaking in tongues. Also, he's talking about knowledge. They're impressed with knowledge. One might even say secular, kind of philosophic knowledge. They like that worldly rhetoric and the ability to marshal philosophical arguments. They were really blended in that way. But there was also a spiritual knowledge that they were getting through the gospel, through the indwelling Spirit. So, they were impressed with knowledge. Look for a minute at 1 Corinthians 8:1; he talks about this. We've got the showy sign gifts on the one hand and then we've got this idea of knowledge. This is just an aside, he speaks about food sacrifice to idols, “Now, about food sacrifice to idols, we know that we all possess knowledge.” Then, he says this, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." Isn't that so strong? Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Knowledge is a good thing if it serves love to build a church. But knowledge disconnected from the love of the body of Christ is a self-puffing, it's a prideful, arrogant kind of thing. That's what was going on in the Corinthian church. So, knowledge must be brought in service to love, to build the church up to full maturity. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”

In effect, spiritual gifts are love's tool, love's tool to build the body of Christ. Spiritual gifts used in an unloving manner makes no sense at all. It's completely irrational. How in the world can you use the very thing that was supposed to be for love and for the building of the church in a way that brought pride or arrogance or boastfulness to yourself, so that you're using your gift to divide from some other person. That's the very thing we're trying to avoid. He talks about this and that's the purpose of 1 Corinthians 13.

Now, we break it up into three sections. In verse 1-3, we talk about the necessity of love. Love must be there in the gifts. If love isn't there, then there's no use to the gifts at all. In verse 4-7, we see the nature of love. What is love like? What is the character of love? Then in verses 8-13, the permanence of love, that love is permanent.

Let's look first at the necessity of love. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." When I was in Japan, I visited Shinto shrines and they had, in most of these shrines, these huge bells, these bronze bells, they were green and they had these logs connected to these huge chords and the Shinto priest would pull the log back at a distance and then let it go. That was a resounding gong and they gave you no warning. So, if you were a tourist and you were walking around, and your head was near that bell, you were going to resound for a while, your head would resound with the frequency of that bell. But the thing is that that was the same thing with pagan religions as well in Corinth, there were these gongs and these clanging cymbals, that had to do with getting the God's attention. Isn't that sad? You had to get the God's attention. They weren't paying attention sometimes. Remember how Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal and say, "Yell louder. He is not listening. Maybe he's busy, he's occupied." So, you have to have this loud gong. When the children would go up and pray in Japan at these Shinto shrines, they'd begin by clapping their hand like that. I asked the missionary, "What's that for?" "They're getting the God's attention." So, that's the way it was.

But basically what Paul's saying here is if you speak in the tongues of men and of angels, he's talking about, some people say this is just hyperbole or excessive speech, whatever. But it could be that the Corinthians actually believed that the gift of tongues was like a heavenly language and that you were speaking in the tongues of angels when you were praying in or speaking in tongues. He said, "Either way, even if I were to speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but if I did it in an unloving way, I'm just a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. I'm just a bunch of noise like a pagan priest that's calling for a God that doesn't exist." What does he mean when he says, "But have not love, if I don't have love?" It's very interesting, for Paul, love is action, isn't it? It's something that you do. It's something that you act on. Romans 5:8, how does God demonstrate his love for us? He sent Jesus Christ. "While we are still sinners, Christ died for us." So, love must be demonstrated. It must be acted on, or else we're a resounding gong or clanging cymbal.

Then he talks about prophecy in verse 2. "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge," what is that talking about? Well, I think in the context there, mysteries and knowledge generally talks about future things. It talks about the end of the world. If I could tell you all the details about the Second Coming in the Left Behind book series, if I could tell you how accurate or inaccurate it might be, if I could fathom all those future things and tell it all to you so accurately, but if I had no love, I am nothing. I am nothing, even if I have a faith that can move mountains, even if I can trust God for the most incredible things. Isn't it amazing the list of things that Paul says you can do without love? Isn't that incredible? Have a faith that can move mountains and you have no love, is it possible? Paul listed here and he says, "I'm nothing." You could put any kind of service you do for the church, any role you play here in the church, if I do such and such, if I'm chairman of this committee or if I serve on the missions committee or if I do this, if I do that, but I have not love, it profits me nothing. I am nothing. I'm only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. It is possible for me to do the things I do here without love. It's possible. That's the very thing he's exhorting that it would never happen.

Then finally he talks about great personal sacrifice, "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body," difficult translation here, it says to the flames, some of the translation might be, "If I surrender my body that I may boast." Either way, it's got to do with some kind of great personal sacrifice. If I give of myself completely and it says, "If I give all I possess to the poor." Interesting phraseology here, literally it could be translated if I parcel out bit by bit my possessions so that the poor have enough. It's an ongoing kind of ministry. Something where you're just there, day after day, week after week, giving what you possess to the poor. Can you do that without love? Apparently so. If I do all of that and have not love, it profits me nothing or I gain nothing. I think he's thinking there about that great day, judgment day, where we talked about store up treasure in heaven. He says, "You're storing up nothing. You're just like those people that prayed on the street corner so that everybody could see them. You're like the people that gave alms and announced it with trumpets." You gain nothing. God is not impressed. Jesus said of them, "I tell you the truth, they have received their award in full." So, there he says, "The necessity of love."

Now, the nature of love, he gives us two positives and then eight negatives and then sums it up with four all things. First two positives, basically what love is and what love does. “Love is patient, love is kind.” Now, patience is long suffering translated sometimes, suffering a long time. One might say holding your fire. You don't say that thing that you want to say. It's in your mind, but you don't do it. You put up with negative treatment. You turn the other cheek. You do not repay evil for evil or insult for insult. It really is a matter of being actively passive. Kind of odd, isn't it? It takes an incredible amount of self-control to do this, doesn't it? Oh, you just want to say that thing that's in your mind, you want to give back and love doesn't. I get the image sometimes of having a magnet, a big, big huge magnet strapped around my waist and it's all I can do to stand where I am and not do that thing that I'm pulled to do. What is pulling me? It's my sin nature, it's my pride, it's the desire to get back. Do you know what I'm talking about? You ever feel it and you just want to say that thing and it takes everything you can to stay in your place and not say it? But love holds you there. Love is patient. It puts up with an awful lot. God is patient, isn't he? Romans 2:4, it says, "Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?" How does God treat his enemies? Is he not patient with them day after day, after day, after day? I heard a story about that. A man who, as you've heard this before, probably, an atheist in Scotland that was going around tempting God everywhere. He said, "If there is a God, I'll give him one minute to strike me dead." Very dramatic. He had this watch and he'd hang it down on a chain and he'd just wait and then he'd pick it up and look at it and let it dangle a little bit more. Pick it up and look and there's the minute, and then that's how he finished his debate with a flourish and he'd give it over to whatever poor minister had to get up and debate him and stand up and everybody was clapping and cheering for atheism, I guess, at that point. But one Scottish minister got up and said, "And did my learned colleague really think that he could exhaust the patience of the eternal God in one minute?" Isn't that something? O to be like God, long suffering, putting up with a lot. But it doesn't go on forever. There does come a day that it ends and that comes unannounced, just like that, it's over. And he doesn't owe us anything, the minute does end sometime. But God is patient.

It also speaks of kindness. That's active expressions of goodness. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous. He actively blesses people who are cursing him. God does that. The rain today was an active blessing on a rebellious city, Durham. Or everywhere that it went. We're all rebellious. All the cities are. It's not that Durham's especially rebellious, it's just that it's filled with people who do not love him and do not walk with him day after day. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Then he urges us to do the same. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink.” Be that way. “Love is patient,” that means you hold back. “Love is kind,” it means you move out. Then a bunch of not’s, “it doesn't envy and it doesn't boast.” We already talked about that in terms of chapter 12. You don't look to somebody else's spiritual gift and wish you had it. You don't look to your spiritual gift and boast over it. You're not prideful over it. It is not proud. Boastfulness and pride is a form of self-worship. We're not going to do that at all.

"It is not rude, it doesn't behave itself unseemly," says the King James Version, I love that, unseemly. Don't be rude. You learned basic lessons in kindergarten about that, didn't you? “It's not rude and it's not self-seeking.” We could say a lot about that. I want to tell you one thing about that though, there is an element of love that is self-seeking. I believe that you cannot be disinterested and still love somebody. It's got to come from the heart. What that means is that I find personal pleasure and joy in your blessing. I find personal pleasure and joy in using my gifts to build you up. It makes me happy to do it. Suppose you had somebody say, "I want you to know I get no personal pleasure out of using my gift to build you up." I don't get anything out of it at all. No pleasure. It doesn't make me joyful at all. You'd say, "Well, that's not loving. I want you to enjoy using your gift to build me up. I want you to be happy that I'm growing into maturity." Don't take this self-seeking thing too far. But what it means is that you're not living for yourself day after day, thinking only about yourself. It says, "Love keeps no record of wrongs." Is that hard to do? You have this thing called a memory, holding on, thinking about things. “Love keeps no record of wrongs.” Then it says, "Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth." Oh, that's so important. Sometimes we think of truth as unloving and it is never unloving, to speak biblical doctrinal truth that builds the body of Christ up. It's never unloving. Now, there are ways to do it and we're instructed how to do it. We speak gently. It's like you're going to get something out of somebody's eye, if you see something in their eye, you go gently, but you go. There is joy and there's health and strength in biblical truth. We speak the truth in love.

Then it says, "Love believes all things, trusts all things, hopes all things, endures all things." I think the outside ones: believes all things and endures all things, talks about present circumstances, things that you're going through right now. Then the inside one, trusts all things and hopes all things, talks about God's future promises. Basically, what it is, I think we're seeing that God is working out his plan in the church and we're willing to put up with a lot. We're willing to stand and put up with a lot so that God's eternal purposes might be worked out. So, we love and we continue to love.

Now, I don't have time tonight to go into the permanence of love. We touched on it last time, God willing, perhaps we'll have more opportunity next week. I guess, I would close with this. God is urging you to use your spiritual gift in love to build the body of Christ up. He's urging you to be in good, faithful, consistent covenant fellowship with a Bible-preaching church, that you may use your gift to build the body of Christ up, that you may protect one another from the deceitfulness of sin. That's what God is calling us at First Baptist Church to be together. Let's close in prayer.

This morning, we are looking at Romans 7, specifically, the end of the section we've looked at now for two weeks, and this is our third week in Romans 7:1-6. Our purpose here, in this section of Romans, is to try to understand the law and how it relates to a justified Christian. What is our relationship to the law? And I heard an illustration that Charles Spurgeon used at the end of one of his sermons, to press the message home, and it spoke to me so clearly, about what it means to serve in the old way of the written code.

And this is what he said, "A certain tyrant sent for one of his subjects and said to him, 'What is your employment?' He answered, 'I am a blacksmith.' 'Go home,' said he, 'And make me a chain of such and such a length.' He went home. The work occupied him several months, and he had no wages at all while he was making the chain, only the trouble and the pains of making it. Then he brought it the monarch and he said, 'Go back and make it twice as long as this.' He gave him nothing to do it with, but sent him away. Again, he worked on, made it twice as long. He brought it up again. The monarch said, 'Go and make it longer still.' Each time he brought it, there was nothing but the command to make it longer still. And when he brought it up at last, the monarch said, 'Take him, bind him hand and foot with it, and cast him into a furnace of fire.' There were his wages for making the chain.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus." And Paul says in our text right here, in verse Five, "When we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death." Every day, somebody who's apart from the grace of Jesus Christ… Every day, somebody who is not living in the New Covenant, (that we're going to talk about this morning)… Every day, somebody who has not yet been saved, is making a chain through sin. Every day, they add another link to it. And in the end, justice will demand that that chain be bound around them, that we will be cast with our sins into eternal darkness. And so serving in the old way of the written code, produces only, as it says in our text, "Fruit for death." Is there any liberation from that which binds us? Yes, there is, and it is the New Covenant of faith in Jesus Christ.

Look again to what it says in verse Four, "So my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to Him who is raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we've been released from the law, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code."

This morning, our purpose is to understand that phrase, "Serving in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code." What does it mean, that we have been moved over into a New Covenant? The word 'covenant' doesn't appear in this text, but that's the foundation of what Paul is saying to us. 'Covenant' is a binding agreement between two or more parties. The clearest example that we have in our everyday life, is that of marriage. A man and a woman stand before God and make a promise to one another. They make a binding agreement and God ratifies that. He hears it and holds the couple to it. And so Paul takes that example here, in Romans 7:1-3, of a married couple, and that we're bound to each other by this covenant, as long as the spouse is alive. What he's saying is that, we also, in one sense, we're bound to the law, and the only way we could be released from the law, is either that the law would die or that we would die. And the beauty of it, the law can never die. Jesus said, "Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." He said, "Until Heaven, and Earth, and not the smallest letter, or the least stroke of a pen will, by any means, disappear from the law, until everything is accomplished." The law cannot die. The law will still stand on Judgment Day, and it will testify against all those who have not been saved through faith in Jesus Christ. The law can stand and it will stand, but what about us?

Well, the beauty of the Gospel is, that we died with Jesus Christ. The moment that Jesus died, we died with Him by faith, and we have been united with Him. He says in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." And so our purpose today, is to understand what that means. Not only that I have died, that I was crucified with Christ, but now, I live by the power of the Spirit, that there's a new life. There's a power in me, which is utterly unlike anything I've experienced before. And that's what He's saying, the covenant, the New Covenant through the blood of Jesus Christ.

Now, God makes covenants. Our God is a covenant-making God. The word appears 275 times in the Bible and it is God's major manner of dealing with the human race. He made a covenant with Noah, for example. He said He would never again destroy the world with a flood, and He set the Sign of the Covenant, the rainbow, up in the clouds to testify to His faithfulness to that Covenant. He made a covenant with Abraham, that to his offspring, He would give the land, and He would be their God, and they would be His people. He made a covenant with Abraham.

He made a covenant with Moses and that's the focus of our study this morning, the Mosaic Covenant, the Promise that He gave to the descendants of Abraham, who are with Moses at the base of the Mount Sinai, that if they obeyed God's commandments, His ordinances, and His regulations, that they would be able to stay in the Promised Land, that they would live there. "If you obey me, you may stay in this land." He also made a covenant with David, that He would place one of his sons on his throne, that David would never lack a lampstand, he would never lack a lamp, and that ultimately, the Son of David would reign forever and ever over the people of God, and that is Jesus Christ. And He made a covenant with Jesus Christ. The Father made a covenant with the Son, "I will save any for whom you die. Any who call on your name, I will save them, and I will welcome them as my own children." And so on the basis of these covenants, we stand before God. Our God is a covenant-making God, but He is also a covenant-keeping God.

It says, in reference to the Mosaic Covenant, that he would keep His covenant to a thousand generations of those who love and obey His commands. A thousand generations. What is that? Between 25 and 40,000 years? Our God is a faithful covenant-keeping God. He never breaks His Word. And on the basis of the New Covenant, and its superior promises, we will stand before God holy and blameless one day. And there is complete protection, security. There is a guarantee for us in this New Covenant, if we only understand it. God keeps His covenants, and our salvation is, therefore, guaranteed by this New Covenant. Paul says in Second Corinthians 3:6, "He has made us competent as ministers of a New Covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

Let's see if we can understand that. The context in Romans here, he's already explained to us the need for justification, Romans 1-3, that both Jew and Gentile alike are all under sin. That expression 'under sin' means under sin's dominion. Sin is the tyrant that causes us to make that chain, with which we would be bound. Sin is a vicious and a cruel tyrant. We're going to talk more about that in Romans 7, as we understand the indwelling sin that we still wrestle with. But sin is a tyrant, and all of us, Jew and Gentile, people from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation, all of us understand what sin is. Sin is a vicious tyrant, and we need to be justified, and there's nothing we can do. We were under sin. We were under sin's dominion, and so we needed forgiveness of sins, and we needed liberation from sin.

Jesus said, "Anyone who sins is a slave to sin, but if the Son makes you free, you'll be truly free." And so He's trying to explain how justification came, and it came by the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus stood up, and took our wrath, our condemnation, and through His blood shed on the cross, He took away forever the guilt and the punishment that we deserve under the Mosaic Covenant. He took away the curse. He died in our place, and He rose from the dead on the third day, and so He is our propitiation, He's our sacrifice of atonement. And that sacrifice is good for any of us who have trusted in Him, any of us who put our faith in Him. Romans chapter 4, we are justified simply by faith. Just as Abraham looked up at those stars and believed a promise that God gave him, so shall your offspring be. We hear of life through faith in Jesus Christ, and we believe, and we are justified. At that moment, we're declared forever not guilty of all of our sins. The guilt and the condemnation of the law has been removed from us. We died to the law and its condemning power, when we united with Christ through faith.

But then, in Romans Chapters 6-8, he's dealing with the issue of indwelling sin, the struggle we have with sin. Any of you who are honest and you know yourself, you say, "Well, I was justified by faith many years ago, but sin didn't just disappear from my life. I still have sin in my life. How can this be? And what is it?" And also, he deals with it theologically. If we're only justified by grace, apart from works, can't we live any way that we want? And he's dealing with that in Romans Chapter Six, he says, "No, you can't, because if you are a Christian, you are united with Jesus Christ. You died with Him when he died, and so, also, you've been raised in newness of life. You're living a whole new life." That was covered in Romans 6

But in the middle of that, in Romans 6:14, he says, "Sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace." And so that's a very important thing to say. What does it mean that we're not under law? Did God give a law, and then revoke it through Christ? What is our relationship to the law? And he's dealing with that in Romans chapter 7, and the issue of this Old Covenant and the New Covenant. He uses the illustration of marriage and says that you're bound as long as you're alive, but if one of the spouses dies, that covenant is ended. And so, also, we died to the law through the body of Christ, that we might belong to another, a new marriage. We talked about it last time, that Jesus Christ is our spouse. We died to the law, and we're freed forever from that old bondage, and now, we've come into a whole new way of serving God.

But we need to understand what that Old Covenant was. What was the nature of the Old Covenant? First, the Old Covenant was promised to Abraham. In Genesis 12:7, it was promised to Abraham at the great Tree of Moreh at Shechem, "This land will belong to you and to all your offspring." And then, in Genesis 17, He gave him a Sign of the Covenant, as a precursor to the Mosaic Law. It was circumcision. And He said that, "All your male descendants must be circumcised, and anyone who's not circumcised will be cut off from the covenant." So that's the covenant promised, but it wasn't established, until Moses brought the people of God to the foot of Mount Sinai. And they received the covenant, they received the Mosaic Law coming down off the mountain.

And this is what they said in Exodus 24, "When Moses went and told the people all the Lord's words and laws, they responded with one voice, 'Everything the Lord has said, we will do.'" That sounds like a marriage to me. They made a promise, "Alright, I've heard all of the laws, the rules, and regulations. We'll do it." They made a covenant. They made a promise that they would obey everything that God said. Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said. "Then he took the Book of the Covenant, and read it to the people, and they responded again, 'We will do everything the Lord has said. We will obey, '" they said to God. Moses took the blood of the covenant, the blood of the sacrifice, this covenant was ratified in blood, and he sprinkled it on the people, and said, "This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words." And so there it is, they made a covenant. They were in a bonded relationship with the law they promised that they would obey.

Now, what is the nature of that covenant? In Deuteronomy, he explains it very clearly. Deuteronomy 11:26 and following, it says, "See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse, a blessing if you obey… the curse if you disobey..." That is the nature of the Old Covenant, blessings and curses. Blessings on obedience, curses on disobedience.

Now, what was the essence of the Old Covenant in the life of Israel? How did it function? We're going to look at it in four ways. First, in terms of law, the relationship to God's Word. Second, in terms of salvation, relationship to God's Holiness. Thirdly, in terms of worship, relationship to God's throne. And fourthly, in terms of service, relationship to God's world.

Let's look at the first one, law, relationship to God's Word. It says in verse Six of the passage we're looking at, we served  "in the old way of the written code." What does this mean, 'written code?' It means that the law was written down on things physical. At first, it was written by the finger of God on the tablets of stone, do you remember that? The finger of God wrote down the Ten Commandments. God inscribed His Word down. He wanted it written. That was the first of the Bible. God was the first, literally, physically, the first author of Scripture, when He inscribed the Ten Commandments with His finger on those tablets of stone. He began the whole written Word. It was His Word written, and He wanted it obeyed, but it was physical, and it was also external.

Later, the Word was written on stone pillars and Joshua brought them in the Promised Land. They wrote it down, so that everyone could read it. It was there for future generations. They also copied it on parchments, on scrolls, and other things, and it was copied, but it was always physical. It was something you could read with your eyes, but it was not internal, it was external. It was something you would read. It would stand outside of you, and it would talk to you, and it would tell you which way to live, and which way not to live, but it was external. And ultimately, because of that, it was powerless. It made no change in the human heart. It ultimately was rendered powerless by our sin nature.

Look again at Verse Five, "From when we were controlled by the sinful nature or the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death." Paul is going to talk about that more in Romans 7. The law comes and actually arouses sin. You're kind of moving along just fine, until you hear what God will and will not permit, and then, suddenly, there's a desire to do that very thing. It's just a phenomenon. We see it around us. We see it in our own hearts. There it is, the law comes and says, "You must not do this," or, "You must do that," and then there's just, immediately, a desire to disobey. It's what the law does, and he's going to talk about that, he said, "Once I was alive, apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died." It's always been the same. It's the same today.

"When we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies." So that we made another link for that chain. Day, after day, after day, we bore fruit for death. It never produced righteousness. Look at Romans 8:3, "For what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did, by sending His own Son." Isn't that beautiful? The law could never get you saved, and so God did it, by sending His Son. The law was powerless. The Book of Hebrews calls it 'useless.' It could affect no genuine change in you.  It stands outside and cannot save you. And we prove it every day, don't we? By just readings, "I see it, but I just can't do it." That's the second half of Romans 7, we'll get there. But that's what the law does, it stands on the shore, and calls out to you, and tells you how to save yourself, but you can't.

The New Covenant is Jesus Christ gets in there. And you got the second half so beautifully right. Jesus literally gets in, and saves us, and therefore, our salvation is guaranteed, because He is never ineffective. He accomplishes what He came to do. Jesus never dives in, and swims out to save somebody, and they end up drowned. It's impossible. He saves us and that's the New Covenant. And so the law was powerless, it was useless, it could save us, not at all. And so in relation to salvation, in relation to God's Holiness, what the law did, is it told you, "Be holy, because I am holy." That's what the law said. Leviticus 19:2, "Speak to the entire Assembly of Israel and say to them, "Be holy, because, I, the Lord, your God, am holy." That's what the law told you, but could you do it? Could you be holy the way God is Holy?

In the message of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:48, Jesus said the same thing, "Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect." I witness to people and I say, "Do you understand what the standards are for fellowship with God? Do you understand what it takes to go to Heaven? God will allow no darkness in His presence. He is perfectly holy and righteous. And therefore, you, also, must be perfect to be in the presence of God." And so in relation to God's Holiness, it speaks to us of holiness. The law screams to us of holiness, but it cannot make us holy. Hebrews 7:19 says, "For the law made nothing perfect." Do you hear that? The law makes nothing perfect and we must be perfect to be in God's presence. Actually, the law only brings curse on us. Galatians 3:10, "All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." Everything, you've got to obey the whole thing.

The illustration I've used before is of the aquarium tank. Imagine a huge big aquarium, where all these sharks, and manta rays, and all that is swimming around, and it's only got one little hole in it. That's all, just one hole down toward the bottom. Would you feel safe near that? As you watch the hole progressively get larger and larger? I'd run out of that building. One transgression is enough to condemn us forever, but we don't just have one transgression, do you? We have a whole lifetime of them. We have a very long chain. We've been fashioning it day after day. "All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.'" Isn't it beautiful, that Jesus stood and took our curse for us? He came and took our curse. He was hung on a tree. "Cursed is everyone who's hung on a tree." Jesus took our curse. If you're in Christ, you're not under the law anymore. You're not under the law's curse. It's been taken away forever.

Praise God for that. Now, within the law, there were priestly sacrifices for sin, weren't there? There was provision, if you broke the law. You would bring a sacrifice, but could the sacrifice do anything for you? Was it not merely a symbol of the future sacrifice of Jesus Christ? How do we know that? beause they had to be repeated, day, after day, after day, week after week, and for the same sinners. Hebrews 9:9-10 says, "The gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshipper." They're not able to do it. You could not have your conscience cleared by blood animal sacrifice. It couldn't be done. And so the law made no provision, genuinely, for sin.

Now, the righteousness that came by the law would be demonstrated by perfect obedience. Romans 10:5, "Moses describes in this way, 'The righteousness that is by law, the man who does these things will live by them.'" In context, he means live eternally. You will get your eternal life by perfect obedience to the commands of God. Perfect obedience. And eternal life comes as a result of this accomplished righteousness. "The man who does these things will live [eternally] by them." But all of this is impossible, isn't it true? Because Paul says in Romans 7, "As soon as you hear the law, the sinful nature kicks in and you rebel." And we've all done it. And once you rebel once, it's over. The law will never again be a path of righteousness for you. It's impossible. It only speaks a curse on you. And only in Jesus Christ, is that curse removed.

"Therefore," says Paul in Romans 3:20, "No one will be declared righteous by observing the law, rather, through the law, we become conscious of sin." You're never going to stand before God and say, "Well, I came that path. I came up the path of the law." No, you didn't. Nobody but one person has walked that path perfectly, and that's Jesus Christ.

What about in relation to worship, worship in relation to God's throne? God's holy throne is the center of all worship, is it not? "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a…" what? "On a throne high and lifted up. And the train of His robe filled the temple."  And there were seraphs crying, 'Holy, holy, holy.'  It's the center of Heaven. It's the throne of God, the eternal God. It's the center of Heaven should be the center of your life too. And so, in the Book of Revelation Chapter Four, the apostle says, "At once, I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in Heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow resembling an emerald encircled the throne. Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads. Before the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God." The throne is the center of it all. It's the center of worship, the throne of God.

And so, when Bill comes here, and we go to worship, what are we doing, but spiritually establishing the throne of God, right in the center of this room? That's what worship is. But the fact of the matter is, God's throne is unapproachable. 1 Timothy 6:15-16 says, "God the blessed and only ruler." What chair does a ruler sit on? A throne. "The King of Kings and Lord of Lords."  He's going to sit on the ultimate throne. "Who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light." You can't get to Him. He lives in unapproachable light. He is holy and pure. Therefore, Old Covenant worship is never going to get you to the throne of God. It's only a shadow, not the reality, as it says in the Book of Hebrews. It's just a shadow, it's an image. It's never going to get you right to the throne of God. Therefore, Old Covenant worship is all about what you can't do, and not what you can. It's all about barriers and oppositions, not coming very close to the throne of grace.

Exodus 24:1-2, "Then God said to Moses, 'Come up to the Lord, you, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel. You are to worship at a distance." Underline that one. "Worship at a distance," is Old Covenant worship, isn't it? "Worship at a distance." What do I mean by, "Worship at a distance"? Separation between you and God. Why the separation? Because of your sin. And there was nothing in the Old Covenant that could take care of it. There was a fence around the base of Mount Sinai saying, "You can't come up this mountain." There was a thousand yard distance between the people of God and the ark, as they went into the Promised Land. There was a curtain in the temple, which separated the Holy of Holies from the priest, and then other curtains would separate the rest of it from the regular people, who couldn't come in. What is that telling you? Barrier. Obstruction. "Worship at a distance." You can't come close.

After striking Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu dead, because they offered unauthorized sacrifice, Leviticus 10:3, God said this, "Among those who approach me, I will show myself holy. In the sight of all people, I will be honored." That's the Old Covenant. "Among those who approach me, I'm going to demonstrate my holiness to you. I will show you how holy I am." And the Old Covenant did that, but you were not welcomed into the throne of God. You couldn't come. That's the essence of Old Covenant worship.

And finally, service, relationship to God's world. How did you serve in the old way of the written code? What was the nature of old code service? Well, first of all, it was about duty, wasn't it? What you had to do. If it's external to you, it means you don't want to do it. It hasn't come inside your heart, and so that it's a matter of duty. The worst expression of that was in Malachi 1:12-13. They're talking about the sacrificial system. They're talking about the Lord's table. They're talking about the actual blood sacrifices that God had provided, and Malachi says this, "You profane it, by saying of the Lord's temple, 'It is defiled,' and of the food, 'It is contemptible.' And you say, 'What a burden,' and you sniff at it contemptuously,' says the Lord Almighty. "

There's some people that serve in the Christian way this way, what a burden they feel. It's a sense of duty and obligation. A sense of 'got to' and 'have to,' not a sense of 'want to.' That's a service in the old way of the written code. "What a burden." It's also based on fear. You're afraid. If you don't do it, what will happen to you? You'll be judged, you'll be condemned. There's a sense of fear. Fear has to do, in First John 4:18, with punishment. That's the essence of Old Covenant service. You serve out of duty, you serve out of fear. Ultimately, it could lead to hatred, hatred for God. You say, "How is that possible?" Romans 8:7-8 says, "The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those committed by the sinful nature cannot please God."

Perfect illustration of this in Martin Luther's life. Before Luther came to understand justification by faith alone, he was serving in the old way of the written code, wasn't he? A bunch of rules and regulations. A bunch of laws, and duties, and obligations. A bunch of fasting, and prayer, and tithe offering, and a bunch of all these works. And nothing could take away his sense of guilt before God, nothing. And it got more and more frustrating to him. And he, as a Roman Catholic, would go to his father confessor, Father Johann Staupitz, and he would confess sin after sin, inclinations of the heart, slight temptations, anything he could to try to cleanse himself, and it never worked. Finally, just out of frustration, he came, and he started to confess something that he had forgotten from the last time, and Staupitz said, "You're making it too hard. All you need to do is love God." And Luther said, "Love God? I hate Him." And Staupitz was shocked. This was blasphemy. But that's what old written code service is all about. It's not about love for God. It's about duty, and fear, and obligation, not about being a son or a daughter of God.

And what is the end result of all that? Well, verse 5, "When we're controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our body, so that we bore fruit for death." We bore fruit for death by serving the law? Yes, because here it is. It's either one or the other. Either you will feel that you are being successful in serving by that way, or you will feel unsuccessful. If you feel successful by that way, you will be proud and boastful, because you did it on your own. Or you'll say, "I could never do that," and you openly rebel. Either way, the law condemns. There is no way that you can come to God that way. To the generally obedient, there's the white devil of pride. To the generally disobedient, the black devil of rebellion. Either way, it comes.

So that's the old way of the written code. Relationship to God's Word: It was written externally, not in your heart. Relationship to God's holiness: The law commanded you to be holy, but made no provision for it. Relationship to God's throne and worship: Law had made it very clear, that you were not welcome to the throne of God. And service relationship to God's Word: It came from duty, and pride, and obligation, and fear. Ultimately, it bore fruit for death. That's the Old Covenant. Aren't you glad we're free from all that?

Praise God. We're waiting for the good news. Well, the good news is in verse 6. Look at the first two words, "But now." What does that tell you? Something new, something fresh, something wonderful. And Jesus said, "It had to be this way. It had to be new." Why? Because of the Parable of the Wine-skins. Remember, He said, "You can't put new wine into old wine-skins. We've got to have a whole new thing. We've got to have a New Covenant." And the beauty is, the New Covenant was promised in the Old. Jeremiah came and promised it.

Look at Jeremiah 31, it's printed there, part of it anyway. Oh, you got to read the whole thing. You got to read the whole thing, but I'm just going to zero in on a couple things. "'The time is coming,' declares the Lord, 'When I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.'" There it is in the Old Testament. There's going to be a New Covenant, something new. And we will not serve in that old way anymore, we'll serve in a new way. There's going to be a New Covenant. He said, "'It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, even though I was a husband to them,' declares the Lord. 'This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel, after that time,' declares the Lord. 'I will put my law in their minds and I'll write them on their hearts. They will be my people and I will be their God. No longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brothers, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more." Oh, boy. That brings goosebumps. I'm just getting excited talking about it.

What are the two aspects of the New Covenant the Old Covenant could never give us? It could not give us forgiveness of sins, and it could not write the law of God on our hearts... But the New Covenant can. Isn't that beautiful? This is a replacement covenant. "By calling this covenant new," Hebrews 8:13, "By calling this covenant new, he's made the old one obsolete. And what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear." It's gone. We're not under it anymore. We've got a New Covenant now. It's an unbreakable covenant, not like the former one. It's not dependent on your obedience. He's going to work obedience in you. It's an internal covenant within your own heart. It's a universal covenant. "The will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest." Everyone included in the covenant will all know me personally. "I will be their God and they will be my people." And it's a cleansing covenant, "I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more."

Well, that's the promise. Was it fulfilled? Is there now, in fact, a New Covenant? It was promised, did it come? Yes, it did, through Jesus Christ. Do you remember the night before Jesus died? He took that cup, the wine, and what did He say, remember? He took the cup, He gave thanks, and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the New Covenant." There it is. Jesus said it. There's a New Covenant. Now, the wine only represents it. We know that the real blood was the blood Jesus shed on the cross, "Which is poured out for many," Jesus said, "For the forgiveness of sins." The New Covenant is in effect. It's here. It's been here for 2,000 years. We're not in the Old Covenant any longer. It's here.

Now, how does it work in relation to God's Word? Look at verse 6, "But now, by dying to what once bound us, we've been released from the law, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code." It is a spiritual thing. The indwelling Holy Spirit comes in and changes you from inside. It's written on the heart by the Spirit. And it is powerful. It actually transforms you. It makes you different than you were before. You love what you used to hate and you hate what you used to love. It has changed you. You're different now, as a result. It is effective. The law is no longer external, it's now written on your heart. He says in this verse, Jeremiah 31:33, "I'll put my law in their minds and I will write it on their hearts." Do you realize the whole Bible is written on your heart? Now, you're wondering why you can't recite the whole thing.

I didn't say it was written in your brain, so that you could recite it. I'm saying it's there, and what happens is, if you're a child of God, when it gets preached or taught accurately, you know it. You just can tell. "My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life." You just know, even if you're in Obadiah or some other place you'd never been, you say, "Yes, this is right." And why? Because He already wrote the law in your heart. It's already there. Now, I still think you should memorize it. I really do.

But it's already there. The truth of it is there and why? Because the Spirit wrote it there. Oh, look at blessed Ezekiel 36. It's printed in your bulletin. Look at it. I would urge you to take that home. I know you're thinking about, perhaps, you're thinking about what you're going to eat for lunch.

This is sweeter than anything you're going to eat for lunch. Ezekiel 36:26-27, take it home and chew on it, before you put any food in your mouth, or after. Maybe during, maybe during your lunchtime, talk about Ezekiel 36:26-27, "I will give you a new heart, and then put a new Spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit in you, and move you to follow my decrees, and be careful to keep my laws." That is New Covenant stuff, folks. Has that happened to you? Has your heart of stone been taken out and your heart of flesh put in? Are you receptive to the moving of the Spirit, and do you have the indwelling Spirit moving you to obey God's commandments? That's the relation of the law. It's written on your heart.

Secondly, relation to salvation, relation to God's holiness. Do you realize that we stand in Christ's perfect obedience? Remember, I told you there was one man who walked the law perfectly, and it was Jesus Christ? He is the end of the law, it says in Romans 10. He is the completion, the perfection of the law. He did it. He is our champion. He is our victor. And He walked that way perfectly for 33 years, some odd years. Perfectly walked, moment by moment, in obedience to His Father's commands. He said, "I always do what pleases Him."

And do you realize, if you're a Christian, His righteousness, that He won fairly in 33 years of obedience in this, it's cloaked on you by faith? Isn't that beautiful? And you're going to stand before Him on Judgment Day, not with any righteousness of your own. You have none. We've proven that. None of us. I don't have any. You all, we don't have any, but there is a robe available. Jesus Christ's righteousness. He earned it, He won it fair and squarely, it's His. And He's offering it to you by faith. Holiness, perfect righteousness that you can cloak yourself with, complete forgiveness of sins. Oh, my goodness. "I will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more." What is that worth to you? What is it worth to you, to have all your sins forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, and He will never remember them again? Wow... You get nothing else out of this, two aspects of the New Covenant: Total forgiveness of sins and indwelling Holy Spirit writing the law in your heart. That Old Covenant doesn't have anything like it, but if you're a Christian, you get them both.

What about worship, relationship to God's throne? We came in here to worship today. I hope you did. I hope you came in here to worship. Do you realize that, if you're a Christian, God has said, "Come right to my throne, right to the center." "Let us approach the throne of grace with confidence," it says. Isn't that beautiful? Right to the throne. There's no barrier anymore. The moment that Jesus died, that curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. From top to bottom, what does that tell you? Who tore it? God did. If it had been torn from bottom to top, they'd repair it, but it's torn from top to bottom. God did it. Maybe they did repair it. I don't think they should've. I think they should've come into the New Covenant that day. God is saying, "Come and welcome to the feast." He's saying, "Come and welcome to my very throne, through the blood of Jesus Christ, right to my throne."

You know Jesus talked to the Samaritan woman. Remember, they had a debate about what's the proper place for worship? Remember that? Is it on this mountain or on that mountain? He's like, Let me tell you something, "a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

He's saying that it's not going to be about location. It's going to be about worshipping, and Spirit, and truth. The indwelling Spirit brings you right to the throne Of God, and therefore, you can worship Him. You have freedom of access. Ephesians 3:12 says, "In Christ and through faith in Christ, we may approach God with freedom and confidence." Is that how you approach God everyday? Freedom and confidence, like a forgiven sinner? Or do you feel like you need to earn your way back in? Freedom and confidence.

And then, finally, service in relationship to God's Word. Not duty, but delight. Not what you have to do, but what you get to do. I love to read the laws now, and the prohibitions, "Thou shalt not," I'd say, "I don't need to do that anymore." And the commands, "Thou shalt," "I get to do that by the power of the Spirit." Isn't that wonderful? It's a whole different thing. It's not duty anymore, it's delight. The law has become my birthright. It's what I get to do. It's said of Jesus in Psalm 40:8, "Here am I. I delight to do your will, oh, God. Your law is hidden within my heart." "This is what I love to do," said Jesus." Now, that same Spirit's in us. That's what I want to do, what I love to do. Not duty, but delight. Not fear, but confidence in Him. And through faith in Him, we may approach God with freedom and confidence. You can be confident before God. Not hatred, but love. We serve as a son or a daughter of God. We cry out, "Abba Father," and we follow the Spirit, moment by moment, serving Him. That's not hatred, that's love. We do it, because we love. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. We're not under that anymore, are we? We're dead to that. We're free from what bound us, and now, we serve with love, and not fruit for death, but fruit for eternal life.

Romans 6:22. Yes, there is a Romans 6:22. I know you've heard of Romans 6:23, but 6:22 says this, "But now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the harvest or the fruits you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life." You live this kind of life, you'll end up in Heaven. But if what I'm talking to you about right now seems strange, unfamiliar, you don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know that you've come into the New Covenant. I don't know that you understand the life of the Spirit. I'm not talking about perfect people. I'm talking about people who understand what I'm talking about, about worship, and about forgiveness of sins, and about serving God, moment by moment, by the power of the Spirit.

I want to speak to you Christians. First of all, rejoice that your sins are forgiven. Rejoice that your sins are forgiven. What is that worth to you? What would you trade for it? Your sins are forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. He will remember your sins no more.  And delight in a whole new way of serving God, not like a slave, but like a son or daughter of God, a child of God. Delight in serving God daily, using your spiritual gifts. Tonight, we're going to talk more about that. God has given you a ministry, each one of us a priestly duty of serving God. Use that gift, that service. Delight in God's service. Offer up, everyday, a service to God, an aroma pleasing to Him. And delight in God's Word. Realize, it's already written in your heart. Delight in it, chew on it, and delight in God's family.

Realize, look around here, this room and around the world, there are people all over the world that God is doing that thing to. And we're all going to be gathered into one place someday, and we're all goanna be made perfect, and isn't that going to be awesome, and wonderful? How beautiful is the family of God, when perfected, and cleansed, and finished.

But for the non-Christian, I guess I just want to make you jealous. I want you to wish you had all that. I want you to wish you knew your sins were forgiven. I want you to be hungry and thirsty for righteousness, and I want you to realize that that chain that you're making, day, after day, after day, it will condemn you, unless through Jesus Christ, and through His blood, you have complete forgiveness of sins. Come to Him today.

Why don't you close with me in prayer? Father, as we bow before you, we thank you for the truths of your Word. We thank you for the new wine put into new wine-skins, both are preserved that way. And we thank you for your goodness in giving it to us. Thank you for the New Covenant, and for its promises that you will forgive our wickedness, and remember our sins no more, and you will write the law in our hearts, by your Holy Spirit. Father, I pray for any who are here, who have never come to faith in Christ, that today would be, for them, the day of salvation. If today, you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, but come. I pray that they would come in welcome to Jesus Christ. We pray in His name, Amen.

Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon that focuses on spiritual gifts, as seen in 1 Corinthians 13.

Look if you will, to 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're going to be just spending a little time in 1 Corinthians 12 because I just think it's timely for us to look at chapter 13 tonight. So I'm going to get ahead of myself a little bit. We're going to go back, I think, God willing in the future and do a little more detailed work on chapter 12. But I think it's important for us together to consider chapter 13 and therefore we're going to do that tonight.

Now, we've been looking at the topic of spiritual gifts for a while and any of you that were there this morning heard just the consistency of Scripture, didn't you? When it says in Revelation 19 that the bride has made herself ready. And I think that's so beautiful, isn't it? How the bride is involved, namely the church of Jesus Christ is involved in building herself up and that's consistent with what we've been learning, isn't it? From spiritual gifts. It's only as each part does its work that the body of Christ is built up to full maturity. And so God has assigned to each one of us who are a part of the body of Jesus Christ a significant role. And therefore, if any part of the body does not do its work, the whole body suffers. Maturity is retarded. We are not able to get to full maturity the way we should. If the teachers don't teach, if the encouragers don't encourage, if the givers don't give, if those with the gifts of faith don't use their gift, the body is hindered, it's held back and can't grow to full maturity.

Conversely, speaking positively, if each part does do its work, the body grows up beautifully into maturity and many things are done. The church accelerates in its mission. The church is able to reach out boldly. We see people coming to Christ. We see those who are already committed to Christ growing up themselves into maturity in Christ and that at a rapid rate if the church is healthy. And so the topic of spiritual gifts is very important. And each one of you who are called by the name of Christ, who call yourselves Christians, all of you who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, you all have a role to play. It says later in our chapter here in 1 Corinthians 12:27, "Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it." So you all have a part to play. You're all part of the body of Christ. And so we must do our ministry, we must do our part.

And so Paul in chapter 12 is working and laboring specifically that each part would do its work. And so he is getting into the minds of the Corinthians and helping them to think properly about spiritual gifts, because the gifts are not all the same. And the way it works it seems in this world is that some honor and some prestige and some worldly benefits are given to those with some gifts and not to others. And whether that's right or wrong, it just happens. And so what ends up happening is some people are jealous of that and desire a different gift package, let's say. Others might take that gift and despise others in the body and say, "I don't need you, I have no need for you," et cetera. So we've got problems from both sides, don't we?

And so in 1 Corinthians 12:14-20, he's dealing with the idea that a part of the body would say, “Because I don't have this other gift, I'm not really part of the body. I'm not important, I'm not included, I'm inferior,” perhaps. And so they would exclude themselves. And what happens then is they don't do their gift. And if they don't do their gift, what happens to the body? Yeah, it suffers. It can't grow to maturity. Each part must do its work. So we've got that problem on the one side where people look at themselves and compare themselves to others and say, "Because I don't have that gift, because I don't have that special ability, I'm not really, therefore part of the body". And so there's a great hindrance there. Those people with those gifts don't use those gifts. And really ironically, it could be any gift that you have. You could look at yourself and say, "It's not important. What I give is not important." And so then you hold back. So that's what we get from 14-20.

And then in 21 and following, we get the idea on the other side where the eye is saying to the hand, "I don't need you, I'm self-sufficient.” A self-sufficient eyeball. What a thing? Can you imagine a self-sufficient eyeball? It's impossible. It needs the flow of blood and oxygen to keep it alive. It needs nourishment. Where does all that come? Well, from the lungs and the stomach. And where do the lungs and the stomach get... The legs have to carry to get the food and the... I mean it's all got to work together, right? And so it's absolutely almost ludicrous to think of one part of the body being self-sufficient. And yet how ironic is it that people are at these kind of attitudes? If we have this body analogy, this image of the body, we can see how foolish and how ludicrous divisions in the body are.

The other day I was walking, I don't remember where I was, but I had a lot of stuff that I was carrying, a bunch of stuff. And one of my arms for some reason was just weak that day. It was my left arm and it just wasn't doing well. And so my brain told my left arm to shift everything, all of it over to the right arm. And so the right arm, poor thing, had to carry everything, but the right arm didn't complain at all against the left arm. It's not in the right arm or left arm to complain. It's actually ludicrous. My arms don't have the capacity for complaining. It's only my brain that has the capacity for complaining together with my mouth. The two work together in conjunction in this complaining thing. But do you see the analogy? The left arm was weak at that point and needed help in order to oblige under the headship of the head. The head ordered, and so it was. Why doesn't the body function that way? Why is it that we are not in unity and in harmony and each part doing its role the way it should be? That's the very thing that Paul's addressing here in the Corinthian church. And then is it amazing after two millennia that we're still the same? We say that God never changes and he never does, but do we really change? We're still the same people. We're the Corinthians, aren't we? We're the same. And so we're wrestling with the same things and we're trying to see the integration, the unity, the beautiful harmony of the body and each part doing its work. And so he's addressing that.

Let's look a little carefully at 14-20 and just read through it. It says,

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 

So you see the analogy. He's speaking in analogous terms here. In one sense, we're not truly a body, are we? Spiritually we are, but we are individuals and we have an individual role. And so the idea of my left hand arguing with my right hand, whatever, would never happen. But he's speaking as an analogy and he's saying in that way, the way that God has arranged and gifted the body, it's done in a marvelous way with wisdom and purpose so that each part is arranged just as God wanted them to be. And so if we murmur against God, if we say, "I wish I had the other gift package, I wish I had these other gifts." We're really murmuring against a wise and loving God who has arranged the body so marvelously. Conversely, as we're going to see in a minute, if we boast over other parts of the body and say, “Because I have this gift and you don't, or I have this and you have a lesser gift, you are not worth as much in the body.” We are again murmuring against God who has arranged the body just as he wanted it to be.

Now he says, "If the foot should say, 'Because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.” What he's saying is it doesn't make any sense to say, "If I don't have this gift, I am not part of the body." It would not at all for that reason cease to be part of the body. Actually quite the opposite is true, because the member is gifted by God there's clear evidence that he's part of the body because the Spirit is working in that individual. So he's actually turning the whole thing around. It would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And he says the same thing again, "If the ears should say, 'Because I'm not an eye, I do not belong to that body,' it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.” And then he goes on into the capabilities. He says, "If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be or the sense of smell?" We would lose something that we need. We need the sense of hearing, we need the sense of sight, we need the sense of smell. We need it all, and so it is also with spiritual gifts. Are there any redundant or extra gifts? Not at all. Why would God give them if they were unnecessary? Well, here's the grief. If spiritually gifted people do not use their gifts, then we're missing whole capabilities, aren't we? There's just whole aspects of the body that aren't functioning. And I believe that most churches are hampered that way. And so we've got to heed 1 Corinthians 12 and say, "Okay, I need to use my gifts. Regardless of where I see myself in the body, I need to be faithful to use my gifts so that the body can be built up." We need all of the capabilities or else the body can't be fully built up.

And then in verse 18, as we already said, "In fact God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be." I don't know how many times in all the gift passages that he says the same thing. It's the Spirit. It's Jesus Christ who apportions. It's the Spirit who gives as he wills. The body's arranged just as he wants it to be. Do you see the recurring theme? What he is saying is that this is God who has done this. Who are we to question? Who are we to challenge? We should accept these roles, this place in the body and realize that it's all done beautifully and that when all of these things are finished, the bride will have made herself ready. She'll be finished, she'll be ready for the wedding day. And then I believe all of those capabilities will be gone. And we're going to see that in 1 Corinthians 13. These are temporary. We won't need them in heaven. It's only for the building up of the body. And once the body is complete and built up, they are no longer needed anymore. And I think that's marvelous.

Now in verse 21 and following, he gets to the other side. This is the boasting side. Whereas verses 14-20, we have the overly humble side in which you're saying, "Gee, I'm not part of the body if I don't have these gifts." Now we've got the overly prideful side. 

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don't need you.” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don't need you.” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And the parts that we think are less honorable, we treat with special honor and that parts that are un-presentable are treated with special modesty. While our presentable parts need no special treatment, but God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for one another. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now what he's saying here is that there are no self-sufficient parts of the body. Every one of you can say to every other one of you, "I really need you. I really do. I need you or else I will not be fully mature." Isn't that humbling to say that? But it is true, isn't it? If what we're getting at here is true, we can extend it really to that level. Any individual Christian can say to any other individual Christian, "I need you. I need what you bring to the body. I receive benefit from your spiritual gifts." And we all do need that. You take the gift of encouragement, for example. Some of you, I think we all should encourage and build each other up. But some of you just really have that gift, don't you? And we all receive benefit. How long could you go without a word of encouragement in Christian life? Think about that. Some of you shorter time than others, some of you are real tough, you're like camels, able to go through the desert long period of time and you just don't need a word of encouragement. But think about it honestly, how long could you really go if nobody ever said anything to you by way of encouragement in terms of what you bring to the body of Christ? And so how vital is that? And really, that's just one gift. We could also say the same about all the gifts. And so we could and actually should be saying to each other, "I need you." But what do we have here in the text? The eye saying to the hand, "I don't need you." What is that? Well, it's called sin. It's called selfishness and sin where one part of the body can say to the other, "I don't need you." It's not true at all. We really do need each other absolutely, indispensable to one another.

And then he goes on talking about these parts of the body that are weaker or un-presentable. And what he's getting at here is the fact that I talked about earlier, that the parts of the body don't seem to be treated equally, do they? You treat some parts of your body differently than others, right? You treat your face different than your stomach. Most of you have covered your stomach tonight. They are un-presentable, I guess, or even other parts of the body. They're un-presentable. And so we cover them with clothing. But other parts of the body like hair, well, some of you do things with your hair and others don't, but you do something to present yourself. But some parts of your body, you don't do anything to. Do you do anything to your ears? Maybe you do, I don't know. Maybe you clean them. Some ladies put the earrings in. But man, I don't do anything with my ears. I just leave them as they are. My nose, it's just the way it is. My cheeks, they're just as they are. But what is he saying? He's saying that not every part gets the same stuff in this world. And that's a challenge to people, isn't it? There are some ministries that are kind of more openly demonstrable and then there are others that you never see them. You never do. Take for example, intercessory prayer. If you follow what Jesus says in terms of the Sermon of the Mount, "You're going to go into your room, you're going to close the door, and you're going to pray to your Father who's unseen. And your Father who sees what has done in secret will reward you." Right? So I guess if you're doing it right, nobody ever know what you did. And yet how vital is that intercessory prayer ministry? No one will ever know what you did, and yet God sees and God answers the prayer. And the prayers of the righteous are going up to him ascending like bowls of incense constantly and God is responding, he's answering, but nobody ever knows it. And nobody's ever going to give a plaque or an honor or something like that or most hours spent in intercessory prayer. You don't want to get that plaque. Jesus already said, don't go for that plaque. You have received your award in full. I don't want it in full. I don't want anybody to know about it. You see what I'm saying? So there are going to be some ministries that some people will never know about. Some of you give financially that way. You give in such a way that nobody knows about it.

And then there are other ministries that are very clearly demonstrable and they almost have to be that way. And certain honor seems to be given to that. What does it mean? It really means nothing. What really, ultimately means something is the credit and the honor given by the judge on that final day. Is that not what really matters? "Well done good and faithful servant. I saw what you did. Here's your reward." Isn't that what really matters? All the other things, they don't matter. They're a form of encouragement. I think we should encourage one another, but it's a stumbling block for people. And so there's this tendency on the one side to look at those gifts and say, "I wish I had them. I don't, so I'm not going to use my gift." And then on the other side to say, "I do have those clearly visible gifts and therefore I don't need you." And so he is saying, "Don't do that."

Parts of our body that are weakest are absolutely indispensable. Our internal organs, for example. They're weak, they need protection and all that, but without them, we die instantly. And so it is he's saying at the church, the parts that you can't see, you never see them are actually indispensable, vital to the body, but they'll never receive any honor. When was the last time anybody honored your liver or your kidneys? All right? But you can't live without them. Boy, you have a wonderful set of kidneys. It doesn't make any sense, but they're absolutely vital. And so he's using that analogy here, he is saying these parts of the body are vital and yet they'll never be honored. Not in this world, but God sees it. Hebrews 6:10, "God is not unjust. He will not forget your work and the love you have shown his people as you help them and as you continue to help his people." He's not unjust. He will not miss anything. This is the Lord with whom a single day is like a thousand years. Think about that. Every day moves an ultra slow motion for God. He doesn't miss anything. And so those things that you do in secret that no one ever sees it, he knows. He knows what's done by faith and so he'll reward it. And so don't let this be a stumbling block is what he's saying. There are just certain earthly things that seem to go to certain gifts. Don't let there be as he says in verse 25, a division in the body, but each part should have equal concern for one another. Some parts are going to be honored more than others, but it doesn't make a difference. We're all one body. Isn't it true? Remember what it says about Christ in Philippians 2. It says, "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." You see, is there any jealousy in the Trinity? Think about that. Is the Father jealous of the glory and honor given to Jesus? Not at all. To the glory of God the Father goes all that honor to Jesus. And so it should be with the body. We are one body. If one part is honored, every part is honored.

Do you think that my right hand is jealous that it's my left hand that gets to wear the wedding ring? Not that I know. Are you jealous? No, I'm not a jealous. Are you... No. I mean it's just they have different roles. All right. This hand gets to wear the wedding ring. Does it make it more important than this hand? No, I'm actually right-handed. This hand does all this other stuff. So God has elevated this hand because it doesn't get to do all the other stuff that the right hand does. It's absolutely ludicrous the kind of jealousy and bickering that goes on in the body over these things and yet it torments the body. It says in James chapter 3, "Where you have selfish ambition and jealousy, there you find disorder and every evil practice." We've talked about that verse before. That's the kind of thing that happens. And then you end up with disorder in the body and this is the root of it here.

So what is he talking about here? In chapter 12 he's generally talking about, excuse me, your attitude toward your gifts. What is your attitude toward your gift? Are you comparing yourself to others? Are you in some kind of competition with others over your gifts? Don't be because we're all one body and we all need each other and it doesn't really make a difference what kind of earthly honor is accorded to each of these positions, that's what he's saying. But now he moves on, and we're going to skip over this part about appointing apostles and prophets and all that. I want to talk about that when we talk about signed gifts. But then at the end he says, "Do all speak in tongues, do all interpret?" And then in verse 31, "But eagerly desire the greater gifts." It could be translated also, "You are desiring the greater gifts." And it really makes a difference, which, and this is one of those quandaries because in Greek you can't tell which way it goes. Is he saying, "Look at you, you're eagerly desiring greater gifts and you shouldn't be?" Or is he saying, "You should eagerly desire the greater gifts?" It's hard to know. I actually lean on the second one, but not that we desire them for ourselves, but realize the significance or the importance, for example, of prophecy over tongues. He talks about it in chapter 14, "I'd rather have one prophet speak a clear word of prophecy than a bunch of people speaking tongues that we don't understand." We'll get to that in chapter 14, but what he's saying is that we should see the role of prophecy, that particular gift in the life of the body. But he's going to go on at this point and say, "I will now show you a more excellent way or the most excellent way."

And at this point he's moving on. Now we're into the famous chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, and here in chapter 12, he's talking about the attitude that you have toward your gift. But in chapter 13, he's talking about how you exercise your gift. How do you carry it out? And both of them are vital, aren't they? The attitude you carry to your gift is vital because it'll have to do with how much you use it and your attitude. But then in chapter 13, how do you actually go about using your gift? Now this is a recurring theme. If you look for example in 1 Peter 4, take a minute and go there. In 1 Peter 4... Thank you. In 1 Peter 4, he says in verse 10, 1 Peter 4:10... Actually I want to start at verse 9. "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he have received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ, to him be the glory and the power for ever and ever." What he's saying there is that how you use your gift matters, the power and the words that you use as you use your gift. Simply, Peter divides them into two categories: speaking gifts and serving gifts. But he says, if you speak, do it as one speaking the very words of God. If you serve, do it with the strength God provides. What he's getting at is how you use your gift, how you do your gift makes a difference. If you look at 4:9, we just looked at it, it says, "Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling." Now, you may have the gift of hospitality, but if you mix grumbling into it, how much of a blessing is that to the body? Have you ever received the gift of hospitality along with some grumbling? Have you ever been somewhere that somebody was extending hospitality with you along with some measure of grumbling? How do you feel? Wouldn't you rather stay in a hotel? I mean, think about it. I mean, wouldn't you rather pay a little extra money and stay rather than put somebody out who's telling you that you're putting them out? And so it actually does make a huge difference how you use your gift. If you use your gift with grumbling, it affects things. It really is an add mixture that weakens everything. All right? He does the same thing in Romans 12. Look over at Romans 12.

Romans 12, he uses the same analogy of the body. Verse 4, 12:4, he says, "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given us." That's the same teaching. It's so consistent. "If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith." So he's telling, "If your gift is prophesying, this is how you should do it." We'll talk about that when we get to Romans 12, but he's giving instructions to how it's done. And then the next few, he just tells you to use your gift. "If it is serving, let him serve. It is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage. If it is contributing to the needs of others," then he says, "give generously." Now he's, again, addressing the issue of how you use your gift. Give generously. And then he says, "If it is leadership, let him govern diligently." Let there be a diligence to how you use your gift. If you are leader, do it diligently. And then, "If it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully." Again, mercy is similar to hospitality. It's a generous giving. You're seeing a need and you want to meet it. And if your gift is mercy, you've got to be cheerful when you do it. Again, doesn't it make a difference to you if you are on the beneficiary side; the receiving the gift of mercy and it's done cheerfully as opposed to un-cheerfully? It makes a huge difference. And that is the context of 1 Corinthians 13.

Look back there at 1 Corinthians 13. He's going to say, "I'm going to show you the most excellent way." Now, why is he doing this? Well, it seems to me in reading across these chapters that they, the Corinthians, were elevating the gift of tongues too highly and that people who had the gift of tongues were boasting over those who didn't. And so that if you didn't have the gift of tongues, you weren't anything in the body. And at one point he says, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you." He said, "But there are other gifts better than tongues, and not everyone does speak in tongues, and so you shouldn't be vaunting yourself against each other based on this gift." So he zeroes in on this at the beginning in chapter 13. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I'm only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." He says, “You may have all the tongues you want, but if you don't have love, you're a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” How you use your gift makes a huge difference.

And then he says, "If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing." Wow, can you have all that and still not have love? Apparently so. You could have this mighty faith, an incredible gift of prophesying, the ability to just speak the word of God so clearly, but if you don't have love, you're nothing. I'm nothing. Well, what is love? He's going to tell us in a minute. It's patient, it's kind, it's gentle. It doesn't keep a record of wrongs. It's all of those things. So you're saying if I'm not like that, I'm nothing? That's what he's saying. I'm nothing. I can't build up the body that way.

This one is just so challenging me. Verse 3, "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing." Wow. Is it possible really to give away all of your possessions to the poor in an unloving fashion? Is that possible? Apparently so. Apparently it's possible to give away all your possessions to the poor and still not have love. It's how you use your gift. It's how you deal with each other. I believe 1 Corinthians 13 is the hardest chapter in the Bible. I know it's beautiful wedding poetry, but is it really? Or does this not search our hearts out and show us who we really are? Is there any natural love in us? Think about it. Are we naturally loving ever? Or is it only by the power of the Spirit that we can fulfill 1 Corinthians 13? If I give all I possess to the poor. You know, we elevate people that care for the needy, don't we? And rightly so, but what Paul's saying is it's possible to do all that and still have no love. And if so, you gain nothing. Well, gain what? Well, a reward could it be? He's talking about storing up treasure in heaven. You've lost your reward. Just as the open boastful intercessor, the one who parades his or her prayer life, or the one who announces the alms giving with trumpets loses his reward, what do we lose here? Well, we gain nothing. God's not impressed, there's no additional jewels in your crown there because there was no love.

All right, and then he defines love. He says... First of all, in verse 1-3, we see the clear priority of love. Love takes priority over everything. How you use your gift matters. “Well, Paul, then tell us what is love?” Well, “Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud.” These are interpersonal things, aren't they? It has to do with how you treat other people. The first one, patience, long-suffering, putting up with one another, bearing with one another in love, now, I know that you don't need to be borne with, but could you please bear with us or do we all need to bear with one another in love? Don't we all have things that just need to be born with? I've said before in Colossians that two verses kind of sums up all of this when it talks about sinners trying to get along with one another. It says, "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another." That covers it all, doesn't it? Bear with those things that are non-moral, offensive things. These personal habits and other things that just grate on you. And then there are moral offenses. They're called sins. And what do we do with those? Well, you forgive them.

So he's saying, “Love is patient,” it’s long-suffering. It's ready to forgive and its kind, kindness. It's so easy to forget that, isn't it? You get wrapped up in your ministry. You get wrapped up in giving and serving and all the stuff you're doing and you forget kindness. “I'm on a mission from God. Don't you realize how important I am?” Running all the red lights and, “I don't need to do all these things.” And suddenly you find out that you've lost your way. 1 Corinthians 13, “love is kind. It does not envy.” Well, that fits into what we've talked about earlier. It doesn't look at what somebody else has and say, "I wish I had that." Flip side, “it doesn't boast.” We covered that too, isn't it? It's not looking at what somebody else has and say, "Boy, I'm better than you," because I have this or I have that. “It is not proud.” The opposite of love is pride, I think in many cases, arrogance. “It is not rude.” It doesn't break those rules of interpersonal communication. “It's not self-seeking,” doesn't seek what it wants for itself, but actually seeking the benefit for others. “It is not easily angered.” Some of you have a temper. That's good. It's when you lose your temper, that's bad. Temper is self-control. Self-control is good, but sometimes we lose our self-control. Self-control also is a fruit of the Spirit. As we're walking in the power of the Spirit, we're not easily angered. “It keeps no record of wrongs.” Is that hard? Are you challenged by that? "Well, what do I do with this thing called my memory? I remember distinctly what was said that day. I remember distinctly what was done to me. Things like that should not be said or done." Well, that's true. Actually all of it is true. That's the whole point. It is true. Remember that parable of the servant that owed a hundred denarii? Do you realize what a hundred denarii is? A hundred days wages. It's a third of a year's pay. We actually do incur debt with one another, don't we? Well, “I'm not going to keep a record of wrongs.” That's what he's saying. “Love keeps no record of wrongs.”

“Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.” That's so important. The truth builds up, doesn't it? That's why I believe in speaking the truth in love. It is right doctrine. It is biblical doctrine that is healthiest for the church. You're not doing anybody any favors by dropping out parts of the truth. That's not loving. We've got to keep the truth together, but there's a way of doing it. Speaking the truth in love. That's what he's saying. And so truth, true truth, that's redundant. Real truth, biblical truth is always loving, isn't it? It's always good for the body. It's always good if it's true. If it's biblical, it's right. So we don't delight in evil, but we rejoice in the truth and we want to see the truth building up. And we don't delight when we see others fail or stumble or fall into sin. There's nothing delightful about that at all. But we only rejoice in the truth. And then, “It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” That is so strong. It always protects. Remember how I said this morning that Jesus protects his bridegroom? A brother or sister protects another brother or sister from sin. Sin is the damaging thing, isn't it? We protect from sin and we protect from threats. And it always trusts. It believes. God is working in your life and I trust that he's going to carry you through. And I hope strongly that we're all going to be there on that final day. No question about it, that we are going to endure to the end. And the bride of Christ is going to be holy and pure and perfect. And it always perseveres. I'm willing to put up with what it takes to see you and me and everyone else through the sanctification process. And it's painful, but I'm willing to put up with it. “Love never fails.” And here is amazing, “Where there are prophecies, they will cease;” all of the spiritual gifts are temporary, “where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.” This is amazing. "When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." What is he getting at? The essence of what spiritual gifts are about is building the body up in eternal life. And what is eternal life? "Now, this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." All the spiritual gifts demonstrate some aspect of God's character and nature. Isn't that true? They all demonstrate something about God. We're revealing God to each other. But according to this, all the gifts are just seeing through a mirror darkly, through a glass darkly. We won't need them in heaven. And why? Because we'll see God face-to-face. We don't need prophecy there. We don't need tongues there. We don't need teaching there. We don't need any of those gifts anymore. They'll all fall away because we'll be seeing God face-to-face. Now we just know in part. Even with the beauty of the Bible, 66 books and all the truth, it's still just partial knowledge. Isn't that true? Says at the end of the Gospel of John, "I didn't write it all. If I wrote it all, even the whole world wouldn't contain everything that could be said." You don't have full knowledge here. We have enough for life and godliness, but then we shall have full knowledge.

So all the gifts are temporary. They're partial. They accomplish the end for which God gave them. But in the end, we won't need any of them. And we'll all be on equal footing seeing God face to face. And won't that be beautiful? I look forward to that. “Now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I have been fully known.” Do you ever think about knowing Jesus as much as he's known you? How much does he know? You remember Psalm 139, "Search me, O God, and know me. Try me and see what I'm like." Well, we're going to search God and know him eternally and we're going to see him and we're going to know him as fully as he's known us. "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." Faith and hope are temporary, aren't they? Who hopes for what he already has? We don't need to hope when we're in heaven. We're already there. We don't need faith when we're seeing face-to-face, but love will remain forever. Isn't that beautiful?

On Wednesday night when you walk in at church conference, remember 1 Corinthians 13. And then on Thursday morning, remember 1 Corinthians 13. And then Friday afternoon, remember 1 Corinthians 13. Use your spiritual gifts, but do it with love because it doesn't really matter how you... It doesn't matter if you use your gift, if you don't have love, it profits nothing for the body of Christ. So let's love one another as he is commanded. Let's close in prayer and then Bill will come and lead us in our closing hymn.

Please, if you would, take your Bibles and open to Romans 7. We continue to make our way through this incredibly deep scripture. And as we come to Romans 7, we come to a very difficult and challenging chapter. And in Romans 7, Paul is dealing with the issue of the law and its relationship to the Christian. What is the purpose and what are the limits of the law? How is the law to function in our lives as Christians? This itself is a subset of a larger question in which the Apostle is dealing with the relationship of sin in the life of a justified person. We have learned from the gospel right from the very beginning, we have seen, Romans 1:16, that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. And so this powerful message has come to transform us from a dire, literally hopeless situation that we might have eternal hope, that we might have actually eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. And so in Romans 1, 2 and 3, the Apostle Paul makes it clear that both Jew and Gentile alike are all under sin. They're under the dominion of sin and all of us were enslaved to sin. Jesus Himself said, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin, but if the Son makes you free, you'll be free indeed."

Now, what a joyful thing is it to be free indeed from the bondage and the burden of sin. And this gospel message comes and makes that burden light. It takes it from us. It frees us. It frees us from the guilt of sin, and so in Romans 3, Jesus Christ, dead on the cross is the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice for our sin. And that all we must do (Romans 4 and Romans 5), is have faith in Christ. Have faith alone, not faith plus works, faith plus any accomplishment at all on our part, but simply faith. And so in Romans 5, Paul elevates this sovereign grace, this gift of God's grace. A simple free gift to be received by faith alone. Well, that raises up a question, doesn't it? If salvation, if justification is simply by faith alone, apart from works of the law, then it does it really matter how we live? And we've been wrestling with this question. What about sin in the life of a justified person? How can we explain it? And so, he deals with it in Romans 6 and talks about our spiritual union with Jesus Christ. We died with Christ through faith and we have been raised with Christ through faith. And so he's talking about union.

And all the way through Romans 6 he talks about that union that we have with Jesus Christ. And if we are alive with Christ, we are no longer dead in transgressions and sins. We have actually died to sin. Sin shall not be our master because we're not under law but under grace. Well, if we're not under law, then what is the relationship of the law to the Christian? And that's what he's dealing with right now. And the way he does it is by bringing up this analogy of marriage in Romans 7:1-6. Now, marriage was originally created as a blessed state from God. It is a gift from God. God created a beautiful world, did He not? Don't you see the beauty around you every day? Don't you see it even this morning? I love the fall. I don't know about you, but I'm not much for hazy, hot and humid weather. I really enjoy the cool crisp days, and I think about the changing leaves and all the beauty. And if you think about this whole world that God made, He put beauty in it. He wove His glory into the very fabric of creation, did He not? And so, He created this beautiful world and He filled it with all kinds of living creatures, with fish of the sea and birds of the air, and animals that walk across the earth. But on the sixth day He created man in His image.

And it says in Genesis 1:27 and 28, "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him male and female. He created them and God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it.'" And so, He set before Adam and Eve, before the man and the woman, a challenge to fill the whole earth. And since man and woman are created in the image of God, so also their children would be in the image of God, and so the image of God would be spread over the whole surface of this globe. The earth was already filled with the glory of the Lord. But God intended that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. And that was our job. Created in His image, that we would see His beauty. And that we would give Him honor and glory and praise and thanksgiving for what He has done. And so, from the very beginning, marriage was intended to be a blessed and a fruitful state. He said, be fruitful and multiply. Now, what he is speaking about physically there, he then moves over into the spiritual realm here in Romans 7. He talks about bearing fruit for God. Now, we've talked in many places about the image of bearing fruit. God intends you that you should bear fruit in your life. After you have been justified, He begins this process of sanctification.

And in this process of growing up to be like Jesus, you will bear fruit day after day. Fruit for God. Fruit that will last. Eternal fruit. And so, Jesus says in John 15, "I am the vine, and you are the branches. If a man remains in me, and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing." And so, there's this picture of fruit that will last through union with Jesus Christ. The picture of the branch and the vine is one of union, is it not? And so, also, we have this picture of marriage in Romans 7.

Now, Romans 7 is a challenging chapter. Wait 'til we get to the second half where we try to wrestle through the picture of Paul and is Paul speaking as a believer or as a unbeliever. And all of us feel the pull and the wrestling with sin. Well, we'll get to that in due time. But first, we have to understand Romans 7:1-6 and what it means to us that we should be dead to the law.

And so, he picks up this image of marriage. He says, "Do you not know, brothers," verse 1, "For I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives. 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 of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man." So in that section he's lifting up this issue of marriage as an analogy, he's speaking by way of picture that they might understand the change in their relationship to the law. Why does he pick marriage? Well, because it's a legally binding relationship, it's a covenant, a relationship between two parties, a covenant or a promise. You're bound together 'til death do us part, and that marriage, that covenant was intended to bear fruit.

The problem is that our being bound together to the law never bore fruit for life, but only for death. Our being bound together by the law does not bear fruit for eternal life, and does not glorify God and why? He's going to get to that in the second half of the chapter. In the middle section in Romans 7, he brings up the issue, is there something wrong with the law? Maybe we were married to a bad spouse, maybe if we had a better law, if God had written a better law, we could have born fruit for life by the law. He actually says not at all, the law is holy and righteous and good. There's nothing wrong with the law. Second half of the chapter, there's something wrong with me. I have sin inside me, therefore the law cannot be used to bear fruit.

Now, let me illustrate that for you in perhaps an analogy that you could understand. Suppose the state legislature of North Carolina legislated that on the first Monday of every month, every husband in the state must buy his wife a dozen red roses. Now, all of you women maybe are excited about that, but then think about it. What would those roses mean to you? They could be called in some cases the roses of obligation, right? You have to buy these roses. They don't mean anything to me. They're beautiful roses but they don't mean love to me. You're under compulsion. And so it is with the law. All of the fruit that we bore at that point was fruit of compulsion; at one point, the Jews themselves sniffed under the burden of the sacrificial system and said what a burden it is. And they did it, they cranked it out, but there was no love. How much better is it that we should die to the law and be brought into a whole new relationship with God, a relationship similar to marriage? And that's the very thing that he's seeking to do. He's getting at how we bear fruit for God.

He's talking about in Romans 7:6 that we serve in the new way of the spirit, and not in the old way of the written code, it's a whole new relationship, and that's what he's driving at. I think you could almost miss it. You're talking about this woman, right? In verse 2 and 3, a woman who is bound to her husband as long as her husband is alive, but when her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage so she is free to remarry. But then in verse 4 he says, "So also, brothers, you…" You see the connection? He's continuing on with this marriage analogy, and he is saying, you died. Now, it's a little complicated, because first the woman is alive and her husband dies. So the woman is us in the first analogy and the law is the husband that only bore fruit for death. But we know the law is never going to die, the law is going to be with us to the end of the world. Who is the one that died in the marriage relationship? We died, didn't we? The moment we had faith in Christ, we died with Christ. And then we were raised again to a new life, so now we're free to remarry. The principle is clear, dead people are no longer under the jurisdiction of the law, and we died to the law. And so now we're free to remarry.

And who are we going to remarry? Look at verse 4, it says, "So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another." Do you see the word belong? It's a marriage analogy, that you might be married to another. It's very strong in the original language, doesn't come across as well in English. But you died to the law that you might be able to remarry, that you might belong to another. And who is that to? Him, who is raised from the dead, that we might be married to Christ. We died to the law that we might be married to Christ and so we have this picture of marriage to Christ. Now, as we look across the scripture we see that this is a major theme. And what I'd like us to do together as we think about being married to Christ is look at it in prophecy, the marriage in prophecy, also the marriage in proclamation, the privileges of this marriage, the preparation of the marriage, the purpose of the marriage, and ultimately the perfection of this marriage to Jesus Christ.

Let's start with the prophecy of the marriage, and I refer here to the Old Covenant, the relationship between Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the people of God, Israel. How many times in the prophets does He speak about His people as though they were His spouse? Many times, it's a consistent theme. Look at Jeremiah 2:2-3. It says there, "I remember the devotion of your youth how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert through a land not sewn. Israel was holy to the Lord, the first fruits of His harvest." He said, "You remember what it was like in the desert as we were moving through the desert, you were like a bride to me and you followed me as a bride follows her husband." So He's speaking through the prophet Jeremiah about the early days of their relationship and how she was like a bride, or again in Isaiah 54:5, you don't have to look there, but just listen. It says, "For your maker is your husband." Let's think about that. Your maker is your husband. He's speaking to Israel. "Your maker is your husband, the Lord Almighty is His name. The Holy One of Israel is your redeemer. He is called the God of all the earth."

And so that relationship, that covenantly binding relationship between Israel and Yahweh, was likened in the Old Covenant to a marriage. She was his bride and he was her groom, her husband. And so therefore when Israel sinned, it was like committing adultery. And so the prophets use this kind of analogy. In Jeremiah 3:14, he says, "'Return, faithless people,' declares the Lord, 'For I am your husband,'" He says. "I am your husband." The prophet Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute to symbolize in his marriage and in his physical life the struggle spiritually between God and faithless Israel. And so he was commanded, Hosea, to marry Gomer, a woman of unfaithfulness, and he had to labor to keep her interested in him. And so it was with Israel and God.

And Israel's restitution in the latter days is likened to the reestablishment of marriage with God. Isaiah 62:5, "As a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you." And so it is, it's a beautiful picture in prophecy, a picture of marriage between the people of God and God Himself.

But then in the New Covenant, we have a proclamation of this marriage, and it begins with John the Baptist. John the Baptist was in many senses the final Old Covenant prophet. He came out of the wilderness with a powerful message for Israel. And he spoke to them, and people began to follow him, they began to listen to his preaching. And he had a large following, and he baptized them. And they were his disciples.

Well, in John 3, they hear that Jesus is attracting more disciples than John was, Jesus is more popular than John, everybody's going after Jesus. And John's disciples come to him and they're very troubled by this. And they say, "Everybody's going after that man that you pointed to in the desert. They're all going after Jesus." And John responds this way. "The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who waits and listens for him, is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete." What is he saying? The bridegroom's here, and the bride's going over to him. Who is the bride? It's the people of God, and they're going over to their bridegroom, Jesus Christ. It's just the way it should be. He must increase and I must decrease.

And so in prophecy and in proclamation, we have by John the Baptist this marriage. Jesus Himself proclaimed it, didn't He? He talked about it often. He made an open statement in Matthew 9:14 and 15, "John's disciples came to Him and asked Him, 'How is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't fast?' Jesus answered, 'How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them? The time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them. In those days, they will fast.'" So He speaks of Himself clearly as the bridegroom. And then in Parables, many times He talks about the wedding banquet. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. By the way, we're in that preparation time now, aren't we? For 2,000 years the King has been preparing a wedding banquet for his Son. And the invitation's going out to come to the wedding banquet, to come and sit at table, and to be part of that great wedding banquet of the Lamb of God.

But He's speaking in parable form, and He's saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son." And then in Matthew 25:1, "At that time the Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom." And so both in open statement and in parable form, Jesus speaks of this marriage. And then the Apostle Paul proclaims it as well. Look, if you will, turn over to Ephesians 5, and there in Ephesians he talks about the relationship between a husband and wife, and likens it to the relationship between Christ and His church. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a minute, so you can just keep it open there. It's such a significant passage. But in Ephesians 5:31-32, Paul writes, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and His church." So what Paul is saying there is that every marriage, every union between a husband and wife, is a picture of Christ and His church. And so the Apostle Paul understood his ministry in this way.

2 Corinthians 11:2, he's speaking to the Corinthian church, a divided, a carnal, a sinful church. And speaking to them as they're mingling with the world, and tempted and drawn into sin. He's speaking of his own ministry. 2 Corinthians 11:2. He says, "I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Him." You see what he's saying? The church is Jesus's, and my role as an apostle, says Paul, is to present you pure as a virgin to Christ, your true bridegroom. So I believe also pastors and teachers have that same responsibility, that the church is Jesus's, and that the job of a pastor/teacher is to present the church to Christ as a pure virgin, undefiled by the world in which we live. And so Paul also likens the relationship between Christ and the church to marriage. And so we see the proclamation of this marriage.

Thirdly, we see the privileges of this marriage. What a treasure chest is this, this is incredible. I stopped at six, we could have kept going. But with all marriages you see traditionally the bride taking the name of the bridegroom. And so also, we take the name of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle said in Acts 4, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men, by which we must be saved." We get saved by calling on the name of Jesus Christ. And so if we are in his name, we are saved. We take His name upon us through faith, don't we? And so the disciples in Acts 19:5, on hearing this gospel message it says, "They were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus." And so we are baptized into His name. In Revelation 22:4 it says they, the people of God, "will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads." There's a sense of ownership, a sense of authority, and a sense of possession that we are His. It says that in verse 4, the passage we're looking at, that we died to the law, that we might belong to another. We are His, and we're called by His name.

Secondly, we also share His standing and His position. First of all, in terms of perfect righteousness. How does God the Father see God the Son? Perfectly righteous. And so also we share the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The Father speaks to the Son and He says, "Your throne, oh God, will last forever and ever and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." That's how the Father looks at the Son. How does He look at us who are united with the Son? The exact same way. We share His righteousness, we're in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and so that's our standing, we share His righteousness. We also share His position, He's a son, an honored son. Well, how would it be, let's say, for a king, and the son, what is the relationship between the bride of the son? Is she not a family member? Is she not taken in as a daughter-in-law, beloved? And so also we will be called and are called children of God. As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God through union with Jesus Christ, and no other way. Through our union with Christ we are called children of God.

We also share His protection, don't we? In John 17:12 Jesus says in His priestly prayer, He's praying for His people, in John 17:12 He says, "While I was with them I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None of them has been lost." Think about that, "While I was with them I kept them safe by the name of God and none of them has been lost," and so, His protection has to do with His people not being lost. He protects them in this world from sin and from attack, He protects His bride out of His intense love for her, He protects her from outside threats, doesn't He? Outside threats or persecution, for example. Remember what He said to that persecutor, Saul of Tarsus, he said, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? You're persecuting my body, you're persecuting my bride," and so He takes it very personally when any government or any people attack His church. He protects them from attacks from without, but He also protects from attacks from within and that is sin, isn't it?

Aren't we prone to wander? Don't you feel it? Don't you feel in your heart how prone you are to sin? And we're going to get to that in the rest of Romans 7, but we've got this sin inside us, don't we? And it is dangerous, it is deadly. Sin is more deadly to us and more dangerous than the devil himself. And He protects us from our own sin, doesn't He? What does He say in James 4:4-6? He says, "You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God." Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. [Listen to this], Or do you think that scripture says without reason that the Spirit that He caused to live in us envies intensely?" The Holy Spirit is jealous over His people, is He not? And when we start to wander and stray into worldliness, there's a spirit of jealousy, like a husband over his bride. And so, He protects us from our own sin, He disciplines us, He chastens us and will not allow us to wander into sin, He shares His protection. He also shares His possessions. Jesus in that priestly prayer in John 17:10, He said to the Father, "All I have is yours and all you have is mine." Isn't that beautiful? Doesn't He say that to His bride too? All of Jesus' things, they're ours, isn't that incredible?

It says of Jesus in Hebrews 1:2, it says, "In his last days, He has spoken to us by His son whom He appointed to be heir of all things." Jesus is going to get it all, He's the inheritor of all things, all things are Jesus', He's the heir of all things. But then, remarkably, it says in Romans 4:13, "It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith." What does that mean? Jesus is heir of all things, Abraham is heir of the world, how can that be? Well, Abraham is part of the bride of Jesus Christ. And so, all His possessions become ours. What does He say in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:5? "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit... " What? "The earth." We get it all. 1 Corinthians 3:21-22, Paul says, "No more boasting about men, all things are yours." All things are yours, you get it all. Why struggle over material possessions and position in this world, and honor, and all of those things? You're going to get it all. Why struggle over it now? God is going to give it to you as an inheritance. You just fulfill your mission as God has commanded, you do the work that God's called you to do and don't worry about what you get in this life and in this world.

Whether reputation, or esteem from people, or material possessions, or any of those things and why? Because you're going to get it all, all things are yours. He says "whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or the present or the future, all things are yours…" And so we share His possessions. We also share His glory and His throne, we will see His glory, not just the reflected glory of this physical creation, we will see His glory directly. The very thing that Moses could never bear to see, the full glory of God we will see it. "Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory." Don't you want to see His glory? Aren't you hungry for it? I know I am, hungry to see His glory, and we will see it by His promise. We will also be transformed by it, we will actually share His glory, we will be glorified. John 17:22,"I have given them the glory you gave me." I've given them the glory you gave me and so, we have His glory, it's bestowed upon us through Christ. And we will also share His position, we will share His throne, we will reign with Him forever and ever, it says in in Revelation 3:21, "To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on His throne." And so, we share His glory and His throne,

And sixthly, we will share His intimate love. Is there not an intense and an intimate love between a husband and a wife? There should be, it's an exclusive relationship and a passionate one. And so, Jesus says to us in Jeremiah 31, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." Heaven and earth cannot separate you from my love, nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. There's an intense and intimate love that we will share forever in heaven. So this is the privilege of this marriage.

What is the preparation for this marriage? Why do I speak of preparation? Because we're not fully married yet, I don't mean to shock you, but in the ancient Near East there was a betrothal, you remember, between Joseph and Mary? And then there was a period of time before the actual wedding day. We haven't come to the wedding day yet, have we? The invitations are still going out, the bride is not complete, she's not fully ready yet. And so, the wedding day hasn't come, we are betrothed to Christ and that's a binding relationship. In the ancient Near East that you had to get a divorce to break that.

Remember how Joseph contemplated divorcing Mary even though they weren't even married yet, but that's how binding the betrothal was, and so it is for us. We are betrothed to Jesus Christ, we are bound to Him, and we will be married, that's why that parable of five wise and five foolish virgins, you got to be ready when the bridegroom comes, when the wedding day comes you need to be ready, and so we have to be prepared for marriage. Well, how does Christ prepare us for the marriage? Look again, I told you to wait at Ephesians 5, look at it. Ephesians 5:25-27 shows how Christ prepared us for marriage.

Look what it says in Ephesians 5:25-27, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church, and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." That explains how Christ got His bride ready for the wedding. Look what it says, husbands love your wives just as Christ love the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy. What is that referring to? Justification, do you see it? He died on the cross, taking our sins on Himself, and in His death we find our holiness, we are made holy through the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus gave himself up for His bride, He died for her that she might be holy. That's justification. Then what does it say?

"To make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word." What is that? Sanctification, the ongoing ministry of the word of God. As faithful preachers preach the word, the church grows up in holiness. It gets ready for its wedding day, it's being made holy, it's being transformed little by little by the washing with water through the word, little by little the church is being made ready for her wedding day. And then finally it says, "And to present her to Himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless." That's the beautiful day of glorification in which the church is radiant and shining and ready for that day. This is how Jesus gets His bride ready for the day, He prepares her for it through justification, through sanctification and through glorification.

Well, what is the purpose of the marriage? Well, I already told you the purpose of all marriage is fruitfulness, He wants fruit, eternal fruit. Look at verse 4 in our passage again, in Romans 7:4, "In order that we might bear fruit for God," it says. So you also die to the law through the body of Christ, in order that you might belong to another, to Him who is raised from the dead, so that or in order of that we might bear fruit for God.

Can a Christian live in sin? Openly, forsaking all righteousness? Can we just sin as much as we want? You don't understand the marriage, you don't understand what new life is all about. We don't just receive forgiveness of sins, we receive a spouse, we receive a God who stands united with us, and will not permit us to live that way.  Rather that we bear fruit for Him, eternal fruit, fruit that will last. Now, every marriage is intended to bear fruit, we know that sadly in this sin-cursed world not every marriage can have physical offspring, children, but that's the usual intention of God in bringing a man and a woman together, that there should be children, that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.

It says in Malachi 2:15, "Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are His and why one, because He was seeking godly offspring." He wanted children. "So guard yourself and your spirit and do not break faith with the wife of your youth." "I hate divorce," says God. But His intention was that there should be godly offspring, godly homes training up children in righteousness. Alright, well, that's the physical side.

So also we have spiritual offspring here, fruit for God, that we bear fruit for God, that we bear fruit through our union with Jesus Christ. And what does that mean? What is fruit?  Well, anything that God leads you to do in service to Him, evangelism, people led to Christ, that's fruit for God, isn't it? Deeds done and the humility that comes from righteousness, isn't that fruit for God? Isn't it fruit for God for all of you to use your spiritual gifts? Is it not fruit for God for you to contribute to the needs of others generously and cheerfully? Is it not fruit for God to come to worship and offer up the sacrifice of praise the fruit of lips that bear His name? Is that not fruit for God? All of these things are fruit, and He wants fruit from us, and then finally we see the perfection of this marriage.

Turn, if you will, to Revelation 19:7-8 as we close. There is in all of our aspect with God now, in our experience in the gospel, an already and not yet aspect. In one sense we're already married to Christ, in one sense we're not yet married to Christ, already and not yet. We do not have the fullness yet, the perfection of the marriage waits, when the bridegroom comes the union happens, the wedding banquet of the Lamb will occur, and it's described in Revelation 19, look at verses 7-8, "Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory, for the wedding of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready." What does a bride do to get ready for her wedding day that morning? Some of you remember all the work you put into your appearance. Getting your hair just right, your face, getting the most perfect dress, I hope you already had it picked out by then. It's no small thing to pick out a wedding dress, I've heard. I went on the Internet recently and tried to find and there are just infinite wedding dresses out there, aren't there?

I don't know anything about this kind of thing. But I looked up and I saw that the most expensive dress, wedding dress that there was, was available for $7.3 million. And it involved diamonds in platinum settings sewn into the hem and in different places in the dress. Now, if you can afford that, you will be well adorned for your wedding day. I don't know that there's a husband on earth that would be worthy of a wife like that. That's incredible. And the principle is that you're going to look your best on your wedding day. And here in Revelation 19, it says, "The bride's made herself ready." She is all ready. She looks beautiful. She's radiant. She's glorious. It's interesting that her actions and her activities are part of it.

She has made herself ready. And so, it is in Ephesians 4 that through spiritual gifts and through our involvement in witness and all that, that we lead others to Christ. We build others up in their walks with God. We are included in the work. We are making ourselves ready. The Church of Christ is built up as each part does its work, right? So the bride is making herself ready every day. But we're not finished yet.

And then it says, verse 8, "Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear." Well, here's another outside person giving something to the bride. Well, he's giving her dress and that's coming from God. The righteousness, it is a symbol of righteousness. Fine linen stands for the righteousness or the righteous acts of the saints. And we have a righteousness from God and then we have the gifts of righteous deeds done by the power of the Spirit. You see? And so, every day the bride gets herself ready by standing in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and doing righteous deeds by the power of the Holy Spirit. And so, we will be adorned in those righteous deeds on our great wedding day. That's the perfection of the marriage, not finished yet, because the bride is still dirty, unclean, sinful, unsaved.

Some of the people haven't come to Christ yet, the church is still divided. Individual congregations are divided through carnality. The body of Christ widely is divided through denominationalism. We're not finished yet. The bride's not ready, but He's going to get her ready. And she, through the working and through the following of the Spirit, walking in those good deeds, "for we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them." Through those righteous acts we make ourselves ready for our wedding day. And what is the consummation? Look what it says in Revelation 21, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city, [That's the people of God, folks] the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband." Isn't that great? The new Jerusalem coming down and she's ready. She's prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for that eternal marriage union in heaven with Jesus Christ. Amen. Can't wait. Are you going to be there? Are you included? Are you included by faith in Jesus Christ? I hope so.

You don't want to miss it, because if you're not included, you're going to be cast outside in the darkness where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. There's no other option. Either you're included in the bride of Christ, or you're condemned for eternity. Are you included?

IV. Application

Four applications. Number one, they all begin with H, the four H club. Happiness, holiness, harvest and hope. Number one, happiness. Rejoice at the security of this relationship. Is there any more secure relationship in this world than marriage? I'm so sorry for the burgeoning divorce statistics. It's a tragedy, it's a sin, but there is no more secure relationship than that husband and wife Covenant relationship. And this one will never end. Rejoice, be happy at the love that Jesus Christ has shown you, to call you His spouse.

Second H, holiness. Realize that Jesus Christ will never tolerate for a moment an unclean, faithless, wandering bride. And so, the moment we start to wander, He will come after us. When we go after worldly pleasures and sins, it arouses in Him a spirit of jealousy that you cannot imagine. The spirit that He caused to live in us envies intensely, it says. Akin to a husband coming around a corner at an office party and seeing his wife embracing another man. Completely unacceptable to God. When we get involved in worldliness, worldly ways of thinking, sinfulness, friendship of the world has hatred toward God. We must be holy. His bride will be holy and pure on that day.

Thirdly, harvest. Christ expects His bride to bear fruit daily. Following in the power of the Spirit, we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. We have a whole new way of serving God now, and everything we do bears fruit for him.

And then finally hope. Be filled with joy at what awaits you. I've said it before, I'll say it again. If you're a Christian, the best is yet to come. All of your best things are in the future. There's nothing you've experienced in this life that even compares to the wedding banquet of the lamb and being included in the bride of Jesus Christ. Nothing. I don't care how great a life you've had. Conversely, there's no misery or grief or suffering or trial that you're going through that is even worthy of comparing with what He's going to give you on that final day. It doesn't matter how much grief and suffering and trial we go through. None of it compares with what He will give us on that day.

Set your hope on things to come. Set your hope on Christ. One final thing, if you're still in Revelation, turn to Revelation 22:17. Look what it says. Revelation 22:17, "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'" You see that? Isn't that powerful? "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'" Who are they speaking to? The world. Unbelievers. Unregenerate people. And the Spirit and the bride together testify and say the same thing. And what do they say? "Come." "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let him who hears say, 'Come.' And whoever is thirsty, let him come. And whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." Come to Christ. Come and be part of His bride. Don't trust in your good works anymore. We only ever bore fruit for death by the law. Come and receive the free gift, not only of righteousness, but of an indwelling spirit that bears forth fruit for eternal life. Won't you pray with me?

I'd like to ask that you just quiet your hearts for a moment as we pray. Lord Jesus, you are the lover of our soul. You poured out your blood on the cross, that our souls might not suffer eternal loss. You loved us with an everlasting and an eternal love, a love unshakable even by death. And you rose again from the dead that we might have newness of life and walk in that newness of life. Oh, God, I pray that you would work out that newness of life in us as the people of God. Father, I pray that we would have done with sin, putting it to death by the power of the Spirit. I pray that we would walk in that newness of life, bearing forth eternal fruit for your glory. And Father, if there's anyone here in this room today who has never come to Christ, I pray that they would hear what the Spirit says and what the bride says. That they would come to Christ, and that they might have complete forgiveness through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ for their sins. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Pastor Andy Davis preaches a verse-by-verse expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 12. The focus of this sermon is spiritual gifts. 

Good evening. It's good to see all of you here. If you would, take your Bibles and open to 1 Corinthians 12, continuing our study of spiritual gifts. I'm passing out for you something that I've referred to before, but I just wanted to give it to you. It's from National Geographic, a little depiction of the body's immune system and how it handles disease. Now, this is not a biology class and you're not going to be tested on this, all of these different types and aspects of the body's immune system. I really just want to stimulate worship in you. I'd like you to rejoice in the complexity of the human body. Now, since you're already having it, I'm going to go ahead and allude to it right away. The reason I'm doing this is that this is exactly what Paul does in 1 Corinthians 12, also in Romans 12, in saying that the body is a unit but it's made up of many individual parts and these parts are woven together in a marvelous way.

Now, you'll notice in the upper right-hand corner there it says, “A miracle of evolution, the human immune system is not controlled by any central...” and it goes out from there. Now, what I want you to do is take a pen, if you have it, and cross out the words, “A miracle of evolution.” They're contradictory anyway. How can evolution be a miracle or a miracle evolutionary or whatever. The whole point with evolution is that it's natural not supernatural. And the whole point with the miracle is that it's supernatural not natural. So we'll dispense with that foolish prose right off the top. This is created by God and I don't want you to think that I'm espousing the evolutionary views of National Geographic in any way, shape, or form, but what I am doing is I'm saying God has made us in a fearful and a wonderful way.

Now, I'm not going to go through all the little details of this, but basically what is described here is what happens when you breathe in or take into your body a virus, and all the different kinds of cells there and all the different approaches and each part of the body's immune system plays a role, doesn't it? And if you don't have, for example, the helper T-cell or the killer T-cell or the B cells or any of these things, you're going to have a problem. As a matter of fact, this article came out in June of 1986 when AIDS was really starting to make inroads into popular consciousness, it had been going on for about five years before that on a pretty large scale, but people were starting to think about it and there started to be articles written and they were seeking to explain, among other things, what happens to the body's immune system when the AIDS virus comes in and how it just destroys the immune system.

But what I found so remarkable is the complexity of the immune system itself. It's not residing in the brain, but there's information, there's memory to it. It keeps track of the things that your body has done. This is why immunizations work well. The immune system stores up data and information. David didn't know one 1,000,000th of it when he said, "I bless you Lord, because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made." Isn't that true? And I guess what I'm getting at, you can just fold it up now and put it in your Bible and read it later, not now, but it's just the immense complexity and yet they're all working together for a common end. That God has put within one body a hundred trillion cells, each of them specialized to do their own job, and they all work together to make you, and you are fearfully and wonderfully made. And in the same way God has put the body of Christ together. The thing I wonder about is how simplistic we are in thinking about the body of Christ. The same God who put this together, put the body of Christ together. And it isn't simple, but it is wonderful and remarkable in how it's made.

Let's begin with prayer if we might. Father, I thank you for the joy that we have in coming into your presence. Father, I thank you that there are things going on in our bodies right now that we will never fully understand. I thank you, oh Lord, that you do fully understand them, that you knit us together in our mother's wombs, that you have arranged us with such remarkable diversity, and within that diversity there is incredible unity. All of us working together and all the cells working together in the body to achieve the common end that you have for that person. And in the same way, oh Lord, you're calling the body of Christ, though diverse and diversely gifted, to work together in a marvelous unity under the headship of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so I pray, oh Lord, that you would send your Holy Spirit, enable us, oh Lord, to understand just what you have done in us spiritually as we also will never fully understand what you've done in us physically. We thank you, oh Lord, for the apostle Paul and for his writings here. And we pray, oh Lord, that we would understand 1 Corinthians 12 and also that we have put into practice the things that we learn here in this body. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let's read the text now, I don't know how far we're going to get this evening, but I would just like to get a sense of the scope of what Paul's doing in 1 Corinthians 12 on spiritual gifts. Beginning at verse 1 it says,

Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you are pagan somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore, I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit. There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit and he gives them to each one just as he determines.

We're going to stop there, we'll continue on once we're done with this section. Now, when we studied this last a number of weeks ago, we talked about the unifying work of the Holy Spirit, how it is the Holy Spirit that's called us into one body that we might be Christians. You cannot say, “Jesus is Lord” from your heart believing the full ramifications of that except that the Holy Spirit has moved it and worked it in you. You are born again by the Holy Spirit and unless the Holy Spirit moves in you, you cannot say, “Jesus is Lord.” But when that same Holy Spirit, and there is only one Holy Spirit, moves in you, you become a Christian, you're born again. It does not matter what tribe or language or people or nation you're from. One Spirit has worked that same conversion in you and he's doing it in people all over the world, and it is the giving of that Spirit at the moment of regeneration that unites the worldwide body of Christ. There is one Spirit that unites us all, not just this one local body at First Baptist Durham, but also worldwide there is one Spirit that unites us all. And he is the down payment, the deposit guaranteeing our final inheritance it says in Ephesians 1. We have an experience of fellowship with God that's partial, it's not complete. He is, the Holy Spirit, is the down payment or the deposit guaranteeing the full inheritance. We don't have the full amount now, but by means of the Holy Spirit we have fellowship with God, don't we? And that fellowship is partial. So Paul can say, “For me to live is Christ and to die is…” what? Gain.

Now you could say what could be more than Christ? Well, in one sense, nothing could be more than Christ except more of Christ. And that's exactly what he's saying. “If I die, I get to be in face-to-face fellowship with Jesus Christ and nothing would make me happier for me personally.” He says there in Philippians 1, “it's better for you if I remain.” But for me personally, I would really delight in having that additional fellowship with Jesus Christ. For me, to live is Christ and to die is more Christ, I think is what he's saying there. Gain. But we do have in part fellowship with God by the Holy Spirit now, and we experience that. In 1 Corinthians 13 it says, “we see through a glass darkly but then we shall see face to face.” So we have a partial experience of fellowship with God now.

Now there's nothing wrong with our position with God. We are seen to be perfect, holy and blameless in His sight through the blood of Jesus Christ. And there's nothing wrong with that partial fellowship either. It's exactly what God has ordained for this time. There is an already and a not yet aspect of our faith. We have something now but we get the full amount later. But it's the exact same way with the body of Christ and the fellowship we enjoy with one another. We have a partial fellowship with one another by the Holy Spirit. We will enjoy a full fellowship with one another in heaven. And the reason I know that is that we've already seen, in John 17, the measure of fellowship or unity in the body is the trinity itself, Father, Son, and Spirit in perfect unity with each other. And Jesus prayed, “Father, that they may be one just as we are one. You and me and I and them, may they be brought together into complete unity.” and so the whole work of the church is a bringing together of all of God's people who have trusted in Christ into perfect complete unity in Christ. And that's an ongoing work, isn't it? And it's a unity through evangelism in that lost people are brought into the body of Christ and the indwelling Spirit is given to them, the same Holy Spirit when they're regenerated. But then there's a unity that comes through growing up in maturity that we individually become more and more like Jesus. And that process is never going to be completed in this world but only in the next world. And so this is the work of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit has been given to us.

Now, if you go back a few chapters to 1 Corinthians 2, Paul points out that the Spirit, in verse 10 and following, the giving of the Spirit is the very thing that makes a Christian different from a non-Christian. If you look at it beginning at verse 9, it says, "However, as it is written, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit." Now we've talked about that before. The fact is that no eye, no mind, no heart, no imagination can imagine or even think of what God has in store for us. But in the teacher training class I've said this is not referring to heaven so much as it's referring to all spiritual things. And the natural mind, the natural man, can't think of them. They can't really enter into the mind of the natural man. But God has, what does it say in verse 10, revealed it to us by his Spirit. So we do know of them, don't we?. We have had these things revealed to us by his Spirit. And so the Spirit is given to us, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of man except them man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” Isn't that an amazing thing? The Holy Spirit plumbs the depths of the thoughts of the triune God and brings that to us, brings the thoughts of God, the very thoughts of God to us as he lives within us. Just as your spirit searches out your thoughts and perhaps you're able to put them in words and communicate them, in the same way the Spirit plumbs the depths of the triune Godhead and brings those concepts, those deep things of God to us and explains them to us. This is what he's saying. “We have not,” in verse 12, “We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God that we may understand what God has freely given us.” In other words, the Holy Spirit is given that we might have a full understanding of all that God has given us. Isn't that beautiful? The Holy Spirit reveals to you the perfection and the totality of his gifts to you, and that includes spiritual gifts, as we'll get to in a moment. "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words," verse 14, "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned." So the distinction between the unbeliever and the believer, between the unregenerate and the regenerate, between the non-Christian and the Christian, is the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit, obviously among other things, faith in Jesus Christ and other things. But here as we focus here, the distinction is the Holy Spirit indwells us and explains to us what he's doing. As a matter of fact, Paul goes so far in Galatians to say, chapter 3:2-3, you don't have to turn there, but there he says that you have been begun or you have begun by the Spirit. Is it possible that you could now be completed by the flesh? Of course not. But the Galatians had begun through the power and the moving of the Holy Spirit and now they're trying to work it out as under the law. They didn't know they were dead to the law. They didn't understand what we talked about this morning, and so they were begun by the Spirit but they're now trying to work it out in the flesh, so what Paul is saying is it's the giving of the Holy Spirit that begins the Christian life. When you received the Spirit you began as a Christian. And then he says in Romans 8:14-17, he says it is the indwelling Holy Spirit that cries out from within you, “Abba Father." And that if you don't have the Spirit of Christ you don't belong to Christ. If you don't have the indwelling Spirit you're not a Christian. But we have received this Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God, and he lives within us, and it is that Spirit that makes us one. It is the Spirit that enables us to experience unity. Now, we do not experience perfect unity in this world just as we don't experience perfect fellowship with God in this world, but we do experience some kind of fellowship with God and we do experience some kind of unity with one another and it's the Holy Spirit that does that.

Now the Spirit, back in 1 Corinthians 12, the Spirit moves and gives us different manifestations. If you look at verse seven, 1 Corinthians 12:7, it says, "Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." Very interesting that he calls it manifestation here. Now, we've already covered the force of the phrase, “to each one.” What that means is if you are a Christian you have received gifts of the Holy Spirit or a gift package or some manifestation of the Spirit. But here he is talking about gifts that are given and he refers to them as manifestations. What it means is evidence that the Spirit is among you. We have evidence that the Holy Spirit is here as you see these gifts working, manifestations of the Spirit. And it says in verse 7 that they're given for the common good. What this means is that they're not given for you to enjoy yourself by yourself. Now, you will enjoy using your spiritual gifts, no doubt about it. There's a certain pleasure that comes from using the gifts that God's given you. A sense of belonging, a sense that your work is valuable, that the things that you're doing are counting for eternity, that you are strengthening the brothers and sisters in Christ by the things you do. And that's a joy, isn't it? Isn't it beautiful to know that the things that you're doing have eternal and lasting value and will not be swept away by the sands of time? They can't be removed. They will last forever. Jesus said, "Store up treasure in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in steal, for where your treasure is there your heart also will be." So what he's saying is that you are given this manifestation of the Spirit and you can derive pleasure out of it. Of course you can, but they're really given for the common good. And that's wonderful because what that means is that you're deriving pleasure not only from your own gifts, but from what? The gifts of other people. And how is that multiplied a hundred or even a thousand-fold? You receive the blessings and the benefits of a healthy church body in which everyone is using the gifts that they have been given and that's healthy and it's strengthening. And as a matter of fact, you can't grow up into full maturity in Christ without it. We all need each other. I can't grow up into full maturity as a Christian unless you all and those Christians that God has put around me, use your gifts. Neither can you grow up unless I and others use our gifts. “As each part does its work,” Ephesians 4, “we grow up into full maturity,” and that's delightful. So the manifestations of the Spirit are given for the common good.

We think far too individualistically as Americans, don't we? We really do. We have a hard time understanding corporate reality. We have a hard time thinking of ourselves as part of a group, but God doesn't have a hard time thinking that way at all. The remarkable thing about 1 Corinthians 12 is the blending together of the unity and diversity themes. You really can't be too strong on one or the other. You can't go too far, that this is all about unity here and forget that there's diversity, or this is all about diversity and neglect the fact that there's unity. There is unity in diversity and that's exactly what he's getting at here. We are all one body and we function as one body, but we are marvelously varied and we need each other for the common good to use our gifts.

Now in verses 8 and following, he gives a list of spiritual gifts. Now, we're not going to go through these lists right now. We're going to come back and look at them. And especially I would like to dedicate one, if only one, teaching time on what we call sign gifts or those kinds of gifts that make you sit up and take notice. And we really should be sitting up and taking notice at all gifts, but those gifts that have been somewhat controversial in the 20th and 21st century, things like speaking in tongues, miracles, prophecy, the way that some define it, the word of knowledge and all of these things, we're not doing that tonight but we'll do it sometime, God willing. But I think what we should look at is the fact that Paul consistently gives lists of gifts that are different from other lists that he gave at other times. Have you noticed that? And so you get the sense that these listings are just meant to be suggestive. And just like that sheet I gave you shows the remarkable complexity and diversity within the body, I don't think we're ever going to get a full list of all the manifestations of the Spirit. It's not going to be just 29 spiritual gifts according to C. Peter Wagner or others. I think that's all that's listed as you go through the New Testament, but because every single list is different you get the sense that not one of them is meant to be exhaustive, and that even if you were to put them all together and add them all up and categorize them, as some have done, that that's all there are. I really don't think so. I think actually every one of you is unique. All of you have kind of a unique package or arrangement of spiritual gifting, but we need to get somewhat specific and talk about how these functions work. And whereas in Ephesians he talks about persons, he gave some people to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, here we're talking more about manifestations, namely the movings of the Spirit and how they work and function. So it's less tied to the person at this point, although I don't think there's any disagreement whatsoever between the two.

So we're not going to go through these and I'm not going to list what I think they mean. We'll do that, God willing, another time. But if you look down at verse 11 it says, "All these are the work of one and the same Spirit." And that's the point he's making. It's the same Spirit that enables you with your gift of administration or your gift of teaching or of helping or of faith or prayer, it's the same Spirit who works that same gift in someone else. And so you should be just as delighted in somebody else's gift as you are in your own gift. And here we're getting to what I think is one of Paul's main motives for writing. I think there was some jealousy working in the Corinthian church. I don't just think it, I know it because he says so. They were jealous of each other. They were envious and it divided them. They were broken up into factions and they were, it says in Galatians, kind of biting and quarreling with one another, devouring one another. I think the same thing was going on in the Corinthian church, and I think the root of it was envy and jealousy, if not also some insecurity on some people's parts. And so I think he's working on helping us to realize how every single gift in the body is needed and how every single gift in the body is done by the Holy Spirit and how we should be just as delighted in somebody else's gift as we are in ours. And how all of these gifts are done, it says in verse 11, as the Spirit wills. And so who are we to question the Holy Spirit? Rather we should just be incredibly delighted at the whole body and the way it all fits together. Look again at verse 11. "All of these," these spiritual gifts, "are the work of one and the same Spirit and he gives them to each one just as he determines." Now if we look at, for example, in verse 4, verse 5, verse 6, the word different in the NIV, there are different, different, different, see 4, 5 and 6, and then this sense of he gives them to each one as he determines. The word different gives a sense of allotment, a sense of an allotment or something that's measured out to you and handed to you. This is your area, your arrangement, your assignment let's say.

I know that some of you are studying in Sunday school the book of Joshua and you know that the second half of the book of Joshua, what goes on in the second half of Joshua? After the conquest, what goes on in the second half?

[Audience speaks.]

Yeah, they divide up the Promised Land. And how do they do that? By lots, right? They roll out the lots and the allotment... that's really where you get the sense of allotment... based on that allotment that's where you would live. And they believed that God was sovereignly overseeing that division or that dividing purpose. That, I think, is what David meant when he said in Psalm 16:6, "The lot has fallen for me in pleasant places, surely I have a delightful inheritance." He's speaking in that old language of, “Hey, I've got a nice piece of land. I've got a hill and I got a river running through it and I'm pretty happy with what I've got. I'm delighted. I'm happy with my life.” How would you characterize David's attitude in Psalm 16:6? What is that, “I'm delighted,” what is he feeling? Contentment. That's a rare thing these days, isn't it? There's a book that I've read and thought about before by Jeremiah Burrows, he was a Puritan writer, entitled The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. And I think what Paul's getting at in 1 Corinthians is he wants you to be content with the gifts that you've been given. Be delighted with them, and not only yours but to be delighted with everybody's gifts. Be happy about it, be content, because it's the Holy Spirit that's done it. And he's very wise in what he does. He knows what he's doing. Be happy; be content with what you're doing.

Now as we look, you're going to see how this theme comes out. But first I want to finish developing this. If you take a minute, go back and look at 1 Corinthians 3:5. 1 Corinthians 3:5, actually, let's go back a little further beginning at verse 1, "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk not solid food for you are not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly, for since there is," now here look what he says, "there is jealousy and quarreling among you." Jealousy. What is jealousy? Isn't it looking out over somebody else's stuff and saying, "I want that"? The root of jealousy is discontent, isn't it? You're not satisfied with what God has portioned out to you. You want something else and so you're jealous. And so there's jealousy and jealousy leads to quarreling. "Jealousy and quarreling among you. Are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere men?" It's stunning how the assumption behind that is you shouldn't be mere men, you should be spiritual, you should be different than the natural man. You should be different. You should be supernatural in your life. And then he goes on from there in verse 5 and says, "What, after all, is a Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe as the Lord has assigned to each his task." Isn't that beautiful? God is given to each person his assigned task. Each person gets an assigned task. Do you know what yours are? Do you know what God has assigned to you? We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God laid out in advance that we should walk in them. He's assigned some tasks for you to do. But there's jealousy and quarreling and they're elevating one over the other. They're thinking of one more highly than the other and that's the root of what he's going to get at here in 1 Corinthians 12.

Look at 1 Corinthians 7:17, a few chapters over, a little bit different context but the same idea. He's talking here about marriage and remarriage after widowhood if you become a widow or widower, and he's giving his advice about that. We're not going to get into that but just look at the verbiage he uses in verse 17, "Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him." A very interesting idea here: the sense of being content at where you're at in your life. Content with what God has given you and whatever he's assigned to you. And then he says, if you could look over at 2 Corinthians 10:13, he talks about similar things there. 2 Corinthians 10, beginning at verse 12-13, he says, "We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves they are not wise." That's the problem. There's this sense of comparing yourself with someone else and you're either on the upside or you're on the downside. Isn't that what happens? You either come up on top or you come up short. If you come up on top, what are you tempted to do? Boast, right, and brag. If you come up on the bottom side you tend to do what? Feel yourself inferior and perhaps be jealous. And Paul is saying we've got to get rid of that whole way of thinking. All of this has been laid out the way God assigned it. In verse 13 he says, "We however, will not boast beyond proper limits but will confine our boasting to the field that God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you." Isn't that remarkable? God has given to each one of us an assigned field that we're supposed to work. And that makes it kind of clear cut, doesn't it? Because if that assigned field has weeds growing up all over it, it's pretty clear what's going on. And God will look at your field on judgment day. He'll look and see how well it's been tended. Did you work the field that was assigned to you? And so our hearts and our focus and our scope should be on the whole world through prayer. We can touch the world through prayer, but we should work the field that God has assigned to us. And Paul says, “By the way, you're included in my field that's why I'm writing to you. That's why I'm ministering to you."

Okay, back in 1 Corinthians 12, you see this sense of assignment, the sense that each one of these gifts has been given as the Spirit apportioned or assigned or moved. And by the way, you could write this verse down, this is so important, James 3:16. It says in James 3:16, "For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice." Wow, what is disorder? Is it not the opposite of this thing that God has set up in the body of Christ? And what is the roots of disturbances and disorder? Is it not jealousy and envy which leads to quarreling and leads to division? Is that not happening in our church right now? And should we not pray against it? Should we not ask that God would grant us the maturity to grow up out of that kind of behavior? Should we not ask that we stop being carnal and fleshly and rather be content with what God has assigned to us and work that field with joy and be delighted in the work of others as a manifestation of the same Holy Spirit that's in us? I think so. And so I'm challenging you to pray for that because that's a good thing to pray for. Jesus prayed that we would be one, “that the world may know that you sent me,” he said. And when the body behaves like that, it doesn't look good to the world does it? It looks like what's going on over there. So I think we should be content with the field that God has assigned to us and we should work it diligently and we should be delighted in what God has assigned to others and watch them work theirs diligently, and pray that they would, and see good fruit come from it all because the Holy Spirit is delighted to arrange it this way. James 3:16, "You find disorder and every evil practice coming up out of jealousy."

All right, now, let's read beginning at 1 Corinthians 12:12 and see how Paul deals with this problem.

The body is a unit though it is made up of many parts and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don't need you.” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don't need you.” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable. And the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Stop there. Do you see how Paul is addressing this? In the first section, verse 12-13, he talks about the body as a whole and says it's a unit and it's brought together in a marvelous unity by one Spirit, right? We'll talk about that more in detail in a moment. But then in verse 14-20 he deals with parts of the body that are saying because I'm not a hand I don't belong. It could be that here is a sense of inferiority. Now some commentators don't agree with this, but I think that that may be. You're looking over to another part and saying, “Well, I'm not like that so I'm not included” or, “The things that I do are not important.” That could stimulate feelings of inferiority and also feelings of jealousy. We're very prideful beings and we're not going to stand for that for long. So we might begin to chafe against it and murmur against it and that's the kind of thing that causes disunity. But what Paul is saying is just because you look over and you see that you're not something else doesn't mean for that reason that you're not part of the body. You are what God made you to be. And you are most certainly part of the body because you have the indwelling Spirit; we all have the same Spirit to drink. And what you do is indispensable to the body of Christ, indispensable. We need you; we need all of you. As each part does its work, the body grows up to full maturity. So he's dealing with the inferiority side, I believe, on the first half.

Then in the second half, the head is saying to the feet, “I don't need you.” Or the eye is saying to the hand or the hand to the eye, “I don't need you.” Here you're dealing with the superiority side in which you feel because I have this gift or this honorable or presentable, he uses that language later, role in the body that I have no need for you or you or you. That's a feeling of superiority. And it's interesting how this is exactly what Paul deals with in Romans 12. Christie was talking to me earlier, she said, "Well, you need to tell us how to discover what our gifts are." And we will get there. I'm going to talk about it, but I think it's good to understand what they are and how they function first. But Romans 12 is the handbook on how to discover what your gifts are. That's what it's all about. Romans 12:1-2 says, “You should present your body as a living sacrifice as holy and pleasing to God.” You should renew your mind, I believe by the washing with water through the Word, just as you're renewing your mind. Then, what? You'll be able to test and approve what God's will is for you personally and also for the whole body of Christ. "For by the grace given to me, I say to every one of you: Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the measure of faith that God has given." He's using spiritual gift language there isn't he? And he's saying think of yourself rightly in proportion to the whole body. You are well apportioned in the body of Christ. Be content with what God has done in you. Don't think of yourself too highly. He doesn't say it there, but neither in this case think of yourself too lowly, but rather with right judgment as far as your importance in the body of Christ. That's what he's saying. So that's kind of the lay of the land in 1 Corinthians 12. He's saying we are all one body because we have this indwelling Spirit. You shouldn't think of yourself in an inferior sense, neither should you think of yourself in a superior sense, but think of yourself with a sober judgment feeling that you and every other single member of the body is utterly vital to the full maturity of the church.

So that's the big picture. I want to say one more thing just because it's so wonderful and we'll finish and, God willing, we'll resume it next time. It says in verse 13, it says, "For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free, and we were all given the one Spirit to drink." Oh, that is so wonderful and I want to talk more about it next time. But the fact is it's the Holy Spirit that's brought you into the body of Christ, it's not the water baptism. We know that. We talked about that in Romans 6. It's not the water that brings you into the body of Christ, but it's that immersion in the Spirit of God, and you are given the Spirit to drink. And I'm thinking immediately of the woman at the well. Remember the Samaritan woman? Jesus said, "Whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never thirst, but the water that I give him will become for him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Isn't that beautiful? “As often as your thirsty drink from me,” that's what he's saying. And then in John 7:38-39, "On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out in a loud voice, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture said, streams of living water will flow from within him.’ By this he meant the Spirit whom those who believed in Jesus were later to receive.” You have it. You have the gift of the Spirit, drink. Don't go to worldly things or anything else for your satisfaction, but go to the Lord and allow Him to minister to you. Drink of the Spirit. We are all baptized by the same Spirit. And by the way, all of us who are Christians here, we're all drinking from the same Spirit. It's the same Holy Spirit who's ministering one to another, and we should desire him to minister to each one, as we are needy, as we're thirsty. We should want our brother or sister to be totally satisfied by the Spirit.

Well, overall, what we're saying here is that there is one body and there's a remarkable diversity and each one of you has an indispensable function in the body of Christ. So do your gifts this week, be busy, be energetic, do the good works that God has in store for you and you'll build the body of Christ. Why don't we close with prayer and then we're going to have a closing hymn and a benediction.

I would like to ask, if you would, that you take your Bibles and open to Romans chapter 7. You've already heard it read earlier, but now we have a chance to look at it a little more carefully. As we turn to Romans 7, we're turning to a most remarkable chapter in the Book of Romans, a chapter that is, in some cases, greatly controverted. People have different opinions and views about what it's teaching. But the topic is clear, and the topic is the relationship of the law to the Christian. The limits and the purpose of the law in the Christian life, and that's what we're facing. But what is this law, the Law of Moses that we are facing? It was given on a dreadful day so long ago at Mount Sinai. The description's given in Exodus 19.

It says there, "On the morning of the third day, there was thunder and lightning with a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him. The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain, and so Moses went up."

That is the description of the day that the law was given, and what a dreadful scene it was. It says in Hebrews chapter 12 that Moses was so afraid that he shook with fear. He trembled with fear though he was a righteous man. And the thing that's so difficult perhaps for us to understand in redemptive history is we see God moving His people out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm out of Egypt, out of bondage, an act of grace and goodness, and brings them through the Red Sea and destroys all their enemies and then gently and carefully provides for them in the desert. God moving and saving His people… Why this? Why does He bring them to Sinai and give them this law? What is the purpose of the Law of Moses? We know that God doesn't speak lightly, He doesn't revoke His words.

And so, how does the law relate to us today as Christians? Jesus said, "Heaven and earth would pass away, but not the smallest letter or the least stroke of a pen would, by any means, pass away from the law until everything was fulfilled." That's how serious the law was to Jesus Christ. And so, it really is in the Cross of Jesus Christ, in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we as Christians come to understand the law. Because there was another dreadful day, not just that one at Sinai, but another one, the one at Mount Calvary, where Jesus gave His life for us. It was the law that killed Him. It was the Law of God that put Him to death. Jesus died under the penalty, under the curse of the law that we might have eternal life.

Now, as we come to Romans, we're trying to understand this teaching of justification by faith, apart from the law. We are made right with God. We stand before God holy and blameless in His sight, simply because of faith in Jesus Christ and the righteousness that has been given us through that faith. An accomplishment of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, completely apart from works of the law. It's a free gift of God's grace. It says at the end of Romans chapter 5 that the law came in alongside, or the law was added, "so that the trespass might increase, but where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." So we have the triumph, the ultimate triumph of grace in the life of a believer in Jesus Christ. But what is this law that was brought in alongside? What is the purpose of the law? What are the limits of the law for a Christian? How shall we understand this timeless law that was given to us?

Now, as we look at Romans 7 and look across it, we're going to come into some rough waters. It's going to be difficult to understand. The whole second half of Romans 7 is one of the most controversial texts in all the Bible. When Paul as the apostle speaking there and saying, "I don't understand what I do. I'm a slave to this law of sin inside me, and I wrestle, and I struggle, and I fight with sin." Every one of us as a true Christian, can resonate with that, can't we? We can say, "Yes, I feel that struggle within me. My reach exceeds my grasp. I see more clearly the holiness of God that He expects in my life, but I just can't live up to it, and so I wrestle with it. And in my mind, I delight in the law of God, but I can't seem to live up to it."

We can say that, but what did Paul mean by saying it? Was Paul speaking as an unbeliever before he was a Christian, or was he speaking as a believer? And we are not even going to settle that or even touch on it today; I'm just telling you what's coming. But it's the topic of how the law relates to the Christian. How shall we understand these things? And then even deeper, the question is, if the law produces death in us, is the law evil? Is it an enemy? Is it something vicious? Or is it good and holy and righteous? How shall we understand the law itself, and why did God give it, and how shall we live accordingly?

So Paul is dealing with this struggle. He's dealing with this issue, and he's dealing with it very personally from self, because everywhere he went, there were zealous Jews that pursued him and attacked him saying he was overthrowing the Law of Moses. That he was teaching false doctrines, because God had given us this law and as Jews, we had constantly gotten into trouble by disobeying the law. That's why we were exiled to Babylon in the first place, and now we've come back, and we're trying our best to follow this law. We're trying to walk in it and we're trying to live according to it. We know we don't do it the way we should, but we're supposed to try and walk, aren't we? And along comes this apostle, Paul, telling us of this whole new, it seems, faith that doesn't line up with our understanding of the law. Paul is uprooting and overturning the Law of Moses.

Now, this was a very big issue, wasn't it? If you look at the life of Jesus Christ, were there not many attacks made on Him in the line of what is lawful and what is not? They would come and they would ask Jesus, "Is it lawful for you to heal on the Sabbath?" And Jesus would have to answer this question. "Is it lawful for your disciples to not wash their hands before they eat?" And Jesus would have to answer that question. "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?" And Jesus would have to answer that question. Jesus was dealing with people, the Jews who were very concerned about the laws, specifically the Scribes and the Pharisees, very concerned about matters of the law to the point that they would give a tenth of their spices, counting out the mint and the dill and the cumin, the leaves, and count them out. That's how careful they were about the law. And along comes Jesus, and He's got to say in the Sermon on the Mount, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law. I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Until Heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter or least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the law until everything is accomplished." Jesus had to say that, because they were misunderstanding Him. And so they also misunderstood Paul.

Attacks on Paul and His Doctrine

In Acts 21:27-28, it says, "Some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, shouting, 'Men of Israel, help us. This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against our people and against our law and against this place,'" the temple. So that was the charge against Paul, that he was overthrowing the law, and it was on that charge that he was arrested and eventually brought to Rome. And so Paul has to deal with this. And as you look at his doctrine, it almost seems that he's open to that charge, isn't it? If you look through the first five chapters of Romans, you begin to see a certain pattern in the way that Paul deals with the law. I already mentioned Romans 5:20 in which he says that the law was laid on aside, it was added so that the trespass might increase.  So, it seems almost like he's saying it's some additional thing. Seems to be undermining the law there.

In Romans 3:28, he says very plainly, "We maintain that a man is justified by faith, apart from observing the law." So the law doesn't do anything to get you saved. When it comes to justification, it's not works of the law that justifies you. Earlier, he said, "By the law will no one be justified." Nobody is going to be justified by the law. And then in Romans 4, Paul proves that Abraham was justified while he was still uncircumcised. His circumcision, the symbol of law-keeping, represented in Abraham a submission to the law, but it came later. But Paul proves that Abraham was justified while he was still uncircumcised. The law literally had nothing to do with his justification.

And yet Paul says in Romans 3:31, "Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all, rather, we uphold the law." How can this be? How, Paul, can you say that you uphold the law when you're saying all of these other things about it? And that is the question that Paul is seeking to address in Romans 7. Now, we've already seen in Romans chapter 6 that he's dealing with the question about justification by faith, remember that. The idea is if we're saved by grace, if works of the law have nothing to do with our justification, then doesn't it logically follow that we can live any way we want?

This past week, I had the opportunity to speak with a church member and somebody that he knew who needed salvation. And as we had a discussion and we were talking about things and explaining the Gospel, and this is a person who is well familiar with Christianity, but as we had that opportunity, he came to understand justification by grace, through faith and Jesus Christ alone, apart from works of the law. And you know what said? He said to me, "Well, if what you're saying is true, doesn't that mean we can live any way we want?" I felt such happiness in my heart, I said, "I know we're on the right track! We're not teaching a morality here. We're not teaching a bunch of good works. We're teaching something we receive humbly by faith as a gift." So we're on the right track, but it needs to be answered, doesn't it? We've all seen people who claim things and they claim to be Christians and they live any way they please, and our nation is rife with it. We're struggling with it, aren't we? We're supposed to be a Christian nation and look. So we're wrestling with it, and so Paul has to be deal with it.

Not Under the Law, Not Lawless Lives Either

And the beauty of the Gospel is that, yes, the question is raised naturally from the doctrine, but the doctrine also answers the question, too. Because it's not simply forgiveness of sins that we receive from God, isn't it? Is it not eternal life we get from Him? And as we receive this full-blooded gift of eternal life, it really is a complete union with Jesus Christ by faith. We are united with Him in His death. We are also united with Him in his resurrection. And that answers everything, doesn't it? He says, "We can't go on sinning, we died to sin. How can we live in it any longer?" And he says also, most provocatively in 6:14, you can look at there. He says, "Sin shall not be your master, because you're not under law but under grace." Wow, what a statement. We're not under law? We're not under law anymore? Doesn't that lead to the same conclusion? We can run amok. There's no law over us anymore, we can live any way we choose.

Well, the answer is in the second half, say, "No, actually you're going to show who your master is by how you live," and he talks about this, "Wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life," but there's still the question about the law hanging out there, isn't it? How can it be that if we're not under law, we're not going to live lawless lives? It doesn't seem to make any sense.

And so he needs to explain that, and that's what he's doing here in Romans 7. And he does it initially here with this analogy of marriage. He brings up this analogy of marriage. In effect, he's saying, the principle is this, that you are under law only as long as you live. But the moment you die, you're free from the requirements or the jurisdiction of the law. And he uses the marriage analogy to teach that. In effect, he's saying, "'til death do you part," right? And so we're kind of united to the law until we die. And when we die, we're free from the jurisdiction of the law. Look at verse 1, Romans 7:1. He says, "Do you not know, brothers, from speaking to men who know the law, that the law has authority over men only as long as he lives?"

It's beautiful how he continues to teach sanctification the same way. Look at the first few words of this chapter, what does it say? "Do you not know?" How does Paul work on sanctification? Through the mind, through doctrine, applied by the power of the Holy Spirit. He's changing, he's working on your thinking. And he's drawing, in this case, something that we all know, that the law has jurisdiction over living people, not dead people. Makes sense, doesn't it? It has jurisdiction over the living, not over the dead. So he's speaking to an audience who knows the law, we don't know whether at this point, he's saying, "Now you as Romans, you're famous throughout the world for your knowledge of the law. You are law-keepers, you are law-abiders, and you know Roman law," or he could be speaking to Roman Jewish Christians at this point, and he's speaking of the Law of Moses, we don't really know. But he's speaking of a general principle about law that only has authority or jurisdiction over the living, not over the dead.

The Jurisdiction of the Law

Now the Greek here says... Or the original language says, "to lord it over," The law has jurisdiction over, or "lords it over, "only the living, not the dead." What is the nature of the laws lording it over? What is the nature of its jurisdiction? Well, there is maybe two senses of it. One is the authority to rule behavior, to guide you in your daily life, the way you live your life every day. And also the authority to condemn misbehavior. In other words, it enjoins that you should do these things and not do these things. And then there are penalties, there are covenant curses that come for disobedience. It has an authority to condemn misbehavior. James 2:10 says, "Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." So the law has the authority to stand over us and judge us. And ultimately, if you take that out to its extreme, the law has the authority to condemn you eternally and send you to Hell. It is the law that stands on Judgment Day against us. If its precepts and if our transgressions in reference to the law are not dealt with, we will be condemned by the law. And so the law stands opposed to us, it seems, and against us and threatens us with eternal harm.

Now, the principle that the law stands in jurisdiction over only living makes sense. You remember at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended for that and all the signs of law pointed toward him, that he's the one that did it, right? But you remember what happened in the intervening days, he was being held for trial and Jack Ruby came in and shot him dead. And that explains why there was never a trial in the case of the assassination of President Kennedy. Because the law stands over and judges only the living. Once the person's dead, there's nothing more a law can do. Case closed, he's dead. But why does Paul reach for marriage as an illustration of this point? Well, marriage is a legally binding covenant. Look what he says in verse 2 and 3, "For example," and that's what he's giving us, an example, the illustration of marriage, "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 of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man."

Now, Paul is not, here, giving us a treatise on marriage per se, but he does hold up marriage as a lasting, 'til-death-do-you-part, binding covenant. Other than death, the only way to get out of marriage is sin. You look in all the scriptures and you find that that's true, the only way to end a marriage is sin. A partner abandons one or commits adultery or something like... But that's the only way to end a marriage other than death. But death is a sinless way to end a marriage. And so, the two, the couple, are bound together as long as they're alive, but as soon as they die, that covenant is ended. And that's what he's getting at, death terminates the relationship to the law. Prior to death, there was a certain restriction by the law. After death, no restriction in this matter, and the woman is free to remarry.

So then he applies the principle spiritually in verse 4. Look at it, it says, "So also," or in the same way, "my brothers, you die to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another, to Him who is raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God." This is an amazing thing. And this is only the first week we're going to be looking at these verses. Beause in effect, he brings over the marriage analogy and applies it to us spiritually.

We were, in effect, married to the law. There was a convenantly binding relationship between us and the law. In reference to the Jews, certainly. The Jews were convenantly bound together to that law. They had promised that they would obey. They had covenant submission ceremonies in which they promised they would submit and they would obey. They're bound to the law. Okay. But one of those partners has died, and it isn't the law, is it? It's very interesting how he changes it. In the one sense, you've got the woman and the husband. If the husband dies, she's free to remarry. But we can't say that the law died, can we? The law is going to last to the end. To Judgment Day, the law will stand. So who is it that died? We did. We died. And we rose again. So we're able to remarry. It's the law, isn't it? There's nothing like it in all history. We can never say a woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if she dies, she's free to remarry if she's resurrected from the dead. But that's in effect what's going on here. We were bound to the law until we died. And when did we die? When we had faith in Jesus Christ. We trusted in Jesus Christ, and at that moment, we died to the law. Isn't that wonderful? Through the body of Jesus Christ.

You Died to the Law

Now what does this mean, that we died to the law? Well, you look at the historical doctrines. "We died to the law through the body of Christ in order that we might belong to another, to Him who is raised from the dead." Look at all the doctrine there. Where did Christ's body come from? From the incarnation. He took on a human body that He might walk under the law. We'll talk about that more in a minute. But then He died. The crucifixion is in view here, and also His resurrection in view. These historical doctrines are the foundation of the way we live our lives now, and they answer the question of how we will relate to the law. Our union with Christ means that we're dead to the law. Free forever from its condemnation.

Now, how does Christ's body produce our death to the law? Let's try to understand this. One of the things I fear, as we are explaining the Gospel, that we see in the cross of Jesus Christ the love of God, but not the justice of God. But both the love of God and the justice of God are equally displayed in the cross of Jesus Christ. We could say God loved us in such a way or to such an extent that He did not want us to go to Hell but sent His son to die in our place, and all of that would be true. God, therefore, was displaying His love and that He was saving us from going to Hell and bringing us into Heaven. And that is true. But we could also say God loved His law so much that He had His son die under His wrath rather than simply to allow sinners into Heaven with the laws just as undealt with. That's how much He loved his law. He would rather have His son die under His wrath than let us sin and the law's demands not being met.

Our God is a good judge, is He not? Think, if you will, of a judge in some district court somewhere, who is known far and wide as a good man. He's a very good man, very kindly, kind of like a kindly grandfather type. And every criminal brought to the bar of his justice, he sends them home free with a bag of cookies, because he's a loving man, and he does not want them to have to suffer in prison. They have families. They have, well, friends at least, who will love them. And so every criminal, every murderer, every rapist, every thief who's brought before him, he sends them home with a gift and with love. Now we might call him a good man, but would we call him a good judge? How long do you think he'd last as a judge? Longer now than 50 years ago, maybe.

I think he'd be pulled because he's not a good judge. Isn't it shocking how we think of God that way on Judgment Day? Isn't that scary? That God is that kind of a judge? All of the law's demands unmet and yet, "Come on in. Enjoy the feast, have a good time in Heaven." How can this be? No, He must uphold His law. And so He sends His son. And what does it say of Jesus? He was born under the law. Galatians 4:4 and 5, "When the time had fully come, God sent His son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons." Jesus, born under the law, and He perfectly obeyed the law. Every jot and tittle, every little command and every big one, He obeyed it all perfectly. Perfect righteousness rendered. Active righteousness rendered to God. And by the way, it's that active righteousness of Jesus Christ that saves you. Because all of that righteousness is put together in a beautiful robe of righteousness and laid on your shoulders the moment you trust in Christ. And on the basis of that, you're justified, declared not guilty. But that active righteousness is a submission to the law, wasn't it?

Did He not submit to the law every day of His life? He's a law-abiding Jew. But then finally, He received the guilt of the sins of all of His people, for everyone from all history who'd ever trust in Him in faith.  He became, it says, "a curse for us." It says in Galatians 3, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.'" This was the very stumbling block that Paul could not get past. He said, "How can somebody under a curse be God's anointed Messiah? It's impossible." But then he understood substitution, that Jesus was under a curse for us, because we're the ones that broke the law. And so the same curse, namely, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do every single little thing in the law. We're under a curse, too, aren't we? And Jesus came and took our curse away. You can't be saved by law-abiding. Your righteousness will not save you. You cannot perfectly obey the law of God. Have any of you ever coveted? Really wanted something that wasn't yours? Have any of you dishonored your parents? Maybe you're through with that phase and now you render perfect honor and obedience to your parents.

But we cannot stand up before the law of God, can we? And Jesus came and took our curse away from us. And all of this so that God could be just and also justify of those who have faith in Jesus. It says in Colossians 2, "When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code with its regulations that was against us and that stood opposed to us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross." Praise God for that. The law of God, with all of its regulations, stood opposed to us, and He dealt with the wrath of God, the penalty that we deserve for breaking that law, by dying on a cross. Oh, the goodness and the love and the mercy of Jesus Christ. And God did it, it says in Romans 3, "that He might be both at the same time just and also justifier of those who have faith in Jesus Christ." He is fair, He is just and you go to Heaven. Isn't that beautiful? Praise God for that. God is absolutely zealous that not one word of His law fall to the ground undealt with, but He dealt with it through His son. The value, the infinite value, of the blood of Jesus Christ, and that all of the regulations were met there.

So What Does “Dead to the Law” Mean?

So then, brothers and sisters, what then does dead to the law mean? What does it mean that we die to the law? Well, first, what it does not mean is that we don't care anymore about the law. Jesus said in Matthew 5:19, "Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of Heaven. But whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of Heaven." So we're not just dispensing with the law, we don't think about it anymore. Paul upholds the law. Romans 3:31, he says, "Do we nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law." And in Romans 13, he's going to say this, "Let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. For he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'Do not commit adultery,' 'Do not murder,' 'Do not steal,' 'Do not covet,' and whatever other commandment there may be are summed up in this one rule: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law." And he's writing that to Christians. He expects that you will walk in that way.

And so what happens is legality is removed, and what gets put in its place? Love. Love for God, and love for neighbor, and love perfectly fulfills the law. So, dead to the law doesn't mean we have no concern whatsoever about the law. Think about the 10 Commandments, can we have as many gods as we like now? Are we free to make idols now? Can we dishonor our parents now? Can we murder and steal now? Can we lie under oath now? Can we covet as much as we like? That's negative. How about positively? We don't have to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, do we? We don't have to love our neighbor as ourself, do we? Obviously, dead to the law doesn't mean that the law has evaporated. Well, what does it mean, then? Well, what it means is that what was once external, a demand, is now a desire. What was an external demand is now the desire of our heart. We want to do these things. God has written His laws on our heart.

Hebrews 8:10, "'This is the covenant I'll make with the house of Israel after that time,' declares the Lord. 'I'll put My laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people.'" God has written His law on your heart if you're a Christian. That's what it means to be united with Christ, dead to sin and alive to God. He's written His law in your heart, He's given you a new heart. We're going to talk more about that in future weeks. But what does it mean to be dead to the law? Well, it means that we're dead to the law as condemner. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The law will not condemn you and send you to Hell, because all of its righteous requirements have been fully met through Jesus Christ.

It also means that we're dead to the law as a manner and way of life and a way of serving God. Look at chapter 7 verse 6, the same section we're in right now. It says in 7:6, "We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code."

We're in a whole new way of relating to God now. It's the life of the Spirit, and the best analogy that Paul can think of right here at this moment is the same one he was using a minute ago, the analogy of marriage. Marriage. Look again at verse 4, he says, "So my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another, to Him who is raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God." What does that say? That you might belong to Jesus. That He is the lover of your soul. He's your heavenly spouse. We're part of the bride of Christ. We're going to talk about this fully next time, it's such a huge theme that we can't just deal with it quickly. But we have a whole new way of relating to God. We're alive to God now. And marriage is a great analogy but a love relationship, a binding covenant to a living Savior, Jesus Christ. And the fruit of that union is good works for God, a whole new way of serving God by the power of the Spirit. It's a whole new life, a whole new way of obeying the law. Verse 6, "We serve, [that is, we bring forth good fruit], in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code."

What kind of application can we take out of this? I just want to ask you a simple question. Has this happened to you? This is Christianity, this is what it means to be a Christian. Has this happened to you? Do you know yourself to be dead to the law, dead to sin, but alive to God in a whole new way in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit? Not merely brushing up on some rough spots in your character, improving some morality in your life, or adding some good habits like church attendance or committee service? And those are good habits, by the way. But not merely removing some bad habits and adding some good things? Not at all, but a death and a resurrection. A radical transformation so stunning could only be likened to dying and being raised to new life. Have you died and then resurrected through faith in Jesus Christ? And do you have a new relationship to God and to the law?

Perhaps you previously saw God as a stern taskmaster who could never forgive you of all your sins. You've done too much to be forgiven. But now you understand that all of the law's requirements have been met through the blood of Christ. Or perhaps, you underestimated the law and never really thought about it that much, didn't matter to you, now you see that God upholds His law perfectly and fulfills it in Jesus Christ. A whole new relationship to the law. Now you feel like it's written on your heart, and you yearn to do God's will, you want to love Him every moment of your life. And you yearn to love your neighbor as yourself. It's a whole new relationship to the law. Has this happened to you?

And do you also see in yourself a whole new purpose in life, bearing fruit for God? Previously, you lived perhaps for yourself, for your lust and your own evil pleasures, your own desire. You orchestrated your life around your own things and your own desires and drives. And now you realize that God has a purpose for your life, and that is that you bear fruit for God, every day. And do you see also a new power in your life? Previously, you were powerless before the sins of your life, but now you realize you're dead to sin, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, you can say no to ungodliness. Do you see a new power in your life? Has this happened to you?

And if so, rejoice and be glad. And yes, we're going to struggle with sin. We'll get to that second half of Roman 7, it's coming. Yes, we struggle with sin, but rejoice that you're dead to the law. You're not under the law anymore; you're serving in a whole new way. But if this has not happened to you, don't let today pass. Don't let the sun go down today. Don't harden your heart if today you hear His voice. Come to faith in Jesus Christ. Let Him be the husband of your soul, let Him be the lover of your soul. Let His blood stand in the place at judgment and take away all of the wrath that you deserve for your sin, and let Him give you His righteousness, sufficient for all the law's demands. Won't you close with me in prayer? I'd like to ask that you just take a moment and reflect on the things we've talked about, and then we'll pray.

Oh, heavenly Father, if we had been at the foot of Mount Sinai and saw all that You did there that day, we would certainly have trembled with fear. God, You gave us the law that day, and because of who we naturally are, we die under that law. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. And so what was good and holy and righteous became death for us. And there's nothing wrong with Your law, it couldn't have been written better; it's just that we needed a savior, and you gave Him to us in Jesus Christ. Oh, what a perfect man He was. How He lived in beautiful righteousness every day, loving You, heavenly Father, with every fiber of His being. He would rather die than disobey You. He loved You so much and loved You every moment. All of His thoughts and passions only directed at every moment toward Your pleasure and toward Your will.

And He loved His neighbors as Himself. Every moment, other sinners... Someone would come and say, "My servant is sick," and He would stand up and say, "I will go and heal him." He loved His neighbor fully as Himself, ultimately, to the point of dying and laying down His life that His neighbors, His brothers and sisters, those who were one flesh with Him through faith, Lord, that they would have eternal life. Perfect obedience. In the name of that obedience, I can even address You now as a "Father." Father, I pray for any in this room here today who have not trusted in You, who have no living principle of the Holy Spirit within them, are not bearing fruit for life but rather only for death, that they would repent today and trust in You, Lord Jesus. And for those of us who know that we are saved, that we have eternal life but still grieve over the sin in our lives, that we might understand how full and complete and free we are in reference to the law, and that we might "serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code." We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on 1 Corinthians 12. This sermon is part four of a sermon series on spiritual gifts.

We're going to continue our look at spiritual gifts tonight. And we're going to go over to 1 Corinthians 12. So turn there if you would. And there's always more we can do in Ephesians, but I want to branch out a little bit and try to understand spiritual gifts from this most extended treatment. 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14, we're not doing it all tonight, that's for sure. But we're going to get started on it anyway. Now from Ephesians 4, we've learned some things about spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts or special abilities given by the Spirit of God, by Jesus Christ. We're going to find out in this passage really given by the Triune God, to each individual Christian, for the purpose of building up the body of Christ. So everybody who's a Christian has a spiritual gift arrangement from God. And all of us have received this and all of us are called to use those gifts for the building of the body.

And so we learned in Ephesians four that spiritual gifts are universally given, but they're not uniform. We don't all get the same gifts, we don't all get the same. We're going to see the same things here in 1 Corinthians 12. They're also called grace from God. We saw that in Ephesians 4 where it says, "But each one of us, grace has been given as Christ measured it out." So spiritual gifts are grace from God. We get more grace than just the forgiveness of sin. We get more things than that. Actually, Ephesians 1:3 says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." So we have them all. Isn't that incredible?

Think about this, where Paul says in one place, "All things are yours." Isn't that amazing? It's all yours, all of it. "The meek will inherit the earth," why squabble over it now? You're going to get the new heavens and the new earth. We don't need it now. We just need to serve now, right? So all things are yours, and that includes this grace called spiritual gifts, those are ours as well. And why is it grace? Because it saves us from a meaningless life here on earth. It saves us from just being time wasters until the Lord comes or until we die. What a waste is that, God wastes nothing. You realize that? Every moment has purpose, every day has purpose. It all means something. And so it's grace from God. Spiritual gifts are grace from God.

Thirdly, they're given us Christ apportioned. Christ measured them out, according to the metron, it says, according to the measurement of Christ, he's measured them out to you. We get the Spirit not by measure, it says in John 3, but we get these gifts measured out to us. And so we are not omnicompetent, you realize that? I know some of you may be tempted to think that you're omnicompetent, but we are not omnicompetent. All of us need each other. I need you, you need each other. We all need each other. And God's done that on purpose, because we're so arrogant, we're so boastful. And we could tend in that direction, but we really do need each other. And so they're given out by measure. We get a certain amount. And they're given out as Christ apportioned it.

Fourthly, we talked about last time that these gifts are given to build the body. And that's so important, isn't it? Are we presently united in Christ? Does the doctrine teach that? Are we one in Christ? Well, yes we are. I know that seems tricky, but it's true. We are to maintain the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Maintain is something you already have. We are one in the Holy Spirit. We already are. But are we perfectly one as the Father and the Son or one? No, we are not. In two levels, two senses. Number one is that not everybody's been saved yet. So they're just totally off from us. They're not in the body at all. They don't believe in Christ yet. So we have to go out evangelistically and bring them in, right? And number two: we're not brought up to full maturity in Christ yet, are we? So we're not done being one. We're not done being united. And what is it that God has given to finish that unity work? It's the spiritual gifts, isn't it? It's the evangelism. It's the teaching. It's the exegesis. It's the administration. It's the encouragement. It's all the gifts that are given to build this up until final unity. Says in Ephesians 4:16, "That the body builds itself up in love as each part does its work." That's so beautiful, isn't it? So those are the four things we learned from Ephesians 4 about spiritual gifts.

Let's go over now to 1 Corinthians 12. And as we look at 1 Corinthians 12:1 it says, "Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant." So we're in the right place, aren't we? If we want to learn about spiritual gifts, we want to go to a place that starts out that way. 1 Corinthians 12:1 says you're in the right place if you want to learn about spiritual gifts. Now the word here in the Greek is a little different than the charismata. It's a different word related to Pneumos, related to the Spirit, but it's the same thing. I think it's the workings, the movements, the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, the spiritual gifts. Now, let's get our sense of context here. Who were the Corinthians? What kind of church was it? What do you know about the Corinthian church? Somebody speak up. What do you know about these folks?           

[Audience speaks]

Factions and divisions, you know what's amazing how often that comes up in Scripture. Do you know that one of the churches that Paul seemed to love the most was the Philippian church and they had the same problem? "I plead with Yodi, and I plead with Cyntiki to a get along in the Lord." Have trouble with that. We're so given to that. But the Corinthians church did. Turn back with me, if you would, to 1 Corinthians 1, and we'll get a sense of the context before we get back to chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 1 teaches us that the Corinthians were a gifted church and yet they were a divided church. Gifted and yet divided. How can that be? But that's the way it was. Look at chapter 1:4-7 Paul says, "I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him, you have been enriched in every way, in all your speaking and in all your knowledge, because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly await for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed." So there it says very plainly, they don't lack any spiritual gift. They're fully endowed, fully equipped. They've got everything they need. And interesting, he says in verse 4, he mentions that it's grace. "I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus." So it's not long before we go to this idea of grace, right on into spiritual gifts. So the idea is that God has given us grace to forgive our sins, the grace of justification. But he's given us more than that by grace. And that includes these spiritual gifts. And he says, “You're fully equipped, you have everything you need.” And he also mentioned something as a strength, which also was for them a weakness. This idea of that they are enriched in every way in all your speaking and in all your knowledge. Now, that was a strength for the Corinthian church. They were great spiritual speakers. And they were filled with this spiritual knowledge. But they had a problem, didn't they? As a result of that, they were very boastful, they were very prideful, very arrogant. And thus ran into problems. And that pride of position, I think, affected their relationships with each other, didn't it? And as a result, you start having these factions in these divisions in the church.

And so they were divided. Look at verse 10, "I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you, and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought." You've heard me mention that before. I believe 1 Corinthians 1:10 is the definition of unity in the church, “perfectly united in mind and thought,” “that you agree with one another.” That does not mean that you sweep differences under the rug. It means you work on things through the Spirit until you do agree, until you come to the kind of unity on earth that there is in heaven on all these things. So you keep working on it. But they were a divided church. Look at verse 11, he says, "My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you." So there are these divisions, there are these quarrels; there are problems in the Corinthian church. So here we have them richly gifted. They've got every spiritual gift, they're fully equipped. But they're also divided and they're quarrelsome. Well, as Brevard mentioned, they're displaying some carnality. Look over in chapter 3:1-4, and he gets to the root of the quarreling that they have. "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you're not yet ready indeed, you are still not ready, you are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, 'I follow Paul,' and another, 'I follow a Apollos,' are you not mere men?" Now, what is the implication of that? That question? "Are you not mere men?" What is he implying by asking that question? You're acting just like everybody else. And behind that, even one more step is, you're not supposed to be like everybody else. You're not supposed to act like mere men. You're supposed to be at a higher level. You're supposed to be spiritual, and that as Christians, you're supposed to attain to a higher level. The bar is not to be low, it's not to be just like the world, we're supposed to be at a different level. And so he says, you're acting like regular people. And you're not regular people, you're spiritually endowed. You have the mind of Christ. You have the indwelling Holy Spirit. We're learning in Romans 6. You're not a slave descent anymore, you're entirely new creation. You should not be behaving this way. And Paul says, “I have to talk to you as though you're not even Christian, sometimes. I have to just ladle out the milk to you,” he's saying.

So there were problems in the Corinthian church, fully equipped with all the spiritual gifts, but yet they're dividing, not getting along. Now let me ask you a question. Do you think that that full equipment of spiritual gifts was being used fully in that divided church? Do you think it was being used efficiently with maximum fruitfulness? What do you think? Absolutely not. And so the gifting does not guarantee fruitfulness. There has to be sanctification issues. There has to be church unity issues in order for those things to be used fully. And so there were problems. They were displaying this carnality and they were following human leaders, there were factions. And Paul must correct them. And the way he corrects them is by bringing their minds up to the spiritual level of God. So that they begin to think the way God does about these things. The first thing he's got to attack is this faction kind of thing, where they're following one man, somebody following Paul, somebody following Apollos, or Cephas. He's got to get at that and say, "You should stop thinking about things like mere men. You should stop thinking about human leaders that way." And he says, "Look at yourselves." This is back in chapter 1:26. He says, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential, not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of the world, and the despised things, and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus." Think about that. It is because of who that you're in Christ Jesus? Because of Christ Jesus, that you're in Christ Jesus. Because of God himself, that you are Christian. So why do you boast? "Why are you boasting?" He’s saying, "So that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus who has become for us wisdom from God." That's going to be a big word in the area of spiritual gifts. They talked a lot about wisdom, that was important to them. And it is an important thing, but not the wisdom of this world. Christ is our wisdom. Christ Jesus, “He has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” So he's correcting them by getting them to think the way that God thinks.

And then he says in 1 Corinthians 2:12, he says, "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us." We are one. And what is it that makes us one? The indwelling Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1 says that, "We have been marked with a seal, the Holy Spirit of promise, the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our full inheritance until the redemption of God's possession." So all of us are one because of that invisible marking, the Holy Spirit that makes us one. And so he says that Spirit has been given that we may understand what God has freely given us. Another word for what God has freely given us is grace, right? So the Holy Spirit comes and instructs you about what he gave you. And it takes our whole lifetime. He's going to tell you what it means to be justified by faith alone. And he's going to tell you what it means that you're no longer a slave to sin. And he's going to tell you about spiritual gifts. And that's exactly what he does in 1 Corinthians 12. So turn over there. That was just by way of context. But here they were, this church, they were divided. And I think what was going on is, that you had some people in the church that were boasting about their spiritual gifts. He says in 1 Corinthians 4:7, he says, "What do you have that you didn't receive?" By the way that means receive from God, right? "What do you have that you didn't receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?" So they're very boastful. He says in chapter 5 in the church discipline chapter about that one that was committing adultery and all that, and that they should have disciplined him. Right in the middle he says, "And you are proud. You're proud. What are you proud of?" And so this is a deep problem with this church that the pride, the arrogance, the boasting. And so I think they were including their spiritual gifts and the boasting. They were boasting about their gifts. And I think especially about the showy gifts, like speaking in tongues and prophecy, those kind of things. And so that's going to receive big play in chapter 12, 13, and 14. Now you wonder, what are we going to say about all those showy gifts? We'll get to that in due time. We're not doing it tonight. If you're all excited about that, we're not getting into tongues and what does that all mean? We're not doing that tonight. We're just talking about gifts in their proper place. But they were boasting about the showy kind of gifts. And I think they felt that one was more spiritual than another. The flip side of that was the people who weren't so endowed with those kind of gifts felt that they didn't belong to the body of Christ at all. They had no place. And so that's what boasting does. Boasting creates, among those that are at least in the running, a kind of pecking order and an ever faster race to boasting. But then it leaves others feeling like they're not even included at all. They're not in the body. And so the whole thing's kind of flying apart. And he said this is not the way it needs to be. And so he is bringing them together. He is saying we need to have that indwelling Holy Spirit teach us about spiritual gifts. And so he brings them back to the teaching.

 So look at verse 1 in chapter 12. He says, "Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant." Now this is so important, isn't it? You just stop right there and say, "How do we begin acting and living properly concerning our spiritual gifts? Where does it all start?" It all starts, apparently, with teaching. “I don't want you to be ignorant about what God has given you.” So you've got this indwelling Holy Spirit, and then the apostle is going to come and tell you about the thing that God put in you, namely the spiritual gift. So he said, "I don't want you to be ignorant about it. I want you to understand. And I want you to understand not just what your gifts are, but how they're to be used in the body." And so he's laying it out, chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 14. Chapter 12, we've got this beautiful body image. And the main message of chapter 12 is unity in diversity. Diversity in unity. It's the same message we saw in Ephesians. We've got this one body with many members and many parts. And though there is one body, each of the members plays a role. And just because you are not an eye, or a hand does not mean you're not part of the body. And in effect, he actually turns it around and says, "If it weren't for the diversity, we would not be a body." We would actually be a monstrosity. Something bizarre like a huge eyeball rolling down the street. What a strange looking thing is that. If the whole body were an eye, what would we be? That's so odd looking, isn't it? We're not meant to be some grotesque monstrosity. God has given us a picture in the physical realm of something in the spiritual realm. And that is our own bodies, which are so beautifully apportioned and put together. And so just as he did with the question of slavery in Romans 6, he's using an analogy to teach us spiritual things. And that analogy is our physical body. What would you be like if you were just an eyeball? Ladies, how would you dress yourself? I mean, how would you drape? I don't know. Maybe there would be styles for you if you were just an eyeball. But I mean it's just a strange thing. And Paul does that and he's not necessarily reaching for humor, but he's trying to get you to see that the body would be a monstrosity if it weren't for these various functions. And if it's not for these functions, we can't be a body. And if we're not a body, we're not going to grow to the final maturity and unity that God intends. We've got to be, each of us, in our proper place, doing our proper thing. But we're not going to be if we're not thinking rightly about it. So I don't want you to be ignorant. I want you to understand that you have received this thing from God and you already use it in the way that God is given. It's just temporary, isn't it? Isn't it to last until you die or until the Lord returns? These are temporary things that God has given for the building up of the body. So just take your place, use it, realize there's not one more higher than another, or more important, they're all needful to accomplish the end that God has intended. And so that's what he's saying.

So in chapter 12, he's giving you this idea of unity and diversity, but specifically, diversity is necessary for the body not to be a monstrosity. We've got to have this diversity. But then in the middle of it all, we get chapter 13. And he's given that just so that at weddings we can have beautiful poetry and read it, and just we can enjoy that treatise on love. Is that why he is given it? No. It's right in the middle of a discussion on spiritual gifts. Context. And yes, we can take the statements by themselves and learn about love. Love is patient. Love is kind. It doesn't envy, it doesn't boast, it's not easily angered. But it's right in the center of a section on spiritual gifts. And the chapter begins with a discussion of spiritual gifts. "If I speak with the tongues of men of angels but have not love, I'm a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal," he's talking about gifts. I will show you a more excellent way. A more excellent way to what? A more excellent way to use your gifts, use them in love. It's what I've been saying just in terms of controversy and doctrinal difficulty in the church, speaking the truth in love. Well, the speaking the truth is the part of the teachers in the church. They're to do it in love. 1 Corinthians 13, that's the way that you use your gift, is in love. Chapter 13.

What is chapter 14? Well, chapter 14 has long discussions about prophecy and tongues, and specifically, how they are to function in the body. Now we're going to get into that to some degree. I'm not going in deep at that point because that's not my purpose. But the one lesson I get out of chapter 14 is that spiritual gifts are to be used according to the rules and directions that God has given. They're not to run rough shod over the church. For example, the spirits of the prophets are subject to the control of the prophets. And tongues are to be used in a certain way. So just because you have a gift doesn't mean that you can run through every red light, so to speak, relationally. That there is an order. God is not a God of disorder, but of structure of beauty, and there's a way that it's all to be done, and that we already use our gifts according to those rules.

So that's what I get out of that big picture. We've got unity and diversity in chapter 12. We've got the using of the gifts in love in chapter 13. And then we've got, there are certain rules and regulations, and order, and structure about the way the gifts are to be used in chapter 14. Does that make sense? So let's dig in and see how far we can get in this particular chapter. "Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant.” You would be ignorant if he didn't teach this." Isn't that true? If God didn't come and tell us about the gifts, we wouldn't know. Just like we would know about the Trinity. You can't discern these things by looking at nature. We must be taught. And so the apostles come to teach us. And then he says in verse 2, "You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other, you are influenced and led astray to mute idols. Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus be cursed.' And no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit.” Now what is that about? It seems a little bit odd to begin this way, but I think if you understand the context and what was going on there, he had just gotten done in chapter 10 telling them that they were not to be involved in pagan, idolatrous worship feasts. Just go back one page perhaps in your Bible or two back to chapter 10:14 and following, he's talking about idol feasts and the Lord’s Supper. We celebrated the Lord’s Supper this morning. And he's saying that when you take part in the Lord’s Supper, you are actually participating in the body and blood of Christ. There's a participation in it spiritually. I do not believe what the Catholics believe, that the body and blood are literally physically there through transubstantiation. I don't believe that. But there is a spiritual participation by the power of the Spirit. I really believe that the Spirit moves during the time of the Lord's Supper. And we in a very spiritual way are participating in the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. But he's saying in the same way, when you go to an idol worship, you are participating in something spiritual too, aren't you? And what is it? It's a demonic presence. Look what he says here. In verse 20, he says... 19, he says, "Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything?” No, they are not. The sacrifice is just meat. The idol is just stone, or wood, or gold. There's nothing to it, but there is a spiritual reality behind it. That's what he's getting at in verse 20. He says, "No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons." Now stop right there. What he's saying is when you're involved in these idolatrous worship feasts you are participating with a demonic presence, a demonic force.

Now, these were pagan people before they came to Christ, they knew about these things. And so in chapter 12, going back there, he says, "You know that when you were pagan, somehow or other, you were influenced in led astray to mute idols." There was an influence, wasn't there? A spiritual influence and it was demonic. It was demonic. And so what is it that's broken the demonic power? Is it not Jesus Christ? Did he not bind the strong man in Corinth? Did he not come and plunder the strong man's house and rob these people from Satan? Yes, he did. And so yes, they were under the sway in the influence of the devil in the demonic forces, but Jesus was more powerful. “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Satan couldn't stop it. And so these folks were rescued from this demonic force. But they understood that there was a sense of spiritual influence at these pagan idolatrous feasts. He's saying that's what there was. There was an influence here. A demonic influence. "Therefore, I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, 'Jesus is cursed.'" Now what is that? I don't imagine that anyone had said those words in the Corinthian church. I don't think that was a problem they were struggling with. It could have been a problem among the pagans though. Perhaps a pagan priest or priestess. Perhaps some of their pagan neighbors would say these kind of things into their ears. And they're saying if you're saying that, and if you believe it, then you're under a demonic influence. You're really under the sway of the evil one. You're still in his kingdom. And so there is a spiritual force there that is causing you to speak. And then it says, "No one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the Holy Spirit." Now you can say, how can that be? Suppose we get a non-Christian to read this chapter. Would they not say the words, Jesus is Lord, while reading? What does Paul then mean when he says, "No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit?" Well, I think it goes to this. Remember how Jesus said when he was healing the paralyzed man? He said, "Which of these is easier to say, ‘your sins are forgiven’ or to say, ‘rise and walk?’" The answer is they're equally easy to say. But to say them with meaning and power, now that's something different. Can we say, “your sins are forgiven?” Yes. Is there any power behind it? No. Can we say “rise and walk?” Yes. Is there anything behind it, any spiritual reality? No. Can Jesus say “rise and walk?” Is there any spiritual reality behind it? Absolutely has power. Can he say to you, “your sins are forgiven?” Yes, there's reality and there's power behind it. Is there power behind a Christian saying “Jesus is Lord?” Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, in Romans 10, that's part of what it means to make a confession that Jesus is your savior. And when you say it, you're saying it by the Holy Spirit. Isn't that what he just said earlier? It's because of him that you're in Christ Jesus. You can't say, “Jesus is Lord” and really mean it unless the Holy Spirit saved you. Unless you're regenerated, born again by the Holy Spirit. You can't just up and say, “Jesus is Lord,” someday. The Holy Spirit moved in you. And therefore the Holy Spirit indwells you. And so you are speaking by the Spirit when you say, “Jesus is Lord.”

Now let's put the whole thing together. What he's saying is the speaking by an influence, the supernatural influence is nothing. What matters is the content of the message, right? So the spiritual gifts don't mean anything except that the center of the content is the exaltation of Jesus Christ as Lord. That's how all these gifts have to function. And so I'm going to take out of these first three verses and elevate a principle in spiritual gifts. And that is that all gifts are given to exalt Jesus Christ as Lord. That's what they're given to do. We are moved by the Spirit. And what does the Spirit do? But to exalt Jesus. And in exalting Jesus, the body of Christ gets built up, through evangelism and through discipleship.

So we don't just speak “Jesus is Lord,” we live it. He is our commanding officer. We cling to him as our Lord and Savior. And we don't just say words as though they meant nothing, but we speak “Jesus is Lord” from the heart because the Spirit's moved it in us. So what is he getting at? Okay, there's going to be some spiritual speaking. Speaking in tongues, prophecy, all those things. We'll get to that in two time. But he said, what does none of that matters except the content of the message, Jesus is Lord. And you can't say it unless the Spirit moves in you. That's what he's getting at. So we're drawing out of this a principle to add to what we learned in Ephesians. The spiritual gifts are given to build up the body, but even more, I believe they're given to exalt Jesus as Lord, to exalt him to the highest place in the body of Christ.

Going on from there in verse 4, he says, "There are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all them and all men." What is going on there? Well pull it apart, those verses. It's beautiful to see. We've got different, different, different. Same, same, same. You see what he's saying? We've got diversity and we've got unity. But we've got the ultimate unity in these verses, don't we? Look at it. In verse four, who is mentioned? The Spirit. Who is mentioned in verse 5? The Lord, for that you read Jesus. And who do you have in verse 6? We've got God, for that you read the Father. So we've got Spirit, Jesus, the Father. They each have different function in the Trinity, but they are as one as you can imagine. Absolute perfect unity. So we've got diversity among the trinity, but yet we've got perfect unity, don't we? We Father has his role, the Son has his role, the Spirit has his. And the interesting thing is this adds to our understanding in Ephesians 4, who was it that gave the spiritual gifts? It was Jesus. But here we understand He didn't do anything on his own. That shouldn't surprise you. He didn't go off by himself and gift the church. But rather, he does all things at the command of his Father. So all things come from the Father, through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. So the Trinity is the ultimate picture of unity and diversity, diversity and unity. And so, should it surprise us that the body of Christ would be a perfect image and reflection of that same thing, different workings, different servings, different motions, different functions, but one body, just like there is one God. Well, we're out of time. Let's continue looking, God willing, next time at 1 Corinthians. And why don't we close in prayer.

Our refuge from fear is in Christ alone. God’s kingdom is eternal, and He alone will be exalted above all the nations.

Perhaps the greatest of all the puritan pastors was Richard Baxter. When someone asked him the secret behind the power of his preaching, and he said, "I preached as a dying man to dying men." So, I stand before you today as a dying man preaching to dying people. Now, I don't have any threat on my life that I know of. I don't have any terminal illness that I know of. There's no news that's come to me specifically of my immediate death, but I am dying, and so are you. The Scripture says, "It is appointed unto men to die once and after that to face the judgement." I think all of us were stunned on Tuesday by the events, September 11, 2001, perhaps a new date, which will live in infamy, and those images are burning in our minds, even now, I don't know how we'll ever get them out. Symbols of America's financial and military power attacked, destroyed in an instant. Lasting images of terrorists, some things that you know what I'm talking about, I'm not going to recount them here, but they caused people to writhe on the ground and turn away in horror, and they're in our minds.

What are the lessons that we are to draw out of this tragedy? What are we to think about the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon? What are we to think of the fact that it wasn't an accident, it wasn't an earthquake, it wasn't something random, but it was the deliberate attack of human beings who sought the lies for a political purpose? What are we to think about this? What lessons do we take out of the fact that these buildings, which filled the skyline, at one point, the tallest buildings in the world were just erased in a matter of seconds, just gone? For me, I think it's that everything physical is temporary, the only things that last are spiritual, the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the word of God. Jesus said "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." So, also the souls of any who trust in Jesus Christ, they are eternal, and they live with Him forever, and nothing else matters. That's what I take out of this.

So, as we're looking at this and asking ultimate questions, where is God in all of this? Are we going to be from this time forward, forever vulnerable, we can't go to a ball game, we can't step on an airplane, we can't walk in any crowded urban area without wondering if there's somebody secretly next to us with a bomb strapped on their body, willing to lay down their life? Are we going to live in that kind of terror? How can we as Christians advance the kingdom of Jesus Christ even in times like this? What should we think of the people who did these terrible things? How should we as Christians think of them? How should we as Christians think of Islam, the religion? And what about our feelings? We have feelings about this. There's passions involved here, aren't there? You feel them inside, don't you? As you were watching the television all week long, you felt the passions well up inside you, grief, horror, fear, terror, perhaps as the week wore on, may be national pride, other feelings would come upon us.

My questions are this, can fear give way to courage? Can apathy, the way we usually live our lives, give way to concerted action? Can pride of any sort be forever replaced by repentance and humility before an Almighty God? Can human anger be replaced by a yearning for God's glory in human salvation? Can that thirst for revenge be replaced by a desire for the glory of God and the salvation of human beings? Can despair yield to unshakable hope? If the Lord gives us time and gives us opportunity, the rubble will be removed from the streets of New York, and my guess is that new towers, perhaps even taller than before will replace them.  I think there are different ways to look at that, life must go on, and that's a good thing. We sit in a comfortable building today, and that's a good thing. These are gifts from God. But if it's motivated by a national pride and an arrogance separated from God, maybe we missed the point. Could it be instead that we're being called to repent and to come to Christ and no longer ignore the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? 

 I think all of these questions, all of these issues are addressed in a remarkable way in Psalm 46. We had a prayer meeting on Tuesday, and the Lord led me to this passage just to read it, but the more I read it and meditated on it, the more perfect it seemed for the thing that we're facing today. It was written by the Sons of Korah. The sons of Korah were the descendants of a man who led a rebellion against Moses. Korah and Dathan, Abiram led a rebellion against the man of God, and God told Moses to get away from them and said basically... “Moses said, ‘If these men die in a normal way, then God has not spoken, but if something unusual happens to them, then you will know that God has spoken.’” And what happened? The ground gave way beneath their feet and they sank down into the ground. It says in Verse 2, "We will not fear though the earth give way," that means something more to the survivors of Korah. They remember their ancestor, they remember his rebellion, they remember that the Earth did in fact give way and he was swallowed alive.

The Sons of Korah, therefore always realized that their salvation came from God, and this wasn't just theoretical, the Earth did in fact give way that day. So, we have in the words of Psalm 46, I think, the thoughts of truly grateful people who are looking to God to be their eternal fortress, their eternal sanctuary. I think it also speaks a word of warning to warring nations, to empire builders, “Come and see the desolations of God. He makes the earth melt with just a word.” It's a warning, isn't it? In effect, he says the same thing in Verse 10, "Cease striving, cease all your empire building, cease your fighting against me and against one another. Be still, cease striving and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations, I'll be exalted among the peoples." That is in effect a word of invitation to the Gospel, that we might know him, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.

I have three points this morning. The first is this, that God's might is our refuge, therefore, we will be courageous. Secondly, God's City is eternal, therefore, we will be gladly humble. Thirdly, God's name will be exalted, therefore, we will be still. First, God's might is our refuge, therefore, we will be courageous. Look at verse 1, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” He repeats the theme in verse 7, "The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress." He says the same thing in verse 11, "The Lord Almighty is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress." It was from this Psalm that Martin Luther took the ideas that he turned into the hymn we sang earlier, “A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. Our helper He, amid the flood of mortal ills, prevailing.” We have a foe, don't we? Who restlessly stalks us, and it's not flesh and blood, it's the devil and all of his minions. And Martin Luther, as he was on his way to the Diet of Worms, literally on trial for his life, recited the words of Psalm 46, and it was a number of years later that he wrote the hymn. 

But many times when he and Philip Melanchthon were dealing with the issue of reformation, and it seemed like things were hanging in the balance, he'd say, "Come Philip, let's sing Psalm 46," and they sang “A mighty fortress is our God.” They'd remind themselves of who God is. What is a refuge? God is our refuge. I think of a bird, a small bird fluttering in a storm looking for a place of refuge and finds it in a crack and is able to pull in and be safe and ride out that hurricane. It's a place of safety, a place of sanctuary, a place of deliverance from a trial and from a storm.  God is our refuge, He's our place of deliverance, our place of safety. He is also our fortress. When I think of a fortress, I think of it a little bit differently than a refuge. A fortress is a place of military deliverance. You've got an army ready to sweep you away, and so you go to a safe place, a fortress, a castle, a bulwark.

I think the events of this past week, if not warfare in the 20th century, has shown us that fortresses are a thing of the past, are they not? There is nothing that human beings can build, that human beings cannot destroy. How much more so than the eternal God? Is there a safe place where you can go where no one can destroy you? The answer is no. Those towers melted in the heat, they disappeared in an instant. But back in Martin Luther's day, as through most of history, there were these safe places, until explosives and airplanes and all that got just too strong and mighty, that you could be safe in, such as a castle, as long as there were enough men to walk the walls and the walls were strong enough, you were safe there. Ancient Israel had no safety from marauding tribes like the Midianites would come sweeping through, killing  man, woman and child, burning farm houses  and crops,  and looting possessions, until David conquered the City of David, Jerusalem, and made it a fortress, and said, "The city of Zion is safe as long as God is in her." That's what the Sons of Korah are talking about here, as long as God is within the walls of this earthly city they were safe, and so, they were. At one point, the Assyrian army surrounded Jerusalem, and God sent out one angel, and in one night, 185,000 Assyrian troops died. If God is within her, she's safe, but if He's not, she's not. When they abandoned God, when they turned their back on Him, when they turned their back on God's power, He turned his back on Zion and gave her over to her enemies. So, Jerusalem was destroyed, many times has Jerusalem been destroyed. But still God is our fortress, and God also is our strength. God's invincible power gives us a renewing strength, a renewing sense of energy to meet the trials of the day. “Even youth grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall, but those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength.” He is a fountain of strength for us.

Have you heard the story about the firefighters that were working amidst the rubble trying to search for and rescue any who had survived. Perhaps through smoke inhalation or through other things, they were overcome, brought to area hospitals, hooked up to IVs, and nurses would get information, then would leave, and the doctors would get around to seeing them. By the time the doctor would come, the IV is just hanging there. Where are the firefighters? They've gone back into the fray. They've been refreshed, they've been renewed, and they're back in there doing their duty. God is our strength. He gives us a renewing sense of strength for the time of trial, and the Bible says, “He is our ever-present help.” He is immediately present. It's stressed in the Hebrew, He is right there when we need him, immediately present. He says, "Call on me and I'll be with you."

Psalm 145:18-19 says, "The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth. The Lord watches over all who love Him, but the wicked He will destroy." So this help isn't just for anybody, but it's for those who call on Him in truth, for those who call on Him in the name of His son, Jesus Christ, He is for them, an ever-present help. In Psalm 50:15,  "Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you and you will honor me." Isn't that incredible? Spurgeon commenting on that verse said, "God and man take shares in a time of trouble. God commands us to call on Him, we respond to His command and call upon Him in faith in truth. He thereupon responds to our cry and delivers us from the trouble, we therefore respond to His deliverance and give Him the honor and the glory for it.” Psalm 50:15, “He is an ever-present help in time of trouble.” Hebrews 37 says, "God has said, Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you."

 So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” Everything you truly, truly value is eternal or should be, and cannot be touched. Your treasure is hidden where moth and rust cannot destroy, and where thieves cannot break in and steal, nor terrorists for that matter, kept safe in heaven for you. So God is our present refuge and our help. 

Alright, that's the truth, but then the scripture goes on from there and says, "Therefore, we will be courageous, therefore, we will not be afraid." I love the word, “therefore”, our courage is reasoned out by faith. There's a reason for our courage. It's not just foolishness. We don't know what the threats are. We face the threats,  we understand what's going on in Israel and Palestine about these suicide bombers. We know that there's really no defense against them. We face these things, and yet we're unafraid. Why? Because God is our refuge and our fortress, our ever-present help in time of trouble, and the things which he has given to us cannot be taken away. They are safe. They cannot be stolen.  Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

In the early days of his administration, during the early days also of the Depression, President Roosevelt had fireside chats with the people by radio.  He said something famous,  “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” Is that true here? Now, it's true of economic times, when you have fear like that, it produces runs on banks, doesn't it? When you have that instability, then it leads you right into a depression. Roosevelt was combating there. Is it true that we have nothing to fear, but fear itself? In a physical sense, it's utterly false. We've seen that today. Would you not be afraid to face the kind of things that those people faced? Those are genuine fears. At an earthly level, I think it's reasonable to be afraid of those things. I think there'd be something wrong with you if you didn't have that. But we conquer our fear with this word, “therefore”, because of who God is, therefore we will not be afraid, because we renew our minds and understand what truly matters. Even though the earth give way under our feet. I was in an earthquake in 1995 in Kobe, there was an earthquake and I lived nearby in Japan. For 45 seconds our house shook and moved, there's nowhere you can go. Where are you going to go? The ground beneath your feet is moving, where are you going to go? Where is the safe place and refuge at that time, except in the hand of God? 5000 people died in that earthquake,  it's comparable to the tragedy we faced this week. But we're not going to be afraid even if the earth gives way beneath our feet, even if something unheard of happens. Mountains, thrown into the depths of the sea, things over which we have no control, we will not fear. Why? Because God is with us. 

The greatest trials are yet to come, are they not? Do you realize that the earth will be removed out from under our feet? As a matter of fact, heaven and earth itself will disappear. Heaven and earth itself will melt. In 2 Peter 3 says, speaking of the end of the world, "The present heaven and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." It also says, "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, the heavens will disappear with a roar. The elements will melt in the heat, and the Earth and everything in it will be laid bare." 2 Peter 3:12 says that day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. Elements, the basic building blocks of the universe, will melt in the heat. What kind of heat is that going to take?  Jet fuel burns at 1700 degrees Fahrenheit, I've been told. That's what melted those buildings,  but that is nothing compared to the judgment that is coming on the physical universe. Where are you going to hide? Is there a refuge from that? Yes, there is, God Himself. He is the only refuge. God and God alone. Therefore, God's might is our refuge, and we will be courageous. 

Point two, God's City is eternal, therefore we will be gladly humble. It says in Verse 4, "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God. The Holy Place were the most high dwells. God is within her, she will not fall, God will help her at the break of day."  I've told you that the writer of this Psalm is thinking about earthly Jerusalem, but we know that earthly Jerusalem is really just a reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem. It's a type of the heavenly Jerusalem and the fulfillment, it’s a shadow, heavenly Jerusalem, the reality. There is a heavenly city, and it is unshakable. It is unshakable, because God is within her. Is there any foe in heaven or on earth or under the earth that can scale the heights of heaven and bring God down from his throne? Is there any group of plotting terrorists somewhere that can accomplish the fact?  Can anyone do it? Is there any power? What if all nations together massed their power against him?  There is no power, not all of Satan and his minions, not all of human rebellion against Him, that can bring God down from his heavenly city. God's heavenly city is eternal. There are no cracks in the foundation, there are not even attacks on it, it is a safe place. 

Earthly empires rise and fall. We saw that in the Book of Daniel, verse 6 says, "Nations are in an uproar. Kingdoms fall, he lifts his voice, the earth melts." The tumult of the nations is well known. We read about it all the time. But isn't that what's caused this? Aren't there political reasons behind this attack? I don't know if Osama bin Laden did this or not. Maybe he did. But the reason for it has got to be the establishment of some kind of political regime that they want. Nations rise and fall.  Jesus said it will continue right to the end of the age.  Matthew 24:7, "Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom." Why do these empires rise and fall? Not just political ones, but economic ones. Was not the World Trade Center a symbol of American economic empire-building? Powerful. Do you remember seeing Diane Sawyer holding a ream of papers that had fluttered down from there, and she was reading it through, the financial planning of small companies or of individuals? Maybe yours was there, I don't know. But she was reading over and saying, "It's all down on the ground now, we've collected and there's thousands of other sheets besides." 

Why do people build earthly empires? Think about it. Through pride, through a desire for a certain kind of life, desire for control and power. But God lifts his voice and the ground beneath our feet melts. It's all gone. God dwells in a city that is unapproachable, but he also dwells there with spiritual beggars.  He says in 1 Timothy 6, "God the Blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light." You can't even get close to him. The light gets denser and denser, if you can speak that way about light. You just can't get close. He lives in unapproachable light., that's the nature of his city. You can't get there unless he brings you, but he wants to bring you. Isaiah 57:15, "This is what the high and lofty one says, He who lives forever and whose name is Holy, ‘I live in a high and lofty place. But also with he who is humble and contrite in spirit.’” I live in a high place, but I also live there with spiritual beggars.  Any who come and call on me in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who humble themselves as simple sinners, I'll take them into my unshakable city and they can live there forever.”

If that's true, therefore, we will be gladly humble. It says there is a stream that makes that city glad. Is it possible to find any joy this week? Is it possible to find any gladness in that rubble? Yes, there is. It is possible. It's possible to find joy and gladness in a city whose foundations can never be shaken, where we will live forever and ever. That's where the joy is, that's where the gladness is, but it's a humble gladness beause we didn't build that city, whose builder and maker is God, it says in the Book of Hebrews. We had nothing to do with it. We didn't construct a single brick of it, it's all God's, and He's giving it to us as a gift. Gladness, not sadness, through the salvation that Jesus Christ alone can give.

Thirdly, God's name will be exalted, therefore, we will be still. The foundation of all of this is a victory that God has promised. Look at verse 8, "Come and see the works of the Lord, the desolations he has brought on the earth." What desolation is it referring to? Look at verse 9, "He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear. He burns the shields with fire." Do you realize how sweet that is? He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. Do you know what's about to face us if we wage war on terrorism, do you think it's over? Do you realize where we're heading? President Bush said the other day, "This conflict was begun on the timing in terms of others, it will end in a way and in an hour of our choosing." That's quite a statement, isn't it? I hope it's true. I really think only God can make that kind of a statement, ultimately. I think we're in for a very difficult road ahead, and I long for the fulfillment of Psalm 46:9, "He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth."

Can any human power, can any United Nations or diplomats make wars cease to the ends of the earth? No way.  God does it in two ways, he does it individually, and He does it worldwide. How does He do it individually? There could be somebody right now who hates America or who hates Christianity, whose hand is clenched around a sword of terrorism, who will at some point hear the gospel and release that sword and burn his own bow and spear and shield. He will come to personal faith in Jesus Christ, the only God, and the only salvation there is. He will realize that Allah is a false god. By the way, last night, I heard an expert in Islam say that Christians and Jews and Muslims worship the same God. Can we please be clear about this? The attacking of mosques is evil and wrong. Unkindness to our neighbors is un-Christian, but we do not worship the same God. I worship a triune God: Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. If you go up to a Muslim and say, Is Jesus Allah? He will accuse you of blasphemy. But they are the blasphemers because Jesus is the God who created heaven and earth. We worship Him, and it's through that deity and through the fact that he laid down his life on the cross and rose again, that we have eternal life. We do not worship the same god. Let's be clear about this. The only thing that's going to unclench that Muslim terrorist hands from the sword of terrorism is the gospel of Jesus Christ, or a power greater than he's ever seen before. That power is not American cruise missiles, it's the power of God, of Jesus Christ when he comes again to reign in glory on this earth. So individually, he will make wars cease when people come to Christ. Our job, preach the gospel. Preach the gospel to Muslims. It's the big block that's un-evangelized. Are you willing to lay down your life the way that these fanatics were willing to lay down theirs? Look at what can be accomplished by people who aren't afraid to die. God is calling us, I think, to missions. “Be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations. I'll be exalted on the earth, I'll be exalted by all peoples.” Are we willing to have that same level of dedication so that we can unclench that man or that woman's fist from the sword of terrorism and bring them into eternal life in Jesus Christ? Wouldn't you like a bunch of them standing next to you on judgment day? Jewels in your crown as you preach the gospel to them?  

But that's not going to end it, is it? He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. Only one thing's going to do that, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, and at that point all the rebellious kings and nations, they'll be gathered in one place. All the kings gathered [Revelation 16:16,] Armageddon, gathered in one place, and the Lord will return from heaven riding before a huge army. He came in peace the first time, the Prince of Peace, not the second time, He's got a sword coming out of his mouth, and He will strike down all of his enemies. Our God is a gentle, loving, patient God, but He's a terrifying enemy, and He will return and He will make wars cease to the ends of the earth. Then He's going to collect all the weapons of war, and  burn them, they'll be gone forever, and then we will live in a kingdom where there is nothing but peace, where Jesus rules forever and ever.  

 I'm yearning for that day. We're in for a difficult road. The wars haven't ceased yet to the ends of the earth, but it's coming because He promised that it would. God's glory in the nations is guaranteed. Look at precious verse 10, "Cease striving or be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." The word “cease striving”, it's a better translation in the NIV means stop fighting against me. It doesn't just mean be quiet and have a quiet time, that's what be still seems to be. I think it's good to have quiet times, but that's not what this verse is about. It means stop fighting me, stop rebelling against me, cease striving against me because I'm going to rule the earth in the end. I'm going to rule and if you gladly humbly submit yourself to me, you will be part of my kingdom. Cease striving against me and know that I am God.

He says the same thing in Habakkuk 2:13 and 14, "Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people's labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." It's the same idea. Why build your temporary empires? I'm going to bring them down, because the world's going to be filled with my glory and my glory alone. And all Christian people will rejoice in that, we'll be glad to see his glory filling the earth.  Won't you be delighted to see it? So stop building your earthly empires.  Therefore as a result of that, we will be still, we will stop fighting against God. We as a nation must stop fighting against God. We must repent. We must turn our hearts back to him. We must cease striving with God. We must yield to his kingdom. We must follow his ways. We must find our peace in his power and in his love, and in the blood of his Son, Jesus Christ. We will find our comfort in his salvation alone. We will cease striving and know that he is God. Do you realize how significant that is? Knowing that he is God. What is eternal life? “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” I want to know God. I want to know him in his power. I want to know him in his humility. I want to know him in his suffering and in his death. I want to know him in his resurrection power. I want to know him in his eternal kingdom. I want to know him in his past actions. I want to know him in his present promises and safety. I want to know him in his future glory. I want to know God. “Be still and know that I am God.” 

What applications can we take from this? First, concerning fear. Find present refuge in Christ alone. Not in America's military response, not in stepped up security procedures at the airports, not even if Osama bin Laden is captured, brought to trial, convicted and judged for what he did. Not in any of those things, but find your peace in the promises and the power of God. God is our refuge and strength. Concerning life, realize that life is short and could instantly end. Do you realize that any of those people who got on that plane, do you think they realized that was their last hour on earth? Life is short. Concerning the physical world, there is nothing you can see, nothing you can touch or handle or taste that is permanent; it can melt in a second, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, and it's gone. I've been saying this since I've been here, and now we have a vivid demonstration of the truth. But God's word is eternal and will never fade away. Concerning our enemies, can we pray for their salvation? Can we realize that nothing compares to the pain of being sent to hell forever and ever, that they might have eternal life? Concerning our leaders, can we pray for their wisdom that they would know what to do to protect our nation from future attacks, but also to act as Christians, since that's what we claim to be. That takes the wisdom of Solomon, let God give it to them. Pray for our leaders for their wisdom. 

Concerning our nation, pray for our repentance and our humbling. There is a story in the Bible similar to what we faced in New York City, it's in Luke 13: a big tower, Tower of Siloam, stood up strong and tall, and one day it fell down and killed 18 Jews. They came to Jesus to get his take on it, it was a current event. In the Jewish way of thinking back then, if something like that happened to you, you are a terrible sinner. Nowadays, we have 180 degrees opposite way, everybody who died in the World Trade Center's in heaven now, I don't think so. Those who have trusted in Christ, who have repented and trusted in Christ are in heaven, and those alone. But what did Jesus say about those 18 that died, these proud people who are standing up and saying, “What about them?” Jesus said, "Do you think that they were worse sinners than any of the others? I tell you, unless you all repent, you will all likewise perish." Repent or perish, came from Jesus. If this offends you, don't let it offend you because basically, we are as Christians to be constantly repenting, not just one time, years and years ago when we gave our life to Christ, but day after day repenting and walking in repentance. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Let us renounce our sins and turn back again to God. 

Finally, concerning judgment day, I want to say one thing. Have you heard about the voids in the buildings? Do you know what I'm talking about? Voids? They're little pockets where when that tower came down, it just formed this little pocket and then everything went and smashed on top of the void, but the void held and the people survived that were inside there. Have you heard about them? They've been rescued out of those voids. When I watched that tower came down, I said, It is impossible for anyone to survive that. Did you see that? How it came straight down, all the weight of those towers, straight down, right on that same foundation, imploded, sucked in. I thought it's impossible for anyone to survive, but people survived that. How? They were in those voids, in those places of safety, in those little refuges. Is there a refuge for judgment day when everything comes down? Yes, there is. His name is Jesus Christ. Are you inside one of those voids? Are you inside Christ the way that Noah was inside the ark? Are you in Him today? Because it's going to come down sooner or later, whether on your own personal death and you face judgment or the end of the world. Come to Christ, trust in his death and in his resurrection for your salvation. That's the eternal issue facing us today. 

I like to ask that you just take a few moments and just compose yourself as we begin to pray to God. “God, you are our refuge and our strength. Therefore, we will be courageous. God, your city is eternal. Therefore, we will be humbly glad within it. God, I pray for those that are suffering now that those that don't know you, those that are asking anguish questions about eternal meaning, I pray that they would come to faith in Christ, those perhaps even in our congregation today who knew people that died or who are just simply grieving and asking questions, Father, that they might come to personal faith in Christ and find in your Word a comfort that only you can give. God, you will be exalted on the earth, therefore, we want to be still, we want to cease striving and know that you are God. God, work a revival in our land that we might humble ourselves before you, in due time, you will lift us up. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Please if you would take your Bibles and look with me. This morning, we're going to consider just one verse. That's unusual. We usually go through more, but Romans 6:23 is such a remarkable verse. And typical of the apostle Paul, as frequently we go through Romans, we come to these verses that sum up his teachings, that sum up what he's been saying in a remarkable way. You've heard this verse before, Romans 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The Home Mission Board has printed thousands, even millions of these cards that just have this one verse on them. These little cards about the size of a business card. And we can use these verses to begin explaining the gospel. It's a very famous verse, it's on the four spiritual laws that the crusade uses. It's on the steps to life that Billy Graham uses, and many others as well. You've heard this verse before. But I want to share with you that I've come to understand it in a new way, as I've studied it in context in Romans 6. Not radically new, but I think in context, it's going to come alive for us in a powerful way, and so I hope. As we look at this verse, we see mentioned prominently this phrase, eternal life. And I think that's what I want to zero in on, namely the mystery of life. What is life?

Now, if you were to come and look at our garden, you would not see any evidence of life except weeds, I think. The deer got all the best parts, and every year, we're very gracious to the deer in our neighborhood, and we plant tomatoes, and we plant squash, and we plant… What else? Watermelon. This year, and they grew up to a certain point, and then they just mysteriously disappeared. And so I ran my lawnmower over it a few weeks ago, and we're done with it. We are not good at growing things. And a while ago, we bought a Crepe Myrtle tree. You've seen this beautiful trees all around, and I'm so jealous of them. When I look at other people's yards, I see these beautiful tall flowering trees, and I have a vision of something like that happening in my soil too.

And so we bought a potted Crepe Myrtle plant and let it sit there for about a week or something like that, and it started to shrivel. You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to plant it right away and get some water on it. So, we un-potted it, and I dug the hole, and I finally got around to planting it. We ran the water, too little too late, I guess in some respects. And then we waited. And we looked every day at that Crepe Myrtle tree. And then finally, these shiny little green leaves started poking out. Oh, what a day. What a day. How exciting that was. Those little green leaves, you know what it meant? The roots were alive. The tree is alive. That was so exciting for us. Are you alive in Jesus Christ today? Is there any evidence of life in your life? I mean spiritual life, not just physical existence, but is there evidence that Jesus Christ is alive in you? That's what this passage is about.

Now, what is life? Biologists tell us very technically, that the difference between a chunk of granite or some of that soil or whatever, and those green leaves or any other living thing comes down to two basic functions, metabolism and reproduction. What does that mean? Nourishment, the ability to eat and take in nourishment, and the ability to produce fruit. Taking in nourishment resulting in fruit, that is life, so the biologists tell us. Now, Jesus Christ gave us a spiritual definition. "Now, this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." Putting it all together, it's in knowing God, in being in Jesus Christ, that we receive nourishment, and we bear fruit for eternal life. That's my understanding of this verse. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

It’s All About the Fruit

Are you alive today? Is there evidence? Is there fruit of life in you? God created this world, this planet, and filled it with life, didn't he? Vegetative life, created seed-bearing plants each with its own kind, and they reproduce. He created animal life, and they each reproduce after their kinds. He created man and woman, in the image of God, and blessed them, and said, "Be fruitful and multiply." And they were fruitful and multiplied biologically. But God also called out a people for himself, for his own glory. Israel. Isaiah Chapter 5 spoke the verdict on their fruitfulness, in which Isaiah said, "I will sing for the one I love." That's God. "I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He watered it and cared for it. Then he looked for good grapes, but received only bad."

"What more could have been done for my vineyard than I did for it," he said. Why is it then that "when I looked for good grapes, I saw only bad fruit?" And so it was that one day Jesus walking into Jerusalem saw a fig tree and went over to get fruit from it. You remember the story? And he saw that fig tree, and on it was only leaves. And he cursed that fig tree, and he said, "May you never bear fruit again." And instantly the leaves withered. And then he told shortly thereafter a parable about the vineyard and they did not produce fruit. Instead, they stoned the messengers that were sent one after another, and finally the verdict came down. The vineyard will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.

The issue is fruit. We are that people. We are the Gentiles. We must bear fruit for God. We'll get to that in Romans 11, but we're grafted in to this wild... We're like wild olives which was grafted into this Jewish olive tree and we are to bear fruit. We must show something, there must be life, there must be fruit. And so it says in our passage here, As we're leading up to Romans 6:23 and erse 21, look down with me, 6:21, it says, "What benefit," in the NIV, it says, "What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!" Not a good translation. The word is literally fruit. In verse 21, "What fruit did you get from your old life in sin? What harvest of fruit came to you when you were a slave to sin?"

That you are ashamed of those things now. What fruit was there at that time from those things you're now ashamed of? Those things result in death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit again, NIV. The fruit is the word, the fruit that you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." It's all about fruit. Now in the past, I've understood this verse a little more statically. This is how it works. When you see it on the track, you say, you've got to get this thing called "eternal life." And if you pray the prayer, the sinner's prayer, if you sign the card, if you walk the aisle, if you do all these things, you get this thing that you call "eternal life" and you put it up on your shelf like a trophy.

It's kind of a static thing that you have and you're going to need it later, it's going to come in real handy on this thing called Judgment Day. But you've got to get it and have it there. And then you go on living however you live, maybe you're a super special Christian and do extra things in the church. But there's that thing that you've got and you remember when you got it, you were 12 years old and you got that thing called "eternal life" or you were 18 or you were 16 at that youth camp or something. You got that thing called "eternal life" and you look back at that moment when you obtained it, you see.

Is that what this verse is talking about? Is it not rather talking about a life that we receive in Jesus Christ? What Paul is dealing with in Romans 6 is the relationship between sin and the life of a justified person. We've gone through justification by faith alone, we've learned that we are declared not guilty before the judgment seed of God based only on our faith in Jesus Christ, apart from works. And it's all coming to us by grace and therefore the question seems to come out of the text. Well, if it's all by grace, if it's just a gift, if it's not by works, and if you can't sin your way out of it, if it's true that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, then why don't we just sin to beat the band?

Why don't we sin all we want? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? And that's what he's dealing with here. How are you living now is the question? You see, what's going on in your life now? And he's teaching you that you have been united with Christ if you're a Christian. You're dead to that old way of life, you're dead to sin forever. Jesus died once for all for sin and you also died with him, and you've been raised to newness of life. Romans 6:4 says that, "We've been united with him so that we may walk in newness of life, buried with him, and then united with him, raised with him."

So you've got a new life if you're a Christian, so therefore you should think of yourself as dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, and therefore as a result of that, you should not offer the individual parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, your new self, this new created being you are in Christ as those who have been brought from death to life, you're like a resurrected person. You're a new person, offer yourself to God and offer the individual members of your body to righteousness and to an ever increasing holiness. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus."

Now as we look at that issue, we're dealing with this counterfeit gospel. We don't want a static understanding of this thing that you get and you have it on your shelf, and then you pull it out at Judgment Day, God isn't that way, God is looking at the twigs of your life the way I was looking at that Crepe Myrtle tree. Where is the fruit? Where is the life? And if there is no life, there is no justification. Justification brings life through Jesus Christ. And if there's no fruit, there's no life, if there's no life, there's no justification, if there's no justification, you're still in your sins, fear Judgment Day, fear it, if there is no fruit in your life.

And so that's what he's getting at, what kind of life are you living? And so he brings out a kind of a summary here in which he's persuading us as justified people that we should not live in or walk in sin any longer, and he does it as he's been doing it through this chapter, negatively and positively. First, he discusses the wages of sin, the wages of sin is death. And then he looks at it positively, but the gift of God, the free gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Let's look first at the negative portion, death, the wages of sin.

From Fruit to Wages

Now the first thing that I want to say about is, that death is the deserved wages of sin. The word "wage" literally means the thing that you get because of your labor, because of your effort. If you were to come to your employer on a payday and he were to say, "Well, it's payday, I want you to know that I'm giving you this check, your wages, just as an example of my free generosity to you. I'm a very generous person, and I just want you to know that this is an example of my generosity to you." Will that be right? Wouldn't you rather say, "I worked for that, I earned it. That was our agreement, that I would work for a certain amount, and I deserve this, so therefore, give it to me."

And that's the same sense here. He's shifted the idea from fruits to now the idea of wages. And he's talking about that which we deserve. This is really a military term in terms of the rations, the income that a soldier gets for serving in an army. In 1815, Napoleon, having been exiled to the little island of Elba by the European powers (he was a dangerous man, powerful military commander), managed his escape and started coming inland in France. Well, they sent a French army to meet him and capture him. He met them. And immediately persuaded them to join him in going to Paris. And he did so by promising them immediate wages for service. But then ultimate booty down the line. Treasure because he was such a skillful military commander. He went to Paris. Did the same thing again. Persuaded more people to join his army. Immediate wages, ultimate reward down the road.

Sin is the same way. Sin comes to us like a commanding general. And says, "Join my army. Join my army." And we did. We joined the army of rebels against God. And what daily wages does this general pay? Death. And what ultimate wage will he pay? Death. It's the same thing. And that's what Paul is saying here. "You want to serve in sin's army, the wages you get is death." That's what you get. And the saddest, and perhaps the bitterest part of all, the ultimate death, as we'll mention in a moment, is hell. That those in hell understand that they deserve to be there. That they are getting what they truly deserve. Just like the thief on the cross said to the other thief, "Why are you reviling this man? We are getting the just desserts for our actions. But this man's done nothing wrong."

And so it says in Romans 3:19, "So that every mouth may be silenced before God and the whole world held accountable to God" at Judgment Day. We will have nothing we can say. We will own and say, "I deserved this." Because the wages of sin is death, we deserve it. And so it's deserved wages. It's also the decreed wages. Right from the very beginning of the world, Genesis 2:16-17 says, "The Lord God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat of it you will surely die.'" So there at the very beginning, the Creator God, the Commander God, the King, united sin and death.

We've already had this in Romans 5. Through the sin of one man death entered the world. So there's a marriage, a decreed union between sin and death. Therefore, every sin deserves the death penalty before God. The ultimate question of your life is simply this, "who is paying your death penalty?" Scripture gives two options, and only two. You can pay it forever in hell or Jesus can pay it in your place through your faith in him. Those are the only two choices for who pays that death penalty. But there is a decreed penalty. And that is death. Death is also the universal wages of sin.

Ezekiel put it this way, "The soul who sins will die." It's just that simple. This is not just for Adam. This wasn't just Adam's decreed penalty. It's for all of us in Adam. All of us have this decreed penalty. It's universal. And since all have sinned and lacked the glory of God, all of us are sinners. Every last one. We are all under this just sentence. All nations are included. All people included. All nations. Every tribe and language and people and nation, the same wages. "The wages of sin is death." Everybody has the same.

And it's not just a matter of big sinners and then little sinners. You've got the folks that are strung out on coke or some other thing. And you can just see it. "Look at that. The wages of sin. It's so obvious isn't it?" Well, the wages of complaining and arguing and irritability and all that, that's death too. All sin deserves the death penalty before God. It's not just for big sinners. But also for the little sinners. Are there any little sinners? Not when you consider the holiness of God. So for everybody. It's universal wages. Is it for Christians too? Well, that's an interesting question. Now Jesus has paid the ultimate death penalty hasn't he? Let me ask you question in the Book of Proverbs. "Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man's wife. No one who touches her will go unpunished."

Let's just extend that out. Can a Christian sin with impunity? Or do you also eat the harvest that you sow?  If you sow to the flesh will you reap from the flesh? Yes. Praise be to God we don't pay the ultimate penalty. But the warning here is given to Christians. "The wages of sin is death." Turn away from it." What has sin ever done for you except make you ashamed and wish you'd never done it? And so for all, universally. And what do I mean by that? I've thought about this. Every single day has its own special good deeds that God intends for a Christian to do. Isn't that true? "For we are his workmanship. Created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God laid out in advance for us to do." What happens if you begin that day in sin? Don't have your quiet time. You don't pray. You have problems. Get in an accident with somebody and then let slip some words you should never say and all kinds of things. What's going to happen to the good deeds laid out in front of you the rest of the day. You've lived it. Is there not a principle of death that day? Now God is gracious. And he can at any moment, through confession of sin, rectify it. But there's still a principle of death. The fruitfulness that God intended for that day dies. Praise be to God though we don't have to face that ultimate death penalty through Jesus Christ.

So death is the universal wage and is given to all sin. Death is also the daily wages of sin. In the day you eat of it, you will surely die. This is for non-Christians. Understand this, those who have not come to faith in Christ are spiritually dead. And they receive that spiritual death day after day. They are dead in their transgressions and sins in which they used to live. There's an ongoing sense of death, a spiritual death, a separation from God. First John 3:14 put it this way, "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers." Because we love our brothers. "Anyone who does not love remains in death." That's a daily experience of death, is what it is. Death is the daily wages of sin. Death is also the growing wages of sin. Sin is relentless, you know. It grows and grows.

Verse 19, "You used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness." It doesn't stay put, it's dynamic, it's moving, it's growing like a tumor. I was talking to Jack recently about prison ministry, and he said that they have a saying in prison in reference to this, that sin takes you farther than you wanted to go, keeps you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost more than you wanted to pay. Have you all experienced that? "Whoa, how did this happen?" "Well, you stepped off early on and now here you are." "Oh, that I had not done that." And the regret comes in. But there's an increasing cost, increasingly hardened in sin, people become. There's a hardening effect in sin.

Doctors and nurses involved in abortion will testify to the fact that early on it was shocking and difficult, but as they progressed it becomes easier and easier to do. So, also, people addicted to certain things testify that had a greater impact, the drug had a greater impact early on. Later on, less and less. There's a hardening effect of sin, it's the way it is. So the drug addict has a decreasing pleasure in the drug, the adulterer decreasing pleasure in adultery, the materialist decreasing pleasure in possessions, the glutton decreasing pleasure in food, the Gen X thrill-seeker always has to push the envelope a little bit more trying to hit that same high. It's a decreasing effect, the wages of sin is death.

Marie Antoinette, the woman who lived a life of debauchery as a consort of the King of France, said at the end her life, "Nothing tastes." Nothing tastes, nothing moves me anymore, I don't care about anything. It's the deadening effects of sin. And then finally, death is the ultimate and eternal wages of sin. We have a spiritual death now presently if we're not Christians. We are dead in our transgressions and sins if we're not Christians. Physical death is promised to all of us at the end of our life. The Lord does not return in our generation. Hebrews 9:27, "Is appointed unto men to die once and then to face judgment." But none of that compares to the final death, and that is hell. Revelation 21:8 says this, "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

I want you to feel the terror of understanding what that second death is if you're not in Christ today. I pray that you would understand it now. I pray that God would move in your hearts and you would understand the seriousness of this death, that it is eternal, there is no escape. And so therefore we must have Jesus pay that penalty for us. We must have him stand in our place and pay our wage for us. Thanks be to God that this verse does not end here. The wages of sin is death, period.

But there's a "but" isn't there? "But the free gift of God is eternal life in our Lord Jesus Christ." Amen?  A free gift of eternal life. Why would anyone not take it? Why would anyone not receive it given the stakes? Jesus said, "What would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul" to that second death? "Or what [on the brink of that second death] would a man give in exchange for his soul?" God has a gift to give and that gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Life is the free gift of God in crisis. The NASB puts the word "free" in there. It's not necessary, it's really redundant isn't it? Aren't all gifts free? If you charge for it, is it still a gift? Of course not. Of course it's free. And as a matter of fact, as Jesus reaches out to you with a gift of eternal life and you dig into your pockets for your good works and try to pay for it, away with your good works, you cannot pay for this. You must be humble and receive it simply as a free gift. Whereas the wages of sin is deserved, this is a free gift. It's not deserved, it's simple grace. Grace, and it's only in and through Jesus Christ, can we say that too much? All of these things are in and through Christ alone. Only in him and through him and through faith in him, because he died on the cross, because he shed his blood and paid the penalty for our sins. Because of that, we have this free gift.

Life is also the promised gift of God in Christ Jesus. Do you realize that all the Old Testament was pointing forward to this free gift? All of it. It was promised in the garden to the woman and to the seed of the woman that her seed would crush the serpent's head. It was promised when Noah and his family got on the ark and they were rescued and saved and delivered from the judgment. It was promised when Abraham was called out and it was said, "Through your offspring, all peoples on earth will be blessed." It was promised then as well. This free gift has been a long expected free gift. It was promised every time an Israelite brought a sacrifice. A sinful Israelite brought a sacrifice, and that sacrifice died. And the sinful Israelite went home.

Looking ahead to Jesus, the day that we would come and bring our sins, and he would pay the penalty and give us his righteousness. We walk home free. It's the promised gift of God in Christ Jesus. It's also the particular gift of God in Christ Jesus. Whereas the wage of sin goes universally, this gift is particular to all who believe in Christ and to only those who believe in Christ. There is no exception. You must believe in this gospel message. You must receive it. In John 20:31, it says, "By believing, you may have life in his name." First John 5:13, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God in order that you may know that you have eternal life." Eternal life is given to the believers, not to everyone. But to those who believe. And it's given to those who submit in obedience to Christ. Through Christ Jesus, our what? Lord.

Do you realize you're being saved out of rebellion to God, into submission to his lordship? There's no separation between the two. He is your Lord if he's your savior. It's to those particular folks that this free gift is given. Life is also the daily gift of God in Christ Jesus. You're supposed to walk in this newness of life, day after day. You're supposed to be bearing fruit to God. When God comes and checks you as a Crepe Myrtle tree, he's going to see leaves coming out and growth and little flowers and buds. He's going to see growth and holiness. He's going to see an increasing yearning for the word of God. He's going to see a hatred for sin. He's going to see actual temptations resisted and refuted by the power of the Spirit. He's going to see a growing fruitfulness in your life. He's going to see these things in you, if you're a Christian.

And so very much as Jesus said, he is the vine and you are the branches. And if you remain in him, you will bear much fruit. Apart from him, you can do nothing. And so remember what life was, the biologist tell us? It's a matter of nourishment and fruitfulness. And so, you are grafted in Jesus and the nourishing sap flows from him into you out into fruitfulness. That is Christianity, folks. That is true Christianity. Anything else, counterfeit. Static. Dead. But this is the life. Are you grafted into Christ? Do you feel that life-giving sap flowing through you? Are you bearing fruit for God? Life is the daily, the now fruitfulness of God. But the gift of God… And then life is the growing gift of God in Christ Jesus. That's apostle Paul's point here. You're supposed to be growing. This is supposed to be a principle of dynamic, of progress. You're more like Jesus now than you were 10 years ago. You're growing in holiness, walking with Jesus, learning more and more about God. There's a growing gift of holiness, a growing gift of life in Christ Jesus.

Look at Verse 22 again, "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the fruit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life." The end of that is eternal life. What is he saying? You want to get to heaven? You want eternal life? You must live this kind of life now. And it's not by works, not at all. It's by being grafted in where that life is flowing through you. It's just going to happen. John 1:4, "In him was life and that life is a light of men." In Jesus's life, you're going to have life in you. There's going to be fruit, the growing gift of God.

Are you growing in holiness? Are you putting sin to death in your life? Are you yearning more for the word of God now than a year ago? Or is sin growing in your life? Which? Are you advancing in sinful habits? Which is it? The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our lord. And then finally, life is the ultimate and the eternal gift of God in Christ Jesus. And now we can speak openly about heaven. Oh, what a thing it is! That we will be given life forever and ever and ever in heaven. Listen to these words from Revelation and think of the images of life. Think of nourishment, think of fruitfulness in this picture.

Revelation 22:1-4, it says, "Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. And on each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads."

You've got the river of life flowing down. You've got the tree of life bearing 12 crops of fruit for the healing of the nations all the time. Such a picture of life, of nourishment, of fruitfulness eternally. And it's focused on oneness with God. They will be his people and he will be their God. Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you have sent. What is static about that? What is put up on a shelf like about that? Nothing.

This is an ongoing living, breathing, spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ. Do you have that today? Does that characterize you? The wages of sin is death. It is deserved, it is decreed, it is universal, it is daily, it is growing, and ultimate and eternal in hell for those that do not receive the free gift. But the free gift is free, it's given by grace through Jesus Christ our Lord. It was promised in the Old Testament, it is given only to those who repent and trust Christ. It is given to us daily. For in him we live and move and have our being. Apart from him, we're dead, but in him, we're constantly alive and it is growing more and more, and ultimate, ultimate eternal life in heaven. Face-to-face fellowship with God forever.

What application? Well, if you don't know Christ, if you look at your life, if you look at your Crepe Myrtle branches, and there's nothing but deadness, are the roots alive? If you've been looking for months for something from that Crepe Myrtle tree and nothing's coming, is that tree really alive?

If you don't know Jesus Christ, come to Christ today. Oh, I beg you that you might follow him, that you might believe in him, to understand that his death was in our place, paying the wages that we deserve, that we might get a free gift. Come to Christ today. And if you're already in Christ, and you see the principle of growth in life in you, don't veer off into sin, because the wages of sin is always death; it always kills fruitfulness. But walk with Jesus, abide in him, stay close to him. I like to begin every day, getting up out of bed and kneeling down and saying, "God, I'm yours. You bought me with the price, you are my master, you are my Lord. My hands, my feet, my mind, all of it is yours today to command. Help me to put sin to death today, help me to love your word and walk with you today, deal with me today." Consecrate yourself to him, present yourself to him daily and grow in holiness. Won't you close with me in prayer?

Lord Jesus, what can we say, other than thank you for the incredible gift of God that you have given us. This incredible gift of eternal life in your name. Oh Lord, I pray for those who do not know you as Lord and savior in our midst, or those that these people who love you will take this message too. Those who are out there who are still dead in their transgressions and sins, that they might hear this gospel message, that they might repent and believe. That they would understand that today is the day of salvation, that tomorrow is not guaranteed. And that the ultimate, ultimate death in hell forever is too terrifying to even consider, oh that they might flee to Christ and find safety in him the way that Noah and his family found safety in the ark. Oh heavenly Father, for those who are Christians, that they might grow and be evermore fruitful. Prune us, Oh Lord, that we might be evermore fruitful for you. That we might grow in holiness, hating sin and loving you, oh Lord, and submitting ourselves to you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.