The Law Is Holy: It Exposes Sin and Points Us to Jesus
Reading from Romans 7
I invite anybody that would like to stand with me in honor of the reading of the Word of God today. Romans chapter 7, beginning in verse 7. There the Word of God says,
“What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.”
Thank you. You may be seated.
Let Us Pray
Thank You, Lord, for Your Word. And God, today as we dig into Your Word, open our hearts and open our minds. God, I pray Your Word pierces our heart where needed. God, I pray Your Word molds us and shapes us, those of us that are believers, to live more for You. And God, I pray that Your Word would pierce anybody’s heart that is in need of salvation to the point that they today make the decision to give their life to You, Jesus.
We love You. It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The Purpose of the Law
We talked about this last Sunday. We will talk about it briefly again. What is the law? You know, again, the law is not something that we are very familiar with today.
You know, the law is not something I do not think anybody any of us have ever practiced the law and tried to follow the law to a T. But there was a time—and Paul was one of them—that people tried to follow the law to a T.
You know, the law is what God gave Moses at Mount Sinai, which is also referred to as Mount Horeb, and He gave it to Moses and Moses gave it to God’s people Israel. And the law was the center of instruction for Israel.
The law includes the first five books of the Bible. We have got all 66 books in the Bible. Well, they had at one point just the law: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And in the law, there are 613 commands from God. And Israel was striving to follow the law.
We talked about this last Sunday, but the law is divided—a lot of people will divide it into three categories of law: the moral law, which includes things like the Ten Commandments; ceremonial laws, which includes things like sacrifices and rituals; and civil and judicial laws, which help to govern Israel.
Again, last Sunday we talked about that awesome news that we are no longer under the law, we are under grace. And here in this passage today, we are reminded that although we are not under it, there was a lot of value to the law and we can still learn from what the law taught and what it teaches us.
The law was good and it had a purpose.
Is the Law Sin?
Paul starts this passage off in verse 7 the same way he starts off the passage in Romans chapter 6 and the same way he starts off the passage in Romans chapter 7. He starts it off with a question.
He starts it off with a question. He says, “What shall we say then? Is the law sin?” See, in the verses that preceded this that we preached last Sunday, he was just speaking about the law and about how it led to sin. And so to open it up here as he is transitioning, he is saying, “So is the law sin? Does that mean the law is sin? Does that mean the law is bad? Does that mean the law is evil?” He says, “Certainly not.”
In fact, at the end of this passage, verse 12, watch how the law is described. It says in verse 12, “The law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”
Paul wants his readers to know that the law is not bad. The law was not evil. The law is good. And he wants us to know in the Word of God we are taught here that there was a purpose that God had in giving the law.
What the Law Taught Us
One purpose is this: The law taught us what was sin. The law helped to put a line in the sand to show what God considered sin.
Paul says in the latter part of verse 7, “On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet.’”
The law, though, one thing it did is it made it clear what God’s standards were. It made it clear what sin was.
So the law—Paul is saying it was not sin. The law was not evil. The law was good. And in fact what the law did is the law taught us what sin was.
But also the law taught us that we are all sinners. Amen. The problem was not a bad law. The problem was broken people. It was a good law. It is a good law. It is the problem is broken people. And the law exposed that we are all sinners.
Because guess what? Not one person other than the Lord Himself who came down as God in the flesh could ever follow the law perfectly.
And when we think about that in our terms today, not one of us are perfect. Not one of us are without flaws. Sometimes y’all ever kind of sit around and kind of think about somebody you do not like and maybe start talking about them or thinking, “Man, I do not like this about them. I do not like that about them.” I think we all do that sometimes. But this is the reality. You are flawed too. I am flawed too. Right?
We are all flawed. We all fall short of the glory of God. And the law, what a great lesson it taught Paul. And it reminds us that no person is perfect. No person walks on this earth perfect other than the Lord Himself.
So the law had a purpose also that it taught us that we are all sinners. We are reminded of that here in this passage that we are all sinners. And we are reminded of that throughout the Bible.
Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, “For there is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin.” Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:10, “There is none righteous. No, not one.”
Have you ever felt like you are perfect? Anybody? Does anybody in here think that they are without sin?
Now, I might have told y’all this before. I probably did, but I have met a guy back when I was building my house. I might have said it last week, but he told me one day, “My wife is perfect.” We had—I had ordered lumber through him for a long time. He is a great guy, Christian guy. But what he believed was that it was possible for a person on this earth to walk perfectly in these human bodies. And I said to him, I said, “Well, your wife must be amazing for you to say that.” But I bet if you asked her, she would say, “No, I am not perfect.” Because I do believe every one of us know we are not perfect, right?
I believe every one of us know that we are sinful. And knowing that, let us use that as a reminder when we start to judge others that we are not perfect either. We are all sinners. We all fall short of the glory of God.
Sin Starts Inside
But the law showed us and it reminded us it showed us what sin was and that God had a standard. But it also showed us that we are all sinners.
Now, when I was digging into the text, I always like to try to let the text drive the message. I always like to let whatever God’s Word is saying direct where the message goes.
And right here, I wanted to keep talking about what the law taught us, but in verse 8, watch what it says. Instead what I want to say is based off of what it says in the next verse. Verse 8, the idea that sin, it starts within. We are talking about sin. We are talking about how the law exposed that we are all sinners. And something I think we see in this passage is that sin starts inside.
Verse 8, it says, “But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire.”
You know, when I think about what Paul is saying there, he is writing this under the inspiration of God. He said, “It produced in me all kinds of evil desire.” And what I hear Paul saying—if I am understanding the Bible right there—is that he is saying within his inner being that is where sin started.
And then I think about earlier he talked about if the law would not have said do not covet, I would not have known that to covet was sin.
That word covet, when I looked it up, it said to feel an intense and often wrongful or envious desire for something that belongs to someone else.
The 10th commandment that Paul gave as an example in this passage, not to covet, is really talking a lot about what is on the inside—to have this feeling of jealousy or to have this feeling of wanting this that this other person has or wanting that that this other person has.
And then Paul says, “What happened in me is it produced in me all types of evil desire.”
And let us just talk about sin for a minute that the law exposed that we are sinners. We have got to be on guard against what is on the inside because what is on the inside will eventually come out on the outside, right?
You know the proverb, it says, “Out of the heart flow the issues of life.” And sin, when you think of sin, is not it so true that it will start brewing inside? It will start in your heart. It will start in your mind.
We have got to be on guard against what we let our mind think on, you know. And again, this example of coveting, are we ever guilty of wanting what someone else has got and being jealous? Have you ever battled that before? Man, this person has the best spouse. This person has the best kids. This person has such a nice home. This person, man, they have got exactly what I want.
We have got to be on guard against what we let—or lusting after someone or whatever it is. Sin starts within and we have got to guard our heart. And when we notice us starting to have what Paul is saying is producing in us an evil desire, we got to be on guard.
Sin Leads to Death
Another thing about sin: sin leads to death.
It says in verse 9, the next verse, “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.”
We are all sinners, and sin leads to death. Romans 6:23 says that. It says, “The wages of sin is death.” Praise God what it says next, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. But sin leads to death.
Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”
James 1:15: “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
We are reminded that we are all sinners. And we are reminded that sin leads to death.
And I will tell you, if you or if me, if we are in a habitual state of sin on this earth, it is going to lead to us being spiritually dead.
And I do not care how healthy somebody is. I do not care how much money they have got. I do not care what kind of white picket fence they have got. I do not care how good their life looks on the outside. If somebody is spiritually dead on this earth, they are not happy. If somebody is spiritually dead on this earth, they are not living alive in this life.
You remember when I think of being spiritually dead, I think about what was written by John in Revelation to the church in Sardis: “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.”
And there it was writing to the church in Sardis. It said, I know your works and that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead.
I do not know exactly what was meant by that, but when I read that, I picture a church that to the world around them looked alive. They had a name. The church in Sardis had a name from the people that they were alive. Maybe they were big, maybe they were booming, maybe they had all kinds of things going on and they looked so alive, but they were dead spiritually.
And you know what leads to spiritual death is sin. Staying in a state of sin leads to spiritual death. Somebody can look alive. Somebody can have all this stuff that looks good to the outside world, but if they are staying in sin, they are dead.
If you have got sin that you know does not need to be in your life, get it out of your life because it will lead to death. And even let me say this. When I think about sin leading to death on this earth and sin leading to unhappiness on this earth, Greenley was sharing a phrase that she remembers Joe Regelia who used to go to church here and who taught youth for a little bit. He would always share it and it speaks about sin and it is a phrase that I know some of the old-timers know it: “Sin will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”
It will take you further than you want to go. Somebody will start to step out in sin. Yeah. Say, “Yeah, I will go right here. I will go into this gray area.” But then they will go here and then they will go here. Before you know it, sin will take you further than you want to go. And it will keep you longer than you want to stay. Someone might say, “Well, I will just try this one time.” I mean, I could equivalate it to like an addiction. Somebody might say, “I will just try a vape. I will just try this one time.” And then it will lead to, well, I will try that vape again. And I am not judging anybody that is vaping, but one thing we know, your body is the temple, right?
And when we start to fill our body with things, it can lead to other things. It can lead to drugs. It can lead to alcohol. And it can lead to being addicted with it. And sin is similar in the sense that when we start to kind of go in the gray area, before you know it, we will be in the outright sin area and we will be staying there. Sin will trap you. Sin will keep you in prison. It is not alive living in sin. It leads to death and it will cost you more than you want to pay. Amen. Sin has consequences.
Sin can absolutely have consequences on this earth. Amen. We have seen that, right? The consequences can be our fellowship with God, but the consequences can most certainly also affect people we love and people we care about. And we have all sinned and we have all messed up.
But today, as we are hearing this, I hope we are encouraged to say, if I have got something in my life that does not need to be there. And I have heard people talking about something they are ashamed of from the past, which we do need to repent, but we cannot stay there because God has got something for us right now where we are at. We got to let it go. We got to repent from it. We got to turn from it. We got to apologize where needed, ask others to forgive us, but we got to move on.
But then if we have got the sin in our life right now, if you are a child of God, that is not who you are meant to be. And it will lead to a feeling of death on this earth because you will be spiritually dead. And worst of all, sin, if not addressed, it leads to death for eternity. Sin, if not addressed, leads to eternity in hell.
God Made a Way Through Jesus
You know, when we think about the law and how it taught us what sin was, it was our tutor as Paul says in Galatians 3. And how it taught us that we are all sinners. And then when we think about sin and the problem with sin is if it is not addressed, it will lead to eternity in hell, right?
And listen, if we are a believer, although none of us are perfect, we are not meant to stay living in sin. We are meant—we are meant to be changed. We will not be perfect, but we should be striving to live for the Lord with God’s help.
But speaking of sin, God made a way to address our sin problem. Are not you so thankful for that?
Because we are all sinners. Do we all agree?
God made a way to address our sin problem. The law, it taught us what sin was. The law, it showed us we are all sinners. The law also taught us that we need a way for forgiveness of sins. That the law taught that.
You think about the Israelites. They would make all these sacrifices to atone for their sins. But you know what God did? God made a once-and-for-all permanent way to atone for our sins by sending His Son Jesus Christ who came down from heaven who was here in the beginning who was here and created all things. Jesus came born of a virgin on this earth, God in the flesh. He dwelt with us and He came with a purpose. He came to die.
He suffered and He died for my sins. And He suffered and He died for your sins. And He rose on the third day so that anybody who believes in Him will be saved.
That is pretty amazing. Amen.
God made a way, a permanent way to address our sin problem. And all we have to do is believe in the Lord. Even though we have evil desires, even though we fall short of the glory of God, God made a way that we could go from sin and death to eternal life.
And I just want to close by saying this, speaking of the law, the law taught us what sin was. The law showed us we are all sinners. The law reminded us and taught us that we need a way for forgiveness of sins. The law ultimately pointed us to the fact that we need Jesus.
Ultimately what the law did is it showed us we are sinners in need of a Savior.
You know—you, me, all of us—we need a way to address our sinful nature and that way is Jesus.
So I just want to close today by saying, have you trusted fully in Jesus Christ as Lord and as Savior of your life? Have you surrendered all? Have you given your life to the Lord? Do you know that you are saved? Do you know that if you were to die today, you would go to heaven?
See, that is what happens when we die. If we are a believer, our soul, it goes to be with the Lord. A lot of us have heard the Scripture: to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Is not that a great comfort when we lose somebody we love?
But again, I will share this one again that I shared earlier. I think about Jesus hanging on that cross and that thief who was a sinner. And right before he died, that thief hanging on the cross, he placed his faith and trust in Jesus.
And Jesus said, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.”
