Transcription
The emotional drain of trying to do the right thing on your own power is exhausting, and eventually you get worn out. And what is the cause of this battle that's going on in you? You actually have two natures inside of you. You have your old nature, which you were born with, and you have the new nature that was given to you when you trusted in Christ, when you were born again, when you became a believer. And this new nature wants to do the right thing, but you still have the old nature inside of you, and these two natures are in constant conflict with each other. And that's the cause of the battle. You have two natures, not one, two natures inside of you.
Paul says this: "I love to do God's will so far as my new nature is concerned, but there's something else deep within me, a nature that's my old nature." The Bible often calls it my flesh, or it calls it my carnal self, or calls it the old man. These are synonyms for the old nature. "There's something else deep within me, my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me."
Now, even though I'm a Christian, my old nature is still alive. And I hate to tell you this, but you're going to live with it the rest of your life. You don't get rid of your old nature until you go to heaven. When you became a follower of Christ, he gave you a new nature and a new ability to do the right thing. But even though I'm a believer and I've walked with the Lord for a long time, I still have my old nature in me, which wants to be prideful, which wants to be self-centered, which wants to gossip, to lie or steal or make myself better or, you know, exaggerate or whatever. That old nature is still there, and the lust and the gossip and the lie and all that stuff's there.
Now, let me tell you why the problem is your problem. Because willpower is not enough to defeat your old nature. And if you think that you can change simply by wanting to change or by learning about change, it ain't going to happen. It'll happen for a little while, but then you're going to get tired and you're going to stop. Knowing what to do is not enough to change you. If it was, I would never have to repeat a sermon topic. You'd get it. You'd change in that area, and then we'd just go on to something else. But just because you know the right thing to do does not mean you do it.
The next verse says this: "So you see how it is. Paul says, 'My new life tells me to do right, but my old nature that's still inside me loves to sin. Oh, what a terrible predicament I'm in!'"
In the original Greek, it literally means "the exhaustion of hard work." It means being worn out after an intense battle. It means you're out of energy. You're wiped out. You're fatigued. You're frustrated. You feel like a failure. It's Paul's cry of agony. He says, "I need relief. I need help."
Now, this is not a pretty picture. Romans 7 is the picture of a defeated, struggling Christian. And finally, he falls on his face out of exhaustion. And Paul goes, "What's the cure?" And then he tells us, and he says, "God's battle plan for victory." And he tells us what the plan is.
Now, let me get you started on a couple of advanced steps on how you start to win the battle going on inside you. You do three things initially.
The first thing I need to do, God's battle plan for winning the battle inside me, is I must deepen my understanding of Christ. Now, you already know Christ. You've got to deepen your understanding of Christ and what he did for you on the cross. Now, we're not talking about being an unbeliever here. You're a believer. Paul is a believer here. Jesus is already in you. In fact, that's why you have this battle. If you weren't a Christian, you wouldn't have this battle. Why? Because you'd only have one nature. And if you only got one nature, your old nature, you'd just go ahead and do whatever you please and do the wrong thing, and you don't even care about it. So a non-believer does not have this battle going on in them because they don't have the good nature battling with the old nature. They've just got the old nature that says, "Do whatever you want to do." So the fact that you've got Jesus in you is what's causing the battle.
But having Christ in you is not enough. He doesn't just want to be resident in your life. He wants to be president in your life. He doesn't want to just take up space. He wants to be in charge. He wants to be the Lord of your life. What does that mean, Lord? It means he's the CEO. He's the boss. He's calling the shots. He's the chairman of the board. He wants you to put a sign over you that says, "Under New Management." That's what it means to have Jesus as the president of your life: "Under New Management." But the first step is I have to deepen my understanding of Jesus Christ. He's in my life, but I've got to know more about him.
Romans 7:24 and 25: "Who will free me from this life? Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin? Thank God, the answer is through Jesus Christ our Lord." This is an amazing phrase here in the original Greek. It is literally, "Who will free me from this body of death?" This body of death. And Paul is giving a striking illustration here that you wouldn't understand unless you knew what was going on in the Roman Empire. Because in those days, one of the punishments for murdering somebody was sometimes they would chain the body of the person you murdered to you. And you had to walk around with that person until they decayed and fell off. And instead of putting you in jail, they would chain the person you murdered and took their life. And that body of death would be chained to you, which means everywhere you go, you're carrying around the memory of your sin. And you wake up each morning, and the stench is unbearable. And wherever you go, you have to drag that body with you. That's the phrase Paul is using here in the Greek when he says, "Who's going to free me from this body of death?" That's keeping it stinking.
Now, I want you to notice on that phrase, "Who will free me?" He doesn't say "what," because the answer to the battle in you is not a principle. It's not a program. It's not a pill. It's a person. It's Jesus Christ. You know those things you want to change but can't change in your life? The answer is not a seminar. The answer is not a new book. The answer is not the next conference. The answer is not psychology. It is not therapy. It is not philosophy. He doesn't say, "What'll free me from all these hang-ups I've got in my life?" He says, "Who will free me?" The answer is that only God can free you, Jesus Christ. "Who will free me from this decaying life I've got?" Paul says, "I'm at the end of my rope." He's been talking now for verse after verse. "I'm at the end of my rope." And at the end of his rope, he gets a flash of hope, and he says, "Oh, I got it! Thank God!" He just blurts it out. "Thank God, the answer is in what Jesus did." He says, "The answer is through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Second preliminary step to ending the battle going on inside of you and winning the battle: I must detect and disarm the lie I'm believing. I must detect and disarm the lie that I'm believing. You need to understand that the number one way Satan messes up your life is by suggesting lies to you or to get you to lie to yourself. And that's the number one way you mess up your own life: is lying to yourself. Every time you expose and challenge a lie that you've listened to in your mind, you're going to be further set free. Every time you sin, in fact, look at this verse. The Bible says, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Now, he's saying there that sin causes us to deceive ourselves, and deception causes us to sin.
Now, we all tell ourselves lies all the time. All the time. In fact, one of the big lies that you tell yourself is this one: "It's not really a problem." Oh, really? Yeah. "It's not really a problem." My finances, they're not really a problem. Our sex life, it's not really a problem. My kids, it's not really a problem. My work, not really. My temper, my foul mouth, my thought life, my little secret habit over here in the corner. "It's not really a problem." Who are you kidding? The Bible says, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." So, let me just ask you this real blunt question, as somebody who loves you: What are you pretending isn't a problem in your life? What are you pretending not to know? What are you pretending isn't a problem in your marriage? Isn't a problem in your personality? And you don't want to admit it.
The Bible tells us that if I'm going to win this battle, I have to stop lying to myself and I've got to stop listening to Satan's lies. Every self-defeating act is a lie I have believed. Behind every self-defeating act is a lie that I have believed. Either I lied to myself or I let Satan lie to me. You see, we have an amazing ability to lie to ourselves and to convince ourselves of things that aren't true. Look at this verse up here on the screen, Jeremiah 17:9: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" What does it mean, "the heart is deceitful"? We have an amazing ability to lie to ourselves. The biggest liar you know is you. And the person you lie to the most is yourself. The person I lie to the most is myself. I tell myself things are right when they're not right. I tell myself things are okay when they're not okay. I often tell myself things are not okay when they are okay. And you do this all the time, and we rationalize and we minimize and we make excuses and we tolerate things in our lives. Go, "It's no big deal. It's no big deal."
And if you're going to get free and if you're going to have victory in this number two, to stop defeating myself, I must stop deceiving myself. To stop defeating myself, all those self-defeating things in my life that I don't like about me, that I'd like to change. To stop defeating myself, I have to stop deceiving myself. I must become a person of the truth. I stop denying. I stop rationalizing. I stop minimizing. I stop excusing. I stop tolerating. Again, let me ask a very blunt question: What self-destructive behavior in your life are you putting up with? And you know it's bad for you, and you know it's going to cut years off your life, and you know it's going to hurt you in the long run, and you know it may destroy a relationship, but you justify it. What is the truth you need to admit? This is the second step to winning the battle.
Jesus said this next verse: "When you know the truth, the truth will what?" "But first, it will make you miserable." The truth makes you miserable as long as you deny it. The truth does not free you until you admit it. As long as you deny the truth, it doesn't help you. In fact, it just makes you mad. The truth makes you mad, and the truth makes you miserable. It is only when you are humble enough to admit it: "Yeah, this is really what I am. And yeah, this is really what I do. And yeah, this is really a compulsion, an addiction, a habit, a problem in my marriage, in my life, or whatever." When you admit the truth, then it sets you free. It doesn't set you free until you admit it.
I detect and disarm the lie that I'm believing. And the Bible says Satan is the father of lies. All he can do is lie to you. That's the only way he can influence. He can suggest lies. Jesus said, "I am the truth." You've got to decide whether you're going to listen to God's truth or the world's lies or Satan's lies or your own lies.
The third thing I need to do to get started in overcoming this battle is I must declare my struggle to another. Declare my struggle, what I'm struggling with, to another. I'm struggling with my mouth. I'm struggling with my mind. I'm struggling with my memory. I'm struggling with my behavior. I'm struggling with my secret addiction. I'm struggling with... and the Bible says we just share it. Sharing, revealing your feeling, is the beginning of healing.
Now, if all you want to do is be forgiven, you just admit it to God. But if you want to change and you want to be healed and you want to be different, God says you're going to have to admit it to one other person. You don't have to admit it to everybody. Just all you need to do is have one person who's going to love you unconditionally, accept it, pray for you. They're going to be an accountability partner. They're going to be a... you know, nobody goes into battle fighting a war by themselves. You go with a team. You go with a platoon. You need a battle buddy. You need one person in your life that you're gut-level honestly frank with. And you can share that with. And if it's not your husband or your wife, then if you're a woman, you need to get another woman to share it with. If you're a guy, you need to get another guy to share it with. You go, "Look, I just need to tell you I'm struggling with this." And by doing that, the relief valve is opened, and the pressure is off, and the boogeyman isn't as big as you thought he was.
Now, the Bible claims this. James 5:16: "Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that God can heal you." Now, he says, "Confess it not to God." It says, "Confess to each other and pray for each other, and then you'll be healed."
Galatians 5:16 says this: "Live your according to your new life in the Holy Spirit. Then you won't do what your sinful nature craves." Now, the difference between Romans 7, which is a picture of total defeat, and the picture of Romans 8, which is a picture of a man or woman in total victory, is this word "spirit." In Romans 7, the phrase "Holy Spirit" is never mentioned. Not one. Instead, 41 times we have "I," "me," "my," "myself," "mine," all these personal pronouns. It's all about me. It's not about the spirit. In Romans chapter 8, the word "spirit" is mentioned 19 times. And that's the difference: is whether you are going by my spirit or going by the Holy Spirit to empower me.
An example: let's say you and I go down to Laguna this afternoon, and we're walking on the beach, and I see a dead seagull. And the seagull's only been dead less than a minute, still warm. And I pick up this dead seagull. Now, it's still got the same muscles, bones, feathers, wings that it had a minute earlier. But I pick up that dead seagull, and I throw it up into the air, and what happens? It comes right back down. Why? Because the life is gone out of it. It is not the muscle. It is not the bones. It is not the wings. It is not the feathers that makes a seagull fly. It is the life that God puts into it. And when the life, when the spirit is out of that bird, it ain't flying. It's still got all the same equipment, but it's not going to fly. You have the equipment to live a successful, victorious life, but it's not worth anything if you don't have the spirit powering you to do it. You cannot do it on your own. If there's anything I want you to understand, it is willpower doesn't work. It's like throwing a dead bird in the air. It's got all the equipment, but it can't fly without the spirit of God in it, without the life that God puts in it. And you can go out and have all the best intentions and make all the promises to yourself, which you have broken over and over and over, because you cannot do it on your own. You cannot be like Christ. You have to let Christ live through you.
And what the spirit does is two things. The spirit does for me, the Holy Spirit does for me, the things I cannot do on my own. I don't have that power. And second, he fulfills in me what God desires to do in my life. Now, resolutions are good. They're a good start, but they'll only get you so far. Then you've got to have spirit power in your life.
Let's bow our heads. Now, all of our best intentions are not good enough. The alcoholic who says, "I'll never take another drink," and the violent person who says, "I'll never lose my temper again," and the person controlled by porn who says, "I'm never going to look at it again," is going to fail. How many promises to yourself have you broken? A lot. The only way to win this battle against the first enemy, the old nature, is to let the Holy Spirit do it. Now, you're never going to get to the victory of chapter 8 until you experience the frustration of chapter 7. And you finally realize you can't live the Christian life on your own power.
So, what's your problem? Temper, impatience, self-control, being honest, thought life, pride, laziness, self-centeredness? You know, every one of us have our skeletons in the closet. The problem is the skeletons don't stay in the closet, and you want to do the right thing, but you end up doing wrong, and that's frustrating. So you may as well be honest and say it isn't working. Me trying to flap my wings against gravity is like me trying to live a life that's good on my own power.
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God has given you a new nature if you've invited Christ into your life, but we are still sinners after we believe. And there is that battle between the two dogs. Some of you really feel defeated today, and you say, "I feel like giving up." And my answer to you is, "Good. Give up. Stop trying to do it on your own. You cannot be Jesus Christ. Nobody can be Jesus like Jesus can, and he can live through you if you will let his spirit empower you with new life, and it will lift you up out of the cycle of sin."
I want you to pray this prayer right now. "Dear God, you know the confusion in my life. You know the frustration I feel. You know the guilt and the shame. You know the compulsions and habits and addictions. And you know how many times I've made promises to myself and to you that I haven't kept. Today I realize that I have two natures inside of me, and they are at war. I ask you to use this to help me have victory. Deepen my understanding of what Jesus Christ has done for me. Show me how to let go and how to let your spirit live through me. And this week, help me to challenge the lies that Satan puts in my mind and to challenge the lies that I tell myself, to detect them and to disarm them. To stop deceiving myself. I want to know the truth about me, and I want it to set me free. And help me to have the courage to declare my struggle to one other person, a battle buddy, a co-worker, a friend in arms fighting their battle, too. And may I offer unconditional love and receive it. Help me to confess my sins to others and pray for others so that God may heal me. And help me to live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit."
If you've never invited Jesus into your life for the first time, you don't have any resources. You need to say, "Jesus Christ, come into my life right now. Live in me. I don't understand it all, but I want to learn to trust you, love you, follow you, and most important, let you live through me by your spirit." I pray this in your name. Amen.
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