Today, we are joined by Nick Kennicott from a sister church in Florida, and he walks us through Paul's illustration of our freedom in Romans 7. Nick pastors at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Coconut Creek Florida. Visit https://www.ebcfl.org/ to learn more.
Springfield Baptist Church
July 7th 2024 - Dr. Nick Kennicott - Romans 7:1-6
Today, we are joined by Nick Kennicott from a sister church in Florida, and he walks us through Paul's illustration of our freedom in Romans 7. Nick pastors at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Coconut Creek Florida. Visit https://www.ebcfl.org/ to learn more.
- Duration:
- 50m
- Broadcast on:
- 10 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
Well, good morning. Glad to be back with all of you. Good to see you. I'm thankful that each year I get invited back here and I have a wonderful host. Believe it or not. It's not James though. It's Lisa. Let's be honest. But I always have a good time here and I go home and I tell people I was in Nebraska and I had a great time and they scratched their heads and wonder how that's possible. But it really is wonderful. But I have been in Florida now for just over two years and it's going very well at Immanuel Baptist Church. As you probably know, we have the best governor the country's ever seen and our state is growing dramatically. I think at least last year around this time they're saying like 1,500 new residents per day. It's ridiculous. So, you know, that comes with all kinds of challenges. But as far as the church is concerned, it's been amazing just to watch people from all over the world really coming. We have people in our church from 32 different countries. So the cultural experience is really neat and my kids meeting people from all over the world and hearing about their lives, where they're from. So it's going quite well. We just finished a church plant in West Palm Beach and they're starting to grow very rapidly and they just voted on their new officers. So we're very excited about that work. And my work in Africa continues on our 14th year now. So, the seminary in Nigeria and that I started in 2010 going there. The school started in 2013 and we're now over 80 students. I have 9 full time staff members and we're completing a very large building project. We've spent $350,000 in this local rural community where people live on less than a dollar a day and are able to provide free seminary education to men preparing for ministry. So, very exciting. I just got back a couple weeks ago. I'll be back there again in October. So maybe one day, if your pastor can gather some courage, he might go with me. He's scared of the food, but I think that's it. So thank you for allowing me to be here and to worship with you and to preach God's word. It is a privilege. We're going to be looking at Romans chapter 7 as we looked at in our scripture reading, verses 1 through 6. Speaking of international travel, if you've ever traveled internationally, you know that when you're flying into another country, you get to the customs area. And a lot of times, depending where you are, you have to take a deep breath and know this is going to be a painful experience. I'm thankful that when I come home to the US, you can get now, if you don't know about this, you can get global access. So you just walk right through wonderful facial recognition software. They already know everything about it anyway. So why not? You can just walk right through. You don't have to stop and talk to anybody. They already know you're back home. But when you go to another country, like when I go to Africa, you never know what you're going to get. A few years ago, I was stopped. I was trying to shake me down for three hours to get money out of me and all this. We got a big argument. It caused quite a scene. And then I've been in these long lines in the UK, these lines that just snake and you're just waiting to get the stamp so you can be let go into the country and handle your business. But this is just the thing. When you travel internationally, what you recognize is that people that are from that country that you're going into, which you're entering into, have a fairly painless process to get through their own customs. But those from other nations have a much more laborious process. Depending on where you are in the world, the country you are from matters. Your citizenship matters. When you're traveling, this is the all-important thing, your passport. What color is your passport? It's the official federal identification that you're given. It contains all of your travel information. And for most countries you go into, you need a visa, which is secured within that passport. And then when you arrive in the country, they check your data, they take your picture, they ask you all sorts of questions. Your information is sent to your country's consulate. And so they know you've arrived, and eventually they let you carry on with your business. But this whole process is often referred to as traveling under passport. The passport you have determines the line you stand in, and it determines what's required of you when you arrive. Now as we look at this text in Romans 7, we should think very briefly about what Paul has written in the previous chapters. And it's really tied to this question of our citizenship. It's easy to assume that a new chapter in the Bible marks this new significant portion of Scripture where we're now onto a new theme or a new subject. But the reality is, remember that Paul is writing a letter. The book of Romans is an epistle. It's a letter. And so Paul didn't have these breaks in his thought where he decided this is a new chapter and these are the verses. This was all added later. And so there was no such division. And so because this is a letter, Paul's line of reasoning and thought just continues on through. So we have to keep oriented to his reasoning so we don't forget about the broader context of what he has been saying all along. And the broader context really goes back to chapter 5 where he tells us how we are traveling through the world. There are, to use my earlier illustration, two different passports that a person can have in this life. You're either traveling under the passport of Adam or you're traveling under the passport of Christ. But you cannot travel under both. There is no dual citizenship when it comes to Adam and Christ. You're either a citizen of the kingdom of Adam in darkness or you're a citizen of the kingdom of Christ in the light. And so Paul sets up this brilliant argument in chapter 5 that causes us to see the world as God sees it in very simple terms as a world that is filled with people who are either in Adam or in Christ. And then you'll, you think about what Paul writes as being a slave to something or being a slave to someone and you're either a slave to Adam or you're a slave to Christ. You have no alternatives. He sets everything up in very black and white terms. It's either one or the other. And so Paul keeps going back and forth in Adam in Christ. Where does your citizenship lie under which passport are you traveling through the world? Now the other part of Paul, Paul's argument is his rejection of all these objections that he knew were going to be raised based on the argument that he was making, especially among those who were the Jews. In chapter 5 he wrote that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. And Paul knew immediately what his opponents would say and so he responds to it because he knew they would come and say, "Well Paul, if that's what you're saying, if that's true, then why shouldn't we sin all the more so that grace will abound all the more?" And Paul of course responds and says, "By no means. If you are in Christ, if you are under Christ, if Christ is your Lord, then you are dead to sin and you will no longer walk in it. If you are a citizen of Christ's kingdom, sin has no power. It has no dominion over you so you can walk in the newness of life and you no longer have an obligation to sin. You have all that's necessary to not sin." And so then Paul said that sin will have no dominion over you because you're not under the law but you're under grace. And again he knew what his opponents would say. And so he asked what then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? And again he says, "By no means. If you are in Christ's kingdom, you won't despise his law but you will delight in it because you are a thankful bondservant of the one who created you, of the one who sustains you, of the one who has saved you and has given you all that you have, that you might live for his glory now and forever more. You have become citizens of Christ's kingdom, therefore you have been set free from sin and the law of God is now a rule of life that you delight in, that you might walk in obedience and gain the fruit of sanctification, becoming more and more like your master. And so if your passport is stamped on the front with Adam, the end result is that your citizenship leads to death. If your passport is stamped with Christ, you've been given the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus. Our Lord, you didn't earn it. You didn't work for it. You don't deserve it. You certainly aren't worthy of it in any way but God has seen fit to give it to you because he loved you and he gave his son to live for you and to die for you and to stand in your place as your representative that you might have everlasting life in him. And so you see the biggest argument above all others through Romans is justification by faith alone. And so with that backdrop we get into chapter seven and we consider what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom of Christ that we might live faithfully and obediently on to him. So let's read the passage once more. "Or do you not know, brothers, for I'm speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives. For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly she will be called an adulterous if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies she is free from that law and if she marries another man she is not an adulterous. Likewise my brothers you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear bare fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Now as we think about these accusations that were being leveled against Paul we recognize that these were objections being raised by the Jews in a way that they raised objections against Jesus. When you take it all collectively you see that what the accusation was is that namely that Jesus and Paul are attacking the law. This is the law given to us by God through Moses and you're attacking it it was an accusation that followed Paul all throughout the Christian churches as he went from city to city. Remember it was Jesus who said himself do not think that I've come to abolish the law of the prophets. I've not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away not one iota not one dot will pass from the law until it is all accomplished. The moral law of God or the ten commandments have not gone away. Christ fulfilled it but its demands are still ever present as a Christian. We can delight in the law for what it does and how it does it. As Paul writes about justification by faith alone the issue of this law comes up again and again and again because Christians need to understand how this relationship works between the law and the gospel. There's often this terrible imbalance between the two in our theology and so often one is emphasized over the other and in the end if the balance is not right your your only way to go is either you become a legalist or you become anti-nomian but really the end result is that either way you go it's really you become very legal-hearted. It might be the right answer at the level of common usage to assume the opposite of legalism is anti-nomianism and that's the theological term that literally means against the law. Anti-nomianism is the rejection of the authority of the mosaic law on the grounds that it's been superseded by Christ's grace and freedom but it was it was unsatisfactory from the standpoint of theology to assume that legalism and anti-nomianism are on opposite sides of the theological spectrum. They're not antithetical to one another in the way that we often assume. Both of them legalism or a complete rejection of the law altogether they're both opposed to the same thing and that is the grace of God. This is why scripture never prescribes one as the antidote to the other. If you're if you're living in sin and you're just loving your sin then you just need to be more legalistic about your life or if you're a terrible legalist and you have rules for everything you do and the way that you do it you just need to lighten up a little bit and become a little more loose with your life. This is not how the scriptures deal with it. The antidote to both is exactly what Paul was going through and and why he went to such great lengths to discuss our glorious union with Christ all throughout this book of Romans. It's essential to our understanding of what the gospel is and what the gospel does. So Paul's essentially being accused of being an anti-nomian of rejecting the law outright but back at the end of chapter 3 he addresses this as well in chapter 3 in verse 31. He writes, "Do we then overthrow the law by this faith by no means on the contrary we uphold the law." Paul's point is that it is only this teaching of justification by faith alone salvation by grace alone that you could ever uphold the law. And so that leaves us with some tricky questions we have to work through. We're going to get this proper understanding of this balance between law and gospel. If we're no longer under the law but the law is upheld and still abiding how does the law function in the life of a Christian believer? This is I believe one of the most misunderstood truths of Christianity but it is one of the most vital. We don't want to be legalists. We don't want to be anti-nomians. We want to live as people who are living freely as bondservants of Christ enjoying the benefits and the blessings of our salvation in Christ by his grace alone while seeing the law as simultaneously important as a reality that has this essential bearing on how we live our lives and how we glorify God. However, this isn't easy. It's difficult because Paul has said that Christians have died to the law. Christians have died to sin but we know just as we have died to sin we still sin. In like manner we've died to the law. We're no longer under its condemnation but we spend the whole of our Christian lives seeing that the law exposes the presence of lawlessness that still exists in us and all around us. So you see when Paul says that we've died to the law he's not saying that the law doesn't matter or that we shouldn't care about what it says but rather that we will no longer live condemned by the law because it has been fulfilled for us in the Lord Jesus Christ and one day in glory he will deliver us entirely from our exposure to sin. This is really where Paul goes in chapter 7. I've died to the law but I'm far from perfect in fulfilling the commands and demands of the law. However even though that is the case I am not left to worry. I'm not left to fret. I'm not left to be anxious about whether or not I have the right standing with God because Christ is sufficient and so now I can look to the law and be thankful for what it does in exposing my sin and it breaks through all of the facade that I've put up and I've tried to keep up to make myself feel better and to try and make myself appear as though I'm less sinful than I really am. And so you see in the gospel there is a spiritual harmony with the law. I am now safe to see my sinfulness exposed by the law of God because I have all of the resources I need in Christ to be able to deal with that sinfulness. Before we were in Christ we hid from the law, we hid from its condemnation but now that we are in Christ we no longer have to look at the law and say I'm not as bad as you say I am. Now instead we say I am that bad and in fact I'm far worse but I'm not depending on myself. I'm depending on Christ and He's enough so I can be exposed. I can be outed. I can come clean in the world because before God I'm declared clean already in Christ. And so that's the big picture of what Paul is writing in chapter 7 specifically in verses 1 through 6. And there's two major things, two major points here in these verses. In verses 1 through 3 Paul gives us an illustration and then in verses 4 through 6. He shows how that illustration applies to our Christian lives. And so in verses 1 through 3 Paul shows us in his illustration that death delivers us from our present obligation to the law. He uses this illustration of marriage here and explains that part of our vows that we make when we say until death do us part. I wonder if you've ever thought much about what that means. We realize living in a sinful world where human beings do sinful things this is not always going to be the case sadly. However the biblical model for marriage is that a covenantal agreement is made between two persons before God and it is to last onto death. But when one of the spouses dies the living spouse is free to marry. There's no longer a binding covenantal agreement or the legal obligation to that spouse that has died. They're no longer under the law of marriage. It's not a bad thing and of course as we live an earthly life it can be a good thing. There's no marriage or giving in marriage in heaven and so it is a temporary union as sad as that makes my life. She wants to be married to me for all eternity. I don't blame her. But this is a temporary union that we have on the earth. Paul writes beginning in verse two for a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies she's released from the law of marriage accordingly she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if he dies she's free from the law and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. In other words if a married woman's husband dies she's no longer married and of course you should know that when Paul writes about her living with another man he's not referring to a domestic arrangement where he she simply lives with him but rather is referring to her being married to another man. So he's saying she's free to marry. She's free to pursue a new relationship. She's not bound by the same obligation that she had in her previous marriage because it ended by death. By God's grace any man or woman who spouse has died has been liberated from their marital obligation and so the relationship with another person is not an adulteress relationship so long as it's pursued of course in a godly manner and it's good and right and pleasing to God that they should be able to pursue that relationship. The vast majority of people have a fundamental desire to have companionship in marriage and so God designed it so that the widow or widower can marry once again. Now Paul is using this picture to illustrate his point which we see in verse one remember he's really going after the assumptions of his Jewish audience here and he sort of pokes them a little bit. He essentially says certainly you you already know this because you're the experts right. You know the law right? Don't just read that verse without seeing what he's doing. Paul has some bite to what he's writing. He always does. I'm afraid many evangelicals would read this if you really read it and understand exactly what Paul is doing and how he's doing it. A lot of evangelicals would say he's being too harsh. He should really check his tone a little bit but he's chosen the exact words the way he wants to use him. He has no intention of softening his language or being nice. There's a big difference between being kind which we're commanded to do and being nice which we're not commanded to do. A lot of bad things have come into evangelicalism because people are too concerned about being nice assuming that means being kind. We should be kind and tender and tenderhearted but that doesn't mean everything we say in the way that we should say it will be nice. There's a big difference and Paul shows us that right here but what does he say? Surely you know because you know the law you're the experts. The law is only binding as a person lives. A dead man is no longer obligated to the law and a man who is entered into the rest of heaven who's no longer obligated to this he now dwells in the kingdom of absolute unhindered grace and peace. This is the very thing Jesus addresses in Luke chapter 20. Remember this passage it says there came to him some Sadducees those who deny that there is a resurrection and they asked him a question and and of course here they're trying to trap Jesus and trying to show that this resurrection idea is all a farce and so they say teacher Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies having a wife but no children the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers the first took a wife and died without children and the second and the third took her and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died in the resurrection therefore whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife and Jesus said to them the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage for they cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels and are sons of God being sons of the resurrection but that the dead are raised even Moses showed in the passage about the bush where he calls the Lord of God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob now he is not God of the dead but of the living for all live to him and so you see I know it's difficult for us to comprehend this in our finite wisdom and our finite ways of thinking about this reality we love our spouses we we don't want to live without them and the sad and difficult reality is in that a fallen sin sick world one of us will depart before the other but the Lord and Paul are helping us to lift our eyes and to see the greater reality namely that marriage here is temporary because we have a new kind of marriage that awaits us as the children of God. So this is Paul's illustration to draw out the implications in this instance a spouse dies therefore setting the living spouse free to pursue a new marriage but then he gets on to his main point in verses four through seven and he shows us that the old man or woman that you were has died and so you are now married to Christ read this again verse four likewise my brothers you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God for while we were living in the flesh our sinful passions aroused by the law we're at work in our members to bear fruit for death but now we are released from the law having died to that which held us captive so that we may serve in a new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code this is interesting what Paul writes here has really tied a lot of commentators and biblical scholars into knots because in his illustration he's dealing with someone else dying and therefore are being freed to pursue a new marriage but now he pivots he he transitions to make the point that we have died to the old man or to the old woman so how does that free us in this instance many suggest that the point that Paul is making is that death ends the obligations that we have to the law and it can no longer condemn us and that's basically it but I think that way of thinking about it really blunts his argument because Paul basically gave us three verses of an illustration only to say what he's already said before and so I don't think that's what Paul is getting at that you've died to the law so you're no longer condemned by the law you're secure in Christ if that's what he means he wouldn't have gone to the extent that he does to use the illustration that he uses sure Paul often repeats his arguments in various places using different language but in this instance he's really driving to a and even more significant point we have to be careful not to miss it I think what Paul is writing here brings us back to where we started in the beginning namely that there's a massive chasm between the difference of being in Adam and being who we are in Christ in other words you you by nature as you come into this world you are married to Adam and you continue in Adam until you are married to Christ to use Paul's illustration here that is who we are that is how we are born that is the nature of our relationship we are born into an abusive reckless devastating marriage that we cannot get out of but by the grace of God the old man the old woman dies and then we can be married to Christ the body of sin that that was bought it was brought to to nothing and so now we can walk in the newness of life we belonged to Adam and when we were in Adam we were under the dominion of Adam the dominion of sin the curse of the law but in our union with Christ that old man that old woman was put to death and so now we are free to marry another in other words we died to Adam to be married to him who is raised from the dead our relationship with Adam the first love John Bunyan's language Adam the first and Adam the second our relationship with Adam the first is dead and buried the dominion of power that existed in that marriage with Adam is gone the enslaving bondage that existed in the past has been laid to the grave so now what well now we're married to Christ think of how powerful and freeing that is we had to we have to think about what this marriage to Adam is like and men I know this may be a little more difficult for us to picture because the illustration really is dealing with a wife but the reality is that this is very much the same for us that marriage to Adam was abusive and painful as I said before imagine a woman in a she's living this oppressed life from the very beginning she was dominated she was she was domineered she was crushed that old husband was merciless he he beat her he kept her locked up he kept her enslaved to his every demand she cried out for mercy but mercy was never delivered he showed her no pity there were times that she wondered is there anyone who could free me from this marriage but she couldn't get away it reminds me of if you've read the pilgrims progress is a part where faithful is recounting to Christian that he was on the hill difficulty and as he was ascending the hill he he had just met with Adam the first and as he was walking away he turned around and a man came swiftly and knocked him down and started to beat him and beat him and beat him nearly to his death and then as he had the opportunity he said why are you beating me and the man said I can't stop beating you I have no choice but to beat you I can do nothing other than to beat you and it was when he said who will deliver me from this beating that another man showed up to rescue him and he said it was only when I saw the nail prints on his hands that I knew it was the Lord Jesus and of course the man beating him was Moses representing the law of God continuing to beat him why because his inclination in his heart what he still wanted in his heart was what was found in Adam the first that relationship he had with Adam and so the law comes in every time we look back to that relationship we had with Adam every time we look back to that old abusive marriage to Adam the law comes in and beats us once again and so in Paul's illustration you have this abused woman this wife who's been beaten down but she can't get away this is what the law does it shows no mercy it cannot it is unbending it is merciless it is rigid it is unyielding it is commanding you not to sin and the more you try not to sin on your own the more it beats you down again and again and again and you sin more and more and more it's an impossible situation it's a terrible marriage in every possible way but now brothers and sisters now you're married to Christ and so picture yourself as this this abused broken woman and this man that you were married to who enslaved you who showed you no mercy he has suddenly died and all of a sudden you're free and it's here when you begin to get a sense of what Paul is starting to deal with in the difficulty of holding this proper balance between law and gospel where he begins to show you the challenge of understanding our place in this world as people who are dead to sin and yet who still sin you see the wife is free and in her freedom she meets a man who's the exact opposite of everything she has ever known he is merciful he is kind he is patient he is loving toward her he's not domineering he's not abusive in any way he meets all of her needs and then some he gently and warmly calls her to himself even if she messes up even if she does something wrong he continues to go back to her and bring her near now for a little while perhaps she can't even believe it's true it's really difficult to believe this is even real she might be in a state of shock me this man wants something to do with me i'm not worth this i'm not worth anything in fact all my life all i've ever been told is i'm not worth anything that's what a husband has told me my whole life why then should this wonderful gracious patient loving kind and merciful man want anything to do with me now of course there will be times she's going to revert back to her old relationship there will be times when she she tries to push this new man away keeping him at arm's length but he lovingly persists and he continues to come back to her and eventually he brings her close and says you're married to me now you don't have to be scared anymore i'm not going to do to you what your former husband did and as she makes her way down the aisle she's rightly clothed in white with tears streaming down her face and she arrives to take her new husband's hand and he wipes away her tears and her fears and distrust all fall away she still knows she's not worthy but she also knows that he chose her and he has proven time and time again that he will love her no matter what no matter what and she she looks at her new husband and she knows that old marriage is gone that old man has died those old obligations are finished and upon marrying my new husband i i have been given a new passport into this world i'm now traveling through life under christ my new husband i have a new citizenship i have an entirely new life i've officiated many many marriages at this point in my ministry and sometimes i love to just stop and take notice of how the bride and the groom stand and stare at one another they just look into each other's eyes they fix their gaze upon each other in this new marriage and brothers and sisters that's what we're called to do to look into the face of a husband who married us whose name is the lord jesus christ the reality is that when we are in christ we're leaving a horrible abusive destructive past behind us so there will be times when we forget who we are we will forget who we're married to and what that new marriage has has done for us we'll forget we'll have flashbacks to that old life we won't always believe that this new marriage that we have is is actually real or that it's actually true but he's not going to let us go and he's always going to come back and remind us it is real i do love you you are my bride he's certainly not going to be what his last our our last husband was he will never be that way he loves us onto eternity and that is the privilege this is the christian life all of scripture is a marriage story and in the story you and i belong our lord will keep us he will guide us he will walk with us he will show us grace and strength and peace and forgiveness all along the way it's a story of gober and hosea she continued to run back to this old life she continued to go back to doing the very thing that she was rescued from and yet he goes and he brings her back and he says i love you're my wife i won't let you go back and if you do go back i'll continue to pull you in this is this push and pull we we so desperately in our flesh want to live under the obligations of the law just give me a list tell me what to do tell me how to do it i need to know what it's going to take to please you and our new husband says you don't need to do the things to please me i'm already pleased in you because you're my bride stop trying start living and by the grace that i'm giving to you you will fulfill certain things that i have commanded but not because you think you have to but because you want to because out of love your love for me and my love for you your whole heart is reoriented your desires your longings are all reoriented to bring you into this place where now you can walk in holiness now you can walk in obedience because you want to live in a way that is pleasing to your husband knowing that these are the very things that give you the greatest possible marriage you could ever have and when you know you don't have to do it because you're not going to get slapped upside the face or beaten down to the ground or told you are worthless and no good but now you do them and you hear well done i love you i care for i'm so thankful you continue to walk in faithfulness in this marriage it changes your entire outlook and how you walk through this life and so brothers and sisters as Christians we must always remember who we are in christ if the law is beating you down and beating you down and you have this terrible sense in your heart i'm not loved by god or or there's no way he's actually accepted me or or maybe you think every time you sin you have this image in your mind god is just in heaven and he's so annoyed by you or he's perpetually just so regretful that he ever saved you in the first place you have to stop and ask yourself what am i doing what am i doing i'm assuming my new husband christ is like my old husband Adam you're looking at the old world that Jesus has delivered you from and you need to instead fix your eyes on your new husband Jesus you ever been in a grocery store and someone has their little kid and the kid is just melting down losing their absolute mind throwing themselves on the floor maybe knocking stuff off the shelves and in your mind you're thinking i hate it for you i'm glad i'm not you right and the mom often trying to gather the kid up and rush out of the store because they're they're embarrassed right they don't want to be seen like this what are these people going to think about about what kind of mother i am who would ever have a child who acts like this i promise it's not always like this right they have all these thoughts and all this regret and all of this guilt and i think so often we think of ourselves before the lord as if the lord is like that mother and we're like that screaming child and that he's embarrassed to be seen with us he's embarrassed by the display that we're putting on before the world what are these people going to think about my people and the way they act and the way they treat each other the lord's not like that at all he's not embarrassed he doesn't say you know today you had a really bad day and so i'd appreciate if as you go out into the world you don't tell anybody that we have any relationship to one another now he delights in you and he says this is my child i'm not embarrassed about my child yeah they've got some flaws they've got some difficulties they've got some problems there's some things being worked out by the spirit in their life but i'm not embarrassed by them i love them i died for them i married them and i will keep them forever and ever and ever and the word divorce will never enter my vocabulary now friends perhaps you hear this and you continue to live in a broken destructive relationship with sin and the demands of the law because you don't know christ and so i ask you to look to christ that you might live will you have this man jesus christ to be your husband never again burdened by the powerful and destructive relationship that exists with adam the first jesus christ came into this world to fulfill the law that god demands be fulfilled every one of his laws must be fulfilled to perfection and if you can't keep the law perfectly you cannot dwell in his kingdom if you love me you will do what i command the problem is i've never met even the most hardened sinner who will say to me yeah i'm perfect everyone wants to say it's it's the world's favorite phrase nobody's perfect and we use that as an excuse for whatever we want to do however we want to live but that's the problem right nobody's perfect and since nobody's perfect and that's what god demands we need a remedy and so jesus came and fulfilled the law to perfection in our place and then he died on the cross to take the penalty for us not fulfilling that law to perfection taking all of the wrath of god that's been stored up and reserved for those who are lawless and rebellious against him and poured it out on the lord jesus christ that in that moment in that day on that cross he would suffer more than any man any woman would ever suffer for all eternity in hell and he did it for his people that by faith alone as you trust in him as you have faith in him as you live your life married to him you need not worry about the wrath of god you need not worry about fulfilling all of these things so that he'll be happy with you today and maybe not so happy with me tomorrow but knowing that he's not going to love you anymore or less today than he did the day he saved you or that he will in a million years his love for you is forever and it's all to be yours by faith alone if you do not know the lord jesus christ i commend him to you he's not an unloving abusive husband he is a gracious and merciful savior that says come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and i will give you rest now really i understand it all sounds too good to be true but it's all by the grace of god that not only is it true it is the greatest truth that is available to all who put their trust in the lord and so the question for you friend is can you say i do maybe you've said that already but you're still being beaten down because you're sort of living your life like the israelites did always looking back to egypt i always find it a bit humorous when you hear the words of the israelites they're they're in the desert they're looking back to egypt and they're saying yeah but i know the lord's delivering manna from heaven i know he's pouring water out of rocks but we had leaks in egypt we had leaks i know we were being abused we were enslaved we had to work hard they never gave us any mercy but we got to eat leaks but every time we look back to adam the first every time we go back to this law of rule keeping and and and list checking and every time we look back to our sin we're saying i know the promise land lies ahead but i just want a few more leaks perhaps it's time christian that you renew your vows and remember who you are in christ i often tell my wife i would marry you all over again because i love it so much and that's the kind of focus we need with christ i want my vows to always be fresh with christ i want this reminder to draw me closer to him than ever before that i might walk in love and faithfulness to him all the days of my life and i pray the very same breach and every one of you amen let's pray together lord this great truth of your gospel we pray may it dwell in the hearts of all who hear would we recognize that this is this is not a true word just for those who are outside of christ who we so desperately want to come to christ by faith but it is the word for each and every one of us that we would live by faith trusting the truth of the gospel trusting the implications of the gospel that we are no longer obligated to be what we once were lord help us as your people help us to remember we are united to christ we are citizens of christ kingdom help us lord to never look back longingly to that old life help us to never take a knee next to the corpse of that old dead man or that old dead woman and try to put our our mouths upon it to resuscitate it back to life help us lord to live in the newness of life that is ours and jesus christ alone and when we sin lord we acknowledge we are sinners we will sin against you help us lord as we sin to not hear the lies of the evil one to not be beat down once again by the law but help us to hear the words of our lord to remind us that we are forgiven as far as the east is from the west our sins have been cast off because of the lord jesus christ help us oh god to remember that truth to rest in you that we might enjoy all of the great benefits of being the bride of christ and we ask this all in jesus name amen thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. 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