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On the Epistle to the Romans in chapter seven. The Epistle to the Romans, chapter seven, and verse seven. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. How be it, I have not known sin except through the law. For I had not known coveting except the law had said, thou shalt not covet. But sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the commandment all manner of coveting. For apart from the law, sin is dead. And I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. The commandment which was unto life, this I found to be unto death. For sin, finding occasion through the commandment, beguiled me and through it slew me. So that the law is holy and the commandment holy and righteous and good. Did then that which is good become death unto me? God forbid, but sin that it might be shown to be sin by working death to me through that which is good, that through the commandment sin might become exceeding sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do, I know not. For not what I would, that do I practice, but what I hate, that I do. But if what I would not, that I do, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. For to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I practice. But if what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me. I find then the law that to me who would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity unto the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me out of the body of this dead- death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. May that same Spirit lead us into his holy secrets here this evening. On our last occasion, we were taking a few elementary lessons in the school of holiness. And our task then was to lay hold of God's basic facts and to make sure that we know them. Four basic facts that we are required to know, and if we know them, we shall find them to be four fundamental principles that will help us in our learning how to live a holy life. We were asked to know that our old man was crucified with Christ. That is, those of us who trust Christ, who belong to the Savior, ask to know that our old man was crucified with Christ. Not just a part of us, not the bad part of us, but the whole lot of us, as children of Adam, condemned by God's law as guilty of death, executed, dead and buried, along with Christ. We are to know that because it is the first step in getting quit. We would begin again and live a holy life. We must first be legally quit. We are therefore to know that in Christ we are legally free to start again. Though we are still compassed around with the dead weight of what we have been lead- reading about this evening, sin in the flesh, however many times it leads us to fall, we come back to this basic fact, we are to know that we are legally free and quit, ready always to start again. We are to know also, as a second basic fact, that Christ, having died to sin once, does not die anymore. The death he died, he died to sin once, the life he lives, he lives to God. He doesn't need to die again. His one death covered all the guilt of every sin. The work of atoning for sin is past. Now he lives, lives to share with us his risen life. Therefore, we are to yield ourselves to him. Our members, our emotions, our bodies, our minds, our intellects, and all we have are to be yielded to him. And that reminds us of the third basic fact that we are to get hold of. That if we constantly yield ourselves to obey somebody, it will form a habit, and we shall become slaves of that somebody. If we constantly yield ourselves to sin, we shall become slaves to sin. And that is true of the unconverted, it's true of the converted as well. If as believers we abuse God's grace and constantly yield ourselves to sinning, we become slaves of sin. Why shouldn't I yield myself to sin? For that very reason, that we become slaves to the one we obey. Far better, my brother, to use a lowly metaphor as Paul does, that we learn to yield our members to Christ and obey him. It will form a blessed habit. It will make us slaves of Christ, and being slaves of Christ is to be free. The fourth basic fact we need to get hold of and be sure we know, is that the law holds its grip on everybody until the person under it dies. A married woman, says Paul, is bound to her husband by the law. Of course, if her husband dies, then she's quit of him, but until he, he dies, the law holds her to her husband. Of course, if she dies, then she's quit of him, but they don't always want to do that. And we were held to the law of God. There's no use our saying, oh, what a bad mess I've made of things in the past. I know what, I turn over a new leaf. Oh, but says the law, just a moment, you don't turn over a leaf like that. With all those accounts on them not paid, you can't turn over a leaf like that. What is more, says the law, suppose you do turn over a leaf, what do you propose to do today now the leaf is clean? You're still under my jurisdiction. If you sin today, I shall condemn you again today. Don't just walk out on the law like that. And if they were thus held still by the law, every day would see us condemned and sentenced to the penalty. And our situation would be hopeless, however hard we tried, however spiritually minded we became, however much we wanted to live for God's glory, if we were thus under the law, every day would see us condemned and lost. Oh, what a wonderful fact it is. Get hold of it and know it, that in Christ we have been set free from that kind of legal, uh, arrangement. The law hasn't died, the law is still very much alive. But when Christ died, we died. He bore its sentence and passed from underneath its jurisdiction, so that we're free, free to live life now on a different principle. Not with a law that says to me as I rise each day, Gooding, thou shalt behave one hundred percent perfectly today. If you don't, I shall curse you to the penalty of death. Now that principle would be useless. I'm free to live life on a different principle. What is that? Well, not now a law with a penalty attached, but an affair of the heart with Christ, to be married to Christ, so that I might yield myself to him, that he in me may bring forth fruit to God. So that we might liken these two things to two husbands, the law as a husband, Christ as a husband. Everybody here is married to one or the other. Want a husband to be under the law. Oh, for everlasting exercise, don't do that, and don't do that, and don't do that, and do this, and don't do that. Now look what you've gone and done. Oh, you stupid ass! Don't you imagine that if you are married to Christ, he's going to be less concerned? He's very critical too. What would you think of a husband who didn't care what his wife looked like? And Christ is exceedingly interested in what we look like and how we behave. And he will be constantly saying, no, not that. Oh, please, not that, my dear. That's not how you behave in the family of God. Oh, wow, that was a clanger you dropped just then. You know, we don't behave like that in God. Oh, yes, he'll constantly be at us. He's going to s- turn us, change us from being slaves as once we were, into being veritable princesses. The process will on time be painful, not without much criticism and instruction shall it be done. The difference with Christ is that he loves us already. He never will reject us. And what is more, he has the power to produce in us the very life that his heart is set on. More of that and more. And you will say to me, look here, Mr. Preacher, it's all right you're standing there laboring those great basic facts that we are to know. You say, I know the facts, known them a long time. I know, I know it all. But Mr. Preacher, those facts don't work. It's all right sitting in church and feeling very holy and getting a grasp of the facts, but you get out into the hurly burly of life in the factory and, uh, with difficult workmates and elsewhere, and somehow the facts don't apply themselves, and it all breaks down. And the good I would do, I don't do, in spite of knowing the facts. Well, if that's how you find it, I nearly said you could take courage. For that's exactly what I would expect you to find from having read God's holy word. For did you notice that after that passage in chapter six and the beginning of seven where Paul bids us get hold of these basic facts? He then confess us, confesses to us that even though he knew the facts, there were days when he was plunged in the most bitter of experiences, finding that the good he would do, he didn't do, and the evil he wouldn't do, that he went and did. It happened so often and so much that he had to cry out, oh, wretched man I am. It's like being chained to a dead, decomposing corpse. The old, sinful self. That's a wonderful thing, is God's word. It's very much like a map, isn't it? Suppose you are going on a long journey to some wild country, and you've been motoring along the road, and the road, uh, uh, gives out, and presently it becomes a dirt track and, uh, uh, gets lost with the jungles, and, uh, presently you hear a lion there and see a buffalo there, and you begin to get scared, and say, I think I got off the route. Well, you stop your Peugeot, don't you, and you, um, wind the windows up in case the lions get in, and then you get out the map and you say, now what does the map say? And the map says, by this time you ought to be on a rough road, and there'll be a lion or two there, a- a- and a buffalo there, and jungle. Well, that's not very pleasant, uh, but this is what the map says should happen. Well. Lord, how merciful God is. We who are in the infant's class in the school of His Holiness have before us a map written by one of the senior scholars who went this way and had the honesty to tell us that when he knew these four basic facts, then in spite of it. We found very often that somehow it didn't seem to work. Why not? There are learned theologians who argue about the verses that we now come across in chapter seven, from seven to the end. This wretched experience that Paul describes, this constant struggle inside, wanting to do well and only succeeding in doing ill. They they argue about this, and they say, now, do you think this came after Paul's conversion or before Paul's conversion? And also to come after, surely believers shouldn't be living like this. Perhaps there are some believers who are not living like that. I know a good many who are, and very often I'm included. So if we shouldn't be, we do anyway, some of us. But anyway, let's forget about them, because you will observe where this chapter seven comes, won't you? It doesn't come at the beginning, where Paul is expounding human guilt and showing that everybody is guilty before God and needing a savior. Doesn't come in chapter one, nor yet in chapter two. Doesn't even come in chapter five, where Paul is showing us that because of Adam's sin, the whole race is ruined. Doesn't even come there. Comes in chapter seven, doesn't he? So we won't argue as whether it is true of us before we get saved or after that, it's both. But we shall ask, why does this lesson on sin come right here? Because that's what it is, isn't it? It's another profound diagnosis of sin. Why does it come here? Well, for this reason, that if you would live a holy life, then once more you will have to let God show you at this level the seriousness of the spiritual disease from which you suffer. This is the third level of the diagnosis. Permit me to use an illustration. I have to be careful what I say in the presence of so many medics. But I can imagine somebody whose eyes were becoming a little bit dim. First, he thinks it's the glass, uh, uh, uh, in his glasses, you see, that's wearing thin through much looking through it. And so he goes along to the, to the optician, and he says, oh no, no, no, that isn't that so. You need stronger glasses, that's what you need, all curvy-fied and so on, and pedaling. So that's it. Mm. You see, he says when you get over fifty, your muscles of the eyes get a bit weak, and they don't work as they should, you see, and you need stronger glasses. So he diagnoses the trouble as weakness of the muscle. Good stuff. And he makes the glasses, and you say, yes, a decided improvement, and it lasts about a week, and you say, yes, but it is improved, but I still can't read the tiny print. So presently you, you go back to him, and he has another look, as you see, through the back of your head, like they do with their funny lights, the opticians. Whether they ever did see anything, I never did know. Um, and he says, ah, well, you'll have to go and see the specialist now. I think there's something wrong. And you go to the specialist, and the specialist says, oh yes, that is perfectly true, what the man said, your muscles are weak, but the reason why they're weak is there's something wrong with your bloodstream. Oh. So the first diagnosis was true, muscles weak, but now there's a deeper diagnosis. It's something to do with the bloodstream. So they sent you to the chemist, and you had to buy a bottle of fearful tasting stuff and take it regularly every day to clear out the old bloodstream. And it's a decided improvement. But still it isn't hundred percent right. So you go back to the specialist, and he says, well, I don't know what you have, I'm a little worried about you, and send you to another chap, and he'll saw through a bone or two and take some marrow out and have a look at it, and he looks very solemn, and he says, yes. Hm. No wonder your blood is wrong. Something wrong with your marrow. So now you've had, uh, three diagnoses, all at a different level, and this is now the most profound. You are rotten in your very bones. We have three diagnoses of our spiritual trouble in this epistle, and each one gets deeper. Be wise men and women to listen to God. This isn't just an afternoon tea party being holy. You try and be holy. And there's no permission not to be, but you try and be holy. You will find it a far more difficult thing than you thought. Yes, far more difficult than you thought when you were unconverted. And therefore, two good reasons. As you get to know Christ, and you begin to live with him and in his company, you will become aware that various things are sin that you never knew were sin before. Now, it's all right for me to sit in, in my kitchen eating my peas with my knife. Huh? What? If I go to Buckingham Palace with the Queen, uh, somebody will gently tip my arm and say, no boy, we don't eat our peas with our knife in this establishment. Didn't know that till I got near the Queen, but still. Live near France. You'll find a lot of things that you thought quite clever before, quite all right, he won't approve of. You'll become aware of sin at much deeper level, and what you thought gross sins before, he still counts bad, but he thinks that things that you even prided yourself on hitherto, he counts most deadly sin. Pride, spiritual pride, boasting, bickering, backbiting, envying. And then when in your sorrow and alarm, you try to apply the rules of the four basic facts that you've learned to know, then you discover something else. That the resistance is more deep-seated than you had guessed before. That's why the law was given us. Nothing wrong with the law. Thank God we're no longer under its penalty. But we'd do well to listen to it. For the law was given to expose this thing from which we suffer. Is the law sin? No, indeed not. The law is not sin. But let us speak dishonoringly of God's holy law. Oh, we still need it, don't we? In my library, I got a book on medicine. I expect you have Home Doctor or something. Well, you don't sit reading it every day, believe me, that doesn't make you feel very cheerful. Hmm, no. You go in for positive, healthy living and exercise and eating, don't you? Ha, but the old home doctor is useful. The law is a sin, but it very often provokes you. You see, says Paul, I was alive once without the law, in the sense that the law had never really honed in on me and got under my skin, and I was thinking I was a pretty decent chap. And then one day, the law really spoke to my heart and said, Paul, thou shalt not covet. I said, I won't. And then I found I was. So I said, don't be so stupid, stop it. I couldn't stop it. And I said, it's ridiculous. I mean, I agree with the law, it's right, but still went on. In fact, I did it now more than I did before, says Paul. I like the way he is so candid. Found that sin was stronger than all my knowledge. Or say somebody, Paul, do you think it is, you know, that, uh, God's law, you know, God was perhaps a little bit unwise in setting us a law like that? The, I mean, it stands too high for us ordinary flesh and blood, aren't they? Do you think that that's the trouble, that the law was good, of course, it was very good, but though it was good, it was made death to me because really it was unsuited for the likes of me. Do you think God has been unreasonable? You know how it is sometimes, don't you? Here's a eight-year-old, he's learned his, uh, bit of music from the teacher, you know, fourth division or something, and, uh, he can play it as well. Harmonious blacksmith or something. And, uh, mama's having a party tonight. So eight-year-old's been practicing this, this whole last week, and now he has to stay up to the party to play it to the guests, uh, after dinner, you see. The guests are late and dinner drags on, you know what guests can be, and it's now getting on a quarter to ten, uh, before eight-year-old's got a chance to begin, and eight-year-old at quarter to ten is beginning to behave like eight-year-olds are wont to at that hour. He's kicking a piano and everybody else's shins and making a old, old, old Wallace, and you know, mother says, now come on now, play, and no, he isn't going to, and he's putting his parts on, oh dear me, what a show. Of course, you say, bad boy, you oughtn't behave like that. But then other folks are saying, yes, but what a stupid mum. Keep the boy up at that hour anyway. Play the piano. Do you think God's been like that? Expected too much of us in his law? God forbid, says Paul, God forbid! It's no way to cure our disease, to try and pull down God's standards. We are to be warned as believers, that though we are not under the penalty of the law, we are not supposed to tell ourselves that the law doesn't matter and that we can fall short of it quite merrily, and we don't have to be so honest, and we don't have to be so just, and we don't have to be so pure, and we don't have to be so loving because we're not under law. That is to make our disease worse, isn't it? Yes, we've every right to keep it. No excuse for not keeping it. We shouldn't try to make ourselves feel good by telling ourselves that the law doesn't matter anymore. God has a right to demand the standard. And you say I am a wretched man, you are indeed. For see how sin has ruined and conquered you. There are, so the psychologists tell us, three parts to human personality. There is our intellect, the logical part of our thinking. There are our emotions, our feeling. And then there's a thing that's meant to decide, our will. And Paul has the honesty to confess that as a believer in Christ, who wanted to do God's will, he found that sin had so ruined him. That it simply laughed at both intellect and emotions and will. My intellect, he says, I, I, I, I, with my mind, with my intellect, I serve the law of God. Who wouldn't? In our quieter moments, our intellect tells us that the law of God is right. Not to do it is insanity. Who can listen to our Lord telling us the Sermon on the Mount and not be utterly convinced, yes, that is how I ought to live? Indeed, says Paul, the contemplation of it, I not only agree intellectually with God's law, but if I consider it intellectually, my very emotions are moved, and I delight in the law of God after the inward man, verse forty— th- two. Have you never found it so? Read God's holy law, you read the epistles on how we should behave as Christians, and you say, yes, that's marvelous. Oh, what a wonderful thing we I've been introduced into. Yes, well, that's jolly good. Our emotions move. And then says Paul, you know, I brought my will to bear. I took myself by the scruff of the neck. I said, Paul, now you agree with your mind the Lord is good, and with your emotions you enjoy it and delight in it. Now Paul, now boy, I'm jolly well going to do it. I brought my will to bear, he says, the will is present with me. Intellect, emotion, will. I combined all three, says Paul, in an effort to keep God's law, and all wretched man that I am, I found myself defeated. Sin just rose up and made a mockery of the lot. You You will will know. notice as we've been listening to him, won't you, a very interesting thing. Shows he's saved, actually, doesn't he? He's not excusing himself. Nor is he saying it doesn't matter. Nor is he making excuses for sinning. He doesn't like it, he hates it, it's rotten. You begin to see in him, don't you, the movings of God's Holy Spirit, bringing Paul through this experience until he finds how deep-centered sin is in his makeup, and bringing Paul to hate it. I fancy God does that with all of us on time, does he not? He's done it with you. Oh, I would like to be holy overnight, one hundred percent holy. Who wouldn't? But God sometimes takes longer at it than we do, or would like to. God is going to make us eternally holy. How? He makes us holy by letting us discover how rotten sin is in ourselves, until we're fed up with it, hate it, and abhor it. It's part of the way of becoming holy. You know, I am many, I think stupid in many things. I have sometimes listened to testimony, folks getting, telling how they got saved, you know, and the kind of lives they lived before. And I got saved so young, I found myself saying I didn't have a chance to do all those, those interesting things. Pity I got saved so, so early. I mean, this chap seems to have got the best of both worlds. He had that world, then he got saved, now he's got Christ. Well, yeah, jolly good. It does sound interesting what he got up to. I tell you what, God isn't going to have anybody feeling like that in heaven. Just you imagine, halfway through one of the choirs, if some of us said, half a minute, Lord, want time off. There are certain things, sins we didn't get the time to do down on earth. We just want time off to do them, and then we'll get converted again. Of course not. Being holy means being utterly convinced that what God says is evil, is evil, and learning to, learning to hate it with all our being. But we shall discover that merely knowing the facts, those great glorious facts that we have considered together, in itself, knowing the facts won't bring us relief and victory. What will? Why, as we all know, chapter eight is about to tell us, the way of release, the way of victory is by God's gracious, powerful Holy Spirit. Who can come alongside and exert his unseen, silent, but exceedingly real power around my weakness? And in the very moment where I should fall left to myself, he may exert his holy power, infuse and invigorate me with the life of Christ himself, cause me to overcome. Oh yes, we know about the Holy Spirit, of course we do. But you see, if Paul's experience is true of us all. We shall learn to lay hold of the power of God's spirit in proportion as we have discovered our own impossible weakness. But it very often happens that we get saved and we know now we're forgiven, and uh, yes, we have eternal life, and we're going home to heaven, and the Lord gives us this and that victory in our lives, and our lives are cleaned up a bit. Yes, we attribute it with our lips to the power of God, but presently, even without thinking about it, we are thinking, yes, I am pretty decent now. Compared with how I used to be. Look at me. How well I'm doing. What progress I'm making. And if we go on thinking like that, we're in for a very big shock. The flesh in us is as bad as ever it was. Like the old Canaanites in their stronghold in the Promised Land when the Israelites came in. Ha ha. Sometimes the Ca- the Israelites came with their sharp swords, and in the power of the Lord they cut the heads off a number of Canaanites, and the rest of the Canaanites ran away, and the Israelites said, hurrah, hurrah, we've won now, we've got the victory. Well, so they had in a way, but all that had happened was the Canaanite had run around the corner and got in one of his strongholds and was looking out at the windows, you know, saying all sorts of things he shouldn't. But these Israelites, imagine they're thinking they've got the victory, we're here still. And I have to find that what God says is true, that even as a believer in me. That is in my flesh. It was no good thing. My flesh is no better now than it was forty years ago when I first trusted Christ. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be of its own strength. It's as I begin to take God seriously and believe it, because I have discovered it in experience, that I shall turn to there alone my resort even, and learn to rely in actual practice each moment on God's Holy Spirit. At least we can pick out the major things from chapter eight, can we not? And first of all, let us notice, shall we? Our relationship as believers with the Holy Spirit, Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, who sets us free from the law of sin and death. What is our relationship with him? You look at chapter eight verse nine. It says this, but you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you. You are in the Spirit if the Spirit is in you. Oh, what a wonderful thing. It's not merely that he comes alongside to help me, that is true. But, says this verse, I'm in him. And he is in me. What you mean, I am in the spirit? I am not in the flesh. The one thing I'm sure of, we shouldn't underestimate what the verse is saying. There is a great mystery about human personality. Who am I? Who am I? What am I? The I. My foot me? Well, in a sense. Yeah, if you stand on my foot, I say, hell no, you're hurting me. Yeah, well, in a sense, that's me, isn't it? My foot. Well, then that's a part of my body. The real me. Not even my brain, is it? I can, I expect you can too. The sort of, uh, look at yourself, can't you, say, cool my, I'm feeling angry now. Hm, I better get away from this chap here, I was to give him a bit of my mind. You can feel the old emotion coming up, can't you? And you make a distinction between that and you. Yeah. I'm losing my temper. Just like you say, I've lost my dog, so I've lost my temper. Yeah, do you notice what you're saying? There's an I there, isn't there? That profound, wonderful thing. That is the real you. Listen, if you are not saved, that you has its roots in the flesh, that fallen humanity with which you were born. It will be with you eternally if you, if you go on like that. And will advance to greater and greater corruption. Until you pass from life into eternity, there as God has you, to perish. Oh, terrible word. To be a something that once was human. Now ruined. Because of the fall. A bit of humanity. Was once a man, a woman, but would you call it a man or woman now? It's perished. Exists yet. But perished, perverted, lost. Loss. Do you know what happened when you first trusted Christ and agreed with God to be united with Christ? Agreed with God that, uh, you should, so to speak, share the very death of Christ, be buried with him. The roots that bound you to that flesh were. And you are not now in the flesh. The real you is rooted in God's Holy Spirit. All our miles, a new ground of being, rooted in the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit himself surging through you. You in him, he in you. Both at the point same time, you know. There are some folk, dear folks, who, who think it's possible for a Christian to be in the Spirit and yet not to have the Holy Spirit in them, and so they seek to get baptized. But this verse tells us that if you are in the Spirit, the Spirit is in you. You can't have one without another. That doesn't mean you are, well, it does mean you are not any longer in the flesh. You is no longer rooted in that old fallen nature. You are in the spirit. That old fallen flesh is still there, though. What we've got to do about it, we shall see in a moment. That our relation then with God's spirit, we are in him and in us. Oh, source of guarantee, not only of our eternal security, but of our triumph in holiness. You say, well, what will the implication of that be for my body? You know, my physical body, 10 toes, two legs, two eyes, ears, and all that kind of thing. What is the implication for my body if I'm now a believer and the real I is in the spirit? Does that mean that my body is going to be cured of all its illnesses, rheumatisms, gout, and everything else, and I can claim whole, uh, healing whenever I get ill? No, it doesn't. I tell you quite straightly and frankly, it doesn't. And you'll save yourself a lot of heartache if you, if you decide to believe God and not bore yourself up with hopes that God does not give. If the spirit is in you, the body, your physical body, is dead because of sin. Not one hundred percent dead yet. But on the way to becoming that, isn't it? I'm not frightening you, but it is the fact. You might as well face it, my dear brother, my dear sister. You needn't be afraid of it. You are in God's spirit. You shall live eternally. Your body is dead, on the way actually to die, isn't he? Cool, look at my hair or the absence of it, and the way I get the gout and all those uncountable things and walk hoddily sick, uh, and all that, and you get your migraines and somebody else has bronchitis. Yes, of course he is. Because God's sentence has been passed on our bodies, and if the Lord doesn't come, we shall all die. You have observed, haven't you, in spite of some folks, what they say, and that there are folks around with very great faith, I'm sure. There isn't a believer living over one hundred and fifty, is there? The Lord doesn't come. We die. Oh yes, God does sometimes, miraculously, I have known such cases. He does, when it pleases him, miraculously renew our bodies for the time being. You know, there was one man, his name was Lazarus. God renewed his body in a spectacular fashion and brought it out of the grave after he'd gone to corruption. Did you know Lazarus died? Oh yes. We have no need to buy ourselves up with false hopes. If the spirit be in us, the body is dead. It remains a mortal body, subject to death, will always be a mortal body until that great day that's coming, when the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, the dead in Christ shall rise, and we which are alive and remain shall be changed and caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. Great power that shall make that change. Do you know that power is already in you? It is God's Holy Spirit that shall affect that change, the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus. He already is in your mortal bodies. You say then, why doesn't he, why doesn't he, ha, why doesn't he make my body immortal now then? For one very good reason. I said on an earlier night that being saved doesn't turn us into machines. Being rooted in God's Holy Spirit doesn't destroy our personalities, doesn't make us machines. What God is going to do is to make us holy by his grace and power, but by our decision. I once, I once was in a home, it was in Belfast. I won't tell you whose home it was, and I'm not telling tales out of school because the man whose home it was, he's now miles from here. Wow he is. And in this home, I was talking theology with this good man, and in come a d- came a dear lady with a morning coffee, and the way he talked to her and the way she quivered in her shoes, I thought it was a, a maid getting off a slave. Found out after she was his wife. Poor woman. What being married to him had done for her, that hadn't developed her personality, made her some downcast slave. Who you may be sure that God's Holy Spirit will never do that with you. And present you one day to Christ as a bride adorned for her husband, vigorous, lively, developed, rounded, fulfilled personality. Christ doesn't want slaves for his bride. Because of that, the Holy Spirit is not going to learn our lessons for us, but empower us to learn the lessons. Not going to do our work for us, but will empower us to do the work. And in order to build in decision into our characters and value, he leaves us in this fallen weak body with that old fallen nature around us still, and says, now look here, the lesson is that you and me learn to deny that flesh, learn to put it to death. That is all that is wrong, that is evil, say no to it. You've got to fight it. Won't disappear overnight, any more than the Canaanites, the wicked old souls, ran away when they first saw- caught sight of Joshua. No, they didn't. They came out and fought. And sometimes the Israelites, by God's power and grace, fought them, and sometimes they didn't. Sometimes the Israelites grew tired and they married them instead. We have got to learn to mortify the deeds of the flesh in the power of that Holy Spirit. Say, why should I? Because that's the way to life. The old fallen flesh is the thing that, uh, restricts us. We would live. We must put that to death. What happens if we don't? What happens if, as a believer, in the spirit, I nevertheless give in to the flesh and walk according to the flesh and indulge the flesh? Well, says Paul, if you do that, you'll die. You must die. Now, please let us notice what man means. Doesn't mean to say that we shall be lost. There is no condemnation for them that are in Christ. No condemnation. But I say, there are consequences, aren't there? It's very important that we get hold of this very clearly, the difference between condemnation of sin and consequence of sin. It's sinful to get drunk, isn't it? Therefore, if I will drink methylated spirits before breakfast every day, and for lunch as well, and night times as well, that is a sin. Yes. The law has a penalty. Suppose Suppose God. God has saved me from doing such foolish things. I trusted Christ. Then there is no penalty for getting drunk. Oh, but my brother, if because there's no condemnation, no penalty, I carry on drinking methylated spirits before breakfast every day, then no penalty, but I shall reap the consequences. Even though I'm a believer, I shall ruin my stomach, I shall send myself out of my mind, I shall get the delirium tremens, and goodness knows end up in a wretched grave, I shall indeed. We are delivered from the penalty of sin, not from its consequences. Consequences. And, says Paul, if you believers in the Spirit, if you continue to walk after the Spirit, you'll reap the consequences. A thin, weak, feeble spiritual life. Buckets of tears and sorrows and dishonor and shame, not only on yourself, but on the Savior you profess to follow. No. We're in the spirit, then let God lead us by his spirit. Constantly lead us. Oh, what a delightful thing his leading is. Comes alongside to lead us. He, he first of all assures us of our security as children of the Father. He witnesses with our spirit that we're children of God, makes us be determined, and begins to banish fear, slavery. I take the time to say it. My dear young folks, if you ever find what you think is the Holy Spirit in you, driving you, making a slave of you, and all sorts of fears that drive you to do this and drive you to do that, please remember that is not God's Holy Spirit. There could be a slight psychological disorder that isn't God's Holy Spirit. He doesn't fill us with that kind of fear and dread. He doesn't make slave. He makes us aware that we're God's freeborn children. But he will stay alongside because he wants us to grow up as sons. And from being babies in the family of God, he's going to make us grow according to God's plan, till we have been conformed to the very image of God's son. And then what? Ah, when we've gone through school, and we've grown up, we've become adult sons of God with the very character of God written upon us, then God shall let us out of school. Of course he will. The Savior will come to give us new bodies. And the Savior is going to take the creation around us and free it from its frustration and groaning, and give us God's great universe to rule for God as his grown up sons and daughters. What a marvelous salvation it is. The Lord give us the grace. For us to thank him ever and constantly remember what he has done in giving us his Holy Spirit and putting us in that Holy Spirit. The Lord teach us the practical wisdom every day to learn more and more to rely on that Holy Spirit. So that by his prayers, by his empowerment, he may lead us step by step by step, until he has conformed us to Christ's image and brought us home to the Father's house. We pray. Father, for these wonderful things now humbly and gratefully we praise thee. Oh, what a glorious God thou hast shown thyself to be. How majestic are thy purposes. How infinitely generous thy grace. How breathtaking are those vistas of perfection and delight and joy and living that thou hast opened up to us who know thy son. We thank thee for thy divine purpose. Whom thou didst foreknow, thou didst predestinate to be conformed to the image of thy son. Whom thou didst predestinate, them also thou didst call, those thou didst call, them hast thou justified. Them thou hast justified, thou hast glorified. We praise thee, Lord, for the desires thou hast wakened in our hearts. Not for heaven as some old people's retiring home, but for heaven as that great goal of living, that perfect sonship that we shall then enter in, to be like thy son, to be troubled no more by the battle against sin. Yet, O Lord, in these moments we have learned enough not to trust in the strength of our own desires. We have found them too often will of the worst. And in these moments, as we quieten our hearts, listen, we beseech thee, to the voice of thy Holy Spirit, whom with incalculable grace thou has placed in our hearts and personalities. Hear his longings and yearnings and breathings and groanings arise from our hearts by his grace, as he strives to bring us along the path thou hast marked out. O God, what it is that he wills, by thy grace we would will. Though we know not what we should pray for, hear his prayers within us, and answer them according to the great tides of thy divine power and grace. We might walk the more firmly led of thy spirit from this moment onwards, without faltering step along that path, till the time comes when all our prayers and wishes are turned to reality, and we see Christ and our life for thy name's sake.