THE APOSTLE IS NOT ANTI-LAW

THE APOSTLE IS NOT ANTI-LAW.

The Living Word — Bishop M. Hector
Main Scripture: Romans 7:7–13

Good afternoon.

Wonderful to be with you yet again as we take a look at God’s Word and all of what it entails, what it can do for us, how it can keep us away from doing the things that are wrong—those things that are offensive to God because of God’s holiness.

And God has called us to be holy as He is holy, and so we must be imitators of Christ by walking the walk and talking the talk.

We are going to pray at this time.

Father, in the precious name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, we come to You yet another time, recognising You for being who You are and for all of what You can achieve in our once downtrodden lives.

Father, we are so ever grateful to You for what You have achieved in us, unworthy as we all are.

I’m asking You, dear Lord, to allow Your precious Holy Spirit to touch each and every listener today and help them to become more conscious of what You are saying to them individually, because there is something for all of us as individuals.

Lord, hear my prayer and be merciful unto us miserable offenders.

Let Your Word continue to cleanse us and heal us, deliver us, that we may live and enjoy this present life that You have given to us.

And when this precious life is over, when we leave this earth and all of its earthly problems, we will recognise that we are where You want us to be, and that’s where we’ll remain and reign with You for all eternity when You say that it’s time.

So cause us today, dear Father, to be humbled before You, to be disciplined, and to know this is Your will for us through Your Son, my Lord and our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Romans 7:7–13

Reading from verse seven of chapter seven of the Book of Romans to thirteen:

“What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin but by the law.

For I had not known lust, except the law had said, ‘Thou shalt not covet.’

But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.

For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death.

For sin, taking occasion by the commandment deceived me, and by it slew me.

Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.

Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid.

But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.”

Quite a mouthful there.

And we need to realise and to know that the Apostle Paul was not at all being critical of the law by these words that I’ve just read concerning the law and those who are to keep it.

He mentioned that all believers are dead to sin and dead to the law, and this might have created the wrong impression that the law in itself was evil, was something that wasn’t godly.

But this is not the case where the Apostle Paul is writing in the Book of Romans.

We need to realise the importance of the law, which was once so important to the Apostle Paul that that is all he chose to want to live by, to gravitate to.

And that all took place before he came into a personal relationship with your Lord and Saviour and mine, the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s sad that so many people embrace things that they do not understand.

The Apostle Paul—he was on the wrong path, but he was about to meet the God who is on the right path, to help him to realise even more than he could dare to anticipate.

As much as he was taught in the things of the law, he was one who prided himself in being a law keeper, a Pharisee, circumcised the eighth day, both parents were Jews, et cetera.

And he goes on to give what seems to be a boastful event of who he was before Christ came into his life.

So he now comes to the point in his life where he is wonderfully saved, and he sees the law in itself—that it is not sinful.

But, as again and again we have to realise, the law comes to give us an open eye, an open mind, so that sin can be revealed in man.

That’s what the law was given for, so it can reveal what sin is.

It was the law that brought Paul to a place where he could be convicted of his terrible heart’s depravity.

He was depraved because he felt righteous in himself.

Like so many people who go to church, they become self-righteous. Not God, but in themselves.

The flesh is telling them, “You’re better than other people. You compare yourself to other people. You’re better than they are. You are a respectable person.”

That’s how he felt. That’s how he behaved.

And there are some we come across in our daily lives, or even in our church lives, that seem to give off that air of superiority.

I must add to you, as far as I’m concerned, as a Christian, as a person who knows God, no person is better than I am.

No person is better than you are, irrespective of what they have, their background, their family riches and all of these things that say that they’re important because they have this kind of air about them—and that you’re a nobody.

Let’s not accept that type of person, but let’s refute it so that we know that irrespective of their being rich or successful in this present world, they appear, as the Apostle Paul appeared in himself, to think that he is more respectable.

But when the law’s demands came clearly known to him, it convicted him, because it has that power.

And he, as a result, as a man seeing his depraved condition, he became speechless. He didn’t know what to say.

Like some people, he felt condemnation because he wasn’t all he made out to be.

And there are people like that today.

And we’ve got to understand, some people, they may be in the church, but the mindset, their spirits are not transformed to now being a new creation.

They still behave in that pompous and proud way as if, “There’s nobody else like me. Look at me. Do you know who I am?”

God’s body is not like that.

So when people come across you like that, you know and I know, you don’t have to have that spirit of discernment. You know instinctively they are not what they’re supposed to be.

Thou Shalt Not Covet

That tenth commandment, as we read in verse seven, it says:

“Thou shalt not covet.”

The latter part of verse seven: “Thou shalt not covet.”

Covet—what do you mean?

That’s the tenth commandment that comes in Exodus 20. That’s the last of the ten that is written there.

Covetousness.

What does it mean?

It’s talking about the effects of wanting what is not yours.

There’s a lot of people that covet, and the Ten Commandments say, “Don’t covet your neighbour’s wife, his livestock, or anything that belongs to your neighbour. Don’t covet it.”

So that means you have that selfish desire in you that you want what they have, and it causes you to be greedy because you’re not satisfied with whatsoever you have.

How sad.

You know that God gives to all men as He chooses, and I may not have what the next person has. They may have much more than me.

So does that mean I’ve got to covet?

Does that mean I’ve got to become so selfish and so driven that I will think, “Well, okay, I should have that. Why have they got it and I have not?”

We need to take a rain check.

We need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves, “Well, why should I think that way?”

And don’t think because people are in church they don’t have that kind of thought.

Some do.

They’re covetous.

They envy you.

They have a selfish kind of mentality that no one else should have what you have except them.

And these are the people I will ask you to steer clear of.

God have mercy, because we’re dealing with real people here.

Let’s keep our feet firmly on planet Earth, because in dealing with real people, you begin to pick up and to understand that irrespective people may, in brackets, claim to be with Jesus, they still have some evil tendencies.

“Thou shalt not covet.”

It’s an active trait that’s in the mind.

And you see some people looking at you strangely sometimes, and you don’t understand what it’s all about.

It’s because they may be seeing you being successful and they are not, and they don’t like it.

I know what I’m saying.

And you will see those little traits, even though you and I may not understand at that specific time.

But here is what the tenth commandment in Exodus 20:17 says:

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.”

And yet, it’s there.

The law strictly forbids it.

But guess what?

Where a law is, people will feel, “I can flout it and I can go beyond because I’m being dared here to do something that I know that I shouldn’t do.”

It’s like the child sees a cookie jar and Mum may have said, “Do not eat the cookies out of the cookie jar.”

But as soon as Mum’s not there, guess what?

The very thing that Mum had told the child, “You must not do.”

Come on, we were children once.

You find yourself taking a sneak look to see as to whether or not Mum is out of eyesight, and there goes your little sticky fingers.

And you take your cookie, you eat it and you try to brush away the crumbs.

But we were children; now we’re adults. We know all those tricks.

But our parents were young ones too, and they see and they know these little tricks.

We think they were born adults.

No, they were born as children.

And because of their being children at one point, at one stage in their lives, now that they’re adults, they know every trick in the book.

And that’s why they catch us out.

Do not covet.

What is your neighbour’s, thank God that they’ve got it.

Don’t become envious and begin to look with that kind of—the term “red eye.”

“That should be mine.”

No, it’s not yours, and it will never be yours.

So we need to take that and allow that to help us.

Being covetous is wanting to possess something that’s not yours in excess—your selfish desire for that which is not yours, that envy.

So you become resentful to others who have what you don’t have, and you may never get it.

That greed, that selfish desire.

You become avaricious, and that is saying you’re covetous and you love money.

I have never seen anything like this in all my life, how some Christians—excuse me for coining this phrase—they are “crumbsy.”

They want everything.

And if you’ve not heard that term before, yes, they are crumbsy.

Every little thing they want.

It’s like the child eating the biscuit or something that’s nice. You drop a bit, a crumb, and you see that child.

You’ve done it and I’ve done it.

You take time to pick up that little crumb off the plate or on the saucer and you eat it because you don’t want it to finish.

It’s too good to finish.

Some people are like that, even though they may be adults.

Some declare that the status that they should have—you have got it and I want it.

Does that ring any alarm bells?

It should.

Watch people.

Don’t walk with your head buried down.

Let’s be practical.

God is practical.

Let us be real, because we are dealing with other human beings just as we are.

So whether or not you’re in church or you’re out of church, whether you love God or you hate God, saved or unsaved, people are still people.

The only difference is some people in the church, they hide behind what should be the blood-stained banner.

But listen—the mask will slip.

The Mind Is a Battlefield

There are so many thoughts that may invade your mind and mine.

The thoughts that invade my mind and yours—even sometimes you’re in church—those ungodly thoughts.

And the Apostle Paul, in his wisdom, brings through the reality of such, and he identifies such that were in his life.

You and I who are alive must also accept and recognise that the mind has been, and still is, a battlefield.

And there’s so many battles that have been fought there in our minds because you and I understand that our minds are continuously under satanic attack.

The enemy wants to trip you up.

He wants to bring you down.

Guard your mind against any sort of pleasure, or that word concupiscence.

He’s saying pleasure, sexual encounters, from clouding your mind, because these things can destroy you.

They can start as a thought and you reap an act.

In reality, if it goes into your mind too much and you do not put it under the blood, it will get the better of you and I.

Because the mind can wander.

You know it and I know it.

Let’s be honest.

Irrespective of you being saved and I’m saved, these things are there to bring us down.

Resist that temptation of being drawn into a world of lust.

Don’t live in Fantasy Island.

You’re living in cuckoo land, fairy tale.

Don’t fantasise.

The law in itself forbids it.

However, although the law forbade it, it could not give man the power to overcome those thoughts, those sinful thoughts.

And we all have them.

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief—we all have them.

Because it is forbidden, then we find that fallen nature which dwells within man—it’s hereditary—desires to engage into the forbidden things that are there of the law.

Proverbs 9:17 tells us:

“Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”

So we see that stolen water is sweet, number one, and the food that is eaten in secret is delicious.

And what does that mean?

It means, in today’s day and age, that proverb is saying doing wrong feels like being fun.

It brings excitement.

The blood races.

Adrenaline rush.

Because it is hidden, so you feel okay.

The excitement is nobody knows.

Hey, you’re wrong.

God knows.

He’s watching.

It’s hidden and it’s forbidden because we feel nobody knows.

But surprise, surprise—God knows.

And someone else may have seen, unknown to you and I.

“Oh no,” you say.

Let’s be careful.

Be careful, little eyes, what you see.

Be careful, little ears, what you hear.

For the Lord God above is looking down in tender love.

Be careful, little eyes, what you see.

Are you being careful?

Well, if you are, you won’t be tripped up quite easily.

What the Law Reveals

So apart from the law—without the law, rather—to you and I, sin is very dead.

Because there is no law, our natures are dormant. They are sleeping as a sleeping dog.

So when the law finally arrives now and declares, “Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not, or else this is the repercussion of your actions,” that dog that is sleeping, that lies dormant—guess what?

It becomes alive.

And it comes alive because the mind now is touched to know that the law is there.

And guess what?

Because it’s put there as a restraining factor, that dog becomes crazy and excessive and takes on what is forbidden because the law is there and saying, “Leave it alone.”

Can you see how much we are in need of that which is of God by His Spirit?

The law cannot do it.

It tells us what we shouldn’t do, but it hasn’t got the power to help us to keep away from certain things.

We were children.

Perhaps, though you’re an adult, maybe going on in age, you’re still behaving like you’re a child.

I’m glad because the Apostle Paul said in First Corinthians chapter 13:

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I behaved like a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

So you drop those because now you are maturing.

And so we see there that the evil desire that comes upon us, that spirit that is coveting what the law says, “Leave it alone.”

That nature—your nature and mine—becomes swollen, it becomes inflamed, it becomes sore because of what’s going on within us.

Sin begins within, and then it becomes visible on the exterior.

And so man’s corruption is all because the law is saying, “Don’t do that.”

We need to understand that apart from the law, sin is dead.

Because where there is no law, then sin is not seen to be sin.

And we need to be convicted by the Apostle Paul, who was alive.

And he says his sinful nature was always sleeping at that time, being ignorant of all of the sin that was in his heart—the iniquity.

But now, when the commandment comes on the scene, it crushes him and causes him to become convicted that his sinful nature is not what it should be.

How about you?

The more we were trying to live godly outside of Christ, outside of salvation—going to church, et cetera, and trying to live a respectable life—the more we failed.

I hope you can identify with that.

We were trying, but on our own we couldn’t live it.

As far as any hope of salvation, our characters could not bring that into being.

Our efforts were hopeless.

They were futile.

So Paul is saying he died to any thought of his own goodness.

He didn’t possess it.

Neither do you or I.

So let’s face the facts here.

If you have a dream that through the law you can be cleared, justified by keeping the law, you’re wrong.

The Law Could Not Save Paul

The commandment was meant to bring life.

As verse 10 tells us, it was meant to bring life.

It actually brought to him death.

So instead of bringing life, the commandment or the law brought death because there was no hope for the Apostle Paul, as far as he was concerned, outside of Christ to receive salvation.

The law couldn’t save him.

And he had to come to that point in his life where he understood:

“The law could not save me.”

This is where Jesus Christ comes in.

And I trust that you’re taking on board to know that Jesus is the only answer.

He has the remedy, the serum, the balm, the healing to save us.

Question is, though, do you really want to be saved?

Or are you happy with just being simply a churchgoer?

So when he’s saying the commandment was to bring life, Paul looks back, and we can see that in the Book of Leviticus chapter 18.

Look at that briefly.

Leviticus chapter 18, and we see what the Apostle Paul was pointing to in Leviticus chapter 18 and verse 5.

This is what he says there:

“Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgment, which if a man do, he shall live in them.”

God says, “Keep my commandments, keep my laws, keep my judgment, and if a man can do that, he shall live in them.”

And He ends up by saying:

“I am the Lord.”

God said that.

Ideally, life was promised here by the law to those who were able to keep it.

But again, it was impossible for the Jews to keep the Torah or the law in its entirety.

Are you seeing something here?

And yet people will be trying to convict you and convince you that you can be a law keeper and you can live that way.

No, you can’t.

I keep saying, and I’ll keep forever saying it: you break one of the laws, you’ve broken them all.

This Is Where Grace Comes In

This is where grace comes in.

Hallelujah!

I’m glad that I’m under grace and not under the law because I would have been a dead man a long time ago.

My bones would have bleached somewhere in some grave somewhere, if they cared to bury me.

But because I’m under grace—hallelujah—grace is saying:

“What the law could not do, I have achieved it.”

So outside, we can look as if everything is nice and glossy and good.

But let’s stand back and take a closer look at ourselves and see that to be under the law and to disobey the law, then we find it’s going to end with this death.

Because that’s what the law is saying:

“If you don’t do this, you will die.”

But we see that the emphasis is not supposed to be that the law can do this.

Remember, Paul is not anti-law.

He’s not against the law.

But he’s trying his best to explain as much as he could because he lived, as a Jew, as a kosher Jew, under the law.

But he’s saying:

“I couldn’t allow the law to do everything for me because the law didn’t have the power. I read it, I understood what it was saying, but there was not that in me that I was able to keep the law.”

How about you today?

And I dare say, as with you, as with me, since we’ve come to Christ, that we have messed up at different times.

But thank God that we’re not under the law.

Hallelujah!

So the law itself was not to be blamed for all of the wrongs we are doing, because the wrongs that we were doing was our indwelling sin that incites us to do those things that the law is saying, “Thou shalt not,” or that the law prohibited.

And sin was there to trick us into doing that which Adam did by eating the forbidden fruit.

“Oh, it’s not so bad after all.”

You know how the devil comes and talks to us?

“Oh, it’s not so bad. You do it. Go on. You’ll be all right. You’ll get away with it. Nobody will know.”

Oh yes, they will.

You will know and God will know.

And we realise that conscience is a thing that can trouble us.

And God does not want to withhold good things from you.

That’s how the devil tricked the man and the woman.

“Oh, God, He knows. If you eat of this, you’ll be like Him.”

And he really strung them along with a nice tune.

He could play that violin beautifully.

And boy, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, it can attract and cause you to fall into error.

So sin killed Paul.

And that’s what kills—sin.

Sin killed him in the sense that it brought death to all of his hopes of deserving, or being able to earn, salvation.

You see, because the law could not do such a thing for Paul.

The Law Is Holy, Just and Good

Remember that the law, as verse 12 tells us, is holy.

Its commandment is holy and just and good.

So we must be reminded that there’s nothing wrong with the law that is given by God.

God gave it.

It is perfect.

It’s an expression of what God wants for His people Israel at that time.

But the weakness of the law was in the material that it had to work with.

It was given to people who were already sinners.

They were sinners.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

They needed the law, and the law gave them that knowledge of what sin was.

And we know what sin is today.

But beyond all of that, they needed Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, the Saviour of the world, that they should be delivered—that you and I could be delivered from the penalty and the power of sin.

So the law is good.

It is good.

And it is there, as in verse 12, to show us that the law is holy, the commandment is holy, just and good.

We know that.

And verse 13 again comes up to reinforce that.

So the law—did it become death to me?

Is the law at fault here?

No.

The law is not at fault.

It’s the sin that is within me that dooms me and dooms the other person, as the Apostle Paul is saying.

So the answer is: the law is not to be blamed.

The law is not the culprit.

The law did not bring sin in originally.

It was man’s sinful nature that responded to the serpent, and the law that is holy forbids man to disobey.

May God help us today.

Sin, through the commandment, it is there, and it becomes exceedingly sinful.

What Are We Going to Do?

What are we going to do?

Realise this as I come to a close today: that the law is spiritual, or that the law is holy in itself, and it’s there to be used to help man’s spiritual benefit.

But we also must understand that man is fleshly, carnal, and that man is not experiencing the victory over the power of indwelling sin in your life or mine.

We’re all human beings.

We all struggle because man is sold under sin.

But listen:

We are no longer slaves to sin, because what the law could not do, grace has done.

By grace are you saved, not of works, lest any man should boast.

It’s the gift of God.

You can’t earn this.

Some feel by doing good works that you’ll earn God’s favour.

No.

You can be unsaved, ungodly, a non-believer, and you can in turn be doing good deeds.

But good deeds don’t get you to heaven, as some believe.

It is your confession and my confession of our faith that fits us for heaven.

Not the law, but grace.

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You today for allowing us this opportunity, whereas we can understand how much we need Your grace and how good and holy the law was and still is, but it could not deliver us from the power of sin.

Thank You for the blood.

And there may be those that are listening today, and I ask You, dear Lord, to apply the blood to their lives and deliver them from the shackles of sin and cause them now to come out from under the curse.

Because when You see the blood, You’ll pass over.

Comfort them.

Strengthen them.

Deliver them.

Anoint them.

And help them to walk in the newness of life.

Thank You, dear Lord, for hearing and answering prayer.

And if you agree, wherever you are, say Amen.

Receive it.

Believe it.

And the work is done.

Thank you for listening to NS Live Spiritual Radio, and long may you continue to listen and to feel that God is leading you in the right direction by His Holy Spirit.

Until we meet again, wherever you are, whoever you are:

Shalom.

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The Living Word Podcast