A Reading from the book of Zechariah 9:9-12
A Reading from the book of Psalms 145: 1-21
A Reading from the book of Romans 7:21-8:6
The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew 11:25-30
A Sermon by Dr Rev Pastor Jimmy
Transcription:
You may be seated this morning. This weekend we celebrated our Independence Day right yesterday and the 250th anniversary or birthday anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Now throughout the weekend Americans have remembered the courage, the sacrifice, and the perseverance that gave birth to our nation.
I made my kids watch the Patriot yesterday. Yeah, yeah they're nine now so they're mature. I wanted them to know freedom ain't free.
But one of the greatest threats to the American Revolution did not come on the battlefield. It came after the war was nearly won. In the spring of 1783 the British had effectively been defeated.
The surrender at Yorktown had taken place nearly two years earlier and peace negotiations were underway. Victory was in sight. Yet in Newburgh, New York, and this has been called the Newburgh conspiracy, something dangerous was happening.
The officers of the Continental Army had gone months, in many cases years, without receiving their promised pay and they had sacrificed their farms, their businesses, their health, and many had buried friends along the way. And so frustration slowly turned into resentment. Anonymous letters began circulating throughout the camp urging the officers to stand against Congress and some even proposed using the army itself to pressure the new government by force.
Think about the irony. After surviving years of attacks from the British Army, the greatest danger to the Revolution was no longer outside the camp. It was inside the camp.
And so on March 15th, 1783 General George Washington entered a meeting with these frustrated officers and he appealed to their honor, their sacrifice, and the fragile future of the nation they had fought to create. And near the end of his remarks he reached into his pocket and quietly pulled out a pair of reading spectacles. Many of his officers had never seen him wear glasses before and as he unfolded them he apologized and said, gentlemen you must pardon me for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.
The room fell silent. Many hardened by years of war were moved to tears. The conspiracy had been dissolved.
A potential military coup had vanished and the Revolution survived because the battle within the camp was overcome. Now history teaches us something profound. Sometimes the greatest danger is not the enemy outside.
Sometimes the greatest battle is the one inside. And this is precisely what Paul is teaching us in the book of Romans. We know that Paul has spent the last seven chapters explaining the gospel, that Christ has died for sins, that we are justified by faith, and that we have peace with God and we have been united with Christ in his death and resurrection.
And yet there's still a war. There's still a war not merely around us. Paul says it is within us.
It's within us. Paul writes, I delight in the law of God in my inner being but I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind. Now notice what Paul is saying here.
He's not just saying another, you know, a difference of opinion or two thoughts. He uses the phrase waging war. In the Greek that word he uses is painting a picture that there is a complete and total separate force, a military operation that is taking place against the law of his mind.
That it's not just that he has different thoughts, that he has an entire war, a military installation that is attacking him, that is created for the sole purpose of conquering his mind. Paul is describing an invasion and not merely bad habits that he's trying to break, that there is an invasion taking place in his mind. And it's created to overcome him.
This is not simply poor choices. This is the lingering power of sin, seeking to reclaim territory that Christ has already conquered. This is the work that we know sin does in our lives and because of that many Christians become discouraged because they assume that once they come to Christ they didn't think that they would struggle with sin anymore.
They thought that the struggle with sin would disappear. But it lingers. Paul teaches us exactly the opposite, that the struggle itself is evidence that something has changed.
Before Christ we sinned comfortably. We didn't have any issues sinning. After Christ, if we are in him, and Scripture says if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.
If we are in him we cannot sin comfortably. It bothers us. Why? Because we've been made new.
Right? It feels like warfare now that we're in Christ when we have these desires and we have these urges and we feel tempted. Augustine famously described the humanity after the fall as being curved inward upon ourselves. That we are now naturally bent towards self rather than toward God.
Martin Luther echoed the same truth and John Calvin described remaining sin as an enemy that still inhabits the believer even though its reign has been broken. That distinction is important for us because sin remains but it no longer rules. Sin remains but it no longer rules in our lives.
Perhaps someone needs to hear that today. Maybe you're discouraged because you continue battling the same temptation. You struggle with the same stuff over and over again and you're trying to overcome it but you can't overcome that temptation and you wonder whether your struggle means your faith is weak or whether God has abandoned you.
I need you to listen carefully this morning. Dead people do not fight wars. Living people do.
If you're fighting against the flesh and every single day you are fighting to live for the Lord, know this, that you are not weak in your faith and God has not abandoned you. That struggle is evidence that God has done something in you or else you could just keep on doing what you're doing and nothing would matter. Being new in Christ changes things.
Your grief over sin and your grief over the temptation or maybe giving in to those temptations is not evidence that God has left you. It's evidence that the Spirit has awakened your heart. That's why Scripture says godly sorrow leads to repentance.
Worldly sorrow leads to destruction. The battle itself points to new life. But then Paul asked one of the most honest questions ever recorded in Scripture.
He says, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will deliver me from this body of death? Notice Paul doesn't ask what program will deliver me from this body of death. What discipline will deliver me from this body of death? What strategy will deliver me from this body of death? Or what self-help book will deliver me from this body of death? He simply asked, who? Who? This is important because Christianity is not just about techniques. Although we have form and fashion to our worship, why do we have form and fashion to our worship? Because it's supposed to be geared toward a person and not us.
And so we gear our worship and we pattern everything around Jesus Christ. And Paul immediately answers this question, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And then, and I love how on the screen you could see this continuity because we think sometimes because of the chapter and verse demarcations in our Scripture that there's a break in thought. But oftentimes you have to read into the next chapter to understand or to read above the previous chapter to see how the context is connecting everything together. So I want you to think about this.
We're finished in chapter 7 and Paul is teaching us this, that our help to overcome this body of death is only through Jesus Christ our Lord. Then he says in verse 1 of chapter 8, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He doesn't say there's less condemnation.
You still got a little, you should be, you still be guilty, feel guilty about things, but there's less condemnation. Not delayed condemnation like, you know, just you wait. One day you're gonna get what's coming to you.
You might be okay now. It's not possible condemnation where we live in fear that one day he's still gonna, he's still gonna tell us, I remember what you did. No, he says there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Why is that? It's not because we've been perfect. How many have been perfect? No one's been perfect. All of us have fallen short of God's moral law.
Paul tells us that in Romans 3 23, right? We all fallen short of God's glory. It's not because we finally got in our lives together, although we're trying and we still got work to do. We still have work to do.
This matters and there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because Jesus Christ has already borne the condemnation that belonged to us. He bore our shame. He bore our shame.
Our verdict has already been rendered at the cross and every Sunday that we confess our sins, we are asking him to continue to pour out his mercy and grace in our lives because we still need him. We still need his work, his mercy, and his grace in our lives and we come honestly before the one whose mercy never fails. What did the psalmist say, right? Slow to anger, abounding in and faithful steadfast love.
He abounds in loyal love. His love is enduring and after our time of confession we often hear the declaration of God's forgiveness that he's faithful to forgive those, right? He's faithful to forgive. Why do we hear those words every Sunday? Because the gospel announces something objective.
Do you all know the difference between subjective and objective? Objective is not dependent upon someone's opinion. It's not dependent on circumstances. Objective is without bias.
The gospel in our lives announces something objective. If we understand this truth, it announces to us that Christ has done what we could never do. Christ has done what you and I could never do.
We could never save ourselves. The burden of condemnation has been removed forever in our lives. Amen? Paul doesn't just stop here though.
Romans 8 begins to shift this focus away from what he focused on in chapter 7 which was repeatedly, I, I, I, I, I struggle, I fail, I want, I cannot. But what happens in chapter 8, the focus changes and it teaches us something. Now we see the focus on the Spirit and it teaches us that the center of the Christian life is the work of the Spirit, is us living in the Spirit and letting the Spirit sanctify us, renew our minds, transform us.
It's not simply trying harder. Sanctification is about learning to live by the life that God Himself has placed within us, that He has given us new life. But Paul contrasts two forms and two ways of living.
One is the Spirit. You know what the other one was? You can live in the Spirit or you can live in the flesh, right? The Spirit and the flesh. This is not a contrast between body and soul because God created our bodies and declared them good.
We know that when we are renewed in Him that He begins to transform us and one day these mortal bodies are going to be fully restored. What Paul is contrasting here is two realms. The old creation ruled by Adam which we've talked about and the new creation inaugurated by Christ.
One leads to death, the other leads to life and peace. Remember the compass that we gave out to all the men? Think about that compass for a moment. No matter how many times you push its needle away, once you release it, if it's working correctly, it returns and points north.
It points north. Before Christ, we know that our hearts naturally pointed toward ourselves. They naturally pointed toward ourselves, toward pride, toward sin, toward independence from God.
But when the Holy Spirit gives us new birth, He gives us a new orientation. How many are thankful for those holy times of recalibration where He reorients our hearts back to Him? Do we still stumble? Yes, every day, every hour, every minute. We stumble and we need His grace.
Our deepest direction though, because we are in Christ, has changed. Though we may fall, we may stumble. We may miss the mark, we may lose our way.
We know that Christ, having redeemed us and taken away the condemnation, we are now in Him and so we fix our eyes on Him. Hebrews says, fixing our eyes on Jesus. That's a present tense reality.
Fixing our eyes on Him, the author and finisher of our faith. We fix our eyes on Jesus because He is the one. And the Spirit in our lives continuously points us back to Christ.
That's why the Christian life is not lived for victory. It's lived from victory. We're not trying to get the victory.
We have the victory. We live from victory. And the Neuberg conspiracy that we talked about in the beginning that almost derailed everything that had been accomplished in the Revolutionary War happened after the decisive victory had already been won.
The Revolution had not yet reached its full conclusion, but its outcome had been secured. The same thing is true for everyone who is in Christ. Every believer in Christ.
The decisive victory has been won at Calvary. Sin's reign has been broken. Death has been defeated.
The empty tomb has changed history forever. Yet until Christ returns, we continue to experience the battle within. We continue to experience the battle within.
We're not fighting to earn God's acceptance, though. We're fighting because we have already received it. We could just give in to sin.
That changes everything. We obey because we are sons and daughters, not in order to become them. That's why today's gospel has such wonderful news for us.
Jesus, in these words, offers to us these comfortable words that we say every week. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew tells us where the rest is found, and Paul tells us why we need it.
Do you know the best advice I ever got when it came to overcoming sin? It's real simple advice, but the best advice I ever got when it came to overcoming sin, I heard from an Orthodox priest. And he said, whenever you feel tempted to give in to sin, just don't do it. That's good advice.
Just say no. Don't do it. Walk away, and you'll overcome it.
I mean, that sounds easy, but sometimes the draw of our desires keeps us. But truly, if we understand what he's saying here, he's saying here is sin no longer has control over us. So if we say no, we're not trapped by sin.
Yes, it's still present. It still remains, but it does not have authority over us anymore, unless we give it authority, unless we give in to those things. But you might be weary today and heavy laden from this fight.
I want you to know the greatest burden that Jesus removes for us is not simply stress, but it's actually guilt. It's condemnation. It's the crushing weight of trying to save ourselves and realizing that we're never going to measure up.
We're never going to measure up to his standard. But Christ invites us to lay that burden down, because he has already carried it to the cross. And every Sunday, as we gather around the Lord's table, we don't come as people pretending that the battle is over.
We come as soldiers who know that the King has already won. We know that the King has already won, and we confess because the battle is real. We know that there is a war that is waging against us, that is being waged against us.
And we struggle, but we confess because the battle is real. But yet we receive what he has given to us, because grace is greater. His grace is greater, and we receive what we need, the nourishment we need.
We eat and drink, because Christ himself strengthens weary pilgrims for the journey home. It's why John Christopherson says that we are like roaring lions when we walk out after receiving from the Lord what he has given us, after his grace has been poured out in our lives again. We're never more fearful to the enemy than we are in those moments, because we have been fed and nourished by Christ.
I want you to know that if you came here this morning exhausted from trying to earn God's approval, I want you to hear these words. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If you came discouraged because the struggle continues in your lives, remember this, the battle is not proof that Christ has abandoned you.
It is evidence that his Spirit is at work within you. And if you wonder whether real change is possible, remember Paul's promise. The law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus.
My friends, yesterday we celebrated the birth of a nation. Today and every Sunday we celebrate something even greater, the freedom that wasn't won by generals or armies, but by the crucified and risen King. Now I'm thankful that we live in a country that provides us opportunity, but I'm more than thankful for Jesus Christ our Lord, because he's the one that has given us the ultimate victory.
He's given us the ultimate victory. And today as we remember those freedoms that we've been given, we're gonna celebrate together. We're gonna have a good time together.
It's First Fruits weekend, but I want us also to remember the price that was paid for us and the opportunity that we have today to receive his new life and to receive his peace and to have his grace continuously poured out into our lives and to receive his mercy, his steadfast love, because it's there for us today.