I bid you Godspeed and come back to us.

I'd like to invite any of you who haven't experienced the Sunday evening service, or perhaps not for a long time, to come and join with us. It's a great time of celebration. I want to turn to our epistle reading for just a few moments. And if you care to follow along, it's on page 981 of the Bibles in your pew backs there.

and look just for a moment at the latter part of Romans chapter 5.

If you were to go out and take a survey of a representative 100 people,

and probably this would be true not only of the man in the street, but of most people in the church, a representative 100, and you were to ask them, why did God give His laws?

Why did He give us His laws? Why did He give us the Ten Commandments and all the other laws and statutes and ordinances and regulations? Why did He do that? I suspect that somewhere around 95 out of the 100 would say, obviously, what a stupid question. He gave us His laws in order to tell us what we're supposed to do.

Scripture does not think so.

Scripture says, as a matter of fact, that we knew already perfectly well what we were supposed to do.

The problem is that we weren't doing it.

We sometimes think that Jesus is the one who dreamed up the golden rule. Not at all. Jesus is simply quoting the Old Testament. And the Old Testament didn't dream it up either. Every religion that has ever come down the pike has had the golden rule at the very center of its ethical world view. It's hard to imagine any other way of doing things. Can you imagine a society, a culture, an ethic that was built upon the tenant that you should do to your neighbor exactly the opposite of what you want him to do to you?

You can't imagine that. As soon as you stop and think about it, it's obvious that we ought to do unto others as we'd have them do unto us.

We know that. That's somehow built into us.

Our problem wasn't a matter of not knowing what we're supposed to do.

Our problem was and is that we don't do it.

and the scripture says that God gave us his law not in order to tell us what we're supposed to do but in order to accuse us of what we've already done wrong

and that is not good news the word gospel means good news that is not good news That's very bad news. See, it's one thing if I know it in my heart in a kind of a subjective, vague, introspective way. Yeah, well, I probably ought to be a little bit better. It's quite another thing if the almighty, eternal God comes and says to me, You're wrong.

But that's exactly what He does. He comes and accuses me of what I already knew was wrong.

But now it's objectively and it's written on a tablet of stone so everybody can see it.

And if I listen to that, I feel very badly indeed.

Look at this latter paragraph of chapter 5. Verses 19, 20, and 21. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, So by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. Law came in to increase the trespass.

You see that? God gave us His law to make us all the more trespassers. To make us all the more guilty.

That's not the end of the sentence, thank God. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Sin came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. The first part of the gospel is bad news.

And the point is, you can't really appreciate the good news until you've dealt with the bad news. Or to put it another way, until you know you've got a problem, you're not going to have any real appreciation for the solution to the problem. Until you know you're in trouble, you're not going to look to the lifeguard to rescue you. Until you know you're sick, you're not going to go to the doctor.

And so God wants you to know that you're sick. It's exactly what Jesus said, isn't it? I haven't come to call those who are healthy and well. I've come to call those who are sick. I haven't come to call the righteous. Truth of the matter, there aren't any.

But sinners. If you don't know you're a sinner, if you don't know you're in need, if you don't know you can't save yourself, if you don't know you're in trouble, you really don't have any use for Jesus, except maybe as a good example.

Law came in to increase the trespass. You know, we reflect this liturgically. If we start our communion service the other way, instead of going right into the Gloria, you remember how it begins. Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ said. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And what's our response? Boy, I'm glad He said that. I really was wondering what I was supposed to do.

Now, Lord, have mercy.

See?

The law accuses me. That's what righteousness looks like. That's what it is to be in right relationship with God and my neighbor. And I don't say, oh, boy, that's terrific. Let me go do it. I say, Lord, have mercy. Because I haven't done it.

I'm not righteous. I'm not right with God. I'm not right with my neighbor. I need to be forgiven. God, forgive me. Have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

Paul's own testimony, if you read on, two chapters later in this book, his own testimony is that I was scrupulous in the observance of the externals of the law.

But suddenly, for the first time in my life, I really heard with my heart the commandment thou shalt not covet.

I hadn't gone around breaking the externals, but that commandment pierced through to the very depths of my being and I saw I've just as good as broken them all.

And I died, he says. I died inside when I heard what the law really required, not just external, but internal righteousness, not only that I shouldn't steal, but I shouldn't even covet in my heart of hearts, I died. And then I knew my need for Christ.

You might think of it another way. A mother tells her little boy, Now, Bobby, I'm going to the store. I'm going to leave you alone. Don't flush the goldfish down the toilet.

That never even occurred to Bobby, right? He never once thought of flushing the goldfish down the toilet. But before the car's out of the driveway, what's he doing, right?

Right?

And he tears down into the basement to check out the wash tubs next to the washing machine, turns on the faucet, see if the goldfish will come out.

What's that tell us about Bobby?

that tells us that there's something in Bobby that delights in breaking the law

know what? something in me that does too

I know there's nothing like that in you

but there is in a lot of people that when the law defines what righteousness is something in me delights in trying to get around it under it, or through it, unscathed.

And when I stop and think about that, that tells me something about myself. I am not what I'm supposed to be. I am not righteous. I'm not what I'd like to be.

But some people still think that if only they'd work at it a little bit harder.

My wife taught a Sunday school class of fourth graders one time, and they got studying the Ten Commandments, and she asked them, why do you think it is that people don't observe the commandments? And they pretty much were unanimous. Well, people just don't think about it that much. So she gave him a challenge. She said, tell you what, for the next two weeks, every morning, every noon, every evening, you're going to remind yourself of the Ten Commandments and really work at it and see how we do.

Two weeks later they came in and she said, how'd you do? Dead silence. Finally one little boy said, I got worse.

That's what the law does. The harder you try to keep it in and of your own strength, the more it will reveal to you your need. That's exactly the point. God sent the law, not in order to tell you something that you didn't already know, but to accuse you that even though you knew it, you haven't done it, and the harder you try, you can't do it.

And so slowly the realization begins to dawn,

I need help.

An automobile was made to run on gasoline. Without it, it can only go downhill. And a human being was made to run on God. And without Him, we can only go downhill.

And the law confronts us and teaches us that we need to be filled up with the life of God. We cannot make it on our own. We weren't even intended to.

In the original version of the film King of Kings, the old silent version made by Cecil B. DeMille in his early years, remember the story of the stoning of the woman caught in adultery and we have that enigmatic passage in John chapter 8 where Jesus bends down and writes in the dust. We're not told what he wrote.

But DeMille interprets that.

And as Jesus writes in the dust, we see the words of the commandments being formed. And one by one, the crowd that was so full of self-righteousness, ready to put this poor woman to death, one by one, they look down, and Jesus identifies your sin,

and this one is yours

and this one is yours and this one is yours and pretty soon there's nobody left.

The law accuses us that we're guilty and we need help. We need to be forgiven. But, praise God, that's not the end of the sentence. It goes on. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So this is not a message of bad news.

This is a message of abundantly good news. Abundantly good news. You have to see your need. But once you've seen it, God's provision for it is greater, infinitely greater,

than however awful, however horrific your wrongdoing may have been.

And so the passage ends, so that as sin reigned in death, it was like a Lord over us, condemning us to death. As sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In other words, there's two ways we can miss the point.

We can preach or heed only the law and be left with condemnation.

Or we can preach only grace

and have a very superficial understanding of the gospel, one that probably never really gets down to where we live. God loves me because that's the way He is. And I don't need to do anything about it. But the biblical balance is both. To begin to see ourselves as we really are, in desperate need, but as people that God loved enough to send His Son to die for us, to meet that need more abundantly than we ever dared to hope or imagine.

Let us pray together.

Lord, show us just enough of ourselves

as you see us this morning.

to drive us to Christ.

Some of us have known Him as Lord and Savior for many, many years, and yet we need to come again and again this morning.

And others perhaps have played church

and have never really seen themselves as you see us, have never really totally acknowledged their desperate need. Pray that you would speak to us personally and individually,

that we might see our wrongdoing, that we might know it and recognize it, strive against it, try to overcome it, realize we can't, and finally come to hate it.

that we might then embrace

more fully, more joyfully, more thankfully, more completely the wonder of Your love and Your provision in Christ.

Thank You that Your love swallows all my sin.

I would flee to You this morning. I would cast myself at Your mercy.

I would receive the gift of Your great forgiveness.

I would be made a new person for Christ's sake. Amen.