The Struggle is Real

We are beginning a new sermon series this week that will allow us to see the ways that God has changed us or is in the midst of attempting to change us. We are allowing Paul’s longest book in the Bible Romans to help us on this journey.

We will begin this week with our focus on the struggle that is taking place within us. Our scripture comes from Romans 7:15-25. The words will be on the screen.

15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. u For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Let us pray…

How many times have you asked yourself the question “Why did I do that” or “What was I thinking?” That is what we are looking at today. Paul is writing to a group of people that unlike most of his letters he had never visited.

He is making sure that they know he is dealing with many of the same struggles that they may be facing at this time. We are all sinners. We have all committed sins against God and against those around us.

We are to be humble in our conversations we have with those that believe like us and also those that might not believe at all. Paul is writing as someone who has been blessed by God as an Apostle of God, but guess what, he is still facing the same inadequacies of those that currently live in Rome.

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There is nothing more frustrating for many Christians than doing what we know is wrong but finding ourselves repeating that same mistake over and over again. It is as if we can’t stop ourselves from doing what we know we should not do.

What may be the most important word that we find in today’s scripture is “understand.” It is important because it points out to us that it is not due to a lack of faith, or lack of understanding, that we do what we know that we should not do. We do what we should not do because of our human nature.

Paul points out the struggle. “Sin” is dwelling within him. He can’t remove it. It is a part of his being. We call this within the church “original sin.”  The idea is that because of the actions of Adam and Eve we were born into sin and there is nothing we can do to prevent ourselves from being sinners.

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This text sounds good to us in some ways because it offers us an excuse for those times that our actions don’t match up with the expectations that God has for us. Paul is telling us that it is not our fault. We are going to sin, and there is nothing that we can do about it.

We have David saying the same thing in our first reading. He states “5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

The excuse is real but that does not mean that it is end of the story. The Jewish people attempted to stop themselves from living in the sin that was buried within them. God made laws for them to attempt to follow and as they failed to live up to the standards given to them by God, they added laws with the hope of having these new laws stop them from breaking God’s laws.

This failed and so they created more sin, more guilt, more shame than they had before. Their attempt to be “gooder” led to them being “badder.” Paul ends the text by offering to us the remedy to our struggle against sin, it is Jesus.

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The struggle against sin is real but those that are willing to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior have been rescued from the power of their sin. We have been saved from our failures that permeate within us against God and those around us.

This means that our struggle should be how am I going to “best” follow the will of God? How am I going to be the “best” representative of God that I can be despite the desire to sin that is embedded within me?

(Transition)

When we return back to our first reading, we have David attempting to live this out for us. In case you don’t know the background of this Psalm, David has committed adultery and began a sexual relationship with a married woman named Basheba and she becomes pregnant.

This leads him to attempt to hide this “indiscretion” by having her husband return and spend the night with her, but he refuses. David eventually has him placed into battle in such a way that he knows he will be killed and that is what happens.

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His friend Nathan comes to him and calls him out for what he has done. It is a long text but is needed to lead up to the Psalm. This is 2 Samuel 12:1-7

12 The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

4 “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” 7 Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!

David’s response to God for his sin that was made clear to him through Nathan is what we have in the Psalm. We receive an understanding of how we should interact with God after we have knowingly done something against him. David begins by asking for mercy.

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We can find ourselves attempting to hide from our sin instead of admitting that we have failed in living up to the standard that God desires from us. We find this with Adam and Eve. They know they went against what God had told them. They hear God walking towards them. They attempt to hide from him.

They then are confronted by God, and they attempt to pass blame on to others without taking responsibility for what they have done. The first step towards being right with God is admitting that we have done something against him and those around us.

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David admits he sinned and then reminds God why he should be shown mercy. We are more likely to go to God and ask for forgiveness when we believe that we have a God of what we usually call grace and forgiveness.

David in his context uses “unfailing love” and “great compassion.” He is saying what we should understand even more than him if we are a follower of Jesus Our God will never leave us or forget about us. Our God will always be willing to forgive us.

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David next tells God what he believes God is able to do within him. We spoke earlier of his acknowledgement that he was born into sin, but that does not stop him from believing that God can still cleanse him. God can make him as “white as snow.”

We should have an even greater understanding of this if we are a follower of Jesus. Jesus became our sacrifice that allows us to have our sins forgiven. The hymn “Nothing but the Blood of Jesus” says it this way, “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the Blood of Jesus.”

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Jesus did for us what David is asking God to do for him. He will cleanse us. He will wash us free from our sin. He will blot out all our iniquities. God will forgive and forget what we have done. The struggle many times is for us to forgive ourselves.

We tend to hold onto what God has already forgiven. We tend to allow our failures to affect how we feel about ourselves. We can end up calling ourselves failures while God is calling us loved and forgiven.

We need to choose to do what we spoke of last week, We need to trust in God. We need to not let our failures determine our future. We need to be willing to let go of our guilt and shame and believe that God has washed away our sin. God has made us pure as snow.

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David follows up with what he desires for God to do for him through removing his sin, he follows up with what he wants God to help him with. He wants God to create within him a pure heart. When we look at what David has done, he recognizes that he needs to change his heart.

He needs to go from a person struggling with lust into a person focused on Jesus. Lust might not be your problem, but you may have other areas in your life that stop you from being the person that God desires for you to be.

You may struggle with greed or coveting what someone else has. You may find yourself having anger issues or thinking that you are better than those around you. No matter the sin that gets in the way of your relationship with God and those around you, we need to be willing to ask God to help us have a pure heart.

(Transition)

Personally, I had issues with anger. I was similar to Paul in that I did what I didn’t want to do but found myself over and over again failing at doing what I know that God would want for me to do.

This led me to look at the reason why. I came up with two scenarios. One was that I would lash out without thinking. I wouldfind myself speaking before I was thinking. The anger wasn’t the problem it was my response to the anger.

This led me to “attempt” to take a breath and wait before I spoke. One way that I have heard it explained is for us to place God between us and the person we are interacting with. The idea being is that we should consider if we would say what we want to say if God was with us.

This is a good measure for us to use because God is everywhere and hears everything. We can’t hide our sin from God. In my case I needed to be willing to believe that God was in the room and therefore think before I respond out of anger.

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The second scenario was that I became angered at inanimate objects. What that means is that I would find myself yelling at the tv when that stupid ref made the wrong call or that dumb player did something stupid.

This was not only a useless endeavor, but it also upset my wife, son, and animals. My reaction not only didn’t do any good, but it led to conflict within the house. It is due to this realization that I have not watched a sporting event of a team I truly care about live since this realization.

What that means is that I have not seen the Buckeyes lose a football game in many years. I will record most of the games and sometimes watch them if they win. This has changed the dynamic in our house and also allows Amy and I to go and do things on Saturdays in the fall.

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I am speaking of my areas of weakness and how I responded to help me at least “less often” make decisions that will cause conflict with those around me and sin against God. What you may want to consider doing is discovering what gets in the way of your relationship with God.

Ask yourself what are some things that you do that lead you farther away from God instead of closer to God. If you are unsure you can be really brave and go to God and ask for his assistance. You will often find these troublesome areas rise up when you least expect it.

The next step is for you to develop habits that will allow you to commit these sins less often. You should attempt to find ways that will lead you towards becoming closer to God instead of allowing these areas of your life to move you farther away from God.

Our responsibility as followers of Jesus is not to be perfect. God knows that we are going to sin against him. What God does desire from us is for us to become more holy. We become more holy when we become more Christ like in the way we show our love to God and to those around us.

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The end of this Psalm turns its focus to the ways in which we worship God. He first brings up what we are doing today. We worship God when we praise God and thank God. God developed the Sabbath as a way for us to pause our lives and spend time with him.

Our Sunday worship is how this is often lived out. But that does not mean we should forget about God the other six days. The Jewish people would pause to pray three times a day. We should find time in our schedules to spend time with God.

I often speak of the importance of scripture and prayer. We should choose to develop what I call spiritual exercises. These are ways for us to stop our life for a moment and spend time with God throughout our day. God desires for us to have him as regular part of our lives.

(Transition)

David also points out that praising God is nice, but what God truly desires from each one of us is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart. God wants us to be willing first and foremost to recognize who he is and who we are.

We not only need to acknowledge He is God, and we are not, through worship. We also need to through our actions. We need to be willing to turn our lives over to God. We need to remove as much as we can our focus on ourselves and turn our focus on to God.

(Transition)

That is what Paul is doing in our main text. He ends verse 18 by saying “I desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

It breaks his heart that he can’t live up to what God desires for him to do. “The Struggle is Real,” we are to attempt to live out that struggle by first asking for God to help. Asking for God to help us become the best person that we can be.

The second partis for us to be willing to do what God asks from us. We show that we have “a broken and contrite heart” when we are willing to live out the desires that God has for our lives. Let us ask today for God to help us individually and as the church to become who God desires for us to be.

Let us pray…