[Part two of a four-week preaching series called “Ruthless”] Pastor Scott teaches from Romans 7 that while believers are dead to sin (Romans 6), the battle with indwelling sin will continue throughout the Christian life.
Sin Strikes Back
Joshua, the Israelites and the Promised Land of Canaan
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16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
17 Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you.
Deuteronomy 20:16-17 (NIV84)
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18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God.
Deuteronomy 20:18 (NIV84)
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14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
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 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, 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.
Romans 7:14-20 (NIV84)
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“want to WANT TO”
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“sin doesn’t stop being fun”
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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.
Romans 7:14-20 (NIV84)
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Discipline breeds discipline.
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Sin is not a moral decision, but a control decision.
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Contract vs. transaction
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21 So I find this law at work: When 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 the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Romans 7:21-24 (NIV84)
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25 Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Romans 7:21-25 (NIV84)
