Good morning people who find God in the pages of the Bible.

Psalm 119:2-3 NIV Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart—they do no wrong but follow his ways.

God is not after blind obedience without relationship. His greatest desire is not that we simply do no wrong, but rather that we seek Him with all our heart and know Him as our Father and Friend.

Intimacy with God is God’s greatest desire for us.

The problem with sin is that it separates us from God. It is not so much about the wrongdoing – it is more about the broken relationship. Even as believers, while we are still saved we can often step back from God in guilt and shame when we do the wrong thing. This is not God’s desire for us as His heart is always towards us.

God’s Word takes the guesswork out of our relationship with God.

In the Bible, we clearly find what God likes and what God hates. When loving God is the greatest pursuit of our lives, knowing this becomes really important to us. Because we love God, we want to honour God, and we do this by doing those things that delight His heart.

What would happen if we replaced an obsession with not sinning with an obsession to love God?

The essence of the Bible is the God of Love reaching out to those He created. When this becomes our filter and focus, God’s Word becomes our daily meditation.

Good morning people who are shaped and fashioned by the Word of God.

Psalms 119:1 NIV Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the Lord.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to live a truly blessed life.

But what does the word blessed mean?

Blessed means happiness, and it comes from a word that means to be straight.

I see a connection between happiness in the word blessed, and the following verse:

Psalm 16:11 NIV You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

The joy and happiness that comes from being in the presence of God is inseparable to walking straight on the path of life, not deviating to the right or left. In other words, we can’t claim to be blessed if we aren’t living according to God’s Word.

There is a connection between being blessed and being blameless.

The word blameless means undefiled and it is linked to the words entire and truth. Please think about what this is saying. Picking and choosing scriptures that we like or that back up our own choices is not the correct way to handle the Word of Truth.

It is Scripture that interprets Scripture, and not our circumstances that interpret Scripture.

On this journey of life, we will all make mistakes and have moments when we sin. But the good news – the wonderful news – is that we have an Advocate with the Father! When we are in Christ and when we confess our sins, God sees us as blameless because He sees us in Christ Jesus!

1 John 2:1-2 NIV My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

Do you want to be blessed and blameless?

Then walk according to the law of the Lord.

Good morning people who honour and value the written Word of God.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

I am absolutely passionate about the Word of God!

I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that it is as relevant for us today as it was in the time that it was written.

I believe that the Word of God is primarily about the God of the Word. I also believe that in it we clearly see the nature of God and the ways of God.

I do not believe that God’s Word is ambiguous, nor do I believe that it can only be understood by the intellectual or the scholar. In fact, I would argue that understanding is one of the greatest potential enemies to revelation.

Upon this foundation, I would love to take a closer look over the coming days at the significance and the power of God’s Word in our lives.

For today, I’ll leave you with this statement:

Freedom is only found in truth, and truth can only be found in God’s Word.

If you would like to saturate yourself in what I will be leaning into, I encourage you to take some time and slowly meditate on Psalm 119. I’ll pick it up in verse one tomorrow.

Good morning people who overcome temptation through the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am going to summarise the rest of Romans 7 and highlight a few verses, but I encourage you to read the whole chapter. Step into God and listen to His whisper.  

Romans 7:14 MEV We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.

Romans 7:18 MEV For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing, for the will to do what is right is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

Romans 7:22-25 MEV For I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, with my mind, I serve the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

The law is spiritual, but I am carnal. The word carnal is not speaking of sinful, but rather, pertaining to the flesh, bodily temporal; in other words natural and of the body.

In our natural bodies as believers, sometimes we make sinful decisions. In these moments, Paul writes that we are sold under sin. He is not saying that we are permanently slaves to sin (he has made it clear that, in Christ, we are slaves to righteousness Romans 6:15-23).

For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwells no good thing. Once again, Paul is not talking about a sinful nature, but in my flesh, and this word flesh denotes the body. Remember, Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14); He did not become sinful – He became human and physical.

Paul caps off his teaching in this part of Romans by declaring I delight in the law of God according to the inner man. This is talking about his spirit where he is born again and loves God passionately. But his next statement highlights the ongoing battle on his journey of sanctification when he says but I see another law in my members; that is, in my physical body or flesh.  

His cry to God is for help to make God-honouring decisions. He knows he is saved by grace and justified by faith. His salvation is secure and he has a new nature. And yet, at times, there is still an intense pull towards sin – not because he still has a sin nature, but because he is still human and temptation is common to all, and because of the fiery darts of the enemy.

How can we be delivered from sin?

Through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thank You Father!

Good morning people who know what sin is because God stated it clearly in the law.

Romans 7:7-12 MEV What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! But I did not know sin, except through the law. I would not have known coveting if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of coveting. For apart from the law sin is dead. I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was intended for life, proved to be death in me. For sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and killed me through it. So then, the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good. 

I must admit that some of the depth of what Paul writes is not always easy to understand. This is not a bad thing – this is a good thing if we lean in deeply to God and desire to know truth.

Paul makes it clear that the law is not bad; it is not sin. He doesn’t stop there, but he declares the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good. We must see the law this way!

At its core, the law makes it clear to us that we are sinners who need a Saviour.

The law highlights and makes clear what sin is. This is so important for the many people who determine what is right and what is wrong according to their own desires and will. We are not God, and He alone declares what is truth and what is right and wrong!

A child will not instinctively do what is right. They need to be trained in the way they should go. When a child throws a tantrum for the first time, they might not have previously been told that “tantrums are wrong”, but it still was wrong before “the law” had been stated. The parents stating “tantrums are wrong” did not cause the child to do the wrong thing. What was in a child’s heart caused them to do the wrong thing.

And so it is with people and the law. The law does not make people sin, but rather, the law reveals that what comes out of our unredeemed hearts is sin. You would think that once we know something is wrong, all desire for that thing ceases. The reality is that often it is the opposite, and this is part of what Paul is saying. We don’t then blame the knowledge of what is right and wrong as the reason for us doing wrong. No, the reason is our own desire for our own desires; we want what we want.

God speaks clearly so that we can live holy. God gave us a Saviour so that we could be delivered from this body of sin and death.

The law was given to reveal our hearts and to lead us to the heart of God.

Watch Dad’s sermon ‘What God Authors, God Performs’.