Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. Ever wonder why there are so many rules in the Old Testament? What was the point in why don't we follow all those laws today?

In today's Devo, Katie Riley, who actually edits all these podcasts,

reminds us that on our own, we are powerless to fight sin or even serve God. Our only

option is to surrender to the one who can. Katie does an amazing job talking about verses 13 through

25, so I want to spend most of our time together focusing

on the first half of Roman 7. What is all this talk about the law? I don't know about you,

but sometimes when I read my Bible, specifically the Old Testament, there are a lot of passages

I'm tempted to skip over entirely or just skim quickly. And many of the passages I'm tempted to breeze over are marked by rules.

Long list of them at that.

We easily write them off as irrelevant and not applicable.

In Romans 7, Paul shows us all those instructions had purpose.

Right off the bat, in verse 1, Paul says he's speaking to those who know the law.

By taking note of that verse when I did my observations, I was reminded of Paul's audience.

He was speaking to believers who knew about God's instruction to the Jewish people.

But as Paul continues, he wants his audience to understand that they're no longer under what's called

by theologians the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant is a term used to describe the way God

related to his people in the Old Testament. It was a conditional covenant, which means that if the

Israelites kept or said differently obeyed the law, that's God's instruction, he would bless them.

And a lot of God's instruction had to do with offering sacrifices to atone for, which means to pay for, the sin of God's people.

But here's the deal. God's people could not perfectly obey the law. They'd always fall short.

So Paul reminds his audience that they are no longer

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