This morning sermon text comes from Romans chapter 7 verses 22 to 25.

For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man. But I see a different law in the members of my body,

waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members.

Wretched man that I am.

Who will set me free from the body of this death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind,

flesh, the law of God. But on the other, with my flesh, we have thanked you.

We have taken our stand upon you as our solid rock and we have said to you alone be the glory.

And we mean all that right now too. We're thankful for your word. We consider

a rock. We want the exposition of it to be a means of your great honor and glory among us now and

then in our lives this week.

So come and help me.

Speak faithfully what the scriptures say.

And apply it by your spirit to every mind and every heart in this room.

Guard us from the evil one who swoops down to pluck the word off the path when it's not understood. And grant that there would be a safe place here now for another few minutes where the word could lodge itself in our minds and hearts and grow up in bare fruit 30, 60, 100 fold.

Oh Father, work, I pray, as you have been working.

Save. as you have been working, save, sanctify, empower, embolden, heal, reconcile, heal, reconcile, through Christ I pray, amen. You cannot love the Bible and despise the mind. It's true that you, if you love the Bible, won't have any rosy notions about the mind that it will save anybody or be the solution to our deepest problems, but you will not be able

to turn away from the mind and say the emotions or the spirit or action is the key to living the Christian life.

If you turn away from the mind, you have turned away from the organ of God's great blessing.

I say it for two reasons.

One, here we are at the end of Roman 7, and I am finishing today.

...