1. Most of us have heard about the shocking killing spree that took place last week in Santa Barbara, California.
2. Many words have been used to describe the killer -- self-absorbed, narcissistic (he even declared that he was a "god"), resentful, misogynist, a spoiled rich kid, etc.
3. He was on the drugs Xanax and Vicodin. Side effects of Xanax are mental problems, confusion, hallucinations, hostility, thoughts of suicide, rage, aggression, and mild degree of mania.
4. Vicodin has side effects of guilt, shame, and depression, confusion, fear, unusual thoughts of behavior.
5. At the age of 12 he started playing video games until 3:00 a.m. at Planet Cyber, a cyber café not far from his mother’s house.
6. He became obsessed with the video game, World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW is a very popular video game. It is violent and features zombies, monsters, dragons, elves, and alien worlds. The killer wrote, “It was all I would think about when I wasn’t able to play it.”
7. He often spent five hours playing the game and his school grades dropped. He wrote, “I was too absorbed in my game to care about anything else.” He later admitted to playing WoW 14 hours per day!
8. Soon he started drinking alcohol and looking at pornography.
9. The murderer's father is a Hollywood director and the killer grew up in that weird, twisted environment.
10. Incidentally, the same thing happened 13 years ago under very similar circumstances. In 2001, a University of California-Santa Barbara freshman named David Attias, who is also the son of a Hollywood director, deliberately plowed his car into a group of young adults in the same Isla Vista neighborhood, killing four and permanently injuring another before climbing atop his car and declaring himself "the Angel of Death."
11. Charged with murder, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a state mental institution. He was released in 2012, and is now freely walking the streets of California.
12. The recent killer supposedly had been going to therapists since he was eight-years-old! Apparently that didn't help him any. In fact, the therapy probably made him worse.
13. The various reports tell us much about the murderer, but one word is conspicuously missing from all the newspaper articles I have read, and that is the word "sin."
14. His sinful behaviour has been alluded to, but the word "sin" is carefully left out of the news reports.
15. It is not only killers that are sinners. Romans 3:23 says, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."
16. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says, "For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not."
17. This is taught repeatedly throughout the Bible (cf. Romans 5:12).
18. David said, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5).
19. Genesis 8:21 says, "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."
20. Ephesians 2:3 says we were all "by nature the children of wrath."
21. Psalm 14:2, 3 says, "The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God. They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one" (cf. Romans 3:10-12).
22. Romans chapter 7 deals with the problem of indwelling sin (cf. 7:17, 20, 21).

I. THE CONTROL OF SIN

1. Certainly we can all agree that sin had strong control over the Santa Barbara killer. He was filled with murderous rage. He was consumed by lust. He was deluded, deceived, and deranged.
2. I read that the killer saw a therapist nearly every day while he was in high school. How much different if he would have saw a preacher or a godly Bible teacher every day!
3. But in all the reports I have read, there is no mention of God or the Bible or church, etc. He lived a godless life, and he died a violent death.
4. Proverbs 13:15 says, "The way of transgressors is hard."
5. Regarding the apostle Paul's teaching of the two natures here in Romans 7, some have mistakenly believed that Paul is describing here the normal Christian life (7:15-19). That is the wrong interpretation of this passage!
6. Paul describes the normal Christian life in chapter 8. The emphasis in chapter 8 is the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the life of the believer (cf. 8:1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, etc.).
7. Whereas the emphasis in chapter 8 is the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, the emphasis here in chapter 7 is the power of indwelling sin in the life of the unbeliever.
8. And while it is true that the Bible does speak of believers being carnal and walking in the flesh, it should be understood that is not the "normal Christian life" (cf. 6:1, 2, 12).
9. Here in Romans 7, indwelling sin is referred to as "the flesh" (7:5, 18, 25); that is, the unregenerate condition of sinful men.
10. Students of Scripture have asked, "Do these verses in Romans 7 describe the apostle Paul's own experiences?" The answer is yes -- before his conversion on the road to Damascus.
11. It is obvious that Paul is speaking from personal experience. Notice his frequent use of the first person pronoun "I" (7:14, 15, 16, 17, etc.).
12. Paul is certainly speaking from personal experience, and yet he is describing an experience which is not only his, but one which is characteristic to all men in similar circumstances.
13. Before his conversion, Paul tried to restrain sin's grip by keeping the law of Moses, but the Lord showed him that would never work.
14. By the way, the word "law" is used in different ways in Romans 7. First and foremost, since Paul was a Jew he is referring to the law of Moses (cf. 7:1).
15. As Christians, we have been "delivered from the law," and are now "dead" to the law (7:6; cf. 6:14).
16. Churches that attempt to put people under the Mosaic law do not understand the law, and they certainly do not understand grace (cf. Romans 11:6).
17. How many people attempt to unleash sin's fierce grip by "religion"! The Bible says, "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags" (Isa. 64:6).
18. In Romans 3, Paul proved that no one can be saved by the law; and here in Romans 7 Paul proves no one can be sanctified by the law.
19. This passage here in Romans 7 describes a man (a lost sinner or a carnal believer) "who is trying to be good and holy by his own efforts, and is beaten back every time by the power of indwelling sin" (W.H. Griffith Thomas, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans).

II. THE POWER OF SIN

1. Lost sinners are destroyed by the power of sin. Sin deceives them, beats them, ruins them, and eventually drives them to hell.
2. To the Christian, Romans 6:14 says, "For sin shall not have dominion (power) over you."
3. But some Christians struggle with sin because they do not understand the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit (cf. 8:9-13).
4. Apart from the ministry of the indwelling Holy Spirit, man is dominated by the flesh, and he is constantly brought into defeat by the flesh. This is the power of indwelling sin.
5. As we consider the power of indwelling sin, we should also consider the powerlessness of the law to overcome the power of sin (7:5).
6. "Motions of sins" refers to sinful passions which were aroused by the law (7:5). The law can never conquer our sinful passions. The law can only arouse our sinful passions.
7. Matthew Poole said, "The motions of sins which were by the law" are "the corrupt inclinations to sin, which are drawn forth by the law, as ill vapours are raised out of a dunghill by the sun."
8. In Galveston, Texas, a hotel situated on the Gulf of Mexico put this notice in each hotel room: "No Fishing From The Balcony."
9. Yet every day, hotel guests would cast their lines into the waters below. Then the management decided to take down the signs -- and the fishing stopped! Think about that (7:5)!
10. Human nature is inherently rebellious. And man is a born rebel.
11. However, when rebellious sinners repent of their sin, God forgives their rebelliousness and lawbreaking, and gives them His Holy Spirit.
12. God imparts to us a new nature and a new ability to obey, so that our greatest pleasure becomes obeying God (Rom. 6:11-18).
13. The "flesh" as it is used here in Romans 7:18 and 25b refers to the power of indwelling sin.
14. Being "in the flesh" (7:5; 8:8) is the opposite of being "in the Spirit" (cf. 8:1, 4, 5).
15. The "flesh" refers to the unregenerate condition of lost sinners (cf. Ephesians 4:18-20). There is no peace with God, no everlasting life, no indwelling Holy Spirit. Sinners are controlled by their fallen, sinful nature.
16. Religion and trying to keep the law cannot help (7:15-21).
17. The Bible says, "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 2:10).
18. There was only one man who perfectly kept the law, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ -- the sinless Son of God.

III. THE UGLINESS OF SIN

1. It is not necessary for me to elaborate on this. Just reading the newspaper the other day I read about a father in New Jersey who drowned his 2-year-old daughter by throwing her into a creek while she was strapped in a car seat.
2. The paper had a photograph of him; he was all covered with ugly tattoos. America is becoming very pagan!
3. Another article was about a Queens man who was convicted by a jury for murdering his parents because they had cut him off financially.
4. A Bronx high school student was so distraught over getting caught cheating, that she committed suicide by jumping into the Hudson River.
5. A Pakistani immigrant who beat his wife to death in Brooklyn because she cooked lentils when he demanded that she cook a goat for dinner was found guilty of murder on Thursday.
6. Other sad news reports described more murder and mayhem -- car-jackings, home invasions, rape, thievery, political scandals, etc. We all understand the ugliness of sin (cf. Romans 3:10-18).
7. Not only is sin ugly, but the punishment for sin is ugly -- eternal punishment in hell. Heaven is a beautiful place, but if even one sinner was able to get into heaven he would immediately defile it.
8. Revelation 21:27 says, "And there shall in no wise enter into it (heaven) any thing that defileth."
9. Wicked sinners would ruin heaven and quickly turn it into a hell. Therefore, impenitent sinners cannot get into heaven (Rev. 21:8).
10. Sin is ugly and sin is addictive. Second Peter 2:22 says, "But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire."
11. Statistics reveal that criminals repeatedly return to crime after they are released from prison. This is the ugliness of sin.
12. One article I read referred to "the chronic tendency toward repetition of antisocial behavior patterns."
13. Perverts return to their perversion. Drug addicts return to their drugs. Prostitutes return to their procurer, even though these procurers are destroying them, and habitually beat them, etc.
14. Spurgeon said, "The man who is bad today will be worse tomorrow. Every week that he lives, he adds some new evil habit to all that he had before, until the chain, which at first seemed but a silken cord, becomes at last an adamantine (unbreakable) fetter, in which he is held fast so that he cannot escape. It is impossible to say how far men will wander away from God!"
15. Sin is addictive. Sin is deceitful. Sin blinds people. Hebrews 3:13 refers to "the deceitfulness of sin."
16. This is the ugliness of sin, and the cross of Christ is the only solution to the problem.

CONCLUSION:

1. When I preach, I aim at two targets -- believers and unbelievers; i.e. saved and unsaved.
2. For the unsaved, I exhort you to repent of your sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He will forgive you and He will save you.
3. For the saved, let us remember that we still have to deal with “the flesh.”
4. One preacher said the flesh of the Christian is just as bad as the flesh of the lost. In other words, when we were saved God gave us a new nature. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17), but He did not eradicate the old nature.
5. I read an interesting story about the well-known Bible teacher, Lewis Sperry Chafer. Dr. Chafer was preaching, and in his message he said that the great British preacher G. Campbell Morgan changed a verse of the hymn, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing."
6. Dr. Chafer said, “I know that hymn has a verse in it that reads, ‘Prone to wander Lord I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.’” But he said, “Campbell Morgan changed it to ‘Prone to worship, Lord I feel it. Prone to serve the God I love.’”
7. And then Dr. Chafer turned to the audience and he said, “Now how many of you think that G. Campbell Morgan was right?”
8. Nobody in the congregation raised his hand.
9. Then Dr. Chafer said, “How many of you think the hymn writer was correct? Prone to wander?”
10. And all the people raised their hands, and then Dr. Chafer smiled and he said, “Both were right.”
11. Now I do not think it was a good idea to change the words to that great hymn, and I would not approve of it.
12. However, I think it is a good illustration because it is true that all believers are prone to wander. And it is also true that because of our new nature we are prone to worship.
13. Sadly, the man who wrote the words to that hymn did himself wander far from God. Robert Robinson was saved at a young age at a George Whitfield meeting.
14. He originally intended to ridicule Whitefield but instead he was gloriously converted. Robinson went into the ministry, first as a Methodist pastor and then a Baptist.
15. But later in life, Robinson got mixed up in Unitarianism and he strayed from the faith.
16. Once, while riding in a stagecoach, he sat by a lady who was reading a hymnbook. She showed him "Come, Thou Fount," saying how wonderful it was.
17. He tried to change the subject, but couldn't. Finally he said, "Madam, I am the unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."