The sermon discusses the story of William Wilberforce, a British politician who became a Christian and dedicated himself to ending the slave trade in the British Empire. It highlights Wilberforce's friendship with John Newton, the writer of the hymn Amazing Grace, and recounts an anecdote about Wilberforce's attempt to share the gospel with William Pitt, the Prime Minister of England. The sermon emphasizes the spiritual death and hostility to God that comes from being carnally minded, as described in Romans 8:6-8.

Welcome back to Burnet Bible Church. Join us this week as Pastor Hopkins continues his sermon series through the book of Romans. Good afternoon again. Turn with me in your Bibles once again to the book of Romans, the eighth chapter, where we will be reading verses, standing and reading verses six through eight. Let's stand for the reading of the Word of the Lord verses six through eight.

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace, because the carnal mind is enmity Let's pray. It can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Let's pray. Father, you alone know the heart of every person here today. And it's our prayer, God, that you might deal with the hearts of every one of us here today.

We know, God, that we are not worthy of the least of all the mercies and the truth that you've already shown us, but we ask for more mercy and more truth and more grace, for eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to believe, Lord, and your Spirit to work in us again this afternoon, but we could never work in ourselves, for we ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. Let's be seated. How many are familiar with a figure from history named William Wilberforce? How many? Many, Great.

For those who don't, and to re-familiarize ourselves with him, Wilberforce was a politician, a British politician, in the late 1700s and early 1800s, and he was elected the youngest member of Parliament in England in 1780 at the age of 21. Four years later in 1784 Wilberforce was converted to Christianity. He came to salvation in Christ. And it was then that William Wilberforce came under conviction to begin the tireless work for which he is best known to end the slave trade in the British Empire. After his conversion, William Wilberforce became good friends with a man named John Newton.

John Newton, the writer of the hymn, Amazing Grace. And he was influenced greatly by Newton, Newton who before his conversion was involved in the slave trade himself. In one of Martin Lloyd-Jones' sermons on Romans chapter 8, Jones recounts a story about Wilberforce that took place after his conversion. William Wilberforce was a close friend of a man named William Pitt, also a political figure at that time. And William Pitt was a young man also who entered politics early in life and would rise to the highest office in the land, that of Prime Minister of England.

But William Pitt, unlike Wilberforce, did not know the Lord. But like many, both then and now, Pitt was outwardly religious. He was an outwardly religious man. William Pitt went to church. He went through all the external emotions and rituals of religion.

He was outwardly moral and respectable in society, but Pitt had never been regenerated. He'd never been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life by an operation of the Spirit of God. He didn't know the Lord. Pitt had no relationship with Christ. He was a moral man, but he was an unsaved man.

And William Wilberforce used to pray for Pitt. And he would often talk with William Pitt about the things of God. Well, as the story goes, one day, Wilberforce invited now Prime Minister Pitt to attend a church service with him to hear an evangelical preacher named Richard Cecil. Wilberforce hoped and prayed that Pitt would hear the gospel and like him be saved. And at first Pitt said he wouldn't go.

Wilberforce asked him many times, But at first he said he wouldn't go. But in the words of Martin Lloyd-Jones, quote, at long last, Pitt agreed to do so. And Wilberforce was delighted and they went together to a service. Wilberforce said that that night when they went to the service, the preacher, Richard Cecil, was at his best that evening and Wilberforce was just enjoying himself greatly, and he was feeling, quote, lifted up into the very heavens as he listened to Pastor Cecil preach. Wilberforce, quote, couldn't imagine anything more enjoyable, anything more wonderful, says Jones.

And as the preacher preached that evening, Wilberforce was wondering what was happening to his friend William Pitt, the Prime Minister, who was sitting next to him. And it didn't take long for Wilberforce to find out because as William Wilberforce and William Pitt exited the hall after the service, quote, Pitt turned to Wilberforce and said, you know Wilberforce, I have not the slightest idea what that man has been talking about. Brothers and sisters, our text this afternoon tells us that to be carnally minded is death. It is the state of spiritual death. It is to be dead to God and to be dead to the things of God.

The Prime Minister of England was just that. He was dead to God and he was dead to the things of God. In 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14, the Apostle Paul writes, "'The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Neither can he know them, because They are spiritually discerned. The natural man that Paul is talking about here is not a nature lover.

The natural man is man in the natural state of corruption in which he is born and in which every one of us was born. Paul is talking about unregenerate, unsaved people. People that our text in Romans refers to as those who are after the flesh, who live according to the flesh, are those who are in the flesh. Those who are carnally minded. And he says in 1 Corinthians 2.14 that a person who is still in the natural state of corruption in which he is born has no spiritual discernment.

He has no spiritual understanding. He can't grasp spiritual things because he doesn't have the indwelling Spirit to open up his understanding. You understand that it's not a matter of intellect or intelligence. It's not like a second grader attending a lecture on quantum physics and then walking out of the classroom scratching his head saying, I don't have any idea what that man is talking about. A child can understand the Gospel and receive the things of God and embrace the Gospel and embrace Christ by faith when the Spirit of God is at work in his heart.

But highly intelligent men and women die in their sins every day, who have heard the Gospel and written it off as foolishness. In the unregenerate state, in the state of corruption of nature in which we're all born, all the faculties of body and soul are corrupted. The mind is corrupted. The affections are corrupted. The will is corrupted.

Everything is corrupted. Everything is affected by the corruption of our nature. Unless the Spirit of God plows the ground of our stony hearts, the seeds of the gospel are merely thrown out onto the rocks, just like Jesus said in his parable. Such was the case with the Prime Minister of England who went to the preaching services with Wilberforce that night. He heard the Word of God priests, just like Wilberforce, but he didn't have the slightest idea of what the preacher was talking about.

But how could he? The things of God, Paul says, are spiritually discerned. How are we going to understand spiritual things who have not the Spirit? Those who are in the flesh, those who are still in the fallen state of nature and corruption in which they were born, who have not been born of the Spirit, who have not been raised to spiritual life by a supernatural work of the Spirit, have no spiritual life, but remain in the state of the spiritually dead. And the dead can neither see nor hear.

They are carnally minded, and to be carnally minded is death. It's a state of death. To be carnally minded is to be in the state and Condition of death and headed for eternal death and the dead can neither see nor hear They are death to the things of the Spirit Because they have not the Spirit Remember what Jesus told the the super religious guys in his day? He said after he had gone through all of these things with them, giving them the Word of God directly from the the heart of God, He's preaching to them the truth of God's Word. They can't understand anything He's saying.

They keep going off in directions that take the spiritual things He's taking and it's all about the temporal world and the earthly world around them. They just can't grasp it. They can't get ahold of it. And Jesus at one point says to them, why do you not understand my speech? And then he answers the question, even because you cannot hear my word.

And he's not talking about their ability to physically hear, but for the words that he is saying to penetrate their hearts. The unregenerate are death to the things of God, And the unregenerate are hostile to the things of God. The religious elites in Jesus' day couldn't understand the things Jesus was talking about. They were spiritually deaf because they were spiritually dead. And the spiritually dead respond to the things of God as all those who are dead to God and the things of God respond.

Either without any seeming comprehension, like the Prime minister who went to church with Wilberforce, or in outright hostility. In our last session, I put it this way, the carnally minded are at war with God. That's what it means to be at enmity with God. They don't often see themselves as being hostile to God or at war with God, but in reality they are. Their response to God's Word manifests the reality of the hostility that exists between them and God.

When it's pressed far enough. As I said last week, they may not be averse to any notion of a God, but they are averse to the one true and living God. They're averse to the concept, any presentation of his nature and character and requirements and gospel, and their death to the only gospel whereby they may be saved. And if you press the truth, as I said last week, about God and who he is, what man is, who Jesus Christ is and what he came to do, what God commands all men to do, which is repent and believe the gospel. If you press the unbeliever long enough, it doesn't matter which one it is, the one that's outright hostile to God or the one that's just going, I don't understand what you're talking about, You press them long enough, you press them hard enough with the truth of God's Word and eventually they will bear their fangs.

They're in enmity with God and they're hostile to God. Why? Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, as the Apostle Paul says. It is set in opposition to God and it expresses itself in opposition to God and the things of God including his law which we'll get to in a moment. Remember I said in our last session press the Muslim, the Mormon, the Jehovah's Witness, the one who's been a Gospel, with biblical descriptions of the one true and living God, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Gospel, the only Gospel, the true Gospel of their salvation, and their hostility will surface.

Press the unregenerate man on the street who claims to believe in God or a God with the fact of a future judgment, the reality of an eternal hell, where unbelievers who refuse to repent believe the gospel will remain confined under God's wrath for all eternity, and he will either reject that God openly or not have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Unless the Spirit of God wields the sword of the Spirit upon the heart of a sinner and convinces him of his sin and his need for the Savior and replaces his heart of stone with a heart of flesh, the unbeliever, when presented with the Gospel of the mercies of God in Christ will either break out an open hostility towards the God of the Bible and you for presenting it, and maybe even present you with a God of His own making, God made in the image of man, or he'll have no idea what you're talking about, like the prime minister who went to church with Wilberforce. How many have been there, done that? In your presentation of the gospel, how many have seen these kinds of responses? Maybe you shared the gospel with a neighbor or maybe someone on the job or or a relative.

Those are always fun, right? Sharing the gospel with a relative that's hardened against Christ in the Gospel? Maybe you just poured out your heart and you just thought, you know, you're just praying for him. You say, God, surely this will pierce their heart. I've given them the Gospel and it's my great joy and comfort and delight and that on which all my hopes are grounded." And then that neighbor or that relative or that friend either got angry with you or looked at you like you were speaking in a foreign language.

Our text this afternoon goes on, not only is the carnal mind dead to the things of God and hostile to God, it says it's not subject to his law. The fleshly mind, the carnal mind that's hostile towards God, it's not subject to his law, and he says in reality it cannot be. It's impossible for it to be. It's impossible for the carnal, fleshly mind of a man who's still in the corruption of nature in which he was born, never renewed by the Spirit of God, to subject himself to the law of God, to be subject to the law of God, because to be subject to the law of God is to be subject to God. First you have to be subject to God, then you can be subject to his law, and that takes the work of God, the spirit.

The carnal mind of unregenerate man is averse to the law of God because it's averse to God. Man in the unregenerate state is carnally minded. He is spiritually dead. He is dead to God and dead to the things of God. He's hostile to God and does not want to be subject to the law of God because he doesn't want to be subject to God.

The unsaved, unregenerate man wants to do what he wants to do and the law of God is always getting in his way. One writer said it's like a wall they're continually running into. The law of God is just this wall they're continually running into that's trying to stop them from doing the things they really, really, really want to do. The carnal mind that is still in the state of fallen flesh does not and cannot subject itself to the law of God. It isn't subject to God's law, and it cannot be, and it's not willing to be.

And it all goes back to the heart. In our last session, I mentioned that there were these neutral countries in World War II. I think there were maybe five of them, may have been seven, somewhere in there, neutral countries, nations that didn't take sides. Sweden was one of them, Switzerland was one of them. But there's never a state of neutrality with regards to God.

Those in the state of the flesh and corruption in which they were born live in opposition to God And it's expressed in opposition to His law and in a spiritual inability to even begin to keep His law from the heart. I'm going to go off script here for a second, but you know, there are those who argue with this. I've heard the arguments. Well, no, the unbeliever can keep the law of God. Or the unbeliever can do good.

No, there's none that doeth good, the Scripture says. No, not one. Well, What about people who give to the poor? You give shoeboxes full of stuff to kids on Christmas. Isn't that good?

Aren't they doing good works? Well, let's analyze it for a second. What's their motivation? What's their purpose? Are they, do they give thanks to God for that which God has given them to be able to give to someone else?

The unbeliever doesn't. Are they doing it for the glory of God? The unbeliever's not doing it for the glory of God. That which is not done for the glory of God, for any other purpose than for God's glory, for His honor, and for His glory, and without gratefulness to Him cannot be said to be good. They don't like the God of the Bible, they don't like His laws, They don't want to be governed by God.

They have no real interest in him. The unregenerate do not like the one true and living God and they don't like his laws. They may be fine with a Jesus who saves them from the penalty of their sins. Everyone likes that Jesus, right? Everyone likes a Jesus who he comes, he dies on the cross, he saves me from my sin, I don't have to go to hell, I get to go to heaven forever.

But they don't like a Jesus who tells them what to do. They like a Jesus who's a Savior but they don't want a Lord. They don't want the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who is the Jesus of the Bible. Again, the one true and living God gets in the way of their carnal and fleshly pursuit of pleasure and worldly enjoyments, and they're hostile to Him. They aren't ruled by God, and they don't want to be ruled by God.

They don't have spiritual understanding because they don't have spiritual life. Now let's hit a hot-button issue, not in this church but in the world. I've heard people in the media claim that this astronomical rate of suicide amongst those who engage in homosexual relations is because they kill themselves because other people won't accept what they're doing. Has anyone heard that? I went to like several sites to just kind of check it out and make sure what I was saying.

Again just make sure I'm saying it right. And over and over again, what they're trying to say is the reason we're killing ourselves is because Christians are in the world basically telling us that what we're doing is wrong. And if all these bad people would stop telling us that the bad things we're doing are wrong and say that they're good then we'd stop killing ourselves. That's the argument. If everyone would just accept our behavior as normal and embrace our perversion, we wouldn't be killing ourselves all the time.

But the fact is that God has given men and women a conscience, and it is difficult to completely exterminate it. Everyone experiences guilt, and everyone has to do something with that guilt. It's a good way to start a conversation when you wanna talk about the gospel. Friend, what do you do with your guilt? Just wondering.

Because everybody experiences guilt. Everyone experiences guilt and everyone has to do something with that guilt. And of course the world's answer is always the same. Surround yourself with people who affirm your particular sin or vice, drunkenness, sexual immorality, whatever it is, just hang out with that crowd, with those who affirm your particular vice, Call that which is evil good and that which is good evil, and if everyone celebrates your sin with you, the sting of conscience will disappear. But the conscience is not always exterminated so easily.

And feelings of guilt return, Because feelings of guilt are associated with actual guilt. In other words, we feel guilty because we are guilty. That's not true of the Christian after their guilt has been removed. Sometimes we have feelings of guilt that's already been placed on Christ. But the reason we feel guilty is because there's things we've done that have violated God's commands.

Because we've been guilty of breaking God's laws. And feelings of guilt are a good thing if they drive us to the cross of Christ for relief. But when feelings of guilt are ignored or suppressed, or when an attempt is made to turn vices from which guilt arise into virtues, then the guilt remains." Again, Jesus. He told the religious leaders of his day that in claiming to have spiritual sight when they did not, their guilt remained. Because you say we see, therefore your sin remains.

Your guilt remains. God's way of dealing with guilt is to admit that we've broken his laws. God's way of dealing with guilt is to admit we've sinned against him and then to turn from our sins to him, no matter the number of our sins or the greatness of our sins. Trusting in his word is the answer. Trusting in God's word that Jesus bore the sin and guilt and shame of his people on a cross 2,000 years ago at a place called Calvary and shed his blood to atone for them, trusting him, trusting his word.

Jesus died in the place of sinners And guilty people can find relief for their guilt who lay their sins on Jesus, trusting that God will forgive them because Jesus was condemned for their sins in their place. And bore the punishment, do their sins as a substitute in their place. Guilty sinners can find a place of rest when they trust that Jesus who never sinned pay the penalty for their sins. Dealt with their sins and guilt once and for all time when he died for them on the cross and he proved it by rising from the dead the third day. One of the hymns from our Trinity hymnal is, Arise My Soul, Arise My Soul, Arise, the old hymn says, Shake off thy guilty fears.

The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears. My God has reconciled his pardoning voice I hear. He owns me for his child I can no longer fear. But those in the flesh who are still in the flesh, still in the carnal state of nature in which they were born, suppress the knowledge of God that He has given them through the external witness of the created order all around them and the internal witness of conscience within them. And so their guilt remains, along with the threat of condemnation and eternal wrath at the coming judgment.

One of the ongoing evidences that a person is still in the state of condemnation is a fleshly mindset that doesn't want to be subject to the law of God. You know, on the streets when I'm preaching, I'll typically bring in Romans chapter one, we're all guilty, nobody has an excuse. God hands them over to a reprobate mind to do sexual immorality, fornication, the root word of fornication is porneia from which we get the modern American word, the English word pornography, sexual immorality, homosexuality, all of these things. The wrath of God is revealed from under heaven against those who commit such things. 1st Corinthians 6, no one's going to inherit the kingdom of God who practices these things.

But then I bring in 1st Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 9, such were some of you. You used to be, and then the list goes goes down, you used to be thieves, you used to be fornicators, you used to be sexually immoral, you used to be engaging in homosexual acts, you used to be effeminate men, we just mentioned in there, you used to be all these, you used to be extortioners, but you're not anymore. You're not perfect, but you're no longer as a pattern of life living in those things with your fists lifted to God saying, I don't want this man Jesus to reign over me. Now you're humbled. As I said last week, like John Bunyan said, you've got your back to the world and your face toward the cross.

And there's sensitivity to sin in your life. It's not the case with the unregenerate. His mind is not subject to the law of God and indeed it cannot be. That's because that which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

And Jesus said you must be born again, you must be born of the Spirit. To see the kingdom of God, there has to be a change. No person has ever or will ever subject themselves to the law of God unless God first changes their heart, changes their mind, changes their will, changes their affections. When God saves a person, a radical change takes place. Within.

A heart of stone is replaced with a heart of flesh This gets back to some of the things that Eric was talking about Let's turn to Ezekiel chapter 36 and read this before we close Ezekiel chapter 36 beginning with verse 26 we've read this before Here's what God says I'll do notice here. This is first person God speaking through the prophet Ezekiel. I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, I will do this, you can't do this. A new heart also will I give you. A new spirit will I put within you.

I will take away your stony heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh. Un corazón de carne. It's in my, I've got my Spanish on the other side here. And I will put my spirit within you, praise God, and cause you to walk in my statutes. Oh, thank you God, you mean What we've been studying here, learning about Jesus died not only for our justification, but also for our sanctification is true.

Yeah, even in the Old Testament. I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you shall keep my judgments and do them. Amen. The heart of the person who is changed by God from within, regenerated, born of the Spirit, made a new creature in Christ Jesus, the heart that was before hardened in pride and obstinacy. Obstinacy towards God and obstinacy toward those whom God has ordained to be an authority as well.

It's one of the ways that it's recognizable. I mean how do you recognize when a child, let's say, is regenerate or not? Well, when the words of Scripture from the fifth commandment and again in Ephesians chapter 6 come alive to them. Their heart is no longer hardened against God and it's the way it's known, the way it's manifested, the fruit of that is He's not rebelling in that way against his mom and dad anymore. She's not having those little spats with her mother anymore.

And if she does, she's broken and she comes to repentance, this mom, I'm sorry. Not because she's hit over the head with a club, but because God has reached into her heart and convicted her, pierced her heart. The young man, same thing. He was a rebel in his home. He's not a rebel anymore, why?

God did a work in his heart, he changed him. He turned him inside out. He broke him. Broke his heart. Changed him.

Made him a new creature in his son, Jesus who died for his sins. The man, He's not the same man he was before. He's not the tyrant in his house anymore ruling with a rod of iron on everyone and creating fear with every footstep Now the the servant leader gentle broken contrite sees his own sin and is able to confess it to others, to his wife, to his kids, and to others to be able to say, sorry, I'm so sorry. We'll do it again by God's grace, by God's grace. Wife in the home rebelling against her husband's authority, She's broken.

None of these are perfect people, but there's a heart change to where they now want to be what God wants them to be and God wants them to act. They're stung by their sin when they sin. They're grieved by it. And they humble themselves. And they turn from their sins and they put their trust continually in Christ and his sacrifice for their sin with the intent never to return to it again with no reservation of mind or heart to go back to that sin.

In one of our family worship times this past week, I asked my sons and daughters, I said, when you read the Bible, why do you read it? Because you have to? As part of your curriculum? Because we told you to or because you want to? And then when you read the word of God, when you read the word of God, do you find God continually working on your heart and pointing out your sin and turning you to Christ in repentance for your sin.

Washer talks about that in one of his videos that's been recorded. You're now sensitive to the sin in your life. And when you're reading the Word of God, God's pointing out your sin to you. You come to patience, you go, that's me, God, sorry. Help me, God, that's me.

I remember a little boy who once came under conviction for his sin at the tender age of seven. And many times he had to fight back the tears when the preacher was preaching at church, when all the other children were coloring pictures. I don't have anything against coloring pictures, I think it's good, especially if it has something to do with the picture of something that the minister is talking about that day, that's great. But he was in tears while everyone else was not under any type of a conviction. But why?

Why? Why was it that William Wilberforce was lifted up into the very heavens when the preacher was preaching in England so many years ago, when the Prime Minister of England, sitting right next to him, didn't have the slightest idea what that man was talking about. Why? It is a work of the Holy Spirit taking the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and piercing the heart of a man or a woman or a child with conviction and with the truth of the Word of God. William Wilberforce is lifted to heaven listening to the word preached.

William Pitt is disinterested, bored to death, probably looking at his watch or the clock to see when it's all going to be over. The seven-year-old boy is coming under conviction and crying his eyes out And the other children around him are unmoved. Christ crucified, as we close, for sinners died is a message that will always move the heart of the person who's been saved by God. It always moves our hearts every time we hear about it. Jesus suffered and died for your sins and rose again the third day.

The simple message of the gospel always moves us And it moves us to gratefulness for all that God has done for us. And it causes us to love Him more. It increases our love. When you hear the gospel preached, is your heart, like William Wilberforce, is it lifted up to the heavens? Or are you disinterested, like William Pitt?

Are you in the spirit or in the flesh? Carnally minded, spiritually minded, alive to God and the things of God, dead to God and disinterested in the things of God, subject to the law of God or restrained by the law of God from doing what you really want to be doing. At war with God or at peace with God. I'll end with these words from number 591 in our Trinity hymnal, Fountain of Grace. It says, fountain of grace, rich, full, and free.

What need I that is not in thee? Full pardon, strength to meet the day, and a peace that none can take away. Amen, let's pray. Father, we are grateful again for your word and God for your spirit, without whom there would be no conviction for sin in our lives, no spiritual life, no eternal life. Father, we thank you for the blood of Christ shed for our sins.

We thank you that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We thank you that he suffered and died that we might live. We thank you that he rose again from the dead proving that his sacrifice was acceptable to you God on our behalf. We thank you God for the person and work of our Lord Jesus, our Savior, our Redeemer, and our Lord. And we pray, God, that as we approach the table of the Lord today, the Lord's table, she would help us to eat of that bread and drink of that cup with the full conviction of the truth and the reality of the salvation that we have in your son Jesus Christ.

For we ask it in his holy name. Amen.