Page 42 - Overcoming Addiction

Until the day when mankind would receive the Spirit of Christ to indwell
them, they would remain in their stony hearted condition. Our stony hearts could
not obey the ordinances of God, always going astray. The result was broken
promises and a broken covenant. The Israelites upon hearing Moses read the Law
of God to them, said that it was good, and they agreed to be bound to it. However,
they were never able to keep it.
This breaking of the Law was also foreshadowed at Mount Sinai. As soon as
the Law had been written Moses descended the mountain to find the children of
Israel worshiping before the idol of the golden calf that they had fashioned. The
first of the ten commandments was a command against idolatry. Yahweh said:

Exodus 20:3-5
"You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an
idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or
in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for
I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God...”

The words had barely been written on the tablets of stone before the
Israelites broke the command. We see the truth of man’s condition when Moses
observed the sin of the people and he cast the tablets of stone to the ground and
broke them to pieces. Whenever the Law of God is written on a heart of stone it
will be broken. We need to receive a new heart and a new spirit within us.
The Law of Moses therefore became a minister of death to those who
received it. Rather than producing in men and women the life of God with its
desire and power to walk in obedience to Yahweh, the Law merely exposed their
inability to keep the commands of God. The Law revealed that men were slaves to
sin, and therefore death, not life, was working in them. On that first Pentecost in
the wilderness, after Moses cast the tablets of stone to the ground, he called for
those who had transgressed the Law by worshiping the golden calf to be slain. On
that day three thousand men were killed.
In a direct contrast to this event, on the day of Pentecost following the
resurrection of Christ from the dead, the Spirit of Christ came upon those disciples
who were waiting in an upper room. Peter then went out in the power of the Spirit
and preached a message to those gathered in Jerusalem and on that day three
thousand men were saved. The Law was a minister of death, but the Spirit brings
life. The apostle Paul describes what happened at that first Pentecost in the
wilderness when the Law was given.

Romans 7:9-12
And I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment
came, sin became alive, and I died; and this commandment, which was to
result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking opportunity
through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.

The apostle Paul speaks much of the effect of the Law upon the life of one
who does not have the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them. The Law stirs up sin,
leading us to want to do the very thing that the commandment forbids. Apart from