The Permanence of the Law

Luke 16, beginning in verse 14, you can find that on page 875 of your

Pew Bible.

And when you have that, please stand for the reading of God's word.

The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.

And he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men.

But God knows your hearts, for what is exalted among man is an abomination on the sight of

God.

The law and the prophets were until John.

Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.

But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the

law to become void.

Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced

from her husband commits adultery.

Amen.

Again, you may be seated.

Dear Heavenly Father, we ask for your blessing upon the proclamation of your word.

We ask that you would open our eyes in order that we might see that we would not be like the Pharisees whose hearts

went after money and status, things that competed with you.

But we ask that our eyes would be fixed on Christ, that we would love him, and that our hearts and minds would be

enlightened to know your will.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Pharisees, in this passage, and having led up to this passage, have been offended at the inclusivity

of the kingdom of God.

They have been offended at the fact that sinners and tax collectors are being welcomed

into the kingdom of God.

Now, while they are very offended at this, Jesus points out that what they failed to be offended

by, what they should actually be offended by, is the exclusivity of the kingdom of God.

Because they think that by their own righteousness, they belong to the kingdom, they feel that they belong and others do not.

But the reality is that the law is so perfect, the law is so permanent, it is so fixed and

unwavering, that they could never get in with their imperfections and with their various bendings

of the law.

And so they failed to be offended by the exclusivity of the gospel, that offense

or that fear that would lead them to love and embrace the inclusivity

of the gospel.

It is the case for us as well.

Maybe not as often as at this time in this particular place, do you have such

groups as the Pharisees who feel that they belong and others do not?

In our time, there are many groups who feel that everyone belongs in the kingdom of God.

But at the root of all these false ideas is the notion

that it is by one person's own inherent value or righteousness or status

that they belong.

And what is offensive in this passage, it needs truly offensive of the kingdom, it needs to be embraced,

is the fact that none of us by our own standing could approach God.

None of us by our own righteousness, none of us by our own wealth can approach him.

But rather, we must abandon all, we must lay it all at the feet of Jesus knowing that

only he, only the status, the righteousness, the wealth that he has is

what can admit one into the kingdom of God.

And to understand this is to have a joy that is excellent and

surpassing worth, to have a community that is united and

flourishing and not built on false foundations as the one in Israel at this time is to have

many riches in Christ Jesus.

Beginning with this first verse, he says the Pharisees who were lovers of money heard

all these things and they ridiculed him.

Particularly what they heard is this parables that were told to them and the parables that were

told to the disciples.

Now the parables that were told to them in response to their complaints about Jesus including the sinners and the tax collectors

was the parable of the lost coin, parable of the lost sheep, and also

the parable of the prodigal son.

And then he turns to the disciples and he tells the parable of the shrewd steward.

And all of these expressing the greatness of the kingdom of heaven show the need to be

willing to abandon all else for the sake of Christ.

And they have no interest in doing this.

In particular, the previous parable told to the disciples said that we should make

friends by means of unrighteous wealth.

To make friends by unrighteous wealth speaks of securing the blessings of God by

using the position that we have been given for a temporary period in this world, that unrighteous wealth that we have,

unrighteous meaning not inherently righteous, not inherently valuable,

amoral, using that in a way that pursues God's purposes

that is in his service in order that we might take advantage of the time that we have here.

Now the Pharisees reject this.

They don't like this because they are lovers of money.

They don't want to make friends with anyone.

They'd rather make friends with money.

In this passage, money has been spoken of occasionally as mammon.

Now the ESV does not say that directly, but it does leave that in a footnote for you.

Mammon being derived from a word that means to place your trust in something.

So it's talking about them having placed their trust in money rather than in God.

And they think that their status, their wealth, is what guarantees

them their right position in the kingdom as opposed to, as opposed to the righteousness of

God.

They think their own righteousness is enough, their own wealth is proof of that, but it is

not.

And so why is this so offensive to them to welcome in the sinners and the tax

collectors?

Well in part because it threatens their status because it would mean that they would have to give up themselves.

If they are to make friends for the sake of the kingdom of God, then as poor sinners are being brought in, rather than

gobbling up widows' homes as the Bible describes them doing, they would have to give homes to the widows.

They would have to give of themselves to others.

And this is a thought that plagues many people today too.

You know, they think that they can follow God without giving of themselves, yet Christ requires

his disciples to give of themselves.

Additionally, there are, doesn't just mention sinners, those who would require some

kind of wealth if you were to truly befriend them and care for their needs.

It also speaks of tax collectors.

Now that might be surprising to you because tax collectors were actually very wealthy.

So how does this fixation on money, how is any of that a problem if you want to

become a friend of a tax collector?

Might that not even increase your wealth?

Well, what you should realize here is that while Jesus speaks very simply of

wealth and money, think of status and position in society as all being wrapped into this one thing.

And what does one do if he associates with those who are frowned upon, who are looked down

upon by others?

They would be sacrificing their status in society.

And so this is why, this is why they like these things, or this is why they reject the things that

Jesus loves and instead love wealth.

Now this is all very irrational.

They are not thinking rationally about the kingdom of God.

They are rather thinking based on where their heart is.

And the Bible explained this on many occasions, that people do not weigh out

matters of God rationally but are led by their hearts.

Romans 1 says that people suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

And this is the case frequently with everyone, with even you, with even me.

When we evaluate the things around us, when we think about what's right and wrong, so often we allow other things

that we love determine where we would land on what is right and

wrong.

So often, and is it not the case at least, at the very least that you are willing to consider the

potential rightness of something that would have perceived good ends for you, or to consider the

potential wrongness of something if you want to avoid it.

These are things that you will sit and contemplate longer than others at the bare minimum, if not even embrace falsely

the wrongness of something or the rightness of something so that you can avoid or embrace things.

Consider if you've ever known a man who's been in love with a very beautiful woman who is,

on all other counts, a terrible person.

On all other counts, not someone that any man, according to the Proverbs,

should be spending his time with.

Someone who is just, just has a terrible personality, is terribly discouraging, but is very

beautiful.

Many of us have known someone who has been enraptured by a woman like that, and will make excuses

for every single one of her flaws, every single one of her evil deeds, all her rudeness, all her

ugliness internally, because of her beauty externally.

And if people are willing to do that for a beautiful woman, how much are they willing to do that for the rest of their lives, where they

are worried about what they think will benefit them?

Even more than beauty, money and other things.

We do not tend to think rationally about these things.

Apart from the Spirit of God, we think not with our minds, but with our hearts, going after the things we love.

And so the answer to all this is to develop a

love for God, develop a love for Christ, so that when you encounter passages in His Word

that run contrary to your sinful inclinations, that you are ready to abandon those things, that you

are ready to abandon your loves for the sake of Christ.

I think this is really the biggest difficulty with various

books on theology that come to wrong conclusions, I think more often than not.

The case is not that this person had difficulty weighing through the matters intellectually, but

rather there were too many heart strings being pulled that led people to draw wrong conclusions.

Whenever you see a book that has wrong conclusions, et cetera, on the matter of God,

on what we should be doing, there are so many books on Christian ethics that make all sorts of compromises.

I don't think this is because people struggle intellectually with the matter so much as it is they struggle

in their heart to love God more than they love either

the sin that they are compromising on and say would actually be permissible, or the status that would be

lost by telling others that something is not permissible or is required by God.

Yeah, you read lots of books on Christian ethics and you will find that

if it isn't sin that is when they veer off course, either sin being promoted

or some righteousness being said that's not required, that happens pretty often, but then on top of that, even more than

those, people avoiding topics, people avoiding topics because to address it, to say what the Bible says on it

would lose them that status in society, would bring in all sorts of criticism.

And so we do not think rationally and we must develop, we must develop hearts that love God.

And what's the response of the Pharisees to this?

Is it rational argumentation?

No, it's not, it's ridicule.

This is the easy response from those who do not have a rational response, it is ridicule.

It's so easy to ridicule something that doesn't sound good to sinful sensibilities.

And how often do you hear that, especially when it comes to things about the truth of the Bible in our atheistic age?

So many people saying you believe in a talking snake, you believe in an ark

that housed all the animals, you believe in et cetera, right?

Not rational responses around considering

the Bible and its word on its own merits and on its own terms, but rather criticizing

it based on external terms, external standards that they consider reasonable

in order to show that it's foolish.

Now this is what someone does rather than thinking rationally when their heart is being taken away by other things, they ridicule.

So just know that when you face ridicule in the world, whether it be around what God

requires of man, whether it be around what God has proclaimed is true about the

world, about who we are, know that you will face ridicule because it is the

only thing the world has to offer against us.

They don't have rational argumentation.

They may make small attempts, but primarily you will receive ridicule because nothing else is available.

He continues on, and he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves

among men, before men, but God knows your hearts.

For what is exalted among yourselves is an abomination in the sight of

God.

And so people recognize just inherently that there's an importance to being right.

There's something negative about being wrong.

You see this in even people who would deny that there's any true, absolute good and evil is they

want to be in the right for whatever their sense of right is.

They do not want to be in the wrong.

And so there's always a need to self -justify.

And these Pharisees are ones who will justify themselves, and they justify themselves before

men rather than before God.

And this is how we deal with our conscience.

Our consciences are pricked, and so where do we seek affirmation rather than humbling before the Lord and receiving his

mercy so that we can be justified in his eyes, right in his eyes?

We go to man, and we justify ourselves before men by appealing to their standards, by doing the things that they will consider good enough,

they will consider righteous enough in order to feel satisfied, in order to feel right.

And what is it just in general that man accepts as giving

someone a good status?

It is a position in society that is typically one of wealth.

So especially in their society, if you have wealth, it means that God has blessed you, that God

is smiling upon you.

And so many people, by their lack of affliction, they consider themselves to be right in

God's eyes.

Now, people point to all different kinds of things.

The status that they may point to is not necessarily wealth, strictly speaking,

financial status, but it is some other status.

People hang on to these things, they love these things more than they love Christ, willing to admit no status on their own

but only the status that they would have in Christ.

And so they run to those things rather than running to Christ.

And they point to those things rather than pointing to Christ.

Second Corinthians 10, 13, 12, excuse me, speaks of the foolishness of

such justification.

It says, but when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are

without understanding.

You know, to compare yourselves with one another, to say, well, I'm more righteous than this person.

Well, I'm more righteous than that person.

I'm more righteous than the average person.

These are all very, very foolish standards.

You know, imagine a bunch of pigs getting together for a beauty pageant, and they're all gonna judge each other's beauty and their lack of

filth.

And now, to them, they might say, oh yes, this one's the most beautiful, this one's the least filthy, et cetera.

Right, but from our eyes, we look at that and we say they're all dirty, they're all ugly as pigs.

This is how we look in God's eyes, going in a circle, judging ourselves by each other.

And this is so common.

Even for those of us who know what the Bible says, who know that Romans 3, 10 says no one is good, we still

have a temptation to think of ourselves as good.

You might be willing to say the textbook answer that we are not good on our own, but really, when you

think about the number of times that you're willing to justify yourself in a conflict rather than to think about things

rationally, when two people are at odds and you immediately go to your own defense, what is your

bias, what is your assumption?

Is that you are a good person, you are a better person.

So do not judge yourself by, do not judge yourselves, justify yourself before men.

Do not judge yourself based on others, based on peers.

Especially considering that the peers you are justifying yourself by are probably not even the best set of peers.

It's never good enough to justify yourself by peers, but you're probably not even picking the right ones.

A lot of things, people justify themselves by just the people around them.

So the people in their own nation.

When people of other nations might have much better sensibilities about certain things, it

goes into talking about marriage and divorce.

So you might justify your divorce or your marriage or whatever sinful act that

you have committed by others just in your own nation when other nations

have a completely different approach and maybe even a more God -honoring standard

around these things.

And then on top of that, you look throughout history and you see what they have done and how they have

upheld God's word.

To judge yourself by your peers in history is foolish as well.

So both time and place, you're probably not even picking the right peers.

Our church uses the Second London Baptist Confession.

One thing it says in the preface about family worship and the importance of family worship, and they saw a decline in

family worship in their own day in the late 1600s.

And they said that Christians of eras past will rise up in judgment at this generation, even

those who are considered godly and examples in our own time.

And so that is something sobering.

You might think that you're godly and you're an example in your own time, but when we're

standing at that day in judgment and suddenly our set of peers has even changed so that it's not just

21st century Americans, but rather those who have been from more faithful areas and more faithful generations,

having judged yourself by peers will feel foolish even on that account.

But once again, these are still sinful men.

Do not judge yourself by peers, judge yourself by Christ, the one who is perfect, and recognize that you have no standing

apart from him.

Our God is a perfect God.

Matthew 5 .48 says, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

He is absolute.

Maybe you've seen that before.

The Bible, excuse me, that Christian theology speaks of God as being absolute, and maybe

you haven't known what that means.

Absolute is the antithesis of being relative, right?

If you're relative, you are measured by other things.

If you are absolute, things are measured by you.

God is absolute.

No, he is love.

It's not that he is very loving and he conforms to some external standard of love.

He is love.

And so our love, his love is not to be judged as many people do and say, well, that doesn't seem very loving of

God.

No, he is love and our love is supposed to be judged on the basis of him, the one who is love, the one who created all

things.

And he is good.

Bible says frequently that he is good.

And if he is absolute and good, what does that mean?

Our standard of goodness can't be based on ourselves.

It has to be based on him.

He's eternal.

He's eternal.

He is not bound by time.

If he is not bound by time, why would he be impressed by your status in society

that is fading?

The wealth that gave these Pharisees a sense of

self -justification, that gave themselves a sense of status, all fading, all fading away, as it

explained in the previous parable.

But then any sort of status that you might have in society is fading.

Why would you look to those things?

You know, the prosperity teacher that points to their own status as evidence of God's love for them and

encourages others to do the same.

But there's so much of that that happens even apart from those most extreme examples.

Just very frequently, people are looking at their own status in society as

demonstrating a status in that kingdom of God.

And it may even be something that purports to be the kingdom, just like the Pharisees are facing, right?

They are part of this people of God.

They think they have status in this people of God.

People can be in churches and even have high statuses in their churches.

But does that mean that they have status in the kingdom of God?

Does that mean that on that last day when they are moved to the proper seat at the table, that

they will be near the head, near the bridegroom?

Or will they be far off or even cast out entirely?

So God, he's absolute, he's good, he's eternal, and he is omnisapient.

You know, you've probably heard of God being omniscient, meaning he knows everything.

He's omnisapient, meaning he is all wise.

He has all wisdom.

He does not just look at the external, he looks at the heart.

It says, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.

For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

There are a lot of times there are things that are actively disgusting in God's eyes that are

praised as being morally good things in our own.

Proverbs 16, five says that everyone who is arrogant in heart is an

abomination to the Lord.

Be assured, he will not go unpunished.

And so it does not matter what the externals, what externals you have going on, what false

humility you may have, because these Pharisees, remember, they're regarded as, even though they have wealth, they're regarded

as humble people, right?

They're ones who are praying in the streets.

Now, we know that.

Because of Christ's interpretation, that's very arrogant.

But in that society, they're considered as the most humble of people, the way they're praying, the way they're giving.

Oh, they're just the most humble people.

And that's praised by man, but God sees the heart.

He knows.

He knows what's really going on.

There is no justification before men.

There's no, do not cleanse your conscience by your peers.

Cleanse your conscience by God Almighty.

He continues on here.

The law and the prophets were until John.

Since then, the good news of the kingdom is preached and everyone forces his way into it.

But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become

void.

And so, once again, this is alluding back to an earlier part of this discourse.

Luke 15, one said, now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him.

And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, this man receives sinners and eats with them.

And so, Jesus is describing that, that everyone is forcing his way into it.

In Matthew, he says that the violent are taking it by force.

You know, there's an invasion happening in the kingdom and people are just rushing in.

And this is how the Pharisees sense it, that their prized little society is

being invaded by others.

And so, Jesus is saying, yes, they are forcing their way into it.

The law and the prophets continued.

This is referring to the Old Testament all the way until John, where he's proclaiming baptism

with repentance and this being a way of coming into the kingdom of God, of repenting before the Lord in

God's mercy.

And all kinds of people are being brought into the kingdom through John's ministry and now through Jesus' ministry.

And the good news of the kingdom is proclaimed.

But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than

for one dot of the law to become void.

And so, while they are very offended by that inclusivity of the gospel, that

various people are being allowed into it, they fail to realize, because they think they belong and others don't, they

fail to realize that they do not even belong.

That the law is something that is so fixed, so perfect, so permanent, that their attempts to bend it

and to make themselves right do not satisfy God.

And so, they are, rather, ones who do not belong.

Now, there are a couple of, there's at least one implication that I'd like to draw out of this.

The fact that the law cannot change, it's not just saying it's harder, right?

There's one thing that's hard, there's this other thing that's harder.

It's impossible, it's impossible for the law to change

because the law is coming from the very character of God.

So, an analogy for that would be, I could say that it's easier to change geography than

it is to change mathematics, right?

Now, that's not just, oh, one's harder to change than the other.

No, you could like, one's possible to change.

You could send a nuke, hit some part of the world, change geography, right?

In theory, it's possible to accomplish that with enough power.

It's not possible to change mathematics.

You can't change two plus two being equal to four, okay?

And so, that's what's going on here.

Heaven and earth can pass away.

God can make them pass away, but his law coming from himself cannot pass away.

And so, that's talking about this moral code that's written on people's hearts.

And this is why it's very important to understand the law of God in a way that

does not conflict with his word.

So, you have statements like this talking about the impossibility of the law changing, but a lot of views of the law make it so that the

law changes.

Maybe you've heard this, that how do we deal with all these laws in the Old Testament that we don't follow anymore?

You know, eating shellfish, stuff like that.

One common approach to this is to say, well, all the law is thrown out in the Old Testament, and then

anything that's repeated in the New Testament actually is still binding.

Okay, so that's the way a lot of people approach it.

But they fail to realize that the law, God's law coming from himself

is not something so mutable where it can just be thrown out and recreated.

They're treating it like heaven and earth.

Like heaven and earth, it can pass away.

And so, the reformed view of this, very simply looking at the Old Testament, divides

the various laws, and more specifically, the aspects of these laws into the categories of moral, civil, ceremonial.

You know, moral being that which is written on the heart and is eternal, cannot change.

It's not gonna someday become okay to murder.

It's not gonna someday become okay to tell a lie.

These are things that are eternal and cannot change.

And these other things, these positive laws, as they are known, that civil code or the ceremonial

code that's tied to the temple, one tied to the government of Israel, one tied to the temple of Israel, those things

are not at the core of this law.

They are not that moral law, that natural law that cannot be changed.

So, it's important to understand God's law rightly so that statements like this can make

sense up.

Because otherwise, if you're saying that, well, God can just toss out any law, he can make other ones, you're treating his law like heaven and earth,

and that's not how it should be treated.

Now, one other thing I will mention about this is that, what I mentioned earlier,

a lot of this maybe seems a little irrelevant to us because you

look at these Pharisees, they're keeping other people out of the kingdom, they think they belong.

They're not happy about the inclusivity of the kingdom.

Where what you see today is really a lot of the opposite.

You know, people are not happy about any notion of exclusivity,

and they're very happy with inclusivity.

More people today tend towards some kind of, something close to universalism,

right, than they do an exclusive view like this.

Now, there are, of course, plenty who are more directly like the Pharisees, but I would argue that

all people have a tendency to be like the Pharisees, not necessarily in wanting to say that,

wanting to say so directly that the kingdom of God is

not inclusive, but rather to say that the means of inclusion is by your own righteousness, right?

This is what the Pharisees are saying.

The means of inclusion is by your own righteousness.

Our own righteousness is enough.

Our status is enough.

You bringing these other people in is sacrificing our status as being the in crowd.

And what is it that the average person who tends toward universalism, the idea that, you know, everyone's right in the eyes of God,

all religions are pointing to the same end, they're all going down the same road and end up at the same destination,

what are they doing?

They're saying that the means of inclusion is by your own righteousness.

You're sufficient on your own.

You've are enough.

You've got enough.

You don't need to abandon anything that you've got.

You don't need to abandon what you're holding onto, your status.

It's gonna get you there eventually.

But Christ is saying that none of it is good enough.

Your own righteousness, your wealth, whatever your religion tells you is going to get you in, none of it is going to do it.

It is only the blood of Christ who can.

How are these people able to force their way in?

It's by the mercy of God and the one who John the Baptist is proclaiming, the one who is to come, who is this one

who is here in this passage, is Jesus Christ.

He is the one through whom we can enter that kingdom.

And so he continues on with something that seems very surprising.

If you are one who tends to look at the Bible as a group of

proof texts, you might not have noticed just how out of the blue this one appears.

Or if you've studied this passage before looking at what the Bible says about divorce and not really looked at the context, now that you're

looking at the context and looking at the flow, this one's very surprising.

This just comes out of nowhere.

It says everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery and he who marries

a divorced woman from her husband commits adultery.

So saying that because God does not approve of that sort of divorce and this not being a legitimate

divorce, it's adultery to marry this one who has been divorced or to divorce this

one.

Now why is Jesus pointing this out?

Now there are other passages.

If you wanna learn about divorce, it would not be, the best

approach would not be to just take this and look at it by itself thinking that Jesus is trying to tell you

all the ins and outs about divorce and all the different situations.

There are other passages that are addressing that more.

In this context, Jesus is addressing the Pharisees and their

bending of the law of God.

In fact, if you look at Matthew, what you see is this is actually, in Matthew, this is two different passages and this is coming together as one

passage in Luke.

In Matthew 5, you have Jesus talking about the permanence of the law

like Luke is and so he goes about the different ways that the Pharisees are bending the law and failing to recognize that the law gets to the heart

and he mentions divorce.

And then later in Matthew 19, he says this, he says this phrase

about everyone who divorces, wife marries and marries another, commits adultery.

And so Luke is, Luke is taking this which Matthew, which Matthew expresses in two

different times.

One to talk about the heart of God's law and then later to speak more

directly on divorce.

And Luke is taking this to refer to the importance of understanding that God's law comes from the very beginning.

It is,.

It is rooted in himself even and so it is

fixed and permanent.

It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to pass away.

Now, this has, yeah, this has a lot of, once again, a lot of implications.

There are other folks who look at, I was mentioning how people look at Old Testament Israel's laws and they imagine, well, maybe it's all thrown out and then

we've got a, you know, it all gets recreated in the New Testament.

There's another group who say, well, no, the law in the Old Testament, especially the civil law needs to be,

needs to be followed directly.

And here's what you end up running into if you go down that route is that you end up having

passages like this that show that, well, actually, the regulation of these things is not actually talking

about their good and you, I think there's a real danger in ending up

unintentionally encouraging sinful behavior because you're trying to mimic the civil

regulation that made sense during a particular hardness of heart, season of hardness of heart, right?

Jesus explains elsewhere that it's because the hardness of their heart that these particular sins were regulated.

We have different kinds of hardnesses in our own era and so to regulate them just as Israel regulated theirs would

be very misguided.

So consider, for example, polygamy, right?

Polygamy is regulated in the Old Testament because this is a sin that people are engaged in and so God's, he has

laws to protect people from the dangers of polygamy while

not going as far as banning it.

So he's dealing with, as Jesus says, the hardness of their heart.

But this passage right here tells us that, I mean, in addition to it being obvious from

other passages, it tells us polygamy is wrong.

It says, everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.

And the polygamous few, that would not be adultery to marry another wife.

It was actually not adultery at all.

So yeah, it just shows some of the dangers of misunderstanding how God's law

operates in the Old Testament.

You don't want to treat it as something that's all something you can throw away and you don't want to treat

the civil code as something that we have to implement today exactly as it says.

All right, so he gives this as just one example.

This is just one case study in how they have bent the law.

They want to divorce their wife, they go ahead and divorce their wife and they think that they're okay in the eyes of God because the

law allowed for this.

They're following the law.

But it is not the case that they are okay.

The two shall become one, what God has joined, let no man separate.

Their practice in divorcing without cause, like I said, other passages speak more to the causes

that would make it correct to acknowledge that as a broken union.

But their following the law in its regulations does not

actually mean that they are following the law of God that has been written on their heart and that has been expressed even in his word

in the way that the world was created, in the way that man and woman was joined together.

And this is true with so many things.

There are so many things that are not repeated ad nauseum in scripture, even

though they are often repeated in scripture, that are abandoned or

muddied because there are not specific prohibitions or specific restrictions.

And so people think that they're in the right because they can't find a proof text when the way that creation was created, when the way that

God has made things has made it very clear that his law is one way and it cannot be changed.

Let me give you some examples of that.

It's very common to, you look at the beginning in the Bible where it says it is

not good for man to be alone.

But there is so much promotion of aloneness, even in Christian circles.

There's so much delay of marriage through the way that our society is shaped because it's just not

profitable for your career to pursue marriage when the Bible encourages it in all normal circumstances.

But people delay this just to the nth degree and it gets delayed longer every

decade, probably every year that we are in.

And this is just one example of what God has said from the beginning.

It's not good for man to be alone.

But more and more people think that they're following that because well, there's nothing that says that we can't

get in undergrad, grad, a few years of the career before thinking more

seriously about what God would have for the normal course of a man's life.

So that is just one example where people are deprioritizing something.

There's not a specific proof text that says this is wrong, but it's against what God has expressed

as expected and normal for man.

There's also, if you think about the way the world was created, there's differences between men and women.

And woman was created from the rib of the man.

She is supposed to submit to the man.

Now once again, I'm just speaking of Christian circles.

I'm not even talking about the gender craziness that's going out in the world.

There are a lot of people who will look at the specific proof text.

They'll say, okay, women aren't supposed to have authority over men in church, so they can't be pastors.

They're supposed to submit, sort of, but there's also a statement saying submit to each other.

And what you end up with is this bare, bare minimum distinction between men and women

that's where the wife will end up running the home, and because they can't find a proof text that says it

shouldn't be this way, even though it's just in the way that God created man and woman,

that the man needs to be leading the home and guiding the home, and the wife should be submitting to her

husband.

Many evangelicals, many Christians that we will see on the day, many people, you and me, are

violating these things that are just built into the way God created the world from his own character.

When he made man in his image, male and female, he created them.

Consider also the Sabbath, something that's not spoken a lot of in scripture, but God rested on the

seventh day.

The law explains why is there a Sabbath.

It's because God rested on the seventh day.

It existed even before Exodus 20 when the Ten Commandments are given.

But what you've seen over the past, just look at the past,

I don't know, 30 years.

I mean, I remember when I was a kid when people honored Sunday a lot more than they honor it today, right?

Because it's very easy to get around these things and say, oh, well, we're honoring it this way, or

just as long as there's a little bit of honor or something, and that just kind of erodes and erodes and bends and bends until is

there a real honoring of the Lord if he has created creation this way?

Additionally, one more I'll add is about the way God created man is he gave him

dominion over the earth, okay?

That dominion entails, very clearly, one of the things that entails is possession, right?

Ownership, that ownership is a real thing.

The Eighth Commandment explains that it's wrong to steal.

The reason it's wrong to steal is because people can truly own things.

And yet, people promote more and more, and once again, still talking about people in the church, more and

more forms of communism infiltrating society where things are not viewed as the property of

individuals, but they're actually viewed as property of the collective.

And it doesn't matter what sort of program it is, what kind of social program, but more and more, that government

that was given the power of the sword, Romans 13, Genesis 9, more and more

has authority, is granted authority not just over

property for the sake of wielding the sword, of

being God's minister of vengeance, but more and more over other things as well.

And because people can't find one specific proof text, they think that this is perfectly acceptable, even

good, it is praised among man.

That which is an abomination to God is praised among men.

Oh yes, this is good for society to promote these various socialist institutions

that are helping society, et cetera.

From the very beginning, God created man to have dominion, to have an ownership, an ownership that

implies rights that should not be taken away apart from

some statement to the contrary.

And the only statement we have is in the context of the wielding of the sword.

So now I dropped four pretty big things there, and I'm sure a lot of that didn't land with some

people, but keep in mind, this is exactly what Jesus does here.

He just drops this one verse.

So if any of that didn't sit right with you, just once again, remember that we are biased

to think in our own way, about our own.

We have an inclination toward what we think is right, and we're not necessarily thinking about what God thinks is right.

We're tending to think just on justification before man in our society.

That might include God's word and finding proof texts, but these things are baked into creation

itself by the eternal God who has made it.

And so let us all sort of think about his law in that way, in the way he has even made creation.

And don't give in to some sort of Darwinistic view of ethics that says, well, as society changes, it's right for

our ethics to change.

God is eternal, and he has given us a law that is good and perfect and cannot

pass away.

So considering all this in summary, first of all, do not be deceived.

Do not deceive yourself into thinking that you belong by your own merit.

Do not be deceived in thinking that others don't belong on the basis of Christ's blood, and that

they need some kind of merit in order to be part of the society, in order to stand before him.

Do not think of yourself as belonging in that way

by your own merit, because you will tend to alienate others when you need to recognize that

you yourself are the alien.

And then moreover, the more that you realize how little you belong, the more thankful you

will be about the fact that you do.

Okay, the more you recognize that I have sinned against a perfect God, I am just

so unworthy to be part of his kingdom, the more you will appreciate being a part of his kingdom, and the more you will

eagerly extend that to others.

You know, I think one way that people fail to do this, people who might, you know, be good students of the word and read

this passage and think, yes, I don't inherently belong, anyone can come by the blood of Jesus,

is evangelism.

You know, when we go and we share the word, and we, or don't share the word, and we're too

cowardly, not bold enough to share the word, what's oftentimes our justification?

Our justification is, oh, I don't think he'd be very receptive to this, I don't think she would respond well to this, and so,

you know, she's just too hard of heart, I'm not going to try.

What were you?

What were you, were you wise enough, were you humble enough to receive it?

What were you?

And so, this is one small way that this pharisaical thinking gets into our brains that

is not, even we who might otherwise embrace Jesus' teaching, it comes in in

places like that, like in evangelism, where we start thinking of ourselves and our own journey as being

more upstanding, a little easier, you know?

Like, oh, this'll be too hard for them, but it was easy for me.

No, don't have those thoughts.

Know that this mercy of God is extended to all, and this gospel is going to those who do not

appear to belong, the sinners and the tax collectors.

And if you're one who identifies with the sinners and tax collectors and feels like

you don't really belong because you don't have some merit to stand before him,

then you are telling yourself the same lies of Pharisees.

You might identify as the sinner and the tax collector, but you're preaching the same stuff to yourself that the Pharisees are preaching.

And now, maybe that is because there are others who have told you that you don't belong by whatever means, and,

you know, I'm deeply sorrowful about that, but I know that for many people, they're telling

themselves this stuff in their own heart, and it's not being told to them by other people, right?

They might see someone who's a little further along in their journey, a little more mature in the faith, and so they don't think

that they belong because they don't have the righteousness of that other person, and that other person's

not making them feel unwanted, right?

They're internalizing all this, and they're imagining messages being sent from these others who are more mature in the faith.

So if you are less mature in the faith and you don't feel like you belong because those are more mature,

first of all, don't let anyone lie to you if they are, that you don't belong.

If you have abandoned everything and come on the righteousness of Christ.

And also, do not lie to yourself.

Do not tell yourself that what I need to do is I need to get a little more mature and then I can come to Christ, get a little more mature and then I'll

really fit in.

No, this is a society for even those who are rank sinners who have

come to Him with repentance.

Truly desiring to follow Him, truly abandoning their status and everything else that they might have knowing that He

alone is worthy.

I once went to an airport where I saw, where there were two men in a

line at a sign that said, please wait here, and there were a bunch of kiosks to get tickets up ahead, but no one was standing

at the kiosks, and one of the guy in the back of the line realized this.

And so he went up and used one of the kiosks, and one of the other guys tried to stop him.

And like, no, you can't go ahead of us.

So he just went to another kiosk.

Like, this is the picture, you know.

Don't stand in line and wait there thinking that you've gotta have something more before you can come to Christ.

You'll miss the flight.

You'll never go.

You will not be part of the society because there's never a time when you will be righteous enough to stand before Him on your own merit.

It is only through the blood of Jesus Christ, and so you should recognize that the invasion is happening.

Don't stand there while everybody else is rushing into the kingdom, but you see that crack in the door, come in, come in,

come in.

Christ is calling for you.

It was a false door.

It was a false wall all along, one made of plaster set up by Pharisees.

Come in, come to Christ.

Do not hesitate to come into the kingdom because there is no barrier, but it's a small door and you have to leave

everything else behind.

Do not try to hang on to anything you have because nothing else of this world belongs in the

kingdom, only you who have left all behind and cling to the blood of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we recognize our own

corruption, our own corruption even having come to you, even having been

cleansed by your blood and have that corruption mortified by the Spirit, but it continues, and so we are people who are

biased, biased to thinking that we have sufficient merit,

biased, loving the things of the world and judging your word based on those loves.

We ask that you would mortify further our sin, that you would mortify those loves, that you would mortify

our false thinking in order that we might more fully appreciate your goodness, that we might fully

welcome people into your kingdom and that this might be a blessed society

of saved sinners who are fully grateful for what you have done in Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray, amen.