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. 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 and needs to be truly offensive of the kingdom and 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 past 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 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 of 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. They think that they can follow

God without giving of themselves, yet Christ requires His disciples to give of themselves.

Additionally, there are, it 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 to, 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, isn't 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, etc., 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 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, you know, 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, you know, 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.

2 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 going to 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, etc. 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, 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, right?

A lot of things, people justify themselves by just the people around them. Okay? So the people in their own nation.

When people of other nations might have much better sensibilities about certain things, you know, it goes into talking about marriage and divorce, right?

So you might justify your, your divorce or your marriage or whatever, 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 are, 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.

The, our church uses the London, 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, that is something sobering. You might think that you're, 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. The 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's 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 .5 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 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 men, 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, 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, you know, their prized little society is being invaded by others.

And so, Jesus is saying, yes, they are, 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, okay?

So an analogy for that would be, I could say that, you know, 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, you know, 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 going to someday become okay to murder.

It's not going to 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, a lot of this maybe seems a little irrelevant to us because you look at this, you look at these

Pharisees, they're keeping other people out of the kingdom, they think they belong, they're not happy about the, 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, is not inclusive, but rather to say that the means of inclusion is by your own righteousness, right?

This is what the, 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, 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 got enough. You don't need to abandon anything that you've got.

You don't need to abandon what you're holding on to, your status, it's going to 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, 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 want to learn about, if you want to 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 coming, 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 phrase about everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.

And so Luke is taking this, 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 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, 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, so God's, he has laws to protect people from the dangers of polygamy while not, while not going as far as banning it.

So he's, he's dealing with, as, 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, tells us polygamy is wrong.

It says, everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And the polygamous view that would not be, that would not be adultery to marry another wife is 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 us at the civil code as something that we have to implement today exactly as it says.

Okay. 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 think that they're okay in the eyes of God because the law allowed for this.

They're following the law. But it is, it is not the case that they are okay.

The two shall become one, what God has joined, let no man separate. Their, their practice in divorcing without cause, you know, like I said, other passages speak more to the, to the causes that would make it, it correct to acknowledge that as a broken union.

But their, 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, 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, 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, right?

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, every decade, probably every year that we are in.

This is just one example of what God has said from the beginning, it is 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, you know, you know, get in undergrad, grad, career, you know, a few years of the career before thinking more seriously about what

God would have for the normal course of a man's life, right? That would, so that is just one example where people are deprioritizing something, there's not a specific, there's not a specific proof text that says this is wrong, but it's against what

God has expressed as, as expected and normal for man. There is also, if you think about the way the world was created, there's differences between men and women, and a 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.

You know, 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, 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, you know, 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, 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, you know, 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 today, right?

Because it's very easy to get around these things and say, oh, well, we're honoring it this way, or, you know, 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, when 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, I dropped four pretty big things there, and I'm sure a lot of that didn't land with, 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, we're tending to think just on justification before man, and in our society, that might include

God's word in 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, God is eternal, and he has given us a law that is, that is good and perfect and cannot pass away.

So, considering all this, in summary, first of all, do not be, 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, do not think of yourself as, 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, as being more upstanding, a little easier, you know, like, oh, this will 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, who identifies with the sinners and tax collectors and feels like you don't really belong because, because you don't have some merit to stand before him, then you are telling yourself the same lies of Pharisees.

You might, 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, 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, of that other person, and, and that other person's not, not making them feel unwanted, right?

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

So if you are, 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, if they are, that you don't belong, if you have, 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, this is a society for even those who are, who are rank sinners who have come to Him with repentance, truly desiring to follow

Him, truly abandoning their status and everything else 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 are a bunch of, you know, kiosks to get tickets up ahead, but no one was standing at the kiosk, and one of the, the guy in the back of the line realized this, and so he went up and, and used one of the kiosks, and one of the other guys tried to stop him, like, no, you can't go ahead of us, and so he just went to another kiosk.

Like, this is, this is the picture, you know, don't, don't stand in line and wait there thinking that you've got to have something more before you can come to Christ.

You'll, 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.