Episode 51: What Hath Sinai to do with Calvary?

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Eddie, I don't remember the first day that we recorded, but now we're recording in August.

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I think we started August 2022. Does that sound right to you? Sounds like it, yeah.

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So we have been recording for one year. Wow.

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On the RCP 2 .0. That's right. 1 .0. How long did the first one last?

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I think it was like 30 -something episodes. Yeah, yeah. But we weren't as good at getting one out every week.

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Well, technology's—even technology's changed. Like, last time we did it, we didn't even use Zoom. That's right.

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What did we even do back then? I'm trying to remember how we did it. Did we use Google Hangouts or something?

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I don't know. It was complicated. But welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I'm Alan Nelson, your co -host, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas.

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And with me is my brother in the faith, partner in the ministry, good friend,

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Eddie Ragsdale. Say hello, Eddie. Hello, everybody. Hey, man. We're going to do a little bit of this right here in front of everybody on the show.

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But did you and Jacob record an episode about that? We want to record—

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You may need to make an announcement there. Yeah, we want to record. We want to do an episode.

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But if our regular listeners were listening carefully, no, I didn't move churches.

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Our church, our local church, Perryville Second Baptist Church, we just decided to change our name.

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And I'll talk about that. Hopefully, I'm going to get on an episode with Pastor Jacob, and we'll talk about that.

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But Providence Baptist Church, Christ is King. That's our name and slogan there.

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Of course, I don't have a vote in matters concerning your church, but when you guys were discussing it, that was my pick of the names that you guys were looking at.

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I think on our vote night, everybody voted except for two, voted for Sovereign Grace Baptist Church.

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But when it was just overwhelming Providence, everybody was just like, okay. And everybody was in agreement and unity.

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And so that was encouraging. Like I said, we're going to do a future episode on that. I need to get with Jacob and work that out.

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But today, in this episode, we want to talk about the

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Ten Commandments and the Christian. There are multiple views out there on this, but instead of just trying to track down every errant view, we're going to give you what we believe is the biblical view, the 19th chapter.

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I don't have it in front of me, brother, but the 19th chapter of the Second London Baptist Confession.

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Oh, it's in arm's length, is really good on this. I may read some from that in just a moment.

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But what we want to start out with is to say that the Ten Commandments do not need to be understood as something just given to Israel, right?

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Mm -hmm, right. Oh, I thought you were going to weigh in on that. No, no,

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I would agree. Yeah, the Ten Commandments, they're a reflection of God's moral character.

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Amen. And so I would say we see the nature of the moral law or whatever term we want to use reflected all the way back at the very beginning of the

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Scriptures. Yeah, so let me start. Chapter 19. God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, by which he bound him in all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling and threatened death upon the breach of it, and endued him with power and ability to keep it.

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So the idea here is God could have said to Adam, essentially, Adam, love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. But the way that God commanded

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Adam to obey was to not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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So this is, as it were, some people don't like this category, and if you come up with a better word, fine.

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I'm fine with the category. The moral law of God that Adam, now this had a specific commandment attached here that's obviously, you know, we're not commanded to not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil because it's not here, right?

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Right. But the idea here is the same. In fact, the confession goes on to articulate better what

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I'm trying to say. The same law, okay? Paragraph two. The same law that was first written in the heart of man continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness after the fall and was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai in ten commandments and written in two tablets, the first four containing our duty towards God and the other six our duty to man.

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So let's start right here. First and foremost, as you said just a second ago, the

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Ten Commandments reflect the righteousness of God. They reflect his moral character, and they are binding not merely upon physical

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Israel, but they're binding upon all humanity. I think it's important to point out, because sometimes

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I think people struggle with understanding the distinctions in the law, in God's law beyond the

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Ten Commandments, because oftentimes we talk about there are things that we don't do today because of Christ's fulfillment of those things in the

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New Covenant. And so oftentimes you'll hear people, and especially opponents of Christianity, that they'll say, well, you don't really follow the

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Bible because you eat bacon or whatever. And so they'll claim that we're not really believing the scriptures or we would do all these things, not seeing a distinction between, say, the

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Ten Commandments and other portions of God's law. And I think it's really important that we point out we do believe that Jesus fulfilled all the law, including the

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Ten Commandments. We would only say that the moral law in fulfilling that,

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Jesus leads us in continuing in obedience to it, not fulfilling it in the sense that it no longer needs to be, that we no longer need to do the

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Ten Commandments. Jesus fulfilled all of the law. Some of the things that God commanded were, particularly for Israel, and they were fulfilled in Jesus keeping those perfectly.

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And so we don't need to do those today, some of the civil laws and ceremonial laws that don't continue for us today.

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But Jesus fulfilled all the law, including the moral law, but today we follow Christ by following him in obedience to the moral law.

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Yeah, that's good. The Confession divides it up moral, ceremonial, judicial. And when we talk about the

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Ten Commandments, first and foremost, the Ten Commandments stand over us in judgment.

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They are a moral gauge, if you will, by which we do not measure up.

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Right. Far from it. So you talk about the Ten Commandments and the Christian, the law, the first place that it serves is to expose our sinfulness.

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We look at these Ten Commandments, and really here's the reality. We don't even get past the first one.

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So I'll illustrate this real quick. But in Matthew 19, this is

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Jesus's encounter with the rich young ruler in Matthew 19. And he says, the text says in verse 16,

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And behold, a man came up to him saying, Teacher, what good deed must

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I do to have eternal life? And he said to him, Why do you ask me about what is good?

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There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments. Now that's an interesting way for Jesus to say it, right?

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If you would enter life, keep the commandments. So just bear with me for a moment.

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Since God is good, he will reward the just. Since God is good, he will give you what you are due.

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And so if you would enter life, Jesus says to this rich young man, if you would enter life, keep the commandments.

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So there is a hypothetical there. There is a reality that if one were to keep all the commandments of God, if Adam were to keep the commandments of God, there is a reward.

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Now the reward far exceeds the obedience or whatever. But there's the idea.

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But what's the problem with that, Eddie? What's the problem with, hey, if you would enter life, keep the commandments?

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Our problem is we don't keep the commandments. Yeah. We do not. We cannot.

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We will not. And we will not. Right. Yeah. And so just to continue the story, the man says to Jesus, okay, which ones?

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And Jesus said, you shall not murder. You should not commit adultery. You should not steal. You should not bear false witness.

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Honor your father and mother. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So he quotes there the

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Sixth Commandment, the Seventh Commandment, the Eighth Commandment, the Ninth Commandment, and then goes back in the

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Fifth Commandment, and then basically summarizes them. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And the young man said to him, all these

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I've kept. What do I still lack? Jesus said to him, if you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.

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When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. So Jesus says, you want life?

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Keep the commandments. Essentially, the guy's like, Richard, yeah, okay, I've done that. And Jesus shows him that really he hadn't even gotten past the

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First Commandment, right? That's right. And which is you shall have no other gods before me.

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And so the idea that I'm just trying to convey here is, first and foremost, what is the

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Ten Commandments and the Christian relationship? First and foremost, before our conversion, they stand over us in condemnation.

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They are a mirror to show us our wretchedness. Mm -hmm, yeah.

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And it's interesting that we're talking about this, because we're working our way through Philippians right now in our church, and so we're in Philippians chapter 3 right now, and we've slowed down to almost your pace, man, right now, because we've really slowed down to about a verse of sermon at this point.

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And the text this last week, this last Sunday that we were dealing with, was verse 9.

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And there Paul says, so the end of verse 8, Paul says, for his sake I've suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain

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Christ. And then verse 9, Paul says, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

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And we know Paul talks a lot about the law in several places. The issue is not that the law is bad.

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The law is good. The issue is that our righteousness from the law is not able to save us because we can't be righteous.

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We need a righteousness that, you know, I first think it was John MacArthur that I heard use the phrase, but I told our church,

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I said, we need an alien righteousness. I know aliens are in the news right now, but we need a foreign outside of us righteousness because our righteousness before the law isn't good enough.

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But the law, but that's not a problem with the law. The law is good. It's this perfect picture of God's moral character.

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And then what God did was sent an embodiment of his moral character in the person of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. So just to hit on that, and then we'll move into the actual, you know, what happens in regeneration.

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But there's a righteous standard all mankind will be judged by. Did you love God perfectly at every moment of your life?

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Did you have anything at any point in your life that could be considered an idol, something you put before God?

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Did you take God's name in vain, whether that be using it, you know, as a cuss word or whatever, or just using it flippantly or not using it when you should have called upon his name?

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Did you honor his Sabbath day? Did you dishonor the worship of God with the people of God and set aside perfectly one day and seven to refrain from the everyday cares of life and to rest in God?

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Did you perfectly obey your parents? Did you honor them in heart and thought and action?

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Have you murdered anyone physically or perhaps in your heart with anger toward them as Jesus teaches?

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Have you committed adultery? Same thing, physically or in your heart with lust or looking at something, you know, on the

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Internet you shouldn't have. Have you stolen? Have you cheated your employer or your government or taken something that hasn't belonged to you?

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Have you lied? Have you stretched the truth or told a half -truth or fudged the numbers just a little?

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Have you twisted events just ever so slightly so that you came out looking better?

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Have you coveted? Have you complained or griped about your situation or circumstance?

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You understand, if you understand these ten commandments, the summation of the moral or the, well,

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I'll talk about that in a second, but if you understand these commandments, the expression of God's moral law, then you understand we cannot be justified by them.

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We cannot hope to enter life through means of the law.

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But as you said, Eddie, this is the gospel. Jesus has kept that on our behalf, and Jesus has bore the punishment due to lawbreakers.

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Jesus has carried our sins in his body on the tree, and he was punished.

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He became a curse for us and died and rose again so that all who repent and believe the gospel will not perish but have everlasting life.

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So now that we're saved, we're born again by the grace of God, how do the ten commandments come into play for the saved?

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Yeah, I would say the ten commandments are still a reflection of God's righteous standard for us as believers, that we want, that now we have a will and a desire to follow because we have a new heart.

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Because the law on our new hearts says yes and amen to the law in the

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Scripture. We want to follow and obey that. I think so often we think of it in terms of the law thinking of it like this external thing, but now it really is internally working in us from the inside out rather than this kind of external code.

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Yeah, no, the old covenant, the law is on tablets of stone, but there's no way to get it from the outside to the inside, and that's the beauty of the new covenant.

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God removes our heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh, and on that heart of flesh he has written his law.

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So back to the 1689, paragraph 6 is beautiful, chapter 19. Listen to this.

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Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works to be thereby justified or condemned, yet it is of great use to them as well as to others in that as a rule of life informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly, discovering also the sinful pollutions of their natures, hearts, and lives, so as examining themselves thereby they may come to further conviction of humiliation for and hatred against sin, together with the clear sight of the need they have of Christ and the perfection of his obedience.

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It is likewise of use to the regenerate to restrain their corruptions and that it forbids sin, and the threatenings of it serve to show what even their sins deserve and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them, although freed from the curse and unalloyed rigor thereof.

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The promises of it likewise show them God's approbation of obedience and what blessings they may expect upon the performance thereof, though not as due to them by the law as a covenant of works.

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So as man's doing good and refraining from evil, for the law encourages to the one and deters from the other, is no evidence of his being under the law and not under grace.

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In other words, very well said by our Baptist forefathers, but the idea is we're not under the law in terms of being condemned by it.

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We can't be condemned by it. Romans 8 .1, there is therefore now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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But the law is useful. It's good. We desire to keep it. It's written on our hearts. And so the

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Ten Commandments are in play because they show us the way that God would have us to walk in newness of life.

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So I don't want to take us off topic here, but as you were reading that from the 1689,

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I'm less familiar with the Westminster Standards, but maybe you can tell me, is there a distinction?

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I mean, I know that a lot of what's in the 1689 is reflected from what's also in the

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Westminster Standards, but that sounded distinctly Baptist to me, particularly how that they were separating it from a covenant of works, meaning that from our

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Baptist forefathers, there would have been looking to the Old Covenant as having been a covenant of works.

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And the Presbyterians would not have seen it as such. Well, no, I don't think that's...

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That's what I'm asking you for your scholarly opinion. No, it's the same.

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So the Westminster Confession of Faith has the same paragraph 6.

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Although true believers be not under the law as a covenant of works to be thereby justified or condemned, it is of great use to them.

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I'm just kind of flipping through. I think most of the wording is the same. Yeah. I was just curious because, like I said,

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I'm not really familiar so much with the Westminster Standards, but it's interesting there that even our

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Presbyterian brothers would phrase it that way because they would actually see it as an administration of the covenant of grace anyway, even in Moses' day.

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Yeah, the Mosaic Covenant is a big, I would say, fundamental problem for the

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Presbyterian system, but there's different opinions on how that works out.

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Sorry not to take us off in that direction. It just stood out to me as your reading. No, that's okay, brother.

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The main point that we're just trying to make here is as Christians, we should seek to obey the

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Ten Commandments. Sure. Because not for justification. These things cannot justify us, and we're going to fall short every day.

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Eddie, did you wake up today and love the Lord your God perfectly, with heart, soul, mind, and strength? Jesus sums up.

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Some people are like, well, Jesus says I don't have to keep Ten Commandments. He just says love God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, yes, Jesus says that, but he says that's a summation of these

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Ten Commandments. Yeah, he says on these hang all the law and the prophets. And I've known people like this, but if you're fornicating and you're like, yeah, but I love

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God. No, you don't. No, you don't. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. Right, right.

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Or you hate your brother or whatever. I mean, that's how the

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New Testament writers talk about John. If you say you love

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God, but you don't love your brother who you can see, how do you love God who you can't see? That's the whole point.

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And so the Ten Commandments are like we should know the Ten Commandments. This really bugs me about conservativism in America today is like we need the

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Ten Commandments posted. And I'm not opposed to that, by the way. Yes. Amen. But what bugs me is do you know the

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Ten Commandments? Yeah. Right. Can you give them to me in order? Do you teach them to your children?

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And that is so good, too, in order. I'm sure you've seen these. You're pointing out something that bugs you.

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You've seen the little hokey thing like you might see it at a

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Cracker Barrel, Southern Ten Commandments or something like that. You ever notice they're always out of order?

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One, it's kind of stupid. Yeah, I don't like that at all, yeah.

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I don't like that to begin with. And then it's like you can't even keep them in order. Yeah, yeah.

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And I would say this, and this would open up a whole new, and maybe we could have episodes on the

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Ten Commandments, but that means not making any graven images.

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Second Commandment is still in play. Yeah. That means the Fourth Commandment, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, still in play.

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These things, I'm not going to offer all the ways that you need to work that out, but you do need to work those things out and think through those things.

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And I don't think that you should watch The Chosen for multiple reasons, but maybe

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I've just given you another reason to consider. When you think about the

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Sabbath day, you say, well Christ is our Sabbath and our rest and amen, and he is our ultimate fulfillment of that.

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But we don't treat him like that with any of the other commandments. So we don't say, well, he's fulfilled the

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Sixth Commandment, so it's okay if I kill people because Jesus is my fulfillment.

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You're like, no. And, of course, there's disagreement about that and different ways that that plays out and that you need to think about that.

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However, I'm just trying to encourage you and challenge you to think about that. If the Ten Commandments now are a guide for us, they're written on our heart, we desire to do these things.

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Then we want to work these things out because our desire now is to please God. We're not trying to work these things out as a club to beat other

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Christians over the head. We're not trying to work these things out to merit more grace or to be justified or something like that.

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We're trying to work these things out. Why? Because we love God. That's right. That's right.

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And we want to live consistent with everything the Bible says. Because we love God. Because we love

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God. We have a holy fear and awe and delight and joy.

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These things don't hang over our head now. It's like, oh, we've got to do this. No, these things are written in our heart, and we desire to walk in obedience, knowing that we're going to come short of our obedience, but that Christ has atoned for our sins and has given us a freedom to kind of stumble and limp and crawl and walk in a way that is obedient in the

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Lord, but even though it's not a justifying obedience, you know, if that makes sense.

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I don't know. We're empowered now by his grace, and we have the desire.

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Well, and I think maybe something that would be helpful to everybody to think about, too.

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You said something, I think, yesterday or the day before. I'm not consistently on social media anymore, so I don't know when things actually are posted, usually.

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But you posted something to the effect that I can't remember what your example was, but this exists because all of God doesn't.

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Oh, it was the summer movie series. Yeah, the summer movie series exists because all of God doesn't.

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And think about it. When God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses, the people were at the foot of the

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Mount, right, Mount Sinai, in awe of God's thundering at the top of the mountain.

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But as New Covenant believers, we're at the foot of Mount Calvary, and we ought to be in awe of how

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God has saved us and given us an imputed righteousness. That was what

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I preached on this last Sunday from Philippians 3 -9, how we have a righteousness that's in Christ.

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Amen, that alien righteousness. And in awe of what God has done for us, now we ought to live out this righteousness that we have in Christ.

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This righteousness is reflected in the law. We ought to live that from our awe of what

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God has done. Israel failed to do that. They failed to do that because it was external.

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And because we have it in us, in our hearts, we ought to live that out.

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And we will wrap this up, but just to mention that if you're struggling with this, you say,

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I don't have these desires. Well, obviously, one certain reality could be you're not a

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Christian. But I don't want to just beat you over the head with that, but I do want to make, I mean, like you might not be a

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Christian, and that would be something very serious. You need to examine yourself and work through these things.

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But maybe you are a Christian, and you just need to go to the Lord and pray for renewal.

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Lord, give me these desires. You've written your law in your heart. Help me to understand. Don't let me treat the law as a means to your approval of me.

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God doesn't love me more or less based on the Ten Commandments. My relationship to him is secure in Christ.

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It's what Jesus has done. It's all about Christ. But God, give me these desires and help me to understand.

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Give me the knowledge of your will and your word. And that's something else, too. Like we don't depend on feeling or experience or even conscience because sometimes our conscience can be wrong.

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We look to the external word. We search the Scriptures, and we say, okay, I'm not justified by these things.

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This is the way that God would have me to live. Lord, help me. Help me to mortify the deeds of the flesh by the

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Spirit. And all of this is of grace, and all of it is of what Christ has done. And so I'm just kind of throwing a lot of stuff there together.

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But I just want to encourage believers. Don't listen to this stuff and say, that's legalism. That's being a

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Pharisee. It's like, no, it's being a Christian. Yeah. Yeah.

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Maybe a way for our listeners, they can think about it, is what we're talking about, like you said, it's not legalism.

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It's love. Love the Lord your God with all your heart. It's not legalism. It's love.

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And it's also not licentiousness. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, a lot of Christians, have reacted against these worldly forms of legalism.

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They've reacted against kind of upper fundamentalist forms of legalism to the point of, you know, we could use the word antinomian, but they're just lawless.

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And it's because that, well, we don't want to be legalists. We don't want to be Pharisees. But to the point where I think there are a lot of legitimate

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Christians who have just been poorly taught when it comes to God's word and God's law because they don't want to be a legalist, or maybe today they don't want to be a theonomist, or whatever, and they're not understanding that, yes, there may be something there to be avoided.

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Certainly there is with legalism. Yeah. But we still want to seek to obey

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God and love Him. And loving Him is going to be obeying His commandments.

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Jesus even told us that loving Him means obeying His commandments.

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You mentioned John earlier. In 1 John, He tells us that to love

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Him is to obey His commandments. And so we ought to want to obey our Lord's commands.

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If He's our Lord, we obey His commands. Amen. And let me just say this, this whole new thing, but it's not loving to add to His commands.

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Right. Legalism can be an issue.

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Certainly. Absolutely. Yes. We don't want to add to the commands of God. You're not more loving to God and to your neighbor by adding to things.

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We want to be careful with that. I'm just trying to think of a quick example. I guess you go to the

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Sabbath day, there's something else that the Pharisees were really, really bad at.

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And we should be doing acts of necessity and acts of mercy on the Lord's day.

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The confession says it, the Bible too. We should be doing those things. And we can't be legalistic and add things to the

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Scriptures that aren't there. That doesn't help either. So we have to guard both the ditches.

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But we've gone a pretty good amount of time. If you have questions about this, if we can, man, we'd love some feedback.

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I think I've shared it before. My email is quatronelson at gmail, that's c -u -a -t -r -o -n -e -l -s -o -n at gmail .com.

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Feel free to reach out. Eddie, if you want to share. Do you have email, Marshall? Yeah, I just got it the other day.

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Eddie Ragsdale, that's all lowercase, 17 at gmail .com.

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Bro, you don't have to say that's all lowercase. I mean, it's 2023. I mean, is there an email out there, capital

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E? Yeah, yeah. That's like. Yeah, yeah. There is somebody who's got that.

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I think I tried that. Well, reach out if you've got questions about this. Oh, it's helpful. We think through the

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Christian life and in the church. Eddie, as always, brother, it's been a joy. And I hope that you guys have a good

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Wednesday night there in Marshall. You too, brother. Sign us off. All right, we'll see you guys next week.

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If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoi mas, the masterpiece of God.