Moses and the Christian

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 1. And if you're looking at the verses on the screen, verses 14 to 17, you may say to yourself, well, weren't those the verses we studied last week?
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And the answer is yes, but we didn't finish them all. So we are back again to continue to look at verses 14 to 17, which is a microcosm of our larger study of the entire book of John.
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We've been focusing on these first 18 verses, which make up what are known as John's prologue or the foundation texts that he builds his entire gospel upon.
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And so in a moment, we'll read verses 14 to 17. But before we read, I want to sort of introduce us to the subject that we're going to tackle today in these verses.
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And that is the subject of Moses and the
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Christian. That's the title of today's message, Moses and the Christian. Of course, when I refer to Moses here,
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I am referring to Moses's law or the law of Moses.
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One of the most widely debated and divisive topics among people who claim to follow
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Jesus Christ is the question of how do we view the
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Old Covenant law? Some believe all of the
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Old Testament is to be jettisoned. In the second century, there was a man by the name of Marcion.
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Marcion was one of the first arch heretics of the church.
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That title only applies to some. It's a title nobody wants. Arch heretic.
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But Marcion was convinced that the God of the Old Testament was not compatible with the message of Jesus Christ.
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And so, he compiled a set of texts which threw away the
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Old Testament and much of the new. He was left with only ten of the books of the
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Apostle Paul, and he didn't even accept all of Paul's works, and portions from the
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Gospel of Luke. The rest of it, he determined, was incompatible with the message of Jesus Christ.
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So that is what is known as Marcionism. The idea that the Old Testament God is incompatible with the
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New Testament God, incompatible with the message of Jesus Christ, that we can just simply look at a few portions of the
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Gospels, or excuse me, a few portions of the Epistles and the Gospels, and that's all that we need.
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Brothers and sisters, that's foolish and heretical. That's just not, that's not the case.
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Marcion was dubbed a heretic, and it was correct to do so. But on the other hand, there are those who would have
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Christians become submitted to everything in the
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Old Covenant law, including all of the restrictions that are found in the
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Mosaic legislation, not only those which we would say have an eternal moral component like murder and theft and lying, but also those which were specifically given to the nation of Israel to divide them out from other nations and to separate them.
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Things like how they wore their clothing, how they planted their crops, whether or not they ate certain foods, whether or not some people were considered clean or unclean, whether or not some animals were considered clean or unclean.
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And these people would say that there is to be no distinction between the
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Old Testament and the New Testament. See you have on the side of Marcion, dismiss the
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Old Testament, get rid of it, you don't need it, it's destroyed, you know, get rid of it. And then on the other side, during the time of Paul, these people existed.
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We've come to call them Judaizers. That's not a term that's necessarily a biblical term, but it is a term that is, has become commonplace among scholars to refer to those people who would go into churches after Paul had preached the gospel, and they would go into churches and they would say, unless you keep the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.
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Even if you believe in Jesus, Jesus is not enough, you must also keep the law of Moses. And if you've ever read
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Galatians, Paul calls that another gospel. He says if anyone comes to you with a gospel other than the one that I preached to you, let him be accursed.
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Colossians mentions this, 2nd Corinthians mentions this, much of Paul's letters was dedicated to correcting the errors of the
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Judaizers. So again, Marcionites and Judaizers. The Marcionites say the
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Old Testament God is not compatible with New Testament Christ. The Judaizers say, unless you keep all of the
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Old Testament law, you cannot be saved. Two deadly errors.
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Two dangerous heresies. So, we're left with this question.
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How do we conclude the question of what do we do with Moses?
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What has Moses to do with the Christian life? So today, as we return to our study of John's prologue, we're going to answer that question as we examine what
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John says about Moses and Jesus. He's going to remind us there is, in fact, a distinction between the
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Old Covenant and the New Covenant when he tells us that the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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So let's stand together and read. We're going to read beginning back at verse 14, though our lion's share of our attention will be spent in verse 17 today.
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I want us to get a fullness of the context. So, if you want to read what
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I'm reading on the screen, it's the English Standard Version, at least one of them. There's three editions now.
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It says this, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen
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His glory. Glory is the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
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John bore witness about Him, and cried out, This was He whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because He was before me.
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For from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word again. I ask that You keep me from error as I preach. I just prayed a moment ago for everyone under the sound of my voice, and I pray again.
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Open hearts, change lives, give insights, heal brokenness.
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Use Your Word, Lord, by the power of Your Spirit to do what only You can do. And Lord, in the meantime, please, may
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I decrease and may Christ increase. May Christ be glorified. May we not look to ourselves and what we have done,
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But trust in what He has done fully, in His name. Amen.
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I also, as I was praying, I could hear the rain beginning to crash down on the ground outside, and let me just say this.
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If we lose power, I will not stop preaching. You may not be able to read your
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Bibles, but I remember what I'm going to say. I may depart my notes and have to do it again next week.
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I'm not going to stop if the lights go out. So, it's happened before.
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Alright, so where are we at in the text? It's important to always understand the context of what it is we're studying.
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And as I've noted over the last several weeks, we have been in John's opening verses, what we call the prologue, the very foundation of his gospel.
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If you get the foundation wrong, the whole gospel will be misunderstood. And if you get the foundation right, at least you will begin on sure footing to understand the rest of his gospel.
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John is wanting us to understand who this man is called Jesus. He wants us to understand that he existed prior to the world.
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That he has always existed. He is the eternal Logos made flesh. And he told us,
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The word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. Glory as the only begotten of the
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Father, full of grace and truth. And then at that moment, when he says full of grace and truth, he interjects yet another mention of John the
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Baptist. Quite honestly, I find this interjection even more striking than the one that came before.
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If you remember as we were studying verses 1 -13, the first portion of the prologue,
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I mentioned that he's talking about Jesus as In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was
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God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and nothing was made that wasn't made by him.
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In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light has come into the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
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There was a man sent from God whose name was John. Just out of nowhere, it just seems to throw itself into the context almost abruptly and almost like it's, why is this even there?
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But the reason we know why the first mention of John is there is so that no one would confuse who it was that John is referring to when he talks about the
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Logos. You see, there were those people, even during the time of John, who still looked and thought maybe
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John the Baptist was the Messiah. And he says, no, he is not the Messiah.
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He came to bear witness of the Messiah. He came to bear witness of the light.
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And what does John say? He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light.
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So that's his first interjection to tell us, yes, John had a purpose. John's purpose was important.
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John's purpose was to tell us who this person was, this person Jesus Christ. He was to come as his forbearer.
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He was to come in the spirit of Elijah. He was to come and proclaim the coming of the Lord, but he was not the
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Messiah. Now he interjects John in again at verse 15.
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And again, I said this interjection is even to me more striking because it seems completely out of place.
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In fact, what's interesting, if you look at the ESV version, you'll notice they put it in parentheses, as if to say, yeah, it seems to come out of nowhere.
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It seems to not fit with the rest. It's interesting if you look at the structure of the prologue and you line it out.
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There's something called a chiasm, and I'm not a huge chiasm guy. It's just a literary structure.
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You won't hear me talk about that a lot, but in this case, it is interesting that the mention of John in verses, I think it's verse four and five, line up again with this verse at the end.
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So if you follow the chiastic structure, it's almost like he's balancing out his message and putting
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John in here again to balance out that structure. If you don't know what a chiasm is, don't worry about it. It's not that big a deal. It's a hermeneutical structural thing.
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It's just a way of looking at the structure of how certain passages are put together.
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So if you're wondering why it's there, that could be one of the reasons why we see John at the beginning, at the end, both in a similar place.
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But there's something else about verse 15 that I really wanted to point out to you today, that I hope you don't miss, and that is this.
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When he quotes John here, and remember, this is John quoting
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John. This is John the Gospel writer, sometimes called John the Apostle, John the
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Beloved Disciple, John the Revelator, right? Depending on how you want to call him.
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You have John the Gospel writer quoting John the Baptist, and he says,
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John bore witness about him and cried out, and this is the quote. This is he of whom
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I said, he who comes after me ranks before me. Now what does that mean?
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Well, in that sentence, he's referring to time. Jesus came after John in time in two ways.
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He came after John in time because he was born after John. Remember, John is
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Jesus' cousin, the son of Elizabeth, who was pregnant before Mary was pregnant.
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And so, John came before Jesus in time. But also,
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John came before Jesus in ministerial time. John started preaching before Jesus, right?
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So when he says, he who comes after me, he could be speaking of the fact that he was younger than him.
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He could also be speaking of the fact that his ministry started after him. He came after me, but this is the most important part.
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He says, he who came after me ranks before me. Anyone who might consider
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John to have a higher place than Jesus Christ, John the Gospel writer is saying, oh nay nay.
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That's not how it is. John, who preached about the coming of the
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Messiah, understood that the Messiah ranked higher than him.
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He was a forerunner, he was a messenger, he was not the light. Again, I talked about this a few weeks ago when
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I preached about the first time John is mentioned. I said, John demonstrates tremendous humility because he understands when he preaches, it's not about him.
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It's not about gaining followers for him, it's not about gaining disciples for himself, but it's about pointing to Jesus Christ.
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He who came after me ranks before me. But now here's the complicated part. That's not complicated, but it's interesting.
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He says, because he was before me. You say, now wait a minute, how can he say that?
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He was born first, and his ministry started first. He even said, he came after me.
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What does it mean when he says, he was before me? Well, John is putting this quote from the
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Baptist in this text to remind us that Jesus Christ existed prior to his incarnation.
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Jesus Christ, the Logos, has always existed. And by the way, you've heard me say this how many times now over the last eight, ten weeks that we've been in John's gospel?
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I say this every week because I'm trying to drill into us all the reminder that Jesus Christ is
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God made man, God in the flesh, God incarnate. He has always been.
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And this verse reiterates it. He who came after me ranks before me.
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Because he was before me. Because he was before you. Because he was before all.
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He was before even one Adam was created.
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A -T -O -M, not A -D -A -M. Well, both, I mean. Jesus, as the
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Logos, has always existed. You might say, why are you spending so much time?
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You've drilled this in. I know, but I can't get over it. I get a sick guttural reaction when
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I talk to someone who wants to argue against the divinity of Jesus Christ. I just want to throw up.
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What a sick, disgusting thing that you want to rob the
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Lord of glory of his majesty. How dare you? John the
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Gospel writer had no problem quoting John the Baptist, reminding us who Jesus is. He ranks before me because he came.
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Because he not, he didn't come. He was before me. Remember that word was. He was already, he was always been. And as this relates to our message today,
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I want to point this out. This isn't in the text. So yes, this is a, what we would call an inference.
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It's not a, it's not a exegetical statement. It's an inference from the text.
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Not only was he before John, but he was also before Moses. Jesus existed before Moses.
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And that's going to come into play when we get into the law and how the law works and all those things in just a moment. But just as a reminder, when we talk about the eternal law
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God, he has always existed and he pre -existed all things, including Moses and Abraham and even
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Adam. Now we come to verse 16.
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And he says, for from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.
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Now, there are some who question whether or not that is a continuation of the quote of John.
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Because if he said, this was he whom I said, he who comes before me, ranks before me because he was before me for from his fullness, we've all received grace upon grace.
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There is a possibility that that is a continuation of that quote. I don't think so.
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I think the word for there, which is gar in the Greek, I think that indicates that we're going back to John's narrative at this point.
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Because he says the same thing for the law came through Moses. And he uses the same conjunction at verse 17.
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It's not like it's a big deal, but just in case you were wondering. But he says this, for from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace.
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What fullness is he referring to? He's going back and reminding us of what he said in verse 14. In verse 14, he said this.
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He said that the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of what?
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Grace and truth, full of grace and truth. And now he says, for from his fullness, meaning he is full.
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And remember what I said last week. Full means complete, lacking nothing, filled up with, covered in every part, thoroughly permeated with.
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The logos lacks no grace and he's deficient of no truth. From that fullness, we have received.
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And here's the phrase, grace upon grace.
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Now, there's different ways to understand what John means by grace upon grace.
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But I think it's, I think it is clear, especially in light of verse 17, that he is referring to what was before Christ and what comes after Christ.
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Here's what I mean. When he says grace upon grace, he can be saying grace upon grace upon grace as if accumulating.
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He can also be saying grace corresponding to grace. You had grace in the old and now you have greater grace in the new.
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Or he could be saying grace in the place of. You had a certain type of grace in the old, but now you have a better grace in the new.
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And there's, depending on how you translate the word upon here, is where you're going to maybe come to your conclusion.
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But here's the point I just want us to understand here. The grace of Christ, which is grace upon grace, is an inexhaustible amount.
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That's the point. For from his fullness, we have received a grace that we cannot exhaust.
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And beloved, that should give great comfort to all of us. We are in constant need.
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Of God's grace. I can't believe that didn't get an amen of all the things.
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Not that I'm asking for it. But is it not true that you live your life minute by minute by the grace of God?
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You know what the Bible says about our lives? It tells us in Philippians, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
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A lot of people have problems with that because they think it says work for your salvation. It doesn't say work for your salvation.
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That's a different idea altogether. But it does say work out your salvation in fear and trembling.
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But then it says this. For it is God who works in you both to will and to do his good pleasure.
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Think about that just for a moment. Your ability. By the way, one of the reasons
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I'm a Calvinist. Just so you know. Ability to do any good toward God is because he himself has given you that power.
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It is God who worketh in you both to will and to do. Will means the desire and the drive to do.
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And to do means to actually accomplish. And it is God who gives you the desire. And it's God who works in you to be able to do it.
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You cannot do it without him. I get excited about that because it's truth.
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And truth should excite us. But I also get excited because there are those who deny it. No, it's my free will that got me in the door.
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Your free will is capable of only damning you because your will is broken and corrupt.
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But God who is rich in mercy with the great love with which he had for us made us to live together with Christ.
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By what? Grace. You have been saved. By grace.
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Grace upon grace. Fullness of grace. Inexhaustible grace.
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Sovereign grace. I'm just pointing to the sign in case you didn't know that. Grace, grace,
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God's grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace.
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Grace that is greater than all our sin. That's the marvelous grace of our loving
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Lord. Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on Calvary's mount out poured. There where the blood of the lamb was spilled.
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That's amazing grace. Inexhaustible grace.
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Powerful. Life -changing grace. And we have received it in full, not in part.
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For from his fullness we have received grace upon grace. And now we get to verse 17.
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For the law came through Moses. Or as ESV says, the law was given through Moses.
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Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, it is very important that we understand that what
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John is doing here is he is establishing what is known as a parallelism.
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Where he is comparing one thing with another. But in this parallelism, we mustn't draw the wrong conclusions.
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And here are some wrong conclusions that you could draw reading this passage.
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If you said, the law came through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. One of the conclusions that you might be tempted to draw, but you would be wrong.
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Is if you thought that the law, Moses, that there was no grace and no truth there.
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That would be wrong. Is there grace in Moses? You better believe it.
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That was the whole sacrificial system was set up because they knew the people were going to break the law. So they gave them sacrifices that they could make.
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Not only the daily and other sacrifices, but the annual major sacrifice in Yom Kippur when they brought the sacrifice in.
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And they made the sacrifice for the sin of the people by sprinkling the blood on the mercy seat. This all was an act of grace.
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God didn't have to do any of it. Grace is unmerited favor. There is grace in the
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Old Testament. God called Abraham.
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That was grace. Abraham was an idolater in Mesopotamia. And God called him by sovereign grace.
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God gave grace to Adam, not slaying him the moment he sinned, but giving him coverings of animal skins, providing for him the clothing for his nakedness, symbolically covering the sinfulness that he had brought upon himself.
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There's grace all through the Old Testament. And there's truth.
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Is there not truth all through the Old Testament? Every word of it's true. God spoke through the prophets.
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He spoke to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. God spoke and that's truth.
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Likewise, New Testament. Is there law in the New Testament?
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Yeah, you better believe it. Jesus had a new commandment.
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I give unto thee that you love one another as I have loved you.
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What's the word? Commandment. I give you a commandment. I give you a standard.
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I give you a law. Here's my law. Love one another. And how?
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You want to know what it looks like? It looks like me. Love one another as I've loved you.
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So if someone reads the law came through Moses, and grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and they conclude there's no grace and truth in Moses, and there's no law in the gospel, then you have reached the wrong conclusion.
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Also, something else that would be a wrong conclusion from this verse.
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This week I was listening to Martin Lloyd -Jones on his sermon from this text.
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And he said another thing people get wrong about this text is they use it to dismiss the
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Old Testament. Now, he didn't mention Marcion, but Marcion isn't the only person who ever dismissed the
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Old Testament. Well, law, grace, and truth.
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Law will put away. Grace and truth will hold on to. That's a problem too.
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When it's dismissed, there's an entire generation of people who came to believe somehow that the
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Old Testament doesn't need to be studied, doesn't need to be dealt with, just needs to be unhitched.
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Maybe you've heard that phrase. And we need to focus only on the
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New Testament. Three quarters of your Bible is the Old Testament, right? Or more.
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John is not calling us to dismiss the Old Testament. But he is. He is calling us to put it in its proper context.
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And this is the main point of today. Made a screen if you want to take notes.
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You don't have to take notes anymore, by the way. All of my notes are now available online. But if you want to take notes, they're there.
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But consider this. John has not dismissed Moses. He's putting him in the proper context.
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Because the law was never intended to save. The law was not intended to save.
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If I can't, I can't say it enough. The law was not intended to save. When I talk to people who say that they are saved by what they do, you know what they're saying?
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I'm saved by the law. I can accomplish enough to where God will receive me.
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And I don't care how hard you work. I don't care when you start. I don't care how faithful and fidelitous you might be to the law.
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You will not keep the law to the point where when you stand before God, you will be righteous. It's absolutely impossible.
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Now, there's a term that's useful.
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Mike and I were talking about this earlier. The reformers use this term a lot, but it goes back further.
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It was the idea of the uses of the law. The uses of the law.
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And you'll often hear if you read reformed literature or study reformed theology, you'll hear people talk about the three uses of the law.
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And the three uses of the law are the civil use, the pedagogical use, and the normative use.
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I'm not going to try to bore you with explaining everything about that, but basically what it means is this. The law functions in three different ways.
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In one way, it provides a standard to show right from wrong.
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And that's called the civil use. Everything that we understand for government and all of that, there has to be a standard of right and wrong, right?
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And so it shows us that civil standard use. We're going to talk a little bit more about this later when we talk about things like theonomy.
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But for now, let's just say there's a civil use. But there is also this use, which
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I think is so much more valuable when we consider what the law is for. Not that the civil use is not important, but here's real value.
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The pedagogical use. Pedagogical simply means the teaching use or the instruction.
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A pedagogos was a teacher or a tutor. Tutor's probably not the best word. More like a schoolmaster, as it is in the
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King James, I know. But I like that word. It was the disciplinarian. It was the person that was in charge of raising the child and giving them the discipline and instruction that they needed.
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The pedagos, pedagogos. The law has the purpose of instructing you of your need for a savior.
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That's the pedagogical use of the law. Turn in your Bibles very quickly, if you will, to Galatians chapter three.
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And I will read to you and show you this is not just something that the reformers pulled out of thin air or something
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I'm making up. This is directly from God's word. In Galatians chapter three, verse 23.
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It says in verse 23, now before faith came, that doesn't mean that the Old Testament saints didn't believe, didn't have faith.
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But it's referring to specifically the faith within the new covenant structure. It says, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned unto the coming faith would be revealed.
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So then the law was our, and there's that word pedagogos, guardian, some say schoolmaster, some say tutor.
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The law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we're no longer under the guardian.
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For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you who are baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
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Here's the point. The law had a purpose. And its purpose was to show us our need for Christ.
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It was to show us our sinful condition.
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I got to get out of this. All right. So Mike goes out evangelizing.
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I follow him with a camera because I'm good at that. I'm good at,
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I mean, I can evangelize too, but he's better at it. Give honor where honors do.
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But he goes out, he evangelizes. What tool does he use to point people to Christ?
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The law of God. The law of God. The law is the teacher that shows us our need for a savior.
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You go up to a man and you say to him, you need to be saved. Saved from what?
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You need to be saved from sin. What is sin? Define sin, church.
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Oh, by the way, do it without using the law. I dare you. Even the catechism.
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Sin is any one of conformity unto or transgression of the what? The law of God. Sin is any one of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.
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It means you want conformity. It means you lack conformity to it or you transgress it.
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This is the difference between trespass and sin. Sin is not making the mark. Trespassing is going past the mark.
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Sin is you didn't live up to it. Trespass means you went past it. Remember when Moses went up on the mountain?
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He said, nobody come any further than this. There was a line. Nobody was supposed to go up there. Ever since then, we've been trying to move the line.
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We want to go past. We want to trespass. We want to sin. You talk to a man.
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You say, if you died today and God said, why should I let you into heaven?
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What did the vast majority of people say? I'm a good person. I'm a good person.
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How do you prove to someone they're not? Do you argue with them? No, you take them to the law.
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And you let the law do what the law does. The law of the Lord is perfect. Converting the soul.
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The law breaks the heart. The law is the anvil upon which our hearts are broken. The law is the pedagogos.
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It is what shows us our need for a savior. So when
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John says the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, he's distinguishing the context and purpose of Moses's role in redemption and Christ's role in redemption.
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Moses's role in redemption has never been to save you. And if you go to Moses looking for salvation, you will be lost.
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But if Moses breaks you, you will find grace in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. You see the difference? It's not to say one has no purpose or one has no place.
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He does have a purpose. He does have a place. He breaks us. He leaves us open and wounded.
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Our hearts laid bare. And in comes Christ, the great physician to heal our broken heart with the only thing that we can be healed with.
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And that's forgiveness and righteousness. He forgives us by taking the punishment we deserve.
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And he gives us the righteousness that he earned by keeping the law perfectly every day of his life. Oh, let me back up.
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I don't like the word earned. He demonstrated his righteousness. He demonstrated his righteousness because he was righteous from all time.
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What righteousness do you have to stand before God, church? He said, none.
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I understand what you mean. No, no, I get it. But Paul says the righteousness that we have to stand before God is the righteousness of God.
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I have a righteous, not of my own, which comes from the law, but a righteousness which comes from God.
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The righteousness of God, which we receive through faith. That's it.
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You must trust Christ and his righteousness because you will not accomplish it for yourself.
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All right. Now, let's talk about the other use of the law. For just a moment,
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I said there was the civil use and the pedagogical use, which I think is very important.
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In fact, I would put that at the top. In fact, most, if you look at the list and they talk about three years of law, they usually put the pedagogical use is the first use of the law.
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First use of the law show you you need Christ. That's first use of the law. But there's another use of the law.
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It's known as the normative use. And this is how the law teaches us how we ought to live in Christ, not for salvation.
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But how we ought to live as people who have been saved.
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The law provides for us a rule or a standard that we can measure.
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Should I or shouldn't I? Ought and ought not. But here's where the issue comes in immediately.
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And I don't know if I got time to get through this. I guess I can. Y 'all don't want this one to split in half.
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You want to hear this because here's the deal. When it comes to the question,
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OK, the law becomes a guide. We call that the normative use law becomes a guide, right? It's not saving us, but it is a guide.
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We have the immediate question. What about all the things that we don't do anymore?
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Is it not the case that much of the old covenant commands have been abrogated?
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Oh, we don't want to hear that. We don't like it. But let's just start with the simple ones.
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What does Paul say about circumcision? If you do it to get saved, you're cutting yourself off from Christ, right?
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Like he literally says, don't do this for the purpose of getting saved. And if you do it for that purpose, you're cutting yourself off from Christ.
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He was directly addressing the Judaizers who were saying, unless you be circumcised, you can't be saved. Paul comes in and says, if you get circumcised, you can't be saved because you're cutting yourself off from Christ.
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Direct abrogation of an Old Testament command. Was it commanded of the Israelites to be circumcised?
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It goes all the way back to Genesis 17, right? Genesis 17, I remember his name.
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Abraham was given the command to be circumcised. His descendants were to be circumcised.
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It's reaffirmed in the Mosaic legislation. He is to be circumcised. They are all to be circumcised. Along comes the
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New Covenant, and the New Covenant says, hey, now we involve the Gentiles. And guess what?
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Circumcision is abrogated. You know what the Jews said? Who are you telling? Who do you think you're talking to?
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We've been doing this for 1 ,700 years. You see how it begins to become an issue.
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A few years ago,
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I teach this in my ethics class. There's a video from a TV show.
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TV show was called The West Wing. And on The West Wing, it was a president played by Martin Sheen.
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He was challenged by a woman who was playing the conservative Christian part about homosexuality.
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And she said, homosexuality is an abomination. And Martin Sheen said, you're right, it is.
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But then he begins to berate her by going through all of the other laws of the
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Old Testament. He says, it's an abomination to hold pigskin. You want to call the Washington Redskins, tell them they can't play football this
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Sunday? You know, it tells us we can't eat pork. You want to call up all the pork distributors and tell them they can't? And he starts going through this list.
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Like I said, I show this video in my ethics class. Because one of the things that Christians are often accused of is we are accused of cherry -picking, cherry -picking what laws we will and won't follow.
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So you get two groups. Again, just like Marcion and Judaizers, you get two groups.
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You get a group who says you got to follow all of them. And you end up with the Hebrew roots people and the
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Seventh -day Adventists and all the rest who care more about what you eat and what clothes you wear and what day you worship on than they care about whether or not you believe in Jesus sometimes.
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Not always. I don't want to say about everybody. But there's this focus on keeping the law. I remember one time
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I was teaching at Set Free. There's some friends from Set Free today. Unfortunately, their pastor's sick and they didn't...
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So it's good to have you guys here today. But I was teaching at Set Free and there was a guy there who did not believe that the
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Old Testament law had been at all abrogated. I said at one point that it had and he kind of got mad with me, had a conversation with me.
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When we walked outside, I began to show him text after text after text of abrogation. I said the first one is circumcision.
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If I can prove that, that proves there's been a change. And that one's easier to prove than anything. You go to Galatians, you go to Colossians, you're going to find it.
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It's very easy to prove that there has been at least one form of abrogation and that is the abrogation of circumcision.
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And that one is pretty important. But there's also the abrogation of the food laws which are specifically told to us.
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Jesus in Mark's Gospel, it says Jesus made all foods clean. And by God's grace, we eat a pork chop to the glory of God.
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And in Acts chapter 10, same thing. Peter is shown the cloth with the animals in it, had all the different unclean animals, rise, kill, and eat, which is the hunter's favorite verse.
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Rise, kill, and eat. He says, I can't eat that, it's unclean. He says, do not call unclean what
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I have made clean. Abrogation. But here's the other part.
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You can keep going. When the Gospel went to the
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Gentiles, the Mosaic laws, here's where you're going to really, you better stay with me because you might get up and walk out and get mad at me.
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The Mosaic covenant was completely abrogated. If you want a verse,
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Hebrews chapter 8 says, if the old covenant had been without fault, there would be no need for a new.
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But the new comes to show that the old covenant has been made obsolete. And what is being made obsolete is about to pass away.
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See, the writer of Hebrews knew that if you put yourself under the old covenant, then what you have done is you've put yourself under something that kills, not something that gives life.
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The law kills, Christ gives life. Now, you're going to say to me, and I don't doubt somebody in here will say to me, well, if you're telling me it's all abrogated,
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I can then go murder and steal and lie. I made you a chart because you know me,
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I like charts. You need to understand the difference between transcendent and covenantal law.
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Some people try to make the distinction tripartite, moral, ceremonial, and civil. And that's useful and helpful at certain times, but it's not the way
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I like to do it. Some people try to make the argument in different ways. Here's the way
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I make the argument. There are laws that transcend all the covenants. When Cain killed
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Abel, he was wrong and he knew it. Even though he did not have a written law saying, don't kill your brother.
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When Abimelech took Sarai into his home, Abimelech said to Abraham, how could you give me your wife?
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Don't you know if I would have slept with her, I would have been condemned to die? Why? Because he understood adultery was wrong 400 years before Moses came.
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You understand there have been laws based upon these principles that even go outside of Moses.
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I mean, Hammurabi has his code and much of it agrees with Moses's legislation. Why? Because there are principles.
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We know that idolatry, murder, adultery, theft, dishonesty, all of those are wrong. And they're wrong no matter what covenant you're in.
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They're summarized in the 10 commandments, all except for the Sabbath. And that's a conversation for another day.
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But I'll go ahead and say it. I mean, where are you going? The Sabbath is the sign of the old covenant.
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Therefore, it's included in the 10 commandments, but it is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our rest.
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That was enough, that was enough to say. But transcendent laws, idolatry, murder, adultery, theft, dishonesty, all those things are summarized in the 10 commandments are also summarized in this.
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Jesus said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. And thus is all the law.
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That's all the transcendent law in two words. Love your neighbor, love God. But if you look at the covenants of scripture, and I didn't include all of them, but I included a few just to show you this.
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If you look at the Noahic covenant, you know what God gave us in the Noahic covenant? He gave us capital punishment.
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He said, if a man kills another man, so should that man's blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man.
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God gives capital punishment in Genesis chapter 9. Anybody wants to tell you capital punishment is not biblical? Run to Genesis 9.
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Oh, and then run to all the other places it says it's right to. Murder is a capital crime.
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God commanded Abraham to circumcise. Was that a suggestion? No, it was a command.
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He commanded Moses to have seven annual feasts, to have sacrifices day, week, month, and annual.
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Every one of those sacrifices had to be made according to the legislation, right? Any of you bring a lamb with you this morning?
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No, because you're not in that covenant anymore. The transcendent laws continue to be the standard by which we measure our morality.
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I don't really have a problem calling it the moral law, but I would say it is the standard.
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If you tell me, and I've had people tell me this, they've told me, I'm committing adultery, but God's okay with it.
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That's dumb. I'm just, at this point, I'm a little too relaxed. But this is so important, y 'all.
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Not understanding this will end you in one of two ditches. You will either end up in the ditch that says, I got to keep every single law, every single precept, and I'm going to kill myself doing so.
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Or you're going to say, I'm under grace and not under law. I can do whatever I want. Both of those are wrong.
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There has to be a balance. That's why I call it the balanced view. This balanced view is very simple. The laws that transcend the covenants are easy to understand.
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And they're summarized for us. But the laws that are covenantal only are kept within those covenants.
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And therefore, I am not under the Mosaic covenant. I am free.
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From having to worry about dietary restrictions. I'm free from having to worry about whether this shirt has cotton and silk.
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I'm free from having to worry about my wife starting a garden. I don't have to worry about she's going to plant the wrong crops beside the wrong crops.
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Now, you hear a lot of things today about applying the law to the civil government.
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We talk about theonomy. And honestly, I don't have time to get into a lot of that.
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Only to say this. The things that are the standards are the things that have transcended all the covenants.
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Now, there is case law in the old covenant that does base itself on these laws. And there is some value that can be had in those.
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And even some that can be applied. I like the example of the, they told him to put the fence around the top of the house in the
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Old Testament. Because that's where people would go. And the fence around the house kept people from falling in. Well, today, we tell people to put fences around their swimming pools.
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Same principle. Same principle. It's the idea that you're responsible for your property and to protect your neighbor.
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There's a principle there. We call that general equity. It's principle.
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And I know somebody wants a pool. I'm not going to say who it is. I'm sorry.
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Beloved, do you understand why this is so important to me and why I've lost my notes and just started talking to you? This is one of the things that people become so confused about.
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And they allow it to drive them to one extreme or the other. But there is a balanced approach.
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And the balanced approach is number one, the law cannot save you. Only Jesus Christ can save you.
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Only his shed blood can save your soul. If you trust in him alone and not what you have done, you will have eternal life.
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And when you come to Christ, your desires will change. And the desire will be to serve him and be obedient to him.
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He says, if you love me, you'll what? Keep my commandments. And what is his commandment? The new commandment
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I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. Love the
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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbors yourself, not because it saves you, but because in doing so, you are most like Christ.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth. I thank you for this opportunity to teach. And I pray, oh God, that I have not gone further than your word would allow.
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And I pray that now as we gather around this table and remember again the blessedness of the sacrifice of Christ, that in this moment, we would not for a second think that we have contributed to this, but that we are absolutely recipients of what