Does the Old Testament Law Still Apply? | The Whole Counsel

He evidently preached weighty sermons and was used by God, obviously, and yet the testimony concerning his delivery was that it was bad, it was dull.

And in spite of that, God used him. In the last year of his life,

God blessed him and the church there with revival. And he died toward the end of that year,

I think 1803. So this is an example of a sermon that he preached, and it is on the law of God, as we've said.

He defines the law and helps us to see why the law is necessary.

Necessary to the gospel, necessary to have any understanding of what God expects, necessary to understand the gospel.

And so if we try to diminish the law, we really are diminishing the character of God himself because they are united.

So let's take a look at this. He opens with a definition of the law that we were talking about before the podcast, that I really find this fascinating because it's not the way

I've ever thought about the law. I guess I've always thought of the law as, of course, the thing that shows me that I'm a sinner, and it does show me the path of obedience.

But here's how he describes the law. It is the eternal rule of righteousness, which is essential to the being, or existence, and glory of God's moral government and kingdom, and is in a sense the foundation of it, pointing out and declaring the duty of rational creatures, or moral agents, as to what is fit and proper to be required of them, and obtaining the rule of God's conduct toward them as their moral governor.

Now that is a classic, really full definition that you might have zoned out about halfway through that, so let me just give you the heart of it.

The law is God's eternal rule of righteousness, essential to the being and glory of his moral government.

So God could not morally govern us without the law. We have to know what he likes and doesn't like.

But it is also glorious that it unveils the perfection of our

God's moral character, in a way that we humans, in our very limited understanding, we can understand that in our present, you know, earthly context.

Yes. And he makes the point that we cannot really understand who

God is apart from the law. So that's kind of what you're just saying, that we're going to cover this a bit more later, but the speculation, you know, we may think we know, but we're playing with fire when we think that way.

You know, we kind of assume that we understand what God is like, or understand what his law is, what he requires of us, but the law is that which actually informs us.

Yeah, on that he gives this statement, he says, a law always supposes a legislator who has the right and authority to make such a law and issue such commands.

And he talks about the fact that your estimation of the law, your measure of it, not theoretically, you know, not theologically, because we know that we're supposed to say right things about God's law.

I mean, the Bible says wonderful things about God's law, so you wouldn't want to, you know, to kind of go on record disagreeing with that.

But in daily practice, how we view the law really is how we view the