Christians and the Law of God

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If we say we believe the Bible, why do modern Christians not obey major sections of the Old Covenant Law including sacrifices, priestly offices, etc.? Are we hypocrites? Pastor Keith demonstrates the relationship between the Christian and the Old Convenant. He also demonstrates the problem with both Legalism and Antinomianism and how they both miss the mark.

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 5.
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We are continuing this morning in our study of the Sermon on the Mount.
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Last week in our study, we saw how Jesus proclaimed the truth that His followers are salt and light in the world.
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They are agents of change, meant to be ambassadors of Christ, representatives of the new covenant in the world.
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Well, today we are going to pick up and see where Jesus begins to set the stage for the next portion of His sermon.
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He is going to give a detailed analysis of the law of God and how it had been misunderstood by the teachers of His day.
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So He sets the stage by giving us something important about the law.
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Now, I want to go ahead and say this before we begin.
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Today's passage is one that inspires many questions among believers and may even inspire questions in your own heart, not the least of which is this.
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How does the Old Testament law apply to the New Testament Christian? So I want to encourage you, I want to encourage your attentiveness to today's message, I want to encourage you to stick with me throughout the duration, and I want you to encourage you to keep your minds turned on during this time.
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Because I must just tell you that to understand this is truly to understand the gospel itself and to misunderstand this is what leads people into things like legalism and antinomianism is it is the swinging pendulum, which people tend to swing one way or the other when they miss this important truth.
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So that being said, let us stand and read the word of God.
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Matthew, chapter five, verses 17 through 20.
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This is Jesus speaking.
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Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
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For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
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Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so or to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
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But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
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For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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Our father and our God, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you for this opportunity to study it.
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I pray that for the short time we'll be looking at it today, that you will keep me from error and I pray that you would open the people's heart to the truth.
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Move on us toward a better understanding of your gospel by understanding the relationship between law and grace.
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Father, thank you for your word.
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And for our time spent in it.
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May it be to your glory.
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In Jesus name, Amen.
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I want to preface the lesson this morning by saying that this passage is a very complex part of the Sermon on the Mount.
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It can be somewhat perplexing in what it says, especially when compared to other parts of scripture.
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The difficulty, at least for many people, is that it seems to be saying something very specific about the Old Testament law.
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It seems to be saying that the Old Testament law in its entirety applies for all time to everyone forever.
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Yet there are things.
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Which the Old Testament teaches.
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Which we no longer practice, which we no longer apply within the New Testament church, including the priesthood, the sacrifices, the Sabbath, circumcision, dietary restrictions, slavery laws.
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The list goes on and on and on.
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And the question is for the believer.
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How are we not being disobedient or worse, how are we not being hypocrites in regard to these parts of the Old Testament when Jesus here teaches that none of the law is to be abolished? That's an important foundational question.
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I hope you see the weight of this question.
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Furthermore, this passage also seems to say that strict adherence to the law is a requirement for entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
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Yet scripture in other places clearly denies that and says that adherence to the law is not what makes a person fit for heaven.
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I point you to Galatians chapter two and verse 16.
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It says, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.
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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law, no one will be justified.
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So is the Bible in contradiction with itself? Is the Apostle Paul at odds with Jesus Christ, as some of the liberal scholars would have us believe? Is the church a place of rank heresy for abandoning the responsibilities of the Old Covenant, including the sacrifices, the priesthood and laws regarding the Sabbath? Well, the answer is no.
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But why is it no? That's the question of the day.
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No, we're not hypocrites.
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No, we have not abandoned our responsibilities.
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No, the Bible is not in contradiction with itself.
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But why? Well, I want to give you the simple answer and then we'll go through the longer part of the answer.
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The simple answer is this.
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To read the words of Jesus Christ in this passage as only a command of strict and perpetual fidelity to the law is to miss the point in the context of what he is saying.
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To understand what Jesus is saying, we must understand the proper use of the word, one word in this entire passage, one word, and that is the word fulfilled.
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If we do not understand that.
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Then the rest of it will not make sense and we will be in a perpetual contradiction when we understand how the word fulfilled is being used and the proper application therein, then we see that Jesus is not at odds with Paul.
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He's not at odds with the church and he's not at odds with himself or scripture at all.
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But instead, he is demonstrating his own unique relationship with the law and its purpose perpetually in the world.
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And that's what we're going to see today.
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So let's begin by examining verse by verse this section.
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Some people would call me crazy for doing this much, but I tell you, if we didn't do it all, we wouldn't we can't do it in parts.
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You've got to take this section.
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It's a section and you've got to understand it all to understand its parts.
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I may go in the weeks to come, I may go back over some things, but we got to look at it all to start with.
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So let's look at verse 17 and see how it fits in with the rest of the passage.
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Contextually, verse 17 says, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
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I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.
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Now, let me ask just a simple, basic question of contextual value.
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Why did Jesus say this? Why even make this point? People don't say things without having a reason to say them.
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And of course, Jesus always had a reason for everything that he said.
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So what was the purpose of him saying, do not think that I've come to abolish the law? Well, he is about to begin a major section of teaching in the Sermon on the Mount about the law of God.
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He's about to begin explaining how the law of God had been misunderstood and misapplied by the teachers of his day.
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He is about to start explaining how all of the things that they thought about the law, or at least the majority of the things that they thought about the law, were in error.
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He's going to say, you have heard it said this, but I tell you this, and to many that would seem like he was intending to abolish the old law and replace it with his own.
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You've heard it said this, but I tell you this.
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So to preempt the accusation, Jesus makes it his point that and he makes it clear that his intent is in no way to destroy the law.
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And also, if you notice, he makes the point that he uses the law and the prophets or actually says the law or the prophets because of the construction of language that he didn't come to destroy either or the law or the prophets.
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Why did he mention the law and the prophets together? Well, it's a way of simply denoting the Old Testament.
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If he would have said, I didn't come to abolish the law, it could be that people would assume that he may be talking about the first five books of the Bible called the Torah or the law of God, the law of Moses.
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But yet he didn't say that.
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He said the law or the prophets.
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He said he came to fulfill them both.
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He came to fulfill all the laws and all the prophecies.
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So the point being made is he came to fulfill the whole Old Testament, not just the first five books, but all throughout.
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Which becomes all the more important when he says he fulfills them.
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But what does it mean? When Jesus says that he came to fulfill, well, he states emphatically that he did not come to abolish the law or the prophets, but to fulfill them.
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Some people believe that the word fulfilled means that Jesus put the law to an end.
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He fulfilled it, thus he ended it.
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However, to take such a view causes a contradiction in Jesus's own terms, because in that perspective, Jesus is saying, I didn't come to abolish the law.
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I came to end it to take the use, use just natural use of language there.
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That's a self-contradicting phrase.
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I didn't come to abolish it.
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I just came to abolish it.
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You know, that's what you say.
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If we take the word fulfilled to simply mean to bring to an end, it becomes contradictory and redundant.
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Brian Swirly said this in his commentary, he said it would be completely absurd for the Savior to say that he came to bring an end to the law and then turn right around and preach on the necessity of a true understanding of various moral requirements that his disciples would properly keep.
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He's just about to tell him the law.
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Why say I came to bring it to an end and then explain it? It doesn't really follow logically.
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So the word fulfilled doesn't mean to bring to an end.
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The word fulfill, pleurosai in the Greek, means to fill something all the way to the top, to fill something until it's full.
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It actually brings to mind a vessel which has been filled to the brim.
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You guys remember in Matthew 13, when the fishing net is being pulled in and it's completely full and it's beginning to bust.
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Well, that word full there is the same root when it says when the fishing net was full, the men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers, but threw away the bad.
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Remember that story? That fullness of the net is the same idea here, filling it to the top, filling it to the full.
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Fulfill means to be complete, to be missing nothing.
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He filled the law completely.
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He fulfilled every single law.
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He fulfilled every single prophecy, not one iota, which the iota is the small letter of the Greek alphabet, the smallest letter.
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It's that it's that little like we would have a letter I in our language, but without the dot, it's just a small line on the paper.
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He said he fulfilled the very smallest iota, the smallest dot.
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It is completely fulfilled in him.
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So the question then we must ask is how does Jesus fulfill the law and the prophets without at the same time abolishing them? As you said, I didn't come to abolish, I came to fulfill.
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Well, how do you fulfill something without then putting it away or abolishing it? Well, this is where it's going to get good, at least I think this is where I really want you to key in on this.
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Jesus Christ perpetually maintains his place as the one who fulfilled the law perfectly as our high priest.
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And thus the law perpetually maintains its place of authority in all of its fullness.
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Let me say it again.
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Did you catch it? Jesus Christ perpetually maintains his place as the one who fulfilled the law perfectly as our high priest, thus the law perpetually maintains its place of authority in all of its fullness.
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Allow me to say it in a different way.
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Maybe I'm adding confusion to something that's already somewhat difficult.
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Why are people at war with God? Why do we say that all men are at enmity with God? Because of a three letter word called sin.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, brother.
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You said it right.
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We are at war with God because of sin.
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The Bible says that we are sinners and as such, we have strife and enmity between us and our heavenly father.
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What is sin, beloved? According to 1 John 3, 4, what is sin? Sin is a transgression of the law.
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Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practice lawlessness.
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Sin is lawlessness.
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In the King James Version, it says sin is a transgression of the law.
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So if it is true that people are still sinners today, then that means the law still has a place today.
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Without law, there is no sin.
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So the law continues to stand as the perfect standard of righteousness.
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And that law has not been abolished.
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Not one part of it has been relaxed or put aside.
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And because all men transgress that law, we all stand justly guilty before the king of the universe underneath that law.
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Now, here's the next question.
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I asked you the question, why are people at war with God? The answer is sin.
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What is sin? Sin is lawlessness.
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Now, how are people made right with God? By keeping the law? No, because we're already dead.
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We can't keep the law.
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It's impossible to be made right with God by keeping the law because we're born in sin.
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We sin because we're sinners, not the other way around.
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People think they're sinners because they sin.
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No, we sin because we're sinners.
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So what is the question? How are we made right with God? By being in Christ.
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That's how one is made right with God.
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God regenerates the heart.
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As a result, we recognize our sin.
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We repent of our sin and we receive Christ.
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He is in us and we are in him.
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But why does being in Christ make one right with God? Because he fulfilled the law.
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He did what you could not do on your behalf.
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He accomplished all of the law for you.
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He filled it to the full for you.
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Martin Lloyd-Jones said this.
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He said, Christ is fulfilling the law on the cross.
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And unless you interpret the cross and Christ's death upon it in strict terms of the fulfilling of the law, you have not a scriptural view of the death upon the cross.
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You don't understand the cross if you don't understand that Christ in that cross was fulfilling the law for you.
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You don't even understand it if you don't understand that.
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Thus, because Christ has fulfilled the law, those who are in him are no longer under the condemnation of the law.
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Somebody quote Romans 8-1 for me.
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Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are what? In Christ Jesus.
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Thank you.
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There's the answer.
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He fulfilled the law.
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If you're outside of him, the law condemns you.
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Thus, it still has purpose.
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If you're in him, he fulfilled the law for you.
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Thus, the law no longer is a burden over you to hold you down in the condemnation.
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But you are now free from that condemnation because there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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That's the law.
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That's how the law operates.
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The law has been accomplished on our behalf, not destroyed, not abolished.
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It has been fulfilled for us.
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Now, this leads to the very next important question.
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I like to ask questions and answer them.
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I pretend like I have somebody sitting with me when I'm studying.
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I really do.
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I pretend somebody is asking me questions because I think what question would I ask at this point? If I were you, what would I ask me? It's my favorite way to write a sermon.
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So the next question is this.
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Does that mean that we get to now ignore the law because it has been fulfilled on our behalf? Does that mean we can just throw it away? We get to ignore it? Hey, we don't have to worry about it anymore.
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Well, I want to take you back to Romans 8 for a minute.
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We're done in Matthew 5 for the moment.
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Go to Romans 8 with me.
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Go to Romans 8.
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Just a few pages to the right there.
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We've already read verse 1.
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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
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Amen.
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We're done.
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We're thankful for that.
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But he goes on to talk about something else.
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He goes on to explain, express how the law and grace work together.
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He says in verse 2, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
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You've been set free from the old law, which was your condemnation.
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That's the law of sin and death.
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You've been set free.
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You are now not condemned anymore.
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For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do.
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What does that mean? You couldn't do it by your flesh.
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People who I met, people tell me all the time.
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I'm a good person.
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No, you're not.
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You're a liar because you just said you're a good person.
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The Bible says you're a liar right there.
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You've demonstrated that you're not.
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You cannot, by the flesh, fulfill the law.
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And he goes on to say, by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.
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In order that the righteousness requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
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You see, now we walk according to the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
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We have the Holy Spirit who walks daily with us.
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Verse 5, for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.
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But those who live according to the spirit set their minds on the things of the spirit.
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He's talking about the difference between the saved man and the unsaved man.
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He said the unsaved man is concerned and it's just consumed with flesh.
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But the saved man has a spiritual mind and his mind has a desire to follow Christ.
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It's a change.
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Beloved, I've said this many times.
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If you say you're saved and your life's never changed, then you are wrong.
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You ain't saved if your life has not changed.
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It's just the Word of God tells us this.
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Verse 6, for to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
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This is talking about the benefit of being a believer.
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If you set your life on the flesh, you're dead and your life is nothing but just perpetual deadness.
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But if you set your life on the spirit, it's life and peace.
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And then verse 7, this is getting to the nitty gritty here, because he says, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile towards God.
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We said that earlier.
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The fleshly mind is at war with God, for it does not submit to God's law.
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Indeed, it cannot.
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Nice little reform text there, because it tells us we actually can't do something until God first changes our heart.
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A little point to be made there.
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But in verse 8, it says those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if in fact the spirit of God dwells in you.
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Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
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But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, that's why we fight with flesh.
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The spirit is life because of righteousness.
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If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.
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This is why we are able to follow after Christ through his spirit who dwells in you.
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You see, we've experienced a change.
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We are no longer living under the heady requirements of the law.
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We are now living by the spirit who lives within us.
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We are not condemned by the law anymore.
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We are saved by Christ because he fulfilled that law in its entirety on our behalf.
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You see, prior to our conversion, we did not even we didn't desire the law.
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Prior to our conversion, we didn't desire to follow God.
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But now, since we have been regenerated, we now agree that God's law is good.
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We now agree that God's law is purposeful and it's beautiful and it has its place in our lives.
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Instead of rejecting the law, we now rejoice in the law.
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This is why the psalmist said, oh, how I love your law.
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It is my meditation all the day.
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I hate the double minded, but I love your law.
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I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law.
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Great peace have those who love your law.
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Nothing can make them stumble.
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You see, that's the believer.
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The believer has gone from one who couldn't stand the law to one who adores the law.
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One who rejected it to one who rejoices in it.
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That's how the believer's righteousness is greater than the Pharisees, by the way.
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Jesus said in verse 24, I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will not never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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That gets some people nervous because they say, man, them scribes and Pharisees, they were righteous dudes.
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Man, they were always they were making up laws on top of laws just so that their laws were lawful.
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They were law givers and law livers.
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They were law, law, law.
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Yeah, but they were not righteous.
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They were whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones, Jesus said.
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Didn't he say that? Didn't he say that they were nothing but hypocrites? They had an external righteousness, but no internal love for God's law.
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They were religious on the outside, but inside they were spiritually dead.
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That's where the believer differs.
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We have a clean outside and a clean inside.
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You might say, well, my outside is not always perfect.
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No, it's not.
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But we're not called to live in sin either.
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And if you're a believer and you're living in perpetual sin, well, then I got news for you.
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You're not a believer.
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So the Bible says, 1 John is very clear about that.
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The believer loves God's law.
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He longs to please his master.
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He is not perfect, but he has a desire of holiness within him.
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He does not desire an outward show of piety, but instead.
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He desires to have an inward.
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Righteousness and inward conformity to the image of Christ that shows forth on the outside, Jesus tells us what's in the well comes up in the bucket, Jesus tells us what's inside shows forth on the outside.
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Very clear.
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We know that we long to be conformed to who? The one who was the perfect confirmation to the Old Testament law, Jesus Christ.
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We long to be conformed to him who fulfilled the law on our behalf.
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Now, if you can hang with me for just a few more minutes, I want to answer the question of the day.
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The question, which some of you may still be urging to raise your hand and ask.
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I want to encourage you to stick with me on this, because this is the part that I spent quite a bit of time this past week praying over, thinking about, because I wanted to answer this question as clearly as I could.
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Sometimes, you know, the answer in here, but you can't get it to come out of here.
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You ever had that happen? You know what you want to say, but you just can't.
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And it took me a while before I could figure out how I wanted to say this and make it clear.
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The question is this.
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Pastor, you say we love the law.
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Yes, the believer is supposed to love the law of God.
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Why is it then that there are parts of the law which we do not practice? That's an important question.
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I mentioned it earlier that there are obvious parts of the Old Testament law which we do not practice in the New Testament church.
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Dietary restrictions, Sabbath restrictions, priesthood practices, sacrifices, slavery laws, and on and on.
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Yet there are some important laws from the Old Testament which we would say are still standards for the Christian.
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Sexual immorality, lying, greed, covetousness, murder, theft.
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There's no first church of the liars in Jacksonville that I'm aware of, or the first church of murderers.
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That wouldn't last long, but you understand, we do say there's a standard to living.
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There's something we're called to.
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So how are we not engaging in double standards by claiming that we are bound by some of the law, but we're not bound by the completeness of the law? Is this not a double standard? Are we not hypocrites? Because let me tell you something, this is the accusation that's being made by many people that are liberal people.
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And I would say this, and I know you all probably think I beat this drum a lot, but I don't.
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I really don't.
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It's just so important.
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It's very prevalent in our society.
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The homosexual movement that is out there, that is trying to infiltrate every area of life and every area of trying to push out every area of godlessness and replace it with this very ungodly lifestyle.
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They claim that we're hypocrites because we say that they shouldn't live this homosexual lifestyle and they shouldn't do this because they say, well, hey, listen up, man, you disobey the Bible all the time because you eat pork sandwiches and you're wearing cotton and wool together.
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And the Bible says you shouldn't mix fabrics.
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And they bring up all these arguments that some Christians have never considered.
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And then you leave yourself going, you need to know people because you will be confronted with this, if not now, soon.
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And you need to know the answer to that question.
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You need not to be left on the cutting room floor just because you couldn't answer why your shirt's wool and your pants are made of cotton and why that's not a sin.
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I'm serious.
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Understanding this requires that we understand one thing, that the word, the Old Testament law has been completely fulfilled in Christ.
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But yet that does not negate our responsibility toward the moral law of God.
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The Old Testament law can be understood with three facets or three parts.
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The Old Testament law can be understood and theologians and Bible scholars have understood this for years.
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I don't know why it hasn't been understood in the church because it's been well understood by theologians that the Old Testament law can be understood in contexts like these.
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We have in the Old Testament the ceremonial law of God.
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We have in the Old Testament the governmental law of God for Israel.
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And we have in the Old Testament what we would consider to be moral law.
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Ceremonial laws.
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What's a ceremonial law? Well, these would include priestly duties, sacrificial regulations and dietary restrictions.
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Beloved, these laws were fulfilled in Christ.
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When He came to earth and acted as our high priest after His atonement was made, every ceremony that before that time had pointed to Him was completed.
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It was fulfilled.
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There was no more need to do the sacrifice any longer.
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Thus, we are no longer obligated to perform the ceremonies which are intended to prefigure Christ once Christ has come.
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In fact, it would be sinful to do so.
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If I brought a goat in here and sacrificed it on behalf of my sin, I would be denying the completed work of Christ on behalf of my sin.
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Thus, to engage in the ceremonial sacrifice of the Old Testament would itself be opposed to the law of God.
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Tim Keller said this, he said, If I believe Jesus is the resurrected Son of God, I can't follow all the clean laws of diet and practice and I can't offer animal sacrifices.
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All that would be, would be to deny the power of Christ's death on the cross.
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Because all of those things pointed to Him.
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All of those sacrifices pointed to Him.
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Even Jesus said that He, in Mark chapter 7 and verse 9, He mentions, it's mentioned there that the dietary laws are abrogated.
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Because all of these things are fulfilled, all of the ceremonies intended to picture cleanliness are fulfilled in Christ when He comes and cleans us perfectly.
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You can't clean something once it's already clean.
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And we are completely clean in Christ.
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All of that, which the Old Testament ceremonial laws purposed, was fulfilled in Christ.
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So if we didn't, we would be wrong if we continued them.
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Thus, those churches that stand legalistically and continue those things are actually denying the power of the cross.
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So that's to deal with the ceremonial laws.
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Now, governmental laws.
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There are laws in the Old Testament which are specific to the theocracy under which the people of Israel lived.
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God intended for them to be under His rule and to govern themselves by His commands.
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Thus, He includes rules for retributive justice, for how judges are supposed to operate, and how the role of priests as leaders in the nation was supposed to function.
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There are laws on how laws are supposed to be enacted and judged accordingly, according to righteousness.
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These laws were set forth for the people of Israel during a very specific period in history.
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A period wherein they were living in a theocracy.
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Christ, as the perfect Israelite in whom there was no guilt, fulfilled all of the governmental laws.
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He was a, not only was He the King of Heaven, He was a good citizen of Earth.
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Interesting.
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He actually fulfilled the laws of government.
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There was no reason to put Him on that cross.
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In fact, they had to get men to come in and lie on His behalf so that they could put Him on that cross.
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So, we are called to live under what as Christians? We are called to live under governmental authority.
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You see, because the gospel is no longer held in Israel alone.
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The gospel has gone out to all nations.
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And now the paradigm has been set that while we don't live in theocracies anymore, we are to live under the rule of the land that we are in.
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Romans chapter 13 tells us that we are obeyed the governing authorities where we are, so long as those governing authorities do not require us to break the law of God, to break God's standard or compel us to disobey Him.
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As such, laws concerning slavery, judges, property rights, etc.
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would simply not be appropriate to apply in the context, outside of the context of the theocracy of Israel.
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Let me, I'll quote Tim Keller again.
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Maybe it'll help make sense.
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In the New Testament, the people of God are an assembly of churches all over the world, living under many different governments.
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The church is not a civil government, and so sins are dealt with by exhortation and at worst, exclusion from church membership.
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This is how Paul deals with the case of incest in the Corinthian church.
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Remember, he says you need to put this guy out of the church.
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He doesn't say you need to go out and stone him to death, which would have been the Old Testament law.
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Because the church no longer has that governmental authority, we now have the authority only to do exhortation or excommunication.
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We no longer are a theocratic government.
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And then he goes on to say, why this change? Under Christ, the gospel is not confined to a single nation.
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It has been released to go into all cultures and all peoples, end quote.
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Because it has gone out to all peoples and all cultures, those laws which were intended specifically for the theocracy of Israel are no longer able to be applied to all of the people of God.
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Does that make sense? Because now we need to talk about the third one.
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We've looked first at the ceremonial law, which is fulfilled in Christ.
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By the way, all three of these are fulfilled in Christ.
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Don't get me wrong.
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But the ceremonial laws are fulfilled in Christ and do not need to be continued.
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The governmental laws are fulfilled in Christ and cannot, by virtue of the fact that the gospel has gone all over the world, be continued.
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But the moral law of God has in itself an inherent difference.
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Moral law, which is found throughout the Bible and refers specifically to how faithful people are to conduct themselves in regard to their fidelity to God and to other people, their fellow men, their fellow men and women.
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These laws continue to stand as a standard for how we are to conduct ourselves in the world.
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If you look at the commandments of God, especially the Ten Commandments as a nucleus of God's moral law, we see that bound up in these commandments are two commandments which Jesus said.
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What are the two commandments? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself and on these two rests the whole law.
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Everything about the moral law of God is rested on two commandments.
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Love God with everything you have and love your neighbor as yourself.
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That's the moral law of God.
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You can take the entire Old Testament.
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You could condense it down to love God and love your neighbor.
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In that sense, God's moral law stands firm as the basis for how a Christian is supposed to conduct him or herself in the world.
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It's not aggregated.
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It's not put aside.
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It is fulfilled in Christ because guess what? We don't do it perfectly.
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You don't do it perfectly.
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Do you love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength every minute of every day? Have you loved Him every minute of today? With everything you have, heart, soul, mind and strength? Have you had a sinful thought? Then you don't love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
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Do you love your neighbor as yourself as you ought? Then no.
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Then guess what? The moral law is also fulfilled in Christ because you can't fulfill it either.
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But it still stands as a standard of living.
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It still stands as an operational standard for how we are to be in society.
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This is why the Apostle Paul can say, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace can abound? No, because that's what the foolish antinomian says.
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The foolish antinomian says this.
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He said, because the law has been fulfilled in Christ, I am no longer to operate under the constricts of the moral law of God.
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And that, my beloved friends, is foolishness and heresy.
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Because we still have a standard of living for believers.
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We are to love God and to love others.
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And that is the standard.
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The coming of Christ changed how we worshiped.
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It didn't change how we live.
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We live with love to God and love to others.
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Now, I mentioned antinomianism and legalism earlier.
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And let me finish with this and I'll make this quick.
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Legalism says this.
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Legalism says that you must obey the law in the strictest sense.
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To be welcomed into the kingdom of heaven because it is by virtue of your law keeping that you are made right with God.
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That is heresy of the rankest kind.
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Antinomianism.
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Nomos is the Greek word for law.
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And yes, this is a word I didn't make it up.
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Antinomianism says that because Christ has fulfilled the law, we have no obligations and we can continue to sin so that grace will abound and abound and abound.
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And we can live in sin as Christians.
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Beloved, both are wrong.
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The Apostle Paul says, and I'm going to read it again.
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I read a little bit earlier, but I'll read it again.
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What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound by no means? How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.
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The Christian life is a changed life.
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The Christian life is a life that seeks to be conformed to Christ.
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The Christian life is a life that is not conformed to this world, but is transformed by the renewal of the mind, a mind which seeks to follow Christ.
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That's the Christian life.
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So how does the law have a place for the Christian today? Does it have a place? Yes, it does.
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Prior to our conversion, the law led us to Christ.
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The Apostle Paul says it was our schoolmaster which leads us to Christ, because it was the law that told us we were sinners and made us grope for a Savior.
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It made us reach for a Savior.
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It was the law that condemned us.
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And then when we met that Savior, we found the law keeper, the one who had fulfilled the law for us, and in Him we found no condemnation.
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The law is beautiful.
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It serves a purpose and continues to serve a purpose.
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And not one iota, not one dot has gone unfulfilled by Christ.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we thank You for Your Word.
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We thank You for this precious opportunity that we have had to study it.
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I pray, O Lord, that You would continue to move on us to understand this subject, this very important subject, even more.
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And I pray, O God, that You would just open up all of our hearts toward a better obedience to Your call of morality in the world.
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We see a world around us, Father, that has so forsaken Your morality.
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And even within the churches, this morality has been forsaken, but yet You have called us to a high standard.
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You have called us to the standard of loving You and loving others.
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Even when others are so unloving towards us, even when they're so unlovable, You've called us to love them.
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We thank You for loving us so much.
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And we thank You for the command to love others, because it is in that that we draw closer to You and are conformed every day closer to the image of Christ.
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I pray for anyone here under the sound of my voice that's never heard the Gospel.
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I pray that they have heard it today.
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I pray that they have heard that they are sinners.
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And I pray that they have heard that in Christ there is no condemnation and that they can reach for Him.
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They can call out upon His name and that Your Word tells us that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
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We know, O Lord, You open the hearts to call.
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And I pray that You would open hearts today.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Stand with us as we sing.
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And if you have a need for prayer, please come.