Law: What Is It Good For?

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Probably 1985, beautiful clear day, I was working in a radio car and working something that I absolutely detested because I'd never been trained for it and that was running radar.
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I was working in a traffic car. I stopped a man for speeding on Foothill Boulevard.
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Foothill Boulevard is a huge street, it's two full lanes with a center divider. It's a perfectly fine piece of roadway.
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I pulled him over, broad daylight, radar, and I said,
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I see your license, registration, and you were speeding. He says, sure.
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Gives me his license and his registration and I said, okay, we'll just wait there for a minute,
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I'll be back with a ticket for you. He says, you're going to write me a ticket?
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And I said, well, yes, sir, actually, that's what they pay me to do. And he said, well,
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I'm sure Mayor Bradley will be glad to know that, that's your job. And in my head,
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I was just like, I don't work for Mayor Bradley. Mayor Bradley is not even the mayor anymore, but whatever. And I went back to the car and I'm looking and this guy was just rude.
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And I'm looking at his stuff and he's got an expired license. So I go back up to the vehicle and I said, excuse me, sir,
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I said, your license is expired, do you have an update? He said, no, no. I've been out of the country a lot and I just haven't got it done.
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And he was just ruder and ruder and ruder. So I said, okay, well,
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I said, I'm going to write you a ticket for speeding and for not having your license with you and you're not going to be able to drive.
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He goes, well, what am I supposed to do? I said, well, you're going to have to call somebody to come pick up the vehicle. So I went back and, you know, back in those days, back in the old days, you know, where they didn't have the cool, you know, you must have the cool logs in there, you know, the laptops and everything where you can do everything electronically.
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We had a little paper log we had to keep up. So I just thought, you know, while I'm waiting for this guy to do whatever he's going to do,
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I'll just catch up on my log. I wrote the ticket. I did all this other stuff and I waited about 10 minutes.
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He wasn't leaving that vehicle. He wasn't going to leave it. So I went back up there and I said, excuse me, sir, would you exit the vehicle, please?
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He says, what for? I said, because I'm going to tow it. And he goes, you know, then things really escalated.
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And, you know, I explained to him that I had the authority to do that and everything like that. He did not like it one bit. He was rebellious.
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I mean, he was the prototype of rebellion. I represented the law. I was the state.
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He was not going to go with what I said. And so it kept escalating. The more he pushed back, the more
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I pushed back and I was not going to lose. Why? Because the law wins. The law is the standard.
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If you don't obey the standard, you will lose. Let's look at 1
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Timothy chapter 1. We're going to read, I'm going to read from verses 3 to 11, mostly because it's been some time since we've been in this text.
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We're going to focus this evening on verses 8 through 11. Paul writing to young Timothy.
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As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies which give rise to mere speculation, rather than furthering the administration of God, which is by faith.
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But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.
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For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.
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But we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men, and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching according to the glorious gospel of the blessed
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God with which I have been entrusted. Now, the last time
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I taught in 1 Timothy, we examined essentially Paul's mission statement, his charge to Timothy.
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Timothy was to stop, as we just read, certain men from teaching strange doctrines, unbiblical doctrines, as we're going to see, using the law unlawfully, unbiblical doctrines that would lead believers away from the truth toward speculations, toward guesswork, toward intuition.
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The overall theme of the book is basically how to run a church. Paul writes Timothy and says, you know,
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I'm writing these things to you so that you'll know how to conduct yourself in the household of God. And I think this is a particularly timely book, because if we were to look, if you just, not that you should, but if you were to read
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Christianity Today, as it comes out now, I think, on a monthly basis, the church today is not much different than it was in Paul's day.
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More technologically sophisticated, for sure, but no less susceptible to false teaching than it was nearly 2 ,000 years ago.
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This evening, I want you to see why the law is good. Paul says it's good.
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Why is it good? And then we're going to look at proper and improper uses of it, so that you will have a right view and even a love for the law.
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And you're sitting there, you're going, did he just say a love for the law? Yes, I said a love for the law.
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If the law is good, as our text says, why would we not love the law? Why would we shun it?
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Why would we avoid it? I was even talking with someone this morning, and they said, oh, they come from a church that says the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
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It's a misapplication. The law is good, Paul says.
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We need to know why it's good. What is its lawful use?
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And it is my goal this evening to encourage you to grasp the proper use of the law with these truths about the law.
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First, the law is good. The law is good. Well, how do I know it's good? Again, because the text says it's good.
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If the Bible says something, it's true. The law is good, he says, but we know that the law is good.
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And in this context, what Paul's trying to do is draw a contrast between those who wanted to be teachers of the law, those who fancied themselves as capable of doing this, but they had no skill.
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They had no knowledge. They were not gifted, and they probably weren't even believers because they misrepresented the law.
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Look back at verse 7. They do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.
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I want to go to that church, the church where we don't know what we're talking about and we make confident assertions about that which we do not know.
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That is the church I want to go to. These men didn't have a clue, but that didn't stop them from wanting to teach.
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They were incompetent and false teachers. But that does not negate the value of the law.
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Again, Paul says the law is good. If you watch TV, if you see a false teacher like Benny Hinn, does that negate the gospel?
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Does the fact that some so -called Christian preachers are in it for profit or they contort or twist or distort the truth, does that eliminate the value of the law?
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No. With Paul, I would say, may it never be. That the law is good, as Paul said, is hardly news.
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I want you to just kind of keep your finger there in 1 Timothy and turn back to Psalm 19.
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Psalm 19. I'm going to use the Old Testament a bit tonight, beginning with Psalm 19.
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Psalm 19, I'm going to read verses 7 -11. See, I almost asked somebody else to read it, but then
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I realized I can't do that tonight. Psalm 19, verses 7 -11.
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The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul. The testimony of the
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Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the
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Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the
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Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
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The judgments of the Lord are true. They are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold.
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Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them your servant is warned.
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In keeping them there is great tyranny. No, great reward.
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The law is good. It is perfect, meaning complete, whole, sound.
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Consider for a moment, as I was even thinking about this, the way the law is described here, if we were to go throughout the entire world and look for something else that we could apply these words to, what could we find?
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What could we find where we could say, this is perfect, that is pure, this is righteous altogether?
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The answer is nothing. There's nothing in this world, in this creation, that has been unsullied, undistorted, left alone by sin except the
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Word of God. For those who say, maybe you're sitting there and you're going, wait a minute, he's conflating, he's joining together the idea of the law of God and the
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Word of God. Well, let's just look at that for a moment. First, consider the law, if we talk about the law, the
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Ten Commandments. Let's look at it this way, that the first four commandments have to do with our relationship, our vertical relationship with God, how we relate with Him, and the latter six with each other.
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And then I would point you to this, you don't have to turn there, but in Matthew 22,
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Jesus said this when He was asked, Teacher, what is the great commandment in the law?
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Verse 37 of chapter 22 of Matthew, He says, And He said to them, You shall, this is
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His answer, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
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This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
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On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. In other words, again, if we were to look at the
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Ten Commandments, first four would be, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, all your soul and all your mind.
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Then the last six would be, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. We could summarize it in that way, and He does.
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I would argue also that you could take much of the Bible and say that it describes the law, it describes people failing to keep it, the consequences of failing to keep it, it instructs people on how to keep it, what the true meaning of it is.
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Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount was doing what? He was explicating, He was explaining, He was giving a deeper understanding of the law of God.
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You have heard it said, but I say to you, you have heard it said, but I say to you, over and over again pointing people back to the law and its intent.
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Now, again, thinking about the law, we talk from time to time, I taught for several weeks in Sunday school about heaven.
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What is heaven? Well, it is a place where we worship God forever, true, but it is also a place in which the law of God is perfectly obeyed by all of His subjects.
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Yes, we will rejoice for Him redeeming us. Yes, we will rejoice at the death of Christ, His burial,
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His resurrection. But we will also rejoice because we have been freed, we have been liberated from the power and presence of sin, and we will obey our
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King and His law perfectly. Back in Psalm 19, the testimony of the
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Lord is sure, it says, sure, verified, confirmed. The law of God, the testimony of God, the word of God is genuine truth.
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It has as its author the divine sovereign of the universe. He has confirmed
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His word on countless occasions, and there is absolutely no higher authority anywhere.
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It is also described as right in Psalm 19. It is just, that means. It sets the standard.
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All standards and all judgments of the word of God exceed all human standards of fairness, of justice.
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It is also described as pure. It is unsullied. It is white as snow. It has never been contaminated.
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It cannot be contaminated. It is true. It is permanently reliable.
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It is righteous. The law of God is alone the determiner of what is right.
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The law of God is inherently good. That means by its very nature it is good, because of its source.
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It, just like God, is not capricious. It is not random. It is not unfair.
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And, listen, it is not restrictive. We're going to talk about that in a little bit.
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But God alone knows what is good, and He determines what is best for His creation.
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Let's turn back to 1 Timothy. Paul says that we know the law is good.
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When he says we, he means Paul. He means Timothy. But every Christian would agree with that.
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It's a no -brainer. It's a slam dunk. It is a truism. It is a, it's an axiom.
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It's just truth. Something every Christian should agree with.
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Rightly understood, the law is good, which means noble or praiseworthy.
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And that's exactly how Paul describes it. No matter what anyone says about it being passé, old -fashioned, out of date, the law was, is, and always will be good.
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The law is good. Secondly, let's look at some wrong uses of the law.
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Notice again that Paul qualifies the goodness of the law. Look at how he does it in verse 8. If, and I have that underlined, if one uses it lawfully, the law is good if one uses it lawfully.
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Well, what does that presuppose? That there's a way to use it unlawfully.
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A way to use it wrongly. And clearly that's exactly what the false teachers had done.
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They didn't have any clues, so they got involved in speculations, myths, genealogies. There were other false teachers about, who said, listen, in addition to salvation by faith alone, through grace alone, or grace alone by faith alone, and Christ alone, you also have to obey the law, the
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Judaizers. People are always trying to do that. Mis -teach, wrongly teach, what the law is all about.
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Well, how can one fail to use it lawfully? It's pretty simple. You just fail to use it for its divine purpose.
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You fail to use it for the purpose for which God gave it. For example, how about teaching that we are able to keep the law of God perfectly?
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God gave us this law, so that we just obey everything, and we would have no issue with that.
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Is perfectionism the point of the law? No. If we could do that, if we could just, if God could just give us this list of things, if it were just a checklist of do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that, and we could do it, then he wouldn't have to send his son to die for sin.
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How about this? The law itself can transform us, leaving apart the spirit of God, regenerating work of the spirit, just the law, just reading the law, just posting the law up on the courthouse wall can transform lives.
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How about this? How about teaching that the law of God can change?
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It's malleable. You know, trends change, cultures change, social norms change, the law of God has to change with it, it has to go with the flow, it has to stay up with the times.
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It's kind of the idea of God in the hands of angry sinners, they will decide what he should look like, what he should be doing.
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Bob Dylan said it, the times they are a changing and so is God's law. No. How about this?
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How about the 10 suggestions? A flexible guide that you can just refer to every now and then, just kind of give you a little signpost that you need to stay between.
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Or how about this? How about as a score sheet? So you can go, you know, I'm ahead of my neighbor 7 to 5.
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I'm trailing 8 to 6. Wrong. How about this?
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How about the law as just a starting point? You know, it's a nice place to start, but you really have to build on it.
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If I really want to prove my righteousness, it's not enough to keep the 10 commandments, I've really got to add on.
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When we went to Israel years ago, not only were there, you know, there were little wires and our tour guides would talk about it, little wires up on the telephone poles and stuff like that that would let you know how far you could walk on a
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Sabbath so that you didn't violate the Sabbath. There were cars parked on the Sabbath at different places, odd places, intersections and stuff like that.
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Well, that was so some of the more Orthodox Jews would park their cars there so that you wouldn't be able to drive on the
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Sabbath. They were going to prevent you from breaking the law. They were going to, you know, take that extra step.
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It's not even enough to obey the law myself, obey God's law myself. I have to impose that on other people.
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Legalism of any form, and that would be what adding to the law is, legalism of any form.
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God doesn't want you to do X even though the Bible never really addresses it, but I'm going to go a step farther.
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Why do we, I mean, even believers sometimes contend toward legalism? I think it's just because rules give us comfort.
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We like rules. The more rules, the better. Just tell me what I need to do and what
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I don't need to do, what I can and can't do. Just give me rules. It really appeals to people.
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Because I think it gives us that sense of somehow we're, you know, not just climbing the stairway to heaven as it were, but that we're making ourselves more godly, that we're making ourselves more pleasing to Him.
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Like, you know, somehow a little kid with his parents, if the kid just does enough that the parent will finally notice.
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And that's what legalism is. I know that growing up in a Mormon home, you know, some of the things that we could and couldn't do.
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Let's see, on Sunday, you know, we had a bunch of Sunday rules. These were for real though. You know, no watching TV on Sunday.
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We would have fast Sunday once a month where you couldn't eat breakfast or lunch.
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That was brutal. See, what else? Oh, you couldn't go shopping on Sunday.
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Can't do that. Definitely couldn't go out to a restaurant. Couldn't play.
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Couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't. It was just a bunch of couldn'ts because that was the Sabbath day and you weren't allowed to do anything except for go to church and put on a sad face for the rest of the day.
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You were allowed to do that. That is a wrong way of using the law.
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It's a wrong way of looking at the law. The law is not a starting point. You know, when you point to the law, when you point to Christianity and you say, you know what,
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Christianity is different than every other religion. Unbelievers sometimes will just say, well, you know,
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Christianity borrows this aspect of its faith from this religion and this from that and the other.
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This is false. All the other religions steal a bit of the truth and they wrap it up in works and they act as if somehow they can then present it to God and it will be worthy.
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Every other religion says it is do this, do that.
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I talk about Islam sometimes because of the number of rules. They have literally books written with rules.
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Judaism, books written with rules of all the different ways to live life. That is not pleasing to God and that is not the purpose of the law.
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One more. How about this? The law as a cosmic killjoy.
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God just gave us the law so that we wouldn't have any fun. He just wants to restrict everything that we can do so that, you know, it's just no fun at all.
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The law is just a bunch of thou shalt nots. Again, nothing can be further from the truth.
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Let's look at Psalm 119. Psalm 119, verses 97 to 104.
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Psalm 119, beginning of verse 97. It's just fascinating to hear how unbelievers complain and whine and say,
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I don't want the law and then to read what the men of God have said about the law.
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Verse 97 of Psalm 19. Oh, how I love your law.
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It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies for they are ever mine.
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Not the enemies, but the commandments. I have more insight than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation.
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I understand more than the aged because I have observed your precepts.
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I have restrained my feet from every evil way that I may keep your word. I have not turned aside from your ordinances for you yourself have taught me through the word he's taught him.
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103, again, how sweet. He said that in Psalm 19. How sweet are your words to my taste.
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Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth. From your precepts, I get understanding.
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Therefore, I hate every false way. To be sweet is literally to be smooth to the mouth, just kind of glide in.
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So when we hear or when we read that, how sweet are your words to my taste, they just kind of melt in your mouth is the idea.
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The law rightly understood and rightly applied is a joy. For unbelievers, it is a kill joy.
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It is a buzz kill. It's a horrible thing to restraint on their fun. And it's interesting, too, because he says that right there from your precepts.
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I get understanding. Therefore, I hate every false way. And he said earlier that it restrained him, restrained his feet from every evil way.
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Once he understood the law of God, he no longer wanted to do those things. So those are the wrong uses or some of the wrong uses of the law.
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Now, thirdly, lastly, right uses of the law, correct uses of the law.
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So look at verse nine. The law of God shows the sinful nature of man.
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The law of God shows the sinful nature of man. Look at verse nine.
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Realizing the fact that the law is not made for a righteous person. The righteous man is not the reason that God gave the law.
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Those who obey, those who want to obey, those who have been convicted by the law is not the reason he gave the law.
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I once had... I mean, if you work in law enforcement long enough, you'll hear this.
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You know, you're taking someone to jail. Or in my case, when I was working with people in jail, they would say to me sometimes, well, you know,
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Senior Cooley, I'm your job security. You need me in order to have a job. I used to love that.
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I mean, in the beginning, it sort of boggled my mind. I didn't know how to answer that. Then later on, I just thought...
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I had several answers for them, and I said, here was my favorite one. I would say, no, no, no.
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My job security was set up in the Garden of Eden. As soon as Adam and Eve fell, I had a job. And they'd just go, what does that mean?
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If you understand total reprivatory, rightly, then you know that there's always going to be a need for police officers until the
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Lord returns. But I'd also say, I'll tell you what, I'll make you a deal. You agree to stop robbing, raping, and murdering, and I'll go dig ditches for a living.
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I said, because you know something? I will be living like a king. I could make $10 an hour.
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I won't have to buy insurance for anything. Everything will be peachy. I go, I will be wealthy beyond your wildest imaginings if I don't have to fork out tax dollars to support this massive monstrosity of a jail and everything else that goes with it.
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You know, the court system, everything else. You know, you want to talk about job security? You can have it.
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You guys just stop breaking the law. I'll give up my job. How's that? It's not going to happen.
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It's not going to happen. We don't have the law, the civil law. Our law from, you know, our founders understood one thing, and what was that?
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They understood that man is inherently good. No, he's inherently evil. That's why there's checks and balances built in the government.
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That's why we have a law to restrain evildoers, to say if you do X, there's going to be a punishment.
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That's why we have the law. It's not for good people. It's not because people are good. It's because they're evil, they're wicked.
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The law doesn't exist for the righteous person. It exists for lawbreakers.
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But what about Romans 3 .23? All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yes, everyone has sinned.
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Still, some have been declared righteous. They've been made positionally righteous in Christ.
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Commentator Knight says, the righteous are then those living in conformity to the requirements of the law by the work of Christ, not because of their own goodness, but by the work of Christ wrought by the
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Spirit in them. It's not for the righteous.
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It's not to restrain the righteous or to impose on them.
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It's for the unrighteous, as we're going to see. Without the gift of the law, and that's what it is, there would be no basis upon which to determine
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God's standard. We wouldn't know what God wanted. There would be no basis for Him saying, this is sin and this is not, if He had not given us the law.
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The law defines sin, so that on judgment day, God can judge righteously and He can justly declare, depart from me, you workers of iniquity.
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How could anyone know what iniquity was if He had not told us? Sinners are the reason the law exists, so the evil of their deeds might be made evident.
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Look again at verse 9. But for those who are lawless and rebellious, the text tells us that they are lawless, that they are literally against the law.
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They are opposed to the law and they are opposed to the lawgiver. The law reveals the heart of wicked men.
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It cuts it open. It shows us what's in their hearts. However, it's also a restraint on evil, even as I read in Psalm 19.
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If it restrains the righteous from wanting to do sin, it also restrains the wicked from being as bad as they could be.
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And you say, how's that possible? You don't have to turn there, but Paul wrote in Romans.
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Romans chapter 2. For when Gentiles who do not have the law do instinctively, instinctively, that is, they don't even have to think about it.
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They instinctively do the things of the law. These, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that, listen, they show the work of the law written in their hearts.
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Their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.
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The war, you know, we see this sometimes in little cartoons. Devil on one side, you know,
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I was going to say Satan on the other. That wouldn't be right. An angel on the other. And this is, you know, the law of God, literally, their conscience accusing or acquitting them.
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Everyone has a conscience, an alarm system. A child goes into a store to steal something.
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You know, is he calm? Well, maybe. Probably not. Probably his heart is racing, you know, a million miles a minute.
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The first time he goes to tell a lie to his parents. Is he like this? No, he's nervous.
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You want to know, you know, he did, how did you know I was lying? Well, let me see.
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A, because I probably told a lot more lies than you ever have in your life and I can see a bad lie a million miles away.
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B, when you start going, no, I'm really telling the truth and jumping up and down, it's kind of a giveaway. But no one has to be told, you know, it's wrong to kill.
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They know this. It is written in their hearts by God. Everyone has the law written in their hearts.
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They have to defeat that. Just to give you an idea, we have a conscience.
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And when we sin against that conscience, there is an alarm that goes off. God gave us so that we would know what was right and wrong.
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So why does sin occur? Because men love their sin. They love it so much that they learn to ignore those alarm bells.
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They learn to just dial down the heart racing. They learn to kind of control their emotional impulses to do the right thing and to stop doing the wrong thing.
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They sear their conscience, the Bible would say. They burn it. They scar it so badly that eventually,
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I mean, what happens if you have nerves on your body and you just kind of, you just take a branding iron and you just kind of burn it over and over again?
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You're going to get some scar tissue there, and guess what? Pretty soon you're not going to feel a thing. Why? Because those nerves have such a level of scar tissue over them, and it's the same way.
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You won't be able to feel a thing. It's the same way with your conscience. Your conscience gets dulled. In fact, for some, merely violating the law of God is no longer enough.
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So they become inventors of evil. They just, I mean,
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I am fascinated now to see what people do to themselves, what they do in this world, because it's like things that you would never even think of because they're bored with the old sin, and they've got to move on to something else.
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Our passage talks about that. 1 -9, they are rebellious. They refuse to submit to authority, and they are flagrant.
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They are flagrant lawbreakers. I mean, they just, they cannot go far enough to tell you they will not be ruled over by God.
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In their minds, they are the center of the universe. They are the ones who decide what is wrong, and they've so seared their consciences that they no longer see what is right and wrong.
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They are convinced that they have become the authority. They have, in effect, become their own God. They've thrown
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God off of his throne, as it were, as if they could. God's law identifies what sin is.
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And, in fact, in this passage, I think we have a list that very closely resembles the
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Ten Commandments. And if you want to just kind of, you don't have to turn there, but we're going to refer to X's 20 a few times.
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The descriptive terms here in our text, lawless, rebellious, ungodly, sinners, unholy, and profane, they all transfer quite readily to the first four commandments having to do with our relationship with God, with our vertical relationship.
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Unbelievers, violators of the law, have other gods, even if their other god is only themselves. They have idols they worship.
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They may be American idols or Russian idols or whatever. They have idols that they worship. They use the
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Lord's name as a curse word. And worse, they claim to be His without a care for His demands.
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How many people would say they are Christians? We have over one billion Christians in this world. Just ask them.
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But their lives would not reflect Christ or His demands. Moving on in our text, it says, talking about murderers, if we went to the next commandment, the fifth commandment, it would say, honor your mother and father.
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And instead of honoring their mother and father, they kill, literally murder them. There's one word each for kill your mother and one word for kill your father or smite.
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Some say smite your mother, smite your father, strike them, give them a blow. But how seriously was the law about honoring your mother and father taken?
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Well, in Exodus 21, after the Ten Commandments, when Moses is kind of explaining the Ten Commandments, listen to this, he says in Exodus 21, 15, he who strikes his father or mother shall surely be put to death.
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Watch an episode of 99 -1 -1 and figure out how many kids need to be put to death. It'll be a lot. Our text also tells us that they are murderers generally.
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Literally, the word is manslayer and indicates that a person is a murderer of women and children as well as of men.
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And again, contrast this with Exodus 20, 13. You shall not murder.
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Verse 10 describes the lawbreakers as immoral men and homosexuals. Two classes, both of which have sexual relations outside the
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God -given parameters. Exodus 20, 14, again, the Ten Commandments.
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This would be what, number 7. You shall not commit adultery.
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You say, well, how does that apply to immoral men and homosexuals? Well, listen to the purpose of marriage given in Genesis 2, 24.
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That is God's purpose and perfect design for sex within a marriage.
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One man, one woman for life. That is His ordained means for sexual expression.
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Adultery, fornication, and homosexuality are all violations of God's command and design.
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And Paul sometimes goes to the extreme to make his point as he's running down this list of the commandments. For example, the next commandment, number 8, in Exodus 20, 15 would be,
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Now, what is the worst possible thing you could steal? A loaf of bread? A jug of milk?
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No. A human being. A bearer of God's image.
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So the next on the list is kidnappers. The word is even more pungent because of our national history.
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It refers to one who acquires a person for use by others. A slave dealer.
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And so in describing those for whom the law is given, Paul decries slavery.
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I mean, think about this country. Think about all the people who profess to be Christians and dealt, traded images of God back and forth.
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Sold them. Treated them worse than cattle. And yet would go to church every
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Sunday morning. Maybe take a wafer, a little cup of wine. Listen to a sermon.
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Well, you might ask, well, how could Paul then, you know, doesn't the Bible condone slavery?
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No, it doesn't. In Colossians 3, 22, Paul does tell slaves to obey their masters.
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But he did that because slavery was legal. It was the law of the land. It was never moral.
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It was never God's law. The ninth commandment,
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Exodus 20, 16. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Paul describes them as liars and perjurers.
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Well, a liar is a liar. We know what that is, someone who tells an untruth. A perjurer is one who says,
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I will tell the truth, takes an oath to do so, and then lies. Today we would see that all the time.
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I mean, if you watch, it was interesting the other day, I watched somebody being, they weren't being interrogated, they were being asked questions during a congressional hearing, and they kept taking the
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Fifth, you know, they're asserting their rights under the Fifth Amendment. The most fascinating thing, though, to me, was when the congressperson said, are you here?
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And the guy sat there at the table and looked, looked over to his lawyer, refused to answer.
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I'm going, okay, you've gone too far. If you've taken an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you
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God, and then you can't even say, I am here. There's something really wrong. I think you might fall under perjurer.
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I don't know. The Tenth Commandment is Exodus 20, 17, you shall not covet your neighbor's,
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I'm shortening it up, possessions. Paul either presumes that the hearer by now will fill in the list, or that the summary that he gives in verse 10 is sufficient, and whatever else is contrary to wooden, or I'm sorry, to sound teaching.
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I was reading ahead in my notes. A wooden translation of that, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching would be this, and if something sound teaching opposes, and I thought it was interesting that word opposes, because anything that opposes, that is the enemy, that is the antithesis of sound teaching, is sin.
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It's very clear. In other words,
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Paul is saying, all these sins, all the Ten Commandments I've just given you, and even more, anything contrary to sound teaching, anything that would oppose sound teaching, false teaching would be a sin.
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It is the opposite of God's standard. Good uses for the law, the law of God, shows the need for a
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Savior. Put simply, as we often say, you cannot give the good news of Jesus Christ until you give the bad news.
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Everyone fails to keep God's law. We know this.
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Look at verse 11. According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which
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I have been entrusted, the law is like a divine x -ray machine.
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It is the illumination to which we hold ourselves up, and we look, and we see the breaks, the fractures, the tumors, all the things that are wrong with us.
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It reveals all of our sin to us. It shows us all of our imperfections.
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Sound teaching, sound doctrine, is that which is according to the glorious gospel.
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The law is good if it is used rightly, rightly used, properly taught. The law reveals the radiant, resplendent, blindingly bright, brilliant gospel, the glorious gospel.
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Cool. How so? Well, just imagine for a moment that if all we had was the law, then all we would know is, you know, wanted posters.
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Steve wanted for this, Steve wanted for that. It would just be wanted posters for violating God's law. But that's not the gospel.
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The gospel brings that to light and then gives us the answer to it. It is only by hearing the word of God that we can come to faith.
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It's only by hearing His law, by understanding that we stand condemned under that law. The spirit of God uses
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God's word as a surgeon's scalpel to reveal to you the truth about you.
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It tells us about ourselves. And the first time that truth pierces your heart, you realize your spiritual nakedness, as it were.
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You stand before God without anything to protect you. There is nothing shielding you from the wrath of God.
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All the goodness, all the good works you've done, all the books you've given to the library, all the old ladies' lodge you've mowed, whatever you've done amount to nothing.
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Now, there'd be nothing glorious about a gospel that says, there'd be nothing brilliant and shiny about a gospel that says, you know what?
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Obey eight of the ten commandments. You're good to go. You'll get into heaven.
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Or, you know, try harder. Be better. Be a better you.
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Your best life now. A glorious gospel has to be transcendent.
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It has to reflect the transcendent God, the glorious God. It displays
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His glory. A God who is both righteous, because He gave us the law.
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He gave us that standard by which we will all be measured. He is righteous, but He's also loving.
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He is just, and He's the justifier. This is all according to sound doctrine.
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And sound doctrine is that which comes from and is in accord with the gospel.
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This gospel that displays all the glory of God. And that is the purpose of the gospel.
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To put God's glory on display that we might see it. What are we going to be praising
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God forever for? Not for His law, but for Him delivering us from that law.
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It is the glorious truth that this law that we can never measure up to, God has delivered us from it.
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He has obeyed on our behalf. Now what to do?
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What do we do with this glorious gospel? With this gospel of this blessed
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God? Look at verse 11 again. With which I have been entrusted. Paul talking about himself.
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I would say to you, if you understand the gospel, if you've been saved, that you've been entrusted with the gospel. What do you do with it?
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What would you do with anything precious that's been entrusted to you? I suppose you might be tempted to take it to the bank, put it in a safe deposit box, take it out in the backyard, you know, like a dog, maybe bury it for safekeeping, keep it away from everybody else.
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But that's not what we do. What do we do? What should you do? Guard it.
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Guard it against false teachers, against error. Proclaim it. Because it is the glorious gospel of the
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God you call blessed. It is a glorious gospel.
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It is a great thing. We want people to understand God's glory. We want them to see the brilliance, the transcendence, the brilliance of the gospel.
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The greatness of this God who says, you shall live in this way, knowing that we won't do it.
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We can't do it. We fell in Adam. We're no longer capable of obeying.
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He sent his son to obey on our behalf. I would say another proper use or another way of thinking about the law of God is that it really separates believers from unbelievers.
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Just as in the Old Testament, the Jews were given the law and a lot of laws beyond the
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Ten Commandments. Why? That they might be a separate and holy nation under God, that they might be so different from the people around them that it would actually create friction.
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God wanted that because he didn't want them to be absorbed by the locals. For us, the law of God separates us because we love the law of God.
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They hate it. They want to act as if it has no hold on their life.
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It has nothing to say to them. It has no value for them. They suppress the truth that they know about God to the point that they even deny what their own consciences are screaming at them.
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Just think about what they hear on a constant basis, their consciences saying to them, sinner,
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God -hater, idolater, parent -hater, murderer, adulterer, thief, liar, coveter.
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The law of God written in their hearts, testifying against them. We bring that law to bear so that every man understands that he is condemned by that law, so that they will cry out to a
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God, a blessed God, for the glorious gospel to be revealed to them that they might have the scales removed from their eyes and they might believe.
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As with the driver who didn't want a ticket and also didn't want to defer to my position as a police officer, those who violate the law of God, they don't like the law.
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They're not supposed to like it. Nobody is supposed to like it who hasn't been delivered from it.
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The law of God does not exist to bring comfort to sinners. The sovereign creator of the universe has put his law into the heart of every human being, not to comfort them but to afflict them when they sin, to build up a burden of discomfort, to assault their consciences.
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The law tells us that man is inherently evil, that we are all afflicted by Adam's disease, that we're born with a sin nature inherited from Adam, our father.
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And knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ perfectly obeyed the law in our place is the greatest source of peace possible for a believer.
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Knowing that we will stand justified before God one day, not because of our own works, not because of our own obedience to the law, but because of the works of the one who obeyed on our behalf, died on our behalf, and was resurrected on the third day is the greatest news anyone has ever heard.
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The law of God is good. Let's pray.
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Father, although it is sometimes difficult to even contemplate the law and think of it in positive terms, and yet we know that it is good.
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Your word tells us that it is good. You have given us this law to wear us down.
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Lord, we praise you for that. We praise you that you have given us the standard, that you have set the bar so that we could see how high it is that we need to go, how perfect, perfect is.
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But God, if that's all you did, we would be in despair. Father, we rejoice that you are a saving
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God, not just a just God, not just a lawgiver, but truly a
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God who gives, who gave his Son that we might be redeemed.
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Father, I pray for each of us here tonight that as we leave here, that we would be afflicted even by our own consciences, not for our lack of righteousness,
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Lord, because if we have trusted in you, your Son has obeyed in our place, but of our need to proclaim your standard to people, that they might see, that they might be face -to -face with their own need for a
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Savior. Father, I pray for anyone here tonight who listens to this list and thinks, you know,
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I don't live up to perfection. I'm not a perfect person.
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Father, I pray that you would so convict them with your Spirit, by your