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Children in second grade and younger are dismissed for Children's Church. Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden, he won ten national championships when he was the coach at UCLA in the 60s and 70s.
He once said, If I were prosecuted for my religion, I hope there would be enough evidence to convict me. What we need to understand is that we will be judged by our works. At the final judgment, the way you lived your life will demonstrate whether or not you had genuine faith.
Romans 2, verses 6 -8 says, He will render to each one according to his works. To those, by patience and well -doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality. He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.
Now let me be clear. Works do not earn your salvation. But they do provide the evidence that you were saved. The works that believers are able to perform are generated by the Holy Spirit. Mike mentioned the Holy Spirit this morning.
They are generated by the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, no person is able to perform even one righteous deed. You might say, Well, don't we see people doing good things who don't have a relationship with Jesus?
Yes. But Romans 15 -23 says, Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. Because any work that an unbeliever performs that is good is not done for the glory of God. An example that I've used that I've heard from a pastor one time is that if a convict is running from the authorities and he happens to see a little old lady walking across the street and he takes her arm and he slowly takes her across the street and then after that the authorities find this man, do you think they're going to be impressed with his good action?
And the answer is no. They are going to arrest him and take him away because he is breaking the law. He is a rebel. And this is how it is with an unbeliever. When an unbeliever does righteous things, but they don't do it for the glory of God, do you think God is impressed with that?
And the answer is no. Because whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. So here we are. We are in the second sermon here of the Ten Commandments. And I've talked here about the Holy Spirit being the engine behind the good works that we do.
Because we're going to be talking about good works a lot over the next three months as we go through the Ten Commandments. We must do this. We must not do this. So we need to lay the foundation for the Ten Commandments before we can actually jump into the Ten Commandments.
Two weeks ago we started laying that foundation by asking the question, where does morality come from? And the answer is that morality comes from God. Morality is simply actions that reflect the holy character of God.
And this morning we're going to ask the question, why did God give the law? Why did God give the law? I'm not going to have you turn to a specific passage in the Bible, but I do encourage you to write down those verses, and of course the outline you have in your hands.
Hopefully you grabbed that on the way in. So the title of the sermon is Why the Law? And here's our big idea. Seek to understand the meaning of God's law past and present. The meaning of God's law past and present.
And we're going to have four points in this sermon, but before we jump into that, let me give a little background about the Bible as it relates to the law. The Bible is a big story. This book from Genesis to Revelation.
Some call it a meta-narrative, if you want to sound really smart. It's an overarching story with tons of smaller stories in the midst of it. The story begins with creation. In the beginning, God created everything.
And he created everything just as it was supposed to be. Then you turn to Genesis 3, and it gets dark. Adam and Eve sinned, and sin, for the first time, comes into the world. But then there's hope in the midst of darkness.
Genesis 3 .15, some call this the gospel beforehand, the first gospel presentation, where we learn that Christ is going to crush the head of the serpent, and that serpent is Satan. This offspring would come from the woman, and this offspring would be the savior of the world.
Salvation has always come from outside of us, from outside of humans. Salvation has always been by grace through faith alone. This is clearly demonstrated early in the Bible through Abraham. His name at first was Abram, but was later changed to Abraham because he would be the father of many nations.
About 4 ,000 years ago, about 1900 or so BC, Abraham had a conversion experience. He was saved the same way you and I are, by grace through faith alone. Abraham was told to look toward heaven, and if he could number the stars, so his offspring would be.
Genesis 15 .6 reads that Abram believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now we don't know if this was the precise moment when Abraham was converted. He may have been converted when he left his homeland in Genesis 12 and went to a land that he did not know that God promised would be his.
But Genesis 15 .6 makes clear that at some point, Abraham believed in God, and that moment when he believed in God, it was counted to him as righteousness. And of course, when you believe in God, guess what?
You always keep believing. You believe at conversion, and you believe through the whole journey of your faith in the Lord. So this happened about 1900 BC. 430 years later, after this, the Lord did something significant.
He gave the people of Israel these descendants that came from Abraham. It's interesting. When we ask the question, what is a nation? A nation is basically a big family. That's how America started. Just a bunch of families, families who knew each other.
You have a nation. Well, what is the nation of Israel? Abraham's family. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger before you know you have millions of people. That's a nation. Common ancestry, common language, common religion.
It's interesting. You hear a lot, America is an idea, and we welcome all these different people. And of course, we welcome immigrants here. But if we lose our identity as a nation, if we say America is not Christian, guess what?
We've lost our identity as a nation. Because when we talk about what is America, it's a Christian nation. It always has been. And if it's going to continue succeeding in the future, it will be a Christian nation.
Abraham and the people of Israel, they come from the God of Israel. The Lord. He is their God. And the Lord calls this man, and from his family comes a nation, the people of Israel. And God gives the law 430 years later, as Galatians 3 .17 says.
And when this happened, the question is, did God change his plan of salvation? Because remember, Abraham believed in God. And it was counted to him as righteousness, just as we believe in Christ, and it's counted to us as righteousness.
But then God gives the law 430 years later. What we need to understand is that God is the author of the story, and it is a perfectly crafted story. From the very beginning, he knows what he is doing. He's not making things up.
It's interesting. Brianne and I have been watching a TV show, and I'll spare the name of the show, because I'll be nice, okay? But we can tell that they're making it up as they're going, because there's contradictions.
Like, well, this doesn't make sense. Two seasons ago, they said this, and this doesn't connect with this. Well, why are they keeping it going? They want to keep it going. I mean, they like the show. They want to keep it going.
Maybe they want to stay employed.
I don't know.
But they're milking this, right? They're trying to drag it out. There's contradictions in this. But the Bible story isn't that way. God crafts it to perfection right from the beginning, and every detail is one giant harmony.
There's no contradictions within it. When God gives the law, 2 ,500 years after He created everything, He knows what He is doing. He didn't alter His plan. Everyone is saved by grace through faith alone.
So the question is, why did He give the law? And this is the question we're going to answer in this sermon. There's four reasons why God gave the law. The first one is this. The law reveals God's holiness.
And this ties in with what we saw two weeks ago. So we're not going to spend a ton of time on this one. In Exodus 20, God made a covenant with Moses and Israel, and this is known as the Mosaic Covenant.
This was a covenant that the people of Israel broke. They broke numerous times. And as I mentioned, if the people of Israel obeyed this covenant, there would be a blessing. But if they disobeyed, they would be cursed.
In Exodus 32, at just 12 chapters after the Lord made this covenant with Israel, Israel broke the covenant by worshiping the golden calf. But the good news is, the Lord is gracious. What the Lord did is that He renewed the covenant and the Ten Commandments.
They are rewritten on tablets in Exodus 34. After reissuing the Ten Commandments, the Scripture describes the Lord's character. The same one who gave these Ten Commandments, we see this in Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7.
The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity on the fathers of the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.
So the one who gave the law is holy, and he expects his people to be holy as he is holy. This is what the Lord says in Leviticus 11. For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy.
For I am holy. You shall not defile yourself with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground. For I am the one who called you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You, therefore, shall be holy. For I am holy.
The law reveals the Lord's holiness. So seek to understand the meaning of God's law, past and present. And the first reason why is that the law reveals God's holiness. The second reason why you are to seek to understand the meaning of God's law, past and present, is that the law defines your sin.
The law defines your sin. The law reveals what sin is. Now, there's people on planet Earth that have never opened a Bible. My father this morning in Sunday school was saying that there's actually an indigenous tribe that was just discovered.
They had never had any contact with the outside world, and now they do. There's people all over the Earth who have never had access to the Bible. They've never read it and don't know what is required of them, but they have something that God has given them.
What has God given them? A conscience. Every person has one. A conscience is a mechanism that God gives us that tells us if we're doing good or if we're doing bad. Sometimes you do something bad and you feel really bad about it.
That's the conscience. Every person has it. Even the most rabid atheist has this, even though he tries to deny that he has it. Now, sometimes you hear people say, he doesn't have a conscience. It is true that the conscience gets so seared that it stops working properly, but everyone starts out with a conscience.
Romans 2 .14 describes this, These are the nations, not Israel. When Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
You don't need a written word to let you know that you did something wrong. Romans 3 .20 says, Through the law comes knowledge of sin. People don't need the law to know that they should feel bad about a wrong done.
In 2004, I took a trip to Washington, D .C. It was a school trip, an American history trip, where we took four exams on American history, and if we've placed in the top six, we got to go on this trip.
I've placed fifth place, so I qualified and was rewarded with this trip. And we did all the sites. We went to Washington, D .C. We saw all the sites. We saw some sites around Washington, D .C. as well.
One of the sites we saw was the Smithsonian Museum. At that time, they had an exhibit, a room you could walk into, and you could see the very flag that Francis Scott Key was looking at when he wrote The Star-Spangled Banner.
Pretty remarkable. He wrote that during the War of 1812. As you might imagine, this over 200-year-old flag was in rough shape. Behind this window were chemicals sprayed onto it to maintain and restore it.
Before you walked into the exhibit, there was a sign, and this sign read, No Flash Photography. It was clearly written that this was not allowed to be done in this space. Now, back in 2004, I was 17 years old.
I walked in, not reading the sign, and I took a picture. And my flash was on. There was probably dozens of people in the room, and it just lit up the entire room, and everybody looked at me. Everyone looked at me, and I was confused.
What did I do wrong? Because I didn't read the sign when I walked in, but I knew I did something wrong. The security woman that came to me was very intimidating. She wasn't Minnesota nice that I was used to.
This was the East Coast, and she said, What are you doing? And I looked like I had no idea that what I did was wrong. She said, There is no flash photography, and she showed me the sign, and she actually let me keep the picture, which is amazing.
At first, she said, Give me your film. This was back when we had film. But then, for some reason, changed her mind and let me keep it. But the sign told me I shouldn't take a picture with flash on, but I did it anyways.
I did it out of ignorance. But what I did was wrong, even though I didn't follow what was written. In the same way, Gentiles who didn't have access to the law, or even people in the present who have no access to the Bible, they do things wrong as their conscience bears witness against them.
But the law tells us what this is. The law tells us what these sins are, these specific sins. People do something, they feel bad about it. The law tells us what it is. Romans 7 says, If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet.
If the law had not said, You shall not covet. The law gives a name to the sin. Before the law, when people sinned, it was not spelled out. In some sense it was, because there needed to be order. But the Ten Commandments, and really the first five books of the Bible, known as the law, spelled sin out in detail.
It was not just the conscience. The sins were named when the law came. There's a reason people feel guilty when they do certain things. The conscience tells us, and the law spells out exactly the sin that is taking place.
So seek to understand the meaning of God's law, past and present. And this is the second reason why the law was given. The law defines your sin. The third reason why we are to seek to understand the meaning of God's law, past and present, is that the law reveals God's certain judgment.
The law reveals God's certain judgment. When God delivered the law of Moses, He delivered the standard by which He would judge. When the law comes, righteousness does not come through the law. The scripture is very clear about this.
So when God gives the law, is this good news or is this bad news? It's bad news because they, that is Israel, nor anyone down through history can keep the law, and the law doesn't save anyone. The law gives the guidelines, the standard that God will use to judge humanity, and humanity cannot keep it.
And this is a hopeless position to be in. In Galatians 3 .19, Paul wrote,. Why then the law? Then he writes,. It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made.
So it was added, the law was added because of transgressions. It's very interesting that in this verse, Paul uses a different word for sin. The typical Greek word for sin that Paul uses in most places, he does not use here.
Instead, he uses the word transgression, and there is a difference between these two words. Transgression is known sin. Romans 4 .15 says, where there is no law, there is no transgression. So known sin leads to a conscious violation of God's law.
This is the position the Israelites were in once they received the law. They knew that they were violating these laws because it was given to them. Paul explains later in Galatians 3 .21 -22,. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?
Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
So where does forgiveness come? Where does righteousness come? Where does our standing with God come from? Faith in Jesus Christ. Righteousness cannot come from the law. This isn't good news when they receive it.
When Israel receives the law, okay, great, let's keep it. They are doomed to fail right from the beginning. What Paul is communicating in Galatians is that the law holds everyone captive under sin. They're told this is what you're going to be judged by.
Here it is. Good luck. You can't keep it. You're in a hopeless state. The demands of the law make it impossible for sinners to fulfill it. According to a report, there are about 150 ,000 people at any given time serving a life sentence.
50 ,000 of these are serving a life sentence without parole. Parole means they can never get out. Each of these prisoners serving a life sentence know the law of the land, and they know the crime that they have committed, and they are in prison until the day they die.
The fact that they know the law of the land doesn't do them any good. They're going to be in this state of captivity until their death, and this is how it was for the Jews. The common view among the Jews was that they could keep the law.
In other words, they misunderstood why God gave it to the people of Israel in the first place. Down through history, this is what happens. Corruption happens. People start to misunderstand what it really means.
The law comes, and then they start thinking, we can actually keep it. So by the time Jesus comes on the scene 2 ,000 years ago, the Jewish leadership, this is what they believed. The Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, this is what the teachers of the law in Israel were teaching.
You can earn God's favor by keeping the law. This is what they believed. And you can see this mistake. They were pursuing an impossible task. They couldn't keep the law, and they were going to be judged by it.
This is what Paul is going after in his letters. You Israelites think you can earn righteousness by the law? Well, I've got news for you. You can't. Righteousness only comes through faith in the Lord, and ever since Christ came, righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
Adam would have been saved the same way we are. Abraham was saved the same way we are. Noah, David, Moses, Daniel, Joseph, all these Old Testament saints. The only difference is they were not putting their faith in a specific person.
They were putting their faith in the Lord. When Christ came, we put our faith in the person of Jesus Christ. And as we put our faith in the person of Jesus Christ, we are putting our faith in the Lord.
Jesus says this in John, Whoever does not know Me does not know the Father. You have the Son, you have the Father also. They're a package deal. And the Jews, the modern day Jews, have this wrong. They reject Jesus as the Messiah, as the Savior.
They think they can have the Father without the Son. You can only have the Son with the Father. Because it is through His finished work that you're brought into a relationship. So in Israel, they would try to keep the law, they would try to keep the law, and they would realize, this was God's design, they would realize, I can't do it.
And you know what God would say? Exactly. Exactly. That's the place to be in. I can't do it. And you feel sorrow for your sins. You feel sorrow that you can't keep the law. Because there was one who would come, who would accomplish the law.
Genesis 53 describes... Not Genesis 53, that's not even in the Bible. Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 describes the suffering servant. Vivid detail, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Genesis 3 .15, as I said earlier, predicted that the Messiah would come and crush the head of the serpent.
Paul described the law as a guardian. It was something that hovered over them. It was this constant reminder that they were going to be judged, and they couldn't keep it.
Condemnation.
That's what it told them. And he describes that in Galatians 3, verses 23 and 24. It was a guardian that they were held captive to, and prisoners until Christ came. It was all pointed ahead to Christ.
It was this temporary imprisonment to show the guidelines that God would use to judge them. The law brings certain judgment, and God will judge you by the law. Romans 2 .12 says this, Romans 3 .19 says the same thing.
Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. So that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world will be held accountable to God.
The whole world.
This is the standard. This is the standard. Every person in the history of the world is under this standard. God's law. Now, Adam could keep it perfectly, and he did. And he did for a while, but then he fell.
No person, we are born into this world as sinners, no person can keep the law. So seek to understand the meaning of God's law, past and present. The law reveals God's certain judgment. That's point three.
Now the law was unable to rescue. It was only able to judge, and it showed them their sinful state, and it offered them no solution. But this is where the good news comes in. This leads us to the fourth reason the law was given.
The law points ahead to Jesus. And I've already kind of spoiled this. Now God gives the law to Moses 430 years after God gave the promise to Abraham. And the promise is pointing ahead to a person. Genesis 15 .6 once again says, Abraham believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.
Abraham's salvation was pending on the finished work of Jesus Christ. Every person in history, before Christ came and after Christ came, the same is true. Their salvation is 100 dependent upon his finished work at the cross and through his glorious resurrection.
Romans 10 .4 says, For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. He accomplished the law. We can't. He did. We need him. Now the law requires righteousness, and you can't stand before God justified unless you're fully righteous.
Jesus is the one who fulfills this righteousness. At the judgment, the Lord's going to say to you, why should I let you into my kingdom? And on our own merit, the answer should be, you should not let us into your kingdom, but only by the finished work of your Son, Jesus Christ.
That is why I should be in your kingdom. It's because of Him, not me. Apart from Christ, you're in a hopeless state. Without Christ, the standard for the law, what is required of you, is impossible to achieve.
And as I mentioned in the previous point, you're in a hopeless state, so you need to rely on someone else to rescue you, to fulfill this righteousness for you. This is precisely what Jesus has done. Romans 8 .3 -4 says,.
For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.
It's amazing when you think about it. It's amazing. He earns our salvation for us. Sometimes we can think of a difficult task to perform. We have gifting that others have, and others have gifting that we don't have.
Imagine if you were given the job, to do Derek's job, for example, where he cuts trees down. Most of us would fail at it. Most of us couldn't do the job.
But he can do it.
There's things that we cannot do in this life, but other people can do. And think about Jesus. There is something that he did, that he accomplished, that no one else can do. And that is what he did. He lived a perfect life.
He died on the cross for our sins. He rose from the dead. We were given that task, and as we were given that task,.
We fail.
But he accomplished it. Now, I want to make a very important point here as we wrap up this sermon. We don't believe in free grace. What does free grace mean? We're saved, and we can just live however we want.
In Romans 6, Paul says, Shall we go on sinning that grace may abound? So you believe in Christ, you trust in Him for your salvation, for the forgiveness of your sins, and now just go have fun, and you're going to go to heaven.
That's not how it works. Free grace, it's a license to sin. Oh, He's going to forgive me anyways, so I'm just going to go keep on sinning. The Bible doesn't teach that. In fact, 1 John 3 .9 says, No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.
So if we love sin, if we're comfortable in sin, if we can go to a sinful environment and we feel at home,.
That's not good.
We're supposed to be holy people. This is what the Lord said, You shall be holy, for I am holy. We're supposed to hate our sin. And yes, do we sin? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. And we won't be completely free from sin until glory.
But in this present state, where we still wrestle with sin, we shouldn't say, Okay, I'm already forgiven, so I'm just going to live however I want. We are given the Holy Spirit. I'm so glad Mike brought up the Holy Spirit during prayer and praise.
We are given the Holy Spirit who is able to sanctify us, to make us holy. So what our life becomes, it becomes a life of, guess what? We can keep the law. We can do what the Israelites in their sinful flesh could not do.
Isn't that amazing? You can be a good person in Christ. You can. Without Christ, you can't be. In Christ, you can be holy. You can do righteous works because they're done for the glory of God. And God recognizes that.
Because you know what's going to happen at the final judgment? Every work that an unbeliever did is going to be thrown out because none of the works were done for the glory of God. We see that picture.
The books were opened. None of their works were spirit-generated. The works are thrown out. The works burn up. And they show that they never had the Holy Spirit. But if you're a believer and you have the Holy Spirit, you're going to have works that were done for the glory of God.
And they're going to pass the test. And it's going to show that you truly did trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins for your salvation. You truly did these works in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Okay, so, I don't even know where I am in my notes, but who cares? We're supposed to live a life of holiness. Hebrews 12, verse 4, Without holiness, you will not see the Lord. Some of you saw the Trump speech.
I think he went off of his notes real quick. It was like, this is getting long. I don't think they wrote a speech that long, and they didn't. But sometimes it's good to go without notes. But yeah, without holiness, you will not see the Lord.
We need the holiness of God. We need it to see the Lord. And what is more wonderful than seeing the Lord? That's what we're created for. We're created to be in His presence. We're created to see His glory, to behold His faith.
In His presence, there is fullness of joy. At His right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's what we're created for. So as we pursue holiness, you know what we're also pursuing? The maximum joy that we could possibly experience as His creatures.
Isn't that amazing to think about? That's what we're created for. And so may we experience this. As we keep His commandments, we can keep His commandments through the Holy Spirit. So as we go through the Ten Commandments over the next three months, if you know Christ as your Lord, Savior, and treasure, if you have the Holy Spirit in your life, you can obey these.
And we're going to go through every one of them. And we are going to do everything in our power through the power of the Holy Spirit to obey these commandments. So seek to understand the meaning of God's law, past and present.
And in this sermon, we have seen four reasons why. The law reveals God's holiness. The law defines your sin. The law reveals God's certain judgment. And the law points ahead to Jesus. So we are to understand the law, be grateful that Jesus has fulfilled it, and live out the law through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now next Sunday, we are going to package the first two commandments together because they're interconnected. You shall have no other gods before me, and you shall not make a graven image, an idol. And so we're going to look at this next Sunday.
And I look forward to looking at that with you. But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, we do thank you for the Word of God. It is here to accomplish its purpose in each of our lives.
And so everyone here today, everyone here is in a different place. We have mature believers here. We have young Christians here. We have, in a room this size, there's probably a few who have never trusted in Christ for their salvation.
And I pray right now that that person, that those people would believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be forgiven and be secure in Him and have His righteousness be their righteousness. Without that, there is no hope.
May they have that, and may they have the Spirit's power with them as they go through the rest of their days. And this is my prayer. And may us all live this out, Lord. And prepare our hearts as we receive each of these commandments in the coming weeks.
In Jesus' name, Amen.