New Covenant Commandments

As we move to the sermon portion, I got excited for a second, I thought we had visitors. I did have someone email us this week about the church, so I thought maybe that was that person just arriving late. All right, Exodus 20, if you remember, or if you weren't here, I'll tell you now, I'm challenging everyone here to memorize Exodus 20, 1 through 17.

You can easily do it. In fact, if you just read it every day, these 17 verses, you'd probably have it memorized in a month. Most of these things are things we already know anyway. and God spoke all these words saying I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery you shall have no other gods before me you shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth you shall not bow down to them or serve them for I Yahweh your God, I'm a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God on it you shall not do any work you or your son or your daughter your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates for in six days Yahweh made heaven and earth the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you. You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. Or his male servant.

Or his female servant. Or his ox. Or his donkey. Or anything that is your neighbor's. You may be seated. last week we talked about the law of God the Ten Commandments and we discussed how the law of God the Ten Commandments his moral law is although given in time here in Exodus is the first time we really see it revealed we see it revealed again in Deuteronomy was a law that was always written on the hearts of people Adam had this law written on his heart Adam knew that it would be wrong to steal he knew that it would be wrong to lie and he knew that it would be wrong to obey any command other than the command of the Lord Adam and Eve we talked about last week broke several commandments even in that first sin including coveting and this is just a theory of mine but my theory is that on the seventh day when God rested from his creation work that it was on that day that Adam and Eve actually broke the commandment.

I don't think we lasted really long is what I'm trying to say. And so they actually disrupted God's Sabbath. And one of the results of that is that we're cursed with this horrible work. And that's just a theory that's not written anywhere for sure. But knowing man, that's my theory. and I don't think the devil wasted a lot of time showing up and tempting Eve but don't take that too seriously it may not be true, that's just my theory but what I want to talk about today is the fact that although we are in what we call the new covenant although there is scripture verses that describe us as not being under the law that we still have the Ten Commandments and they are still active today.

I will clarify that we have Ten Commandments today, not nine. There are some people who very happily say, oh yeah, we still follow God's laws, but the Sabbath one was just a silly one for Israel and we don't need to do that one. They wouldn't say the word silly. They would say that it was ceremonial. But the way that it gets treated, I think simply it can be reduced to foolishness there's either ten commandments or there's zero and God wrote them in stone with his fingers we have an entire Bible that God has chosen to preserve for us forever oh Yahweh your word is firmly fixed in the heavens we know of God's word as eternal and yet he chose ten specific things to actually etch in stone and I think that's instructive for us our confession when describing the law of God in chapter 19 in the final paragraph says neither are the aforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel so the first several paragraphs describe the uses of the law the first use of the law we talked about this last week is that it points you to your sin so that you may be led to Christ it's the it's the law that shows you your unworthiness, it actually incites in you the sin that shows you that you cannot be righteous, which is what leads people to Christ.

I dare say it's impossible that anyone was ever saved apart from some understanding that they had broken God's law. Even if it was only in their own conscience that that worked out. The second use of the law is to keep people from doing evil We talked about that last week as well We not going to get into that detail but the fact that there a law against stealing and you know you might go to jail if you steal, keeps a lot of people from stealing.

People find ways around it, but a lot of times when people steal, what they do is they find ways that they can steal but stay within the law. So they try to create a loophole. Those people are called Congress. And so what we try to do is we try to have laws that actually teach people what's right and wrong. And we try to have consequences that will cause people to not want to break God's law, even though we know in their flesh they want to.

If we knew everybody wanted to do good things, we wouldn't have laws, right? We'd just have parties, basically. But the fact of the matter is, is you know there are people who may want to steal your things, and that's why you're actually glad there's a police officer you can call if somebody comes into your house and takes something of yours. If somebody assaulted you or assaulted someone you love while you were going to a restaurant or to a football game or any place you may want to go, you know that there's a consequence for that.

So you know even people who are predisposed to perform those kinds of actions don't do them in broad daylight. One of the reasons a lot of people, especially Christians and older, excuse me, older, wiser people go to bed 10 o'clock at night is that after 10 o'clock, when it's dark out, that's when evildoers start to actually go out and do their evil things. There's a lot more arrests made at night by police officers and things like that than in the daytime.

And the third use of the law is that it tells the Christian how to live, according to our confession. There are some people in Christianity who would say, no, no, no, that's not the case. The New Testament tells us how to live and it tells us in all these various ways somehow avoiding the use of the Ten Commandments in the discussion. Today I'm going to explain why that's not the case.

The Ten Commandments tells us how to live as a Christian. It doesn't enable you to live, but it tells you how. So, neither are the aforementioned uses of the law, the three uses I just told you, contrary to the grace of the gospel. So the law is not contrary to the grace of the gospel when it's used properly. But those uses, it says here, I love this phrase, my favorite two words in the confession almost.

But do sweetly comply with it. The spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully, which the will of God revealed in the law requires to be done. the point is this that when you know christ you actually want to do what it says in god's law is required of you and a simple example is if you were a if you got a new job tomorrow you walked into work the very first thing you want to know is what does my employer want me to do like i want to get the paycheck and i need to know what i'm supposed to do so i can get the paycheck You don't want to just go in and blindly start doing things. You would want to know what can be analogously described as the law.

What are the rules? What are the requirements of you so that you can actually get the reward? For Christians, we want to do God's will. We read this biography today of Julia Gonzaga. And she was a 16th century Christian. she was born before Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church in Wittenberg she lived several years after all the way through the council of Trent she was never caught by the Roman Catholic Church but she was under investigation constantly her life was threatened and many of her friends died as a result of the Roman Catholic Church's inquisition and their extermination of true Christians and she did a lot of things to promote the gospel and to promote writings about the gospel.

And when she was saved, she was saved by speaking to this man named Juan de Valdez who spoke to her after she heard a sermon that particularly pricked her heart. She was like everyone at that time. She was basically Roman Catholic. She's from Italy, which is still, I think, 98% Roman Catholic. and listen to this Juan de Valdez's description of the law and the gospel.

This is all providential because I opened this today, like my kids can testify I had to take the plastic wrap off this book. I didn't know this would happen, but this is what he says. It is very good for you, my lady, to understand both law and the gospel. When God gave the law to Moses, so we're talking about the Ten Commandments, The people of Israel who were at the foot of the mountain heard great thunder and lightning flashes, so that they all trembled with fear.

And everyone says this signifies the terror, fright, and inner conflict the law creates in the hearts of the people who receive it. But you should also know, my lady, that the law is very necessary, because without the law, there wouldn't be a conscience. And without a conscience, we wouldn't know our sin. and without knowing our sin we would not humble ourselves and without humbling ourselves we would not receive grace and without grace we would not be justified and without justification our souls would not be saved.

This is the task of the law. At the same time the gospel works in those who see it not as a law but as messenger of grace and peace. it has the task of healing the wounds inflicted by the law preaching grace, peace and remission of sins calming and pacifying consciences and then here's the key just in case you thought I was making up something new this is an extremely historic doctrine I want to teach you today imparting the spirit that allows us to keep what the law shows about God's will and to fight conquer and crush the enemies of our souls So this is Julia Gonzaga It a really nice book It took us less than an hour to read the whole thing It's showing pictures to kids, so I'll share it with anybody who wants it. But so, turn to Jeremiah 31. in Jeremiah 31 people in Jeremiah's time were given a promise I'm going to spoil a little bit of the surprise here they're given the promise of the new covenant the ESV spoils the promise by putting a heading over it or spoils the surprise I mean they don't spoil the promise and what we're going to do is we're going to look at the new covenant as described in scripture we're not going to get too deep into covenant theology and how it all works or maybe we will and this will be three sermons but that wasn't the plan the plan was to show you that from the beginning it was always planned that as part of the new covenant the 10 commandments would remain and that those 10 commandments would not ever be used to save people's souls but would absolutely remain and be active and be important in the lives of Christians.

So in Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah is writing. He's writing what Yahweh, the Lord, tells him. And he's saying to the people, he says, behold, this is Jeremiah 31, 31. I'm sorry. I kept saying 31 and I forgot. I never told you that was the verse.

He says, behold, look, OK, a lot of stuff happened before this. in just this one chapter. It's an exciting chapter. But he says, behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. So upon initial reading, if you're very surface level, it's like, okay, this is about Jewish people.

So it sounds like, and he says, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers. Who are their fathers? Well, on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. Okay, so he's talking about the people that left Egypt. Who are those guys? Those are the Israelites, right?

The covenant he made with those Israelites. We see that he makes that covenant in Exodus 19 and 20. This is the Ten Commandments that he gives them. And he said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. They said that multiple times. the Israelites. There was this covenant.

And the covenant was, do this and live. Don't do this and die. Do these things and you'll receive blessing. Don't do these things and you will receive curses. Violate the principles and the precepts that I'm instructing you with and you get cursed. Follow them and you'll be blessed.

It was a really simple thing. It's what we all do with our kids pretty much all the time. We tell our kids, this is what you ought to do. And if they do it, we try to give them a reward to encourage the good behavior. When they don't do it, we try to give them some kind of negative consequence that is supposed to dissuade them from the bad behavior. And hopefully the negative consequence we hope is worse than the joy of sinning.

When you know you have a tough case when your kid loves their sin more than the pain of the consequence. but he says not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt my covenant that they broke though I was their husband declares Yahweh so Yahweh took Israel even as his own wife he says and they broke a covenant it's notable that they were able to break the covenant This was a, we'll call it a biconditional covenant, where Yahweh had something he was going to do, and the people had something they had to do. There was an obligation on the people to do something, and if they failed, the covenant was broken. It's like the exact opposite of the new covenant.

We're going to get into the distinction here. Just to clarify for people who maybe don't know this, there's a whole group of Christians out there they're called Presbyterians and they're subdivided in all sorts of different things right now but the good ones, the reformed ones they believe that there is one covenant of grace that God has provided and that covenant of grace existed in reality in the old covenant in the old covenant that the Israelites broke they claim that's the covenant of grace and then God made a new covenant that apparently was like the covenant that he made with their fathers. And I disagree completely, and I need to make that abundantly clear, because one of the problems with Baptist covenant theology is it's been completely unpopularized, unpublicized.

You go online and you want to look at Reformed doctrine, you go to Banner of Truth Trust, where there's thousands and thousands of things to buy, and they're all Presbyterian. And all the covenant theology you're going to read, except for about six or eight books now are all Presbyterian covenant theologians. And one of the things that happens is when Baptists become covenant theologians, a lot of them become Presbyterian eventually because there's not enough people talking about what Baptist covenant theology really teaches.

Which, of course, I'm going to tell you is the right way to look at it. So anyway, that's up for you to figure out. It is what our confession teaches. So 33 says, this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days. Declares Yahweh. He says, I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts.

And I will be their God and they shall be my people He says that no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying Know Yahweh for they shall all know me From the least of them to the greatest declares Yahweh. And he says, For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. If you want to keep reading, he explains how it will be literally impossible for this covenant to be broken or end. and we're not going to keep reading because I want you to turn to Hebrews 8 because what you need to understand is that this little section of scripture that Jeremiah has dropped in the middle of what most of you would probably think is a long book of the Bible compared to other books it is.

This little book of the Bible that Jeremiah wrote, this little section where he talks about the house of Israel and the house of Judah that I told you if you're just reading it as a surface level sounds like, okay, these guys are in exile in Babylon. He's going to get them out of there, and he's going to forgive their sins, and they're going to start living right again. And in fact, it sort of happens.

Israel kind of had its ups and downs where they would be kind of a healthy nation whose God was the Lord, and righteousness exalts the nation. And so they would live righteously, and they would start to do well. And then they would, you know, sin is a reproach to any people. as the Israelites became more idolatrous and as they started to waver in their faith in God, they would fail.

And so there is a connection between those within the national Israel. Where did I put my water? Sorry. There's a connection with those who are within national Israel who truly believe in Yahweh and their obedience to the old covenant. So if you were a faithful Jew who truly trusted in Yahweh, who truly saw the types and shadows of Christ that were embedded in the ceremonial law and even the moral law, who truly understood how all the judges were just types of the Messiah who would come, who would fail, who truly understood that the kings were types of the Messiah who would come and fail, that the prophets and the priests were all types, if you truly understood that, you would have obeyed the Old Covenant.

You would have done the things that you were told to do. And so there's this connection we have, but there were also lots of people in the Old Covenant who weren't true believers. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people who were part of Old Covenant Israel, who were under that law, who were expected to obey it, and they never did. some of them became false prophets themselves evil kings think of the evil king like Ahab and Jezebel his wife they were under the old covenant but I want you to understand when we get to Hebrews 8 that Hebrews 8 I'm going to read a little bit of it starting in verse 8 and what you're going to see is that the author of Hebrews who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this in such a way that it would still be sitting in front of you now You realize like literally nothing written this long ago is in front of you except for the Bible.

I mean, that's hyperbole. There's like, you know, a handful of documents by guys like Plato and, you know, things like that. But really, there's one historical document that has stood the test of time and it's the Bible. That's how important it is. And God preserved this for us. And what we see is the author of Hebrews thought that Jeremiah, when he wrote about the new covenant, was actually talking about Christianity.

He wasn't talking about Judaism. And when Jesus calls things the new covenant in his blood, we're about to drink the blood of Christ, and we're going to eat the body of Christ. When Jesus talks about a new covenant, he's talking about the new covenant Jeremiah was talking about. There's not two covenants and two new covenants. But there is two covenants.

There's an old and a new, and they're different. So verse 8, we'll just start there. We'll start with 7. 7's fun. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. So there we have it.

The first covenant was faultful. Or at least it wasn't faultless. The old covenant wasn't able to actually bring people the eternal life that people needed. It was powerless to do so. For he finds fault with them when he says behold the days are coming declares the Lord when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

Well here we are, the same thing that this author is applying it to the current context of people who are living in the New Testament. And what he's actually telling them, you'll discover if you read the book of Hebrews, is he's telling them quit all the ceremonial laws. Quit all the temple worship. Quit all the sacrifices with the animals and taking them to the priest and the high priest and Yom Kippur and all the stuff that you're doing that is totally Old Covenant, that was totally biblical, that was the exact right thing to do for a long, long, long time.

And if you didn't do it, you were wrong. He's saying quit it now because Christ came and fulfilled it all. Jesus Christ said I didn't come to abolish the law but I came to fulfill it. He's telling them hey these ceremonial things are abolished. So part of the law is abolished. So what part of the law is Jesus saying he didn't come to abolish?

Well it could be the judicial laws. The law is specifically given to a people who were living in the Middle East 3,000 years ago. So that they would know how to live in their little society and to deal with the nations around them and the types of things that happened at that time. And you know as well as I do that even in the United States of America, a law made today could be obsolete in about two years.

We have entire law, like there's whole sections of code in the law about like how to use the internet. And like it's all obsolete as of 10 years ago because the internet's changed so much. so if there's some law that Jesus Christ came not to abolish it's the ten commandments, it's the moral law and we're going to see that in a moment so he says not like the covenant that I made with their fathers. Again, two covenants, not the same one.

It's not even like it. When I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, he said, for they did not continue in my covenant, so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. He's quoting Jeremiah. And he says, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts.

And I will be their God and they shall be my people. You cannot tell me that when the New Testament tells us we're not under the law, when the New Testament tells us that we are under grace and that Jesus Christ has fulfilled the law on our behalf, you cannot tell me that when God says, I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, that that means that there's no longer an abiding Ten Commandments. I would actually argue that the onus, I can't think of a synonym, I was going to think of a synonym for the kids.

The weight of the argument would be on the person who wants to argue against the abiding Ten Commandments, not on me. I have no reason to argue that they didn't go away, because there's no reason to believe they did. So we have Ten Commandments, and God has promised to put those laws into our minds and into our hearts, If we're in the new covenant. The difference between the old covenant.

That had the ten commandments. And the new covenant that I'm telling you. Still has the ten commandments. Is that the old covenant. The ten commandments were completely external. They were etched in stone.

Stuck into the ark of the covenant. We see this in chapter 9. Verse 4. Inside the ark. Of the covenant. That was covered on all sides with gold.

Was a golden urn with the manna. representing Jesus Christ, the bread of heaven, the bread of life. Aaron's staff that budded. God can give life from nothing. And the tablets of the covenant. The Ten Commandments were so important, they were in the most holy place. And I don't think when Jesus went into the holy place to sprinkle everything with His blood to purify it, it meant He was erasing them and letting you figure it out on your own or just extrapolating what the rules are from the hundreds of commands you could find in the New Testament.

Interestingly enough, every single command in the New Testament, you can trace back to a commandment in the 10. Everything that God tells you to do, somehow traces back even to the summary of the 10 commandments that Jesus gave. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. the first four commandments tell us how to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength when you find yourself violating the first four commandments what you realize is I'm not loving the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind and strength it's just that simple the last six commandments tell us how to love our neighbor as ourself you wouldn't know how to love your neighbor if God didn't explain it to you some people think loving their neighbor means endorsing their proclamation of their sin.

Some people think loving their neighbor is not challenging a person when they're doing something evil or lying to a person if it makes them feel better. Without the Ten Commandments telling you what right and wrong is, we would just all go our own way. The difference is the Ten Commandments were external to the people in the Old Covenant. In the Old Covenant, you had the Ten Commandments and they were hidden away and the ark.

They were in the most holy place where people couldn't go. The people couldn't even go near the mountain when God was giving them to Moses, right? There had to be this mediator all the time that was the go-between. They had to have priests and all these things. They didn't have these things written on their hearts unless they were a believer. We believe God would have written those things more clearly.

But the Ten Commandments are on the hearts of all people in a different way where we know them. It's called your conscience. And there's a lot of people in our world whose conscience has been seared in a way where they don't understand them. But they were there at one point. They will be held accountable for them. The new covenant, God promises he'll write them on your mind and on your heart.

The point being that if you're in the new covenant, if you're in the group of people represented by the mediator of the new covenant, Jesus Christ, you have God's law written on your heart. so when somebody brings it to you when I read it to you every week when I tell you to memorize it yourself so it's even more on your mind when we go through each commandment exegetically and try to understand exactly what it's telling us to do exactly what it's telling us not to do how we shall live based on it that should prick your heart and it should actually change you if you're a Christian if you love God learning more about what God truly wants should change you. Because we're all falling short. If you need a little assurance, when you fail to keep God's commandments, you do what you're always to do.

You turn to the one who kept them for you, who is our mediator of our new covenant, Jesus Christ. So again, the Ten Commandments abide. Ten of them. I'm going to keep saying ten of them because I'm so annoyed that people have turned it into nine. I did that. Like I have a tract on my desk at home that I wrote where I list nine commandments to challenge people whether they're obeying God and then the back gives them the gospel.

Because I believe there was only nine active commandments, okay, when I wrote this tract. I gave the gospel, I challenged people with the commandments, but I wasn believing rightly about the Sabbath And neither do most of you So we going to open the scripture and teach it I didn mean that accusatorily It like we all in the same boat here It's the lost teaching, literally. I mean, you're not going to find a lot of people talking about it.

You're not going to find a lot of people teaching on it. The best example we have in the United States, I think, is Chick-fil-A. Right? I mean, that's the best example, right? Somebody just says, hey, we're just not going to open on Sunday. Hobby Lobby.

They're capitulating in other ways right now, though. But anyway, I don't want to get into politics and stuff. So turn to 1 Timothy. So now that I've explained that I think the Ten Commandments abide, I think the judicial laws were for Israel and the land at the time, and that those are not things that we're supposed to necessarily copy, although we can imitate them because the judicial laws of God were all good, and they were all based on God's good ten commandments that he gave that are his moral imperatives.

The ceremonial law is completely abrogated. In fact, you would be a sinner to try to keep doing the things that God called ceremonial. I'm not saying you can't have a feast and celebrate one of the holidays or something, I guess, if you just wanted to eat or whatever and send people gifts. But if your heart is thinking, I'm making this sacrifice because I need to, you're mistaken.

And if you go to a priest to confess your sins, you're actually violating the high priest that already is standing there mediating for you if you're in a new covenant. So turn to 1 Timothy 1. Paul says in verse 5, the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. There's three sermons there. Certain persons, though, by swerving from these, swerving from what? a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith, have wandered away into vain discussion.

And then what's he saying? Desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions. So people have wandered away into vain discussion. Useless discussion about the things of the law because they don't even understand it. So that's why we want to understand it, okay? Verse 8.

Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. So if you're using it correctly, if you're using it the way it's intended, then it's good, right? We talked about that earlier. Three uses I gave you, right? Leading people to Christ by giving them a knowledge of their sin. Restraining of evil in society at large. and showing the Christian by its punishments and by its rewards the severity and the goodness of the law itself so the Christians may know what God requires of them.

So use it lawfully. So he says, understanding this, the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. Now it's interesting here.

We're in 1 Timothy 1. This is a letter to a first century pastor. He's a new covenant pastor. If there was ever a guy who got to say, hey, there's no more law, it'd be Timothy. and Paul when describing for Timothy the type of people who the law was laid down for to expose I want you to look at it he says the lawless and disobedient and he says the ungodly and sinners the unholy and profane so that first section there reflects the first four commandments of God.

The ungodly are people who aren't obeying the first commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Have no other gods before him. The unholy and profane when we, actually what's interesting I wanted to point out, because everybody likes to say the Sabbath isn't in the New Testament. When people violated the Sabbath in the Old Testament, what God would say is they profane my Sabbath.

Jesus said the priests profane the Sabbath, actually, when they did their work. So when Paul uses the word unholy and profane, I think he's talking about the type of people that break the third and fourth commandment, the blasphemy, using unholy speech, using God's name in vain, and breaking of the Sabbath, profane. I don't think he's talking about people that, you know, say a word that when they stub their toe that you don't like.

I don't think that's what he's talking about. Obscenity or something like that. So he's talking about the Ten Commandments. Because then look, look at the rest of the list. For those who strike their fathers and mothers, well that's the fifth commandment. Honor your father and your mother.

So he recognizes people that violate that. He says, for murderers, that's the sixth commandment. Those who murder. the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality that's the seventh commandment you shall not commit adultery enslavers that's the eighth commandment you shall not steal man stealing was a sin the Old Testament read the Old Testament stealing another man was a sin that's the reason why American slavery was so horrific not necessarily the existence of slavery in some cases the poor treatment of slavery was a big big problem but the reason why it was so bad is that it was based on stealing you can't steal a man in the Bible liars that the ninth commandment perjurers that the ninth commandment bearing false witness And then it says and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine We can go through this list a bunch of times if we wanted to understand some of these But what I'm trying to show you is Paul is basically listing the Ten Commandments here.

He's just listing the violations, what violators of each of the commandments happen to look like. So from the perspective of, I'm trying to show you that God's law abides and that it's still good. that's why I brought you there Romans 13 Romans 13 verse 8 owe no one anything except to love each other for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law we're told in Galatians bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ and there's a group of people today that call themselves new covenant theologians or new covenant theology so they believe in the new covenant where the law is to be written on our hearts and minds. And they say that means that it's not the Ten Commandments written on our hearts and minds.

It's something else. Right? And this law of Christ, I don't even know exactly what it is to them. But I know it's a lot harder to remember than the Ten Commandments. But he says, if you love one another, you've fulfilled the law. And Paul could have stopped there and said, and thank you for reading my letter, Romans.

I appreciate you guys. go do the law of whatever in us. But Paul follows up his explanation of loving one another and is fulfilling the law with for the commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet and any other commandments are summed up in this word you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And when Paul says and any other commandment we need to decide Does he either mean, well, most likely all of the possible commandments that have ever existed or at least been given by God?

So, like, the instruction of the priest for washing his hands before, you know, doing a ceremony in the temple? Or we could decide, well, he certainly meant the commandments that this list was taken from, right? I mean, if I gave you all a list, and then a few weeks later I referred to a few items on the list, And I said, or the rest of them. You know which list I was talking about, right?

We have to think here. There's more thinking that needs to go on in Christianity than we sometimes do. Paul's talking about the commandments that are from the same list. And now you have to decide, is he talking about most of them or all of them? Because most Christians you meet today will say, no, he just means nine of them. I don't think so.

Paul was a real good Jew. He knew. He knew this stuff better than any of us will ever learn it. You spend the rest of your life studying the Bible, you will never know it like Paul did even before he was saved. Okay? He understood a lot of things.

He knew the Old Testament commandments. And if Paul had a chance here to say, By the way, you going jet skiing on Sunday is the thing you're allowed to do now? Because there's no more Sabbath? He would have said it. the author of Hebrews would have said it too it's ten commandments there's commandments that God gave us and they're all not only for your good so that you will worship God rightly but they're for the love of your neighbor you love your neighbor by not violating any of God's ten commandments as much as you can that's how you love people you don't love people by violating a commandment even if it's what they want you to do so this is another section Revelation 21 just trying to get it proved that whenever God in the Bible talks about verse 8, whenever He talks about sin in the New Testament whenever He talks about laws you can really see that these come back to the Ten Commandments so the same Jesus who said love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself it's his spirit that inspired Paul to write that's the fulfilling of the law Romans 13 in Revelation 21.8 John says but as for the cowardly the faithless the detestable as for murderers the sexually immoral sorcerers idolaters and all liars their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur which is the second death basically a list of the violations of the ten commandments idolaters, that's the second commandment liars, that's the ninth one sorcerers is the Greek word pharmakia, some people think it has to do with drug use either way it has to do with sorcery and rebellion against God, thinking you can manipulate things that are meant for him a lot of drug use is simply people trying to escape a feeling that they're having that they should go and rely on God to help them with and a lot of sorcery is the same concept people are trying to cast a spell trying to do something outside of let's follow the word of God that's sufficient for all of our needs so this is God's law written on our hearts in the new covenant and so my argument last week was God's law was eternal, it was always there it was written on our hearts, the ten commandments as written as reiterated multiple times was abiding before Jesus even came and was certainly before Moses even gave it to the people.

The argument this week is that these same Ten Commandments that always existed as an exhibition of basically God moral standards but even more so as an exhibition of God righteousness The law is not like some separate thing that God figured out he could follow so then he told us to follow it. The law is God telling us this is what's right. It comes from God.

And in a weird way, it's not like God created the law. The law is a revealing of what's righteous, and he just is perfectly righteous. So he tells us how to be perfectly righteous. And yet none of you can do it, and neither can I. So we rely on Jesus. We turn back to Jesus.

But, as a Christian, in the New Covenant, you have been told that God will put his spirit within you. that He will write His laws on your mind and on your heart and that He will give you a new heart that He will taint your heart of stone and He will give you a heart of flesh and that in the new covenant where you are completely secure for all eternity in Jesus Christ the new covenant that you cannot break not like the old covenant that He made with the fathers when he took them out of Egypt and let them by the hand and then they broke it. Not like that one, the new covenant that you can't break. He promises though that you will love his law.

You ought to meditate on it day and night like the psalmist says. You ought to hope that your eyes are open that you would behold wondrous things out of it. but he promises that and so if you are struggling as a Christian with the flesh if you're struggling to keep God's law if you find yourself not even maybe delighting in it or maybe you delighted most of it but there's parts of it that you just think nah I don't like that one you need to go back to the fact that you've been put in a covenant and you need to pray that the Lord would help you to love His law because as long as you don't love it, you're not going to obey it. You're not even going to want to.

And you need to go back to the basics of even begging Christ to save your soul again maybe in some cases. The external evidence we have that somebody is not part of the new covenant is not that they, you know, we look back and realize our baptism seemed invalid or something. The external evidence we have is that somebody lives a life that shows they don't really want to follow in Jesus' footsteps.

We just went through the church discipline section about that and the whole point of it is if you catch your brother in sin, you try to help him and the brother is supposed to want to get out of the sin. And if somebody doesn't want to come out of sin, we say, well maybe you're just not part of us. you have no hard feelings we're not mad at you but if you don't want to repent of sin we have trouble believing the Holy Spirit resides in your heart and is leading you to believe God's law and that it's been written on your heart but you cannot break God's covenant by your sin so I want to give assurance to you Christians in here who wake up every single day and there's a part of you that really does want to obey God and maybe for some of you right when you wake up It's like there's that moment where it's like, wow, I haven't really sinned much yet today. And then you go through your day.

And then moment after moment occurs where you find yourself either ignoring what God has commanded or even actively violating it at times, even seeking out ways to sin. I want to remind you that you cannot break the covenant. And it is that love that God has already bestowed on us as lawbreakers who don't deserve that grace that's supposed to drive you back to Him.

And it's supposed to drive you to rely on Him for your strength. So if you walk out of here and what you heard is, okay, if I just keep the Ten Commandments, God and Michael will be happy with me. You weren't listening. Because it's not what I'm saying. but I am saying that a Christian will will grow in their sanctification as much as you are promised that you will be glorified one day and that you will be released from this body of death that you will make it to heaven on the basis of Jesus Christ leading the covenant that you're in think of it like a big circle and Jesus is at the top taking the whole circle with him, you're in it as much as that's promised, you're also promised that you will be sanctified in this life.

There is no such thing as a Christian that's not growing, a Christian that's not repenting, a Christian that's dying. No such thing as a carnal Christian. There's Christians that have some bad moments. But we hope for better things for you. So, God's law is eternal. His moral law revealed in the Ten Commandments has not been done away with.

It simply needs to be used for its lawful purposes. and if we use it correctly, it will help us to function as a church, it will help us to function as families, it will help us to function as individuals, whether you're a father, mother, whether you're a child. You children have it great. It's sort of like one law, right? If you wake up every day and you obey your parents, you're doing pretty good.

And yet that's the one you guys find most necessary to break most often, I think, right? You children need Christ too. When you children are getting your spankings or when you're not getting your dessert or whatever it happens to be, you remember that Jesus Christ never once disrespected his parents. And I want you to remember something else that's striking.

Jesus Christ's parents were sinners. And he submitted to them. How much more should sinful children of Christ. to their parents. So we will go through the Ten Commandments and we'll start to look at them. I'm going to remind you if you have any questions about the commandments, maybe ask them before I get to one so then if you have a really good question I can make sure I answer it instead of afterwards having to come back and do another sermon on a particular one.

But maybe next week we'll get into the First Commandment. We'll start talking about what these things mean. But for now rest on the fact that Jesus Christ kept the commandments for you and has given you the same power that enabled him to be raised from the dead to reside inside you and to give you power over the hold that sin has on us let me pray Father please bless us today as we open your word please bless our goings and comings as we go out from here as we think about our own lives Lord help us to be honest inquisitors as to whether or not we're violating your laws.

Help us to be seriously concerned with what it means to violate your law and to allow the truth of your law, an important part of your word, to be used correctly to teach us about what is righteous, that the gospel may motivate us and that your spirit may empower us to those good ends. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.