The Ten Commandments - Preface

Exodus 20 She wants to make that a thing. She just reads every day, your next reading plan thing. And I thought, yeah, probably after a month you'll have it memorized. You know, if you read it every day just once, even without trying to memorize it. But let's look at those first 17 verses and then we'll get into it. 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 and the children's children.

Well, that's another verse. Sorry 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, excuse me, 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.

This is the word of the Lord. May he bless the reading of it. You may be seated. Let me pray. Father, I ask that you would bless our time together in your word, that we may truly glorify you with even our thoughts at this time. Help us to stick to what your word has said and to truly understand the intent that you had, the mind of Christ, when the Spirit inspired this writing.

Amen. we have we've been in the law of God for three weeks now when I say the law of God I've actually named the series the Ten Commandments because the law of God encompasses more than the Ten Commandments depending on how you're talking about it we believe in the tripartite division of the law here at Covenant Bible Church That's a classic reform position where there is the moral law as is displayed and exhibited in the Ten Commandments. We also have the ceremonial law, which was, in essence, the stuff the Levitical priests did when they sacrificed sheep and did all the stuff in the temple. All those things pictured Jesus Christ coming.

And according to the New Testament, in particular Hebrews 8, we see that those things have been abolished completely because Jesus fulfilled those. And we no longer need types and shadows of these things that Jesus did in reality. And then there was the judicial laws, which some people like to argue about, that somehow those would persist. we believe the judicial laws were given for the nation of Israel at a time and a place in history so that they knew how to function as a nation, particularly a theocratic nation.

And although those laws are very good, and we should... Let me put this... If you're a lawmaker or if you're helping elect lawmakers, looking at the judicial laws of Israel would probably be the very best place you could start. those are going to be good laws and the intent behind those laws will be extremely important to understanding so that you can implement similar intents in laws today that would make sense for this nation and so we would always hope for that every one of those good laws though would have most certainly been able to be traced back to one of the Ten Commandments or more which would actually explain the morality behind it.

So, week one of this series was, I tried to prove to you that God's law is eternal. That His Ten Commandments are eternal. They actually are just reflections of who He actually is as a being. And thus, these Ten Commandments don't go away just because Jesus came and died and rose again. OK, so that's a I hate to use it's a false teaching. I don't classify it the same as some false teachings, but I believe that's a teaching that is false, that is prevalent today.

I don't believe everyone that says that is a false teacher. So don't don't go there with it. There's some there's some good teachers that have some different views of the law. And that one of the reasons we have denominations and stuff like that And so that was to show you that God law is eternal And because it comes from him, because it's actually an exhibition of who he is, it actually makes perfect sense that the law would still abide today.

Last week, what I tried to show you, and so if you didn't hear these already, if you weren't here, you can listen to these on sermon audio, because they build on each other. So if I just preach today what I'm going to preach, you're going to say, well, he missed a couple things. Well, that's because some of it was already said. All right? Can't say everything in each sermon.

And well, unless we skip dinner, we can stay here. But we'll keep doing our fellowship meal and we'll have shorter sermons. Last week I tried to prove that the New Covenant actually explicitly, or at least implicitly, includes God's Ten Commandments by showing you a number of passages in the New Testament that pretty much explicitly showed you that these are the same commandments that were in the Old Testament.

These are the things that we're being told to obey today. I want to do two things today. The first one, which, again, the whole plan, this is supposed to be short. I'm never short in my intros, sorry. But the first thing I want to do today is I want to show you that I do think that God's law can be divided up in the way that I just described, that tripartite division.

I want to show it rather simplistically. So if you walk out saying, I don't I don't believe that we can go deeper. But I just want to show you a couple of things to make you think along those lines, because it's important to understand this. Because if I'm going to tell you the Ten Commandments are abiding on the Christian today, the natural question is, well, what about all the other laws in the Old Testament that you would agree were good, that came from God, so they were in fact perfect, it's God's word, it's profitable for teaching and reproof and correction and instruction and righteousness.

How can I say, well, some of it we don't have to do? And I think for most of you, the ceremonial aspects is obvious. and clear. But there is a teaching that says the whole Old Testament law was one piece and it's all gone. And now we have this new thing that they call the law of Christ, which is a biblical term. I would just think it's describing the Ten Commandments.

But some people come up with a new law and they call it the law of Christ. And it always reduces down to nine commandments, actually. But we'll talk about that more another time. The second thing I wanted to show you today was I wanted to give you an understanding of the purpose of the law. So instead of jumping right into the first commandment and basically making everybody feel horrible because even as a Christian you hardly keep it whatsoever, I thought let's just do one more week basically before I make everybody mad.

But if I make you mad or I make you feel bad, the whole point here is that none of you can keep the law. Jesus kept the law. You can't do it. And so don't feel too bad. You should feel bad in the sense that you should be repentant and you should actually abhor yourself for your sin. But you shouldn't feel bad in a you need to keep the law kind of way.

It should lead you to the foot of the cross instead of the foot of Sinai, basically. So quickly, turn to Ephesians 2.15. Ephesians 2.15. I want to show you the first thing that I told you I was going to show you, which is that God has, in some sense that I think we could clearly define, divided up his law in a way that we can understand and use. Reminder that chapter 19 of our confession describes the law in seven paragraphs.

7? I think it's 7. Yeah. And it describes the difference between the moral law, the judicial laws, and the ceremonial laws. And that's in paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 in particular. And so this is confessional.

So you could say you disagree with me at the end of all these sermons, but then you're disagreeing with the confession of the church. So you've already agreed to agree to that if you're a member. but Ephesians 2 so you know in Ephesians 1 and 2 Paul is describing what God has done with salvation for people and with the Ephesians this is a group of people who if you know where Ephesus was these would have been Gentile believers these weren't Jews so these were people who were separated from the covenant of Israel they were separated from Christ and all these things and And so in 2.12, Paul says that to him. So the point of this section of the passage after you've been saved is that we're one.

So he says, and we'll start in 11. Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands. He says, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise without hope, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. So he says, for he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh one of the most confusing pieces of Scripture, I think. If you're not thinking about it, you can just pass right over it. But what does it possibly mean that he broke down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.

Here's your challenge. Have you ever contemplated that? How many times have you read the book of Ephesians? Some of us have probably read it a lot. It's a pretty good book. It's a nice one.

What does he mean? The dividing wall of hostility. This is something metaphorical in some sense I going to tell you that much But we should think through these things when you read the Bible That why some of these read the Bible in a year plans are nice And I know guys that are, I've read the Bible 20 times in 20 years. Well, that's great. But sometimes it's better to read it slowly.

Maybe even read the same chapter day after day or the same book day after day. And actually mull these things over. I think every Christian should read the whole Bible. If you haven't done that, find a Bible reading plan, get it done. Read every word of it one time. At least start there.

But once you've done that a couple times, you start mulling things over. You meditate on God's word day and night, and you'll start to figure some things out you weren't figuring out. Paul says that he broke down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.

And then he says, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross. Okay, I don't want to spend a ton of time on this. The book of Ephesians would be a great book to go verse by verse through. But of course, any book, you can call it a book name and say, well, that'd be a great book too. But when he says reconcile us both, Paul is talking about Jews and Gentiles.

Jews and Gentiles historically were always separated because God separated the Jews. They didn't eat shrimp. They didn't wear mixed fabrics. All you have to do is go on the street and preach a little while. And you'll have a bunch of people come up to you and teach you all the rules of the Old Testament. Because everybody knows all the weird, obscure rules of the Old Testament that we don't keep today. and so it's kind of fun to talk to him about those things but he's abolishing the law of commandments verse 15 well what could that mean right?

Matthew 5 we looked at this a couple weeks ago Jesus says in Matthew 5 17 do not think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them alright so Jesus just says I haven't come to abolish the law or the prophets and then Paul says by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two so making peace Paul is describing the fact that the Jews followed certain ceremonial practices that the surrounding nations not only didn't practice but weren't expected to practice. Jews had to follow these laws, these ordinances of the Levitical ceremonial law, the way that the priests washed and how they got their lamb and how they sacrificed the lamb and the bulls and the goats and the burnt offerings and the wave offerings and the grain offerings and all the things they had to do all the time. These were very important.

And there were other laws that Jews followed that weren't solely moral. They were positive laws that God gave that there was no evident morality behind it, like don't eat pork. And before you say, well, maybe that was actually moral, if it was, Jesus wouldn't have said, go ahead and eat pork, okay? If it was moral. And so there were certain ceremonies the Jews followed that were for a number of reasons, the most important of which was It separated them from the nations around them in a very visible outward way.

And it preserved the line of the Messiah. You couldn't have a whole country die out because of V.D. Because they didn't have medicine yet without some of the laws they had that was going to prevent that kind of thing from spreading. But Jesus abolished these law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create himself one new man. And so Jesus comes not to be the God of the Jews, but to be the God of all of those who he came to redeem, Jews and Gentiles.

That's why throughout the scripture, when God says all people, I must say every single time, but like in First Timothy, when he says he desires all people to be saved. And, you know, that's the Arminians favorite verse or there's probably a couple more that they like. But all people being saved is what Jeremy just read about. all tribes, tongues, and nations, and languages.

All sorts of people God has called to be saved. Not just the Jews. A first century Jew would have been very shocked to think that Jesus actually came to save Gentiles. Now, a faithful first century Jew might not have been so shocked since it was revealed throughout the Old Testament, but I don't want to get into all those details. So the point was is that here's Paul telling us that he's abolished the law of commandments But then if you turn to chapter 4, a lot of people divide Ephesians into two sections, the theological in the first half and then the practical in the second half.

I hate that division because I think theology is utterly practical. Because what you believe about God is the most important thing about you. And that is actually going to determine your behavior. For the most part. We'll see actually in Romans 7 today that will not determine some of your behavior, but that's because of a conflict we're going to live with for a while.

Chapter 4, after Paul describes how we get saved and what God's plan was for Jews and Gentiles and all this thing, just a few verses I want to jump to. Chapter 4, Ephesians, verse 25, he says, Put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. Chapter 26, he says, Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Interestingly enough, that's a quote from Psalm 4, which is one of the psalms we sing. If you want to understand what Ephesians 4.26 means, read Psalm 4. He says in verse 28 let the thief no longer steal In 29 he says don let corrupting talk come out of your mouth 31 he says don let any bitterness wrath or anger or slander be put away from you In chapter 5, which there's no actual chapter divisions in scripture, he's just continuing and he says walk in love.

And then in verse 3 he says sexual immorality and impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you. What did Paul just do in about 10 verses there. You can say it a lot like go ahead like we need more participation sometimes. Yeah he basically just said hey keep obeying the same commandments that you were told to obey before but these are Gentiles and so these Gentiles didn't have them written in stone and put in in their temple but they were written on their hearts all the time.

Gentiles even when they do what is according to the law they show that the law is written on their hearts. And everybody knows that you're not supposed to do these things. When I say everybody knows, that's a general term. It's called hyperbole because there are people who actually will display that they don't believe these things anymore. And that's because they've become perverted and it's because they're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness that they do know.

One of the reasons why sinners that you know get so utterly angry when you point out the truth to them is because of a psychological term called cognitive dissonance, where something in them actually knows that what you're saying is true, that they're not supposed to have sexual relations with someone that's the same sex or that's not their spouse. They're not supposed to steal. They're not supposed to lie.

They're not even supposed to steal little bits of stuff. They know that deep down inside, but they love the sin so much that they try to suppress that truth. So when you stand and simply, some of you, if you just be a good person, if you just be righteous, you're going to be hated by people around you because they see it. And you create in them, because of you reflecting God's law before them, such disdain for God and His law that you bring it out of them, and they get angry.

Cognitive dissonance isn't just holding two contradictory thoughts at the same time cognitive dissonance i think by definition is actually the anger that arises from it and this is why people one of the reasons why people get so angry so in ephesians paul says christ has abolished the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create one new man in place of the two and then he goes on to basically tell people follow the ten commandments. So I would argue that the law that Jesus abolished in chapter 2 is not the 10 commandments. Pretty simple, seeming to me.

In Exodus 32, Moses breaks the tablets, but turn to Deuteronomy 4.13. I'm not going to go through the Exodus passage now, but in Exodus 32, a lot of you will remember the story. Moses comes down from the mountain. He has a mountaintop experience. And some of you may remember that while on the mountain, God says, my hot anger burns against these people.

And Moses is like, oh, no, don't be so angry. Like, you know, you shouldn't be so angry. You know, whatever. He kind of intercedes on their behalf. Moses comes to the bottom of the mountain. He sees the people dancing and worshiping a false god and immediately gets angry with him.

And I think Moses got a little taste of what it's like, you know, to love a people and to actually want to deliver them. And then they just disrespect and hate you completely like those people were doing to God. And so Moses breaks these tablets of stone that God with his finger wrote the commandments on. And there's a lot of argument about what he wrote.

I read all these commentaries, like, well, it was five on one and five on the other and four on... I actually believe what Ed Clowney says. And that is that there were two tablets, both containing the whole law, the whole Ten Commandments. Because normally when somebody had a covenant, they would each just keep one copy of the contract. But in God's case, he doesn't need a physical copy of the Ten Commandments.

So there were two copies that were just kept down in the ark. I like the way Ed Clowney teaches that. Edmund Clowney teaches that. So that's my opinion. Merrill Unger said, when Moses breaks the tablets of stone that held the Ten Commandments at the bottom of the hill, Merrill Unger said, the whole episode shows the inability of the law to make men good.

Depraved man is never saved by law-keeping, but by faith. Faith alone is the way to justification and salvation in every age, as well as the way to sanctification of life. That's important. Some of you are going to fall for the Galatian teaching, which is that you got saved by faith and now you're going to keep the law. And that's what's going to actually sanctify you.

And if you hear me teach that up here, you come talk to me after. We'll correct it because that's not how you get sanctified. but that's one of the dangers of preaching the law in Ephesians 4-6, is people will inevitably get confused sometimes. Spurgeon, when talking about the law, said a couple things that I really like. He said a bunch, but it's my sermon, so I can't just read Spurgeon the whole time.

But Spurgeon says, Even Moses could not carry those tablets in his hand without breaking them, nor can I do any better than he did. So that's a metaphor. We break the law, right? One more thing about the Deuteronomy. And then we'll get into the purpose, and we have another Spurgeon quote. So Deuteronomy 4.

The law of God written on the tablets of stone has been broken by Moses, and God calls him back and says, hey, I'm going to write it again for you. You can read through Deuteronomy and understand it. But in Deuteronomy 4.13, just one point I want to prove. He says, and he declared to you his covenant. This is the Lord. which he commanded you to perform.

And it says, that is the Ten Commandments. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And Yahweh, and now this is a next thing. And Yahweh commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and rules that you might do them in the land that you are going over to possess. So we could flesh this out a lot more, But that, to me, is just a simple proof text to show that God actually treats the Ten Commandments distinctively from the judicial laws, the statutes and rules in verse 14 that he wants them to do in the land that they're going over to possess.

Interesting, the law of Moses wasn't kept before they went over, right? It wasn't what they were held accountable to in that sense. So this is for people who think that the judicial law is to be implemented everywhere and anywhere. It's a phrase that has lost some meaning over the years, but the concept is called theonomy. And some people believe that the Mosaic law as written is what we should be implementing, including all of the penalties for disobeying it and things like that.

Whereas Paul takes the judicial law in the New Testament and he actually applies the concepts behind those laws to how we should do government in the church. And thank God because we'd all have been stoned a while ago if our country actually did that. Now, the law was written in stone. That denotes permanence. There was only one thing that God wrote in stone that I can remember.

It was the law of God. It was written with God's own hand. He used a mediator for everything else, right? But God's finger was able to just write in the stone. Interestingly enough, for you to write in stone, it's extremely laborious. You'd be imperfect at it.

One mistake, you could ruin the whole thing. He can just write in stone. the stone was breakable unlike a soft heart that could be molded the stone represents our hard hearts that's where the law breaks things but a soft heart can be moved around a little bit so that's why we need a soft heart that God gives us the final thing was the quote from Unger the external law can't save you so that was the first point kind of finishing the last sermon was the law has three parts. Ten Commandments is the moral aspect, the judicial aspect, which was for Israel and the land, and the ceremonial aspect, which was abolished by Christ when He completed it.

So turn to Romans 3. Now we're going to get into this week's sermon. I know my family laughs when I say that kind of stuff. But this stuff's all very important. Like when I sit and think, okay, it's time to get into the First Commandment, I think, oh no, I want to make sure people understand this and this. So this is an important thing.

So what is the purpose of the law? Spurgeon said, the law is also very useful because it shows us our defections and stains. It is like the looking glass which my lady holds up to her face, that she may see if there be any spot on it. But she cannot wash her face with the looking glass. When the mirror has done its utmost, then there are some stains. It cannot take away a single spot.

It can only show where one is. And the law, though it reveals our sin, our shortcomings, our transgressions, it cannot remove the sin or the transgression. It is weak for that purpose because it was never intended to accomplish such an end. This is why righteousness will not be attained by the keeping of the law. So Romans 3, verse 19 and 20. 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 may be held accountable to God.

For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Law gives us the knowledge of sin. It doesn't give us the cure for it. It doesn't give you the power or the desire to actually obey it. It just tells you what's wrong. And in our case, it's a mirror that shows, it's a perfect mirror in the analogy that shows us how dirty we are.

Romans 3.31, even though Jesus Christ justifies us by faith, Paul says do we then overthrow the law by this faith by no means on the contrary we uphold the law I want to yell certainly not or whatever the King James one was it's all emphatic so that's the natural progression of the argument well Jesus came he justified you by faith the law was weak to help you the law we going to see in a little bit actually made things worse for you in a sense actually seems to we say and so the natural thought is well maybe we don need the law at all The law couldn help us Well the law didn have that purpose The purpose of your mirror isn't to wash your face. So you don't throw away the mirror because your face is dirty when you look in the mirror. You get your soap, you wash your face, then the mirror helps you see your face that's clean.

Do you understand the analogy? Turn to Romans 5.20. We're just going to look in Romans a little bit. Romans 5.20. Interesting verse. If you read it and you already understand it, great.

If you read it and you're not a little confused, then you need to keep reading the Bible more so that you understand what Paul's trying to say. He says, Now the law came in to increase the trespass. And he says, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So as much sin as there was, Jesus is greater. But what a strange phrase to us. Now the law came in to increase the trespass.

What can that possibly mean? So then Romans chapter 6, Paul teaches us that we're no longer slaves to sin, we're slaves to righteousness. and then Paul transitions in Romans 7 to talk about the law. And I believe Paul is not talking about the ceremonial law and I believe Paul is not talking about the judicial laws of Israel. I believe God is speaking of and Paul is speaking of the eternal, unchangeable Ten Commandments that is the display of God's righteousness and His justice for all of us to see. and so Romans 7 verse 5 follow along with me Paul says for while we were living in the flesh our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death so there we have another thing where the law is actually increasing the trespasses said in Romans 5 here it says the law aroused our sinful passions.

The mistake we can make here is thinking that without the law, we would have just gone right along as righteous folks. So we see that the law increases the trespass, that the law aroused our passions, and we think, well, the law is the problem then, right? and what Paul's going to teach us is that the problem is our sinful hearts the problem is that you have sin dwelling in you and that it's actually the knowledge of the law that gives you the idea of how you can do the wicked things that you want to do I'll use a word that kids you're not supposed to say this word probably but we're so stupid in our sin that we don't even know how to sin. It's like we want to, but until God tells us, hey, here's what's right, it's like we're not even quite sure.

We'll just follow our passions. We may accidentally do something right. But once you know what God hates, if you hate God, you'll go ahead and you'll do all the things you can to keep violating His law. That's how the law increases sin. so inside your heart is a desire to be dishonest inside your heart speaking to non-believers more but inside your heart is this desire to steal to be unfaithful to hate and until god's law tells some people not to they are in a way almost unsure how they can be as rebellious as possible to God.

And if you look back at your own testimony before you were a Christian, and you try to be honest with yourself, maybe you'll see some of that in your own life. I'll confess this. I had no real reason to blaspheme. There's nothing natural about blasphemy. You don't just wake up and want to blaspheme. But when I found out that Jesus was God, I couldn't stop blaspheming.

The law actually aroused the wickedness in me. And now I knew how I could violate God on a more regular basis. And so maybe some of you could think of things in your own life where knowing God's rules actually is what aroused you to violate them. So at this point, Paul's still dealing with the argument, which is, is the law bad? If the law is actually arousing the sin in us and in the people, and the law couldn't save anybody, only Jesus could save, it's all justification by faith alone, what's the use of the law?

Is it maybe the law is the problem here? And Paul says in verse 6, chapter 7, But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code or the letter of the law. So now we have another one of these phrases where we're released from the law, we're not under the law.

And this is not Paul's way of saying, hey, the Ten Commandments are gone. We've already looked through several passages of Scripture that show clearly that the Ten Commandments are still in effect and are still abiding and are the way to understand what is right and good. But what Paul wants us to understand is that the law was something that people served by the letter, but now we have the spirit.

Now we can understand the intent behind the law that we may be able to observe what God truly wants us to do without simply outwardly trying to follow the letter of it There are things in your life where you have figured out how to follow God's rules while in your heart you're still violating the rule. Jesus exposes that in the Sermon on the Mount. when he says, you've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder, but whoever murders will be liable to judgment. He says, but I say to you, everyone who's angry with his brother is liable to judgment.

These people were walking around hating each other and hating their brothers. And according to God, murdering them in their hearts. But since they weren't outwardly murdering, they thought themselves not guilty of murder. Yeah, by the letter of the law, they weren't. And they couldn't have been tried in a courtroom. I can't try any of you in a courtroom for murder if I just found out you were angry and called someone a mean name.

I can't do it. But God can in His court find you guilty of murder. Because that's the spirit of the law that we're supposed to obey. And now we actually are able to do so. So Paul says in verse 7, What then shall we say? That the law is sin?

By no means. yet if it had not been for the law I would not have known sin. Now he's describing the purpose. The first purpose of the law to give us the knowledge of sin that we may be led to Christ. Second purpose is to help people to understand how to have a society and the third is for the Christian to know what God wants. And then Paul says for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet.

It's the 10th commandment. You shall not covet. And I dare say that you cannot break any commandment without breaking the 10th and the 1st. Because to break any commandment is to break the 1st because you're now not serving God as the God, the only God. And for you to break any other commandment, you are implicitly coveting something that you yourself don't have and that you've decided you wanted in your heart.

But Paul says this is the commandment that really broke him. That's how he knew what sin was. Because Paul was blameless. Remember his testimony? He was blameless according to the law. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin, as to the law of Pharisee.

Blameless according to the law. Well, externally, he was. But Paul recognized his coveting when he understood Christ. So Paul says, but sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. And he says, for apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, he says, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. sin looks for the opportunity the law would give it.

So the law comes along and tells you what's right and wrong, and then sin takes on a life of its own. This is why a lot of people, when they sin, and fortunately some Christians will say this too, they'll describe it as if something else happened than they decided. Well, yeah, I just lost my temper. I was overtaken by that. When people describe their sin, it really tells you a lot about their theology.

Because if you describe your sin in a passive way, like it's something that happened to you, yeah, I just got swept up in the emotion of it all. When you describe sin as something happening to you, you're removing yourself from the responsibility of it. And one of the reasons I think it's easy to do is sin does seem to take on a bit of the life of its own.

Sin seized the opportunity through the commandment. So the law comes and then sin is excited. And so the question is still, what's wrong with the law? The law is not doing a good thing here. Paul says the very commandment that promised life, the old covenant promised life, right? Keep these commandments and live.

Get these blessings if you do what I say. It promised life. Paul says it proved to be death to me. Because when the commandment came to him, he couldn't keep it. Those same commandments came to Jesus Christ and he kept every one of them perfectly. What's the difference?

Did the law fail with Jesus? The difference is Jesus Christ didn't sin. He didn't have sin in his heart, seizing an opportunity. He's not like you. He's not like me. Oh, he became a man, and that's super important.

But let's not do the we're so much like Jesus thing. He's very different from us. That's why we need him saved. Paul says, for sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment in 11, deceived me and through it killed me. So Paul places the responsibility not on the law, but on your sin. so the law is holy, he says, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

So before you walk away thinking, well, the law is terrible because the law can't save people, because the law is weak, Romans 8, verse 3, God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. Don judge the law by what it wasn intended to do The law job was never to give you life Some of you are still thinking that the point of the law Like, well, if I just do this, God will love me more. And unfortunately, some of you have human relationships where that's the way it works.

Where it's all performance-based. What that means is if you perform properly, someone will love you and they will bestow upon you affection and gifts and things like that. And I'm not talking about discipline when you're bad. That's actually loving to get discipline when you disobey. I'm talking about relationships where you have to perform for someone in order for them to love you.

That's not how God is. God loved you despite the fact that you couldn't perform. And so Paul says in 13, did that which is good then bring death to me? By no means. He says it was sin producing death in me through what is good. In order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.

That's a long sentence. It sounds confusing. He's saying it was sin in him through what is good, the law, which is good. It was sin in him through the law that is good that produced the death in him, not the law. And it was so that the sin would be shown to be sinful beyond measure so that you would sit back and realize, I don't know what I can do. Because if you think you can wake up tomorrow and you're going to obey the first commandment and the second commandment, maybe just try one a day.

See if you could just do one in one day. Just pick one. Do that one for the whole day. If you think you can do that, maybe you can string a few of them together and then maybe in 30, 40 years you can start doing two or three a day and then maybe before you die you can keep all 10 in a day. If you think you could possibly do that, you're mistaken and you're going to go to hell.

Because the only person who could ever do it was Jesus Christ and he did it perfectly every moment of his life. Even when he was hanging on a cross being persecuted by some of which he came to save. Even when Peter was denying him across the way. Even when he's telling the disciples things that he clearly tells them you should understand this already.

And they're all looking at him like, well, I thought we brought bread. Even when he didn't sleep all night and he prayed in the garden and dropped sweats of blood while he's praying for you and for me. And then the next day they come in and they decide they're going to kill him. and his sheep scatter, which is predicted by the Old Testament, he didn't even have one moment of being irritable.

I can't go to bed 15 minutes late without being irritable. This guy's amazing. And we think we're going to wake up and we're going to somehow be pleasing to God. I think it was Whitefield that said, you're more likely to build a rope of sand to the moon than you are to get to heaven by your works. you cannot keep God's law but God's law is good and pure and holy and Jesus kept God's law Jesus is the one who fulfilled all righteousness Jesus is the one who woke up every single day and had a heart and soul completely consecrated to God totally in tune with the Spirit constantly loving the Father Everything he said was perfectly seasoned with grace, even when Jesus said a lot of very hard things.

And Jesus is the one who, when he went to that cross, couldn't possibly have been guilty of anything. And the wicked Pilate recognized this. Read the Bible. I mean, it's crazy. I mean, Pilate made a living just to kill people. That's what he did.

He got paid, like, just kill people. And he's like, this guy's not even guilty. I mean, you couldn't think of one thing that Jesus did wrong. You know how easy it would be to find one thing that we all did wrong, just like at the fellowship meal? It's super easy. Jesus never did anything wrong, and then he was hung on that cross because God predetermined that he was going to actually suffer for the sins of other people. because you constantly violate the law it's not just that you can't keep it like well you tried really hard no you hate God and you hate his law until God regenerates your heart and grants you faith in his gospel and you believe that Jesus Christ died in your place and God demonstrated his love for people by sending his son to die and for the wages of sin is death and Jesus Christ suffered the death that people in this room deserve and then he rose again because you know what death couldn't hold him because just like we're no longer under the law when we're saved he death couldn't hold him there's nothing about Jesus that death had any control over because Jesus is the God over all death and he ascended into heaven and you're going to ascend into heaven one way one day to whether it's the moment he returns or whether you die and then you eventually get a glorified body.

And then this battle that the rest of Romans 7 describes that Christians still have what their sin is over. But so I want you to understand that the law is good. That when I show up next week, Lord willing, and I begin teaching you from the first commandment, Exodus 20, verse 2 and 3, I begin teaching what that means. and I begin telling you these are all the imperatives of it.

And I can open the catechism here and there's a bunch of questions. What is the positive thing that we're told to do in the first commandment? What are the prohibitions of the first commandment? And we do that with every commandment. We understand what it means and what we're told to do. And then we flesh some of that out and we start talking about D.

Like whether we can go sledding on a Sunday or, you know, whether you can steal something if you're really hungry. All these questions that come up with some of it. And we can always remember that we're not doing any of these things because that's what's going to earn God's favor in our life or make him smile upon us. You're going to work and strive to obey God's law because God's law is good and you love God because of what he's already done for you. and God will bless those efforts if they're done by faith God will help you if you pray and ask him for help and you know what sometimes God will leave you in your sinfulness and it will be a test of whether you really trust him and sometimes Christians fail to keep his law sometimes Christians have difficulties but we're going to talk about what it means we're going to try to hold each other accountable to it at this church we're going to try to give people what we call discipline we talked about that in July right?

June but we're always going to remember that it's Jesus Christ who kept the law it Jesus Christ who is our Savior Jesus Christ is our only hope and if you do any good thing today tomorrow or for the rest of your life it only because Jesus Christ chose to work in you even as a Christian. You have no good thing to brag about. So we beg Him for mercy that He might help us.

So pray with me. Father, Your law is holy, and we maybe don't think about it rightly all the time. We live in a culture that has perverted your truth. Your word says sin is lawlessness. And so, Father, because we hate sin, because we don't want to do the very thing that Christ had to suffer for, we ask you to help us to be lawful. That we might meditate on it day and night, as the psalmist said.

That we may delight in the law of God. that we may actually receive the joy and the blessing of a heart that loves Jesus Christ and is actually fulfilled and satisfied by that hunger and thirst for righteousness that your law helps us to understand. Thank you, Father, for this time together. Please bless the rest of the service that we may worship you in spirit and truth and not grow weary of doing good.

Amen.