and a good conscience and a sincere
faith. Certain persons, by swerving
from these, have wandered away into worthless discussion, desiring
to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they
are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
Now, we know that the law is good. if one uses it lawfully. Understand this, that the law
is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and the disobedient,
for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for
those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for
sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars,
perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching.
In accordance with the gospel, of the glory of the blessed God
with which I have been entrusted." Now, this phrase that Paul closes
out with here is continuing in sort of the theme that I see
Paul teaching Timothy. And that is the theme of stewardship.
That as believers we are stewards of that which is not ours. but
belongs to someone else. Our lives, which is not our own,
but has been bought with a price. We are stewards of one another. We have responsibility to care
for one another and to oversee each other's well-being. We are
to look after other people's interests as we do our own. Counting
ourselves not as greater than others, but that we count others
greater than ourselves. We also see that Paul throughout
all of his writing has taught that he was a steward of the
gospel given to him by the good grace of God alone through Jesus
Christ and that what he has and the message he has and the job
and the role that he has as an apostle is not his own but is
Christ given to him by his command. And so we then are to be stewards,
stewards of the gospel, stewards of the body, stewards of our
lives, stewards of our money, stewards of our time, stewards
of our thoughts, We are to be stewards of the Word. We are
to be stewards of righteousness. Remember, we talked about that
last week. And today we're going to learn that we ought to be
stewards of the law, the law of God, because we are stewards
of the law. And not only that, we're stewards
of God and His Word. as he's commanded us to know
it and understand it and then also by his spirit granted us
that change of mind to see it and to rest therein. And so as
we come to this type of text there's something that's very
important and I'm going to be very redundant as we continue
in this letter and it's purposeful because If we miss the point
of this, we're going to do exactly what Paul is teaching against.
If we miss the point of where we're to understand the doing
of the Christian life and the being of the Christian life and
the commandments to the Christian church, to the New Testament
church, if we misunderstand those things, we are going to actually
blaspheme Christ. We're going to put our hopes
and efforts and our striving in our own doing. And then we
may get uber spiritual in that doing and may thank God for all
that we have become and all that we're able to accomplish. And
that's what was happening. You'll notice that Paul doesn't
tell Timothy the details of any of these teachings because to
expressly delineate error is to actually blaspheme Christ.
To deal with, from the pulpit, all of the wrongs and spend so
much time in the wrongs takes the focus off of that which is
the power of God unto salvation. Just like those who preach obedience
and assurance through obedience defames the gospel of grace,
so does continuing to foolishly expose and express error after
error after error. Our mouths should not be movements
and mechanisms for error spewing into the ears of our brothers
and sisters. The elders had a very good meeting this past Friday
evening and we were looking at some things that we're writing
and we just decided to remove all references to any reference.
Going to stick with the scripture and just make assertion based
on what the Bible teaches because even in small things, even a
footnote can often derail us. Don't believe me? Study Bibles,
the worst invention of the 19th century. Terrible. Why? Because we read
the notes, the footnotes, the cross-references, the commentary. We find our time, and you know
how they're written, right? See, my Bible has just the text,
but the study Bible, there's this much text and this much
footnote. There's all sorts of things to learn, and charts,
and pictures, and they have their place, just like an atlas or
a globe. You don't use a globe, driving
calls country, and you don't really use an atlas in outer
space. but to each his own. The study Bible, just like all
other things, take our focus off of that which God is teaching
simply by His Spirit through His Word for His people. And
it puts it on the efforts of men to extrapolate and to expand
and to garner new knowledge that's beyond the simplistic of what
God has revealed. And so, as an academic, I stand
before you having read millions and millions of pages. And I
don't know to dare say billions of words, but probably so. Either
or. But just the same, at the end
of it all, I have to ask the question, so what? What difference
does it make? For no matter what I say that
comes out of my mouth, it does not hold any authority over you
or in your lives except that it can be proven according to
the text of Scripture. And Scripture is the first and
final authority of the church. So here Paul is teaching this
young elder to stay in Ephesus. He's not making much of the error.
He's making much of the gospel. He's making much of the fact
that there are people who are dividing and being divisive because
of their behavior, because of their refusal to be quiet, because
of their refusal to sit still and be taught. But their opinions,
and if you know the word heresy has four meanings, it means an
alternate opinion, it means a sect or belonging, it also means a
damnable doctrine or a damnable opinion about the person of Christ,
and it means division. And so in all those ways, the
predominant way in which the word heresy is used in the New
Testament is in the book of Acts, where we find that it always
refers to identifying certain sects of people. Now there's
nothing wrong with that. And if we look at the Old Testament,
we see some of the verb usages of the variants of that term.
We can actually see where God uses the word heresy in choosing
things he wants. Because he has the privilege
of being particular and choosing, making differences and segmenting
things. So words are manifold in their
understanding, even in the Bible. We need to remember that. When
we argue about them, we're heretics. We're causing division. You see
what I'm saying? When we are causing other people to fear
and be frustrated. And that's what's happening here.
We get to the place where we find that people who are, what
does he say? Swerving from love, a pure heart
and a good conscience. Swerving from the grace that
is theirs in Christ. Swerving from the simple reality
of Christ is all. Causing problems. And it's not
always biblical things amongst the people of God, is it? Sometimes
it's political things. I'm gonna have people who will
not speak to me today because I refuse to listen to a 42-minute
podcast about nonsense. And I'm not listening to that.
Why won't you listen to that? You don't love the Lord if you won't listen to that.
Okay, then I don't love the Lord you're talking about. That's
fine. You don't love me. Well, I must
not. If loving you means I have to listen to this nonsense, then
hate it is. You see? But we're all there. As a matter of fact, I could
probably, if we had all of the resources and the sticky notes
and the pencils in the back of the seats and all that kind of
stuff, I could get the cards out. I could say, okay, everybody
write down your top three fears. And for the parents in the room,
it's got something to do with our children or health or death
or something that's going on in our lives. the outcome of
uncertainty, we don't know what's really gonna take place, and
then for others, if I focused on spiritually speaking, most
everybody would have something written down that centered in
this particular, or that rested in this particular category,
and that category would be, I don't want to disappoint the Lord,
or I'm scared of not doing what is right. Now when we read Paul's letter
to the Roman church, to the believers of Rome, We see his first eight
chapters. They weren't his chapters, he
just wrote. We've marked them as eight, the
first eight sections of that letter as we have identified
them historically. Paul talks about doing that which
he doesn't want to do. He talks about his flesh being
a slave to sin. And by the way, that is all in
present tense. It's not something Paul was,
it's who Paul is as he walks around in this meat suit he had.
And then he laments at the very end and he cries out in a way
of expressing what he knows his readers are also going through.
Because remember, a majority of the readers in the letter,
to the letter, excuse me, in Rome, the recipients of the letter
to the Romans, they were not raised in the spiritual garb
that the Jews were. They were raised in a very free
society, a free thinking society that, you know, universalistic
ideas and all sorts of you know, open thoughts about what gods
are and what life is, etc. And so when they came to believe
by the power of Christ in him and his promises to them and
his finished work for them, they were a little perplexed because
it was very easy for the long-sitting Jewish man to say, when I was
a child and we prayed this way, and we ate this way, and we dressed
this way, and we circumcised this way, and we see what happens
to all the churches of the region of Galatia. The same is true
today. We find people who are long-fitted
in evangelical faith, long-fitted in the history, the traditions
of the church, whether it be Baptist or not Baptist. And those
are the divisions, by the way. And then, you know, evangelical
or Orthodox or whatever it might be, we often tend to lend credibility
to someone who's sat there longer, who's had more experience. But
beloved, the longer the experience, the more likely the world and
the flesh has crept in. The further away from scripture
we get in practice, the easier it is we leave holes and ditches
that are so wide we're really in the ditch when we think we're
in the road. And I could talk like this for the next hour and
you could never land your plane on the point I'm trying to make.
But ultimately, The pinnacle of the Christian life living
out today is not for us to fear what we're doing might offend
God, but to rest in the sufficiency
of what God did in killing his son for the offense.
That's why Paul says, therefore now there is no condemnation.
Therefore now there is no condemnation. There is no condemnation. There are some people who don't
want to preach the full counsel of the word of God because they're
so fearful of causing the church to be fearful that they don't
want to tell them things that they're proper for Christians
to do. Okay. And then there are some people
who don't want to preach grace because they're afraid that Christians
will live like worldlies. And I don't think there's any
such thing as a balance. I don't think the apostles were
thinking there's a balance. Where is the balance? Salvation
is by grace, period, end of story. And if you never learn another
thing from the Bible, you don't need it. But if you're gonna
get together and you're gonna cooperate together and you're
gonna give glory to Christ, then there are some instructions given
to us. The very fact that I stand before you a qualified elder
by the mercies of God comes from the Bible, you see. So if we're
not willing to learn from the scripture the things to do, then
we're never gonna do anything. And then we see that the scripture
even writes about congregations who had a lot of people who did
nothing. And what did Paul say? I know they're hungry, but let
them starve. 2 Thessalonians. Those people
that won't work, that are sitting on their butts waiting for the
Lord, who refuse to do what is called of them and required of
them, just in humanity much less, amongst the children of God,
let them starve. Does that sound like ministry?
But it is, you see. So it's not really a balance,
it's knowing. It's a stewardship issue. Knowing
how to read the Bible. And beloved, if we don't understand
what Paul is saying in verses 8, 9, and 10, 11, we're not gonna
understand the scripture. We're not gonna understand all
these things because what do we do? It's very easy. Why is the Christian book community
so profitable? I mean, what needs to be said
that hasn't been said in the Bible? What high-brow, divinely
gifted brain is necessary for the average Joe and Jane like
us to figure out what the Bible's teaching? Does God have these
semi-prophets going on today? Why are there so many books? What are the books? The books
are either parsing out further details of the legal debates
about certain teachings of the scripture, and I'm not going
to use the word doctrine anymore today. I'm going to use the word
teachings every time I want to talk about doctrine because that's
what it is. And then the other side of that
is things that we must do to fulfill our lives as Christians,
like how to pray, how to pray effectively, how to pray spiritually,
how to pray in the spirit. How to spiritually spiritual
pray in the spirit, spiritually. How to pray over your meals.
How to pray with your eyes open. How to pray with your hands raised.
How to pray with your head bowed. How to pray in public. How to
pray in private. How to speak. How to deal with
difficult people. Jesus' rules of jealousy. I mean, you know, the shack,
the wheelbarrow. The grocery bag, I mean, we can
write a book about these things and we can fill it full of stuff
in the grocery bag. Remember when we used to, we're
actually going back to that a lot of places. When you go to some places, they
don't even give you bags. You gotta walk out like a homeless person. 700 rolls of toilet paper. It's
a reenactment of Pilgrim's Progress. You put it on your back and just
go. But you know, in the bag, when I was a child, that building
over there was Bagot's IGA. And we went in there and Miss
Baggett would punch you out. You know, for those of you who
grew up here, you know what I'm talking about. And if you didn't
grow up here, you grew up somewhere where before they had automated
systems and scanners and stuff. You were at the will of the presser. The point I'm making is that
I could build an entire theology around that Around that, I could
talk about patience, I could talk about how God showed me
patience, or about how preparation requires love and all these other
things, and about how you place things in the bag, and whatever
you place in the bag is the only thing you're ever gonna get out
of the bag, and you gotta be careful that things are in, you
know what I'm saying? Where's my bread? I left it on the counter,
because it's always last, right? I've left the bread on the counter
many times. Did you get the eggs, did you get the bread? No, they're
still sitting at the grocery. Gotta hook the mule back up and
two hours later we're back. I mean, see there's a theology
there, right? But it's not biblical. And be
careful that the lids are tight, that things are where they need
to be. Don't make the bag too heavy, you can't lift it. Don't
make it too light or you'll throw it over your shoulder. Don't
make sure there's nothing leaking or it'll fall on the ground and
everything will go to waste. That's the Christian life, that's
baloney. It's not the Christian life.
Because even that, as nonsensical as it is, somebody's gonna make
a million dollars on that, probably, watch. Why do we have all these
things? Because people want to know what
they need to know about knowing how to live for the Lord. They're
so scared, we're so scared, and gospel preachers aren't preaching
the gospel, so no one is living in the state of no condemnation.
We're all living in the state of a no condemnation. Even though
we say mercy, mercy, grace, grace. And I've had people in our congregation
before through the years be so upset that they call me and ask
me what heinous sin that I have in my life because I preached
grace too strongly. And must be that there was something
I was not wanting to approach because to preach grace that
strongly means that there's something you are hiding that's deeply
wicked. I'm not hiding it. You want a list? I don't have to hide it. But
where is the hope? It's not in obedience. And beloved, there is no other
way to put it, the way Paul puts it right here. He says, people were teaching
things, teachings, contrary to what he had taught, contrary
to what he had written, contrary to what he had explained concerning
the prophets, who taught of Christ. Moses included Genesis 1 and
2. And in verse 8, these people who wanted to be
teachers of the law, why would we want to be teachers of the
law? What is the law? The law could be defined in many
ways, but let's be honest. You've got laws today in the
state of Georgia, and they just get more and more and more laws.
Why do people make laws? because people do dumb stuff. People do bad stuff. People do
wrong stuff. And people in general, we're
just stupid. And when we follow our flesh, we do dumb things,
and we hurt ourselves, and we hurt others, and we hurt the
economy, we hurt businesses, and we hurt people's, we cause
people to fear, and so the governors of our world have to come together
and go, okay, well, that's not really bad what they're doing.
We gotta make a law. so that we can kill them for
it. We got people spitting on the sidewalks and we just can't
have that. We're gonna make a law that it's
a misdemeanor to spit on the sidewalk and comes with a $50
fine. If you do it twice, you go to jail for 24 hours. If you
do it three times, it's 30 days. That's a real law in the state
of Georgia. Now could you imagine Barney
Fife in South Georgia during hunting season? outside the huddle
house where every man in there puts tobacco this big in his
mouth. Boy, the tax base would be so
low if we could find people for spitting. Look at the law of
Moses. If you spit on the ground, you
can spit, but you couldn't spit on the Sabbath. So from 6, let's
just be general, 6 p.m. Friday to 6 p.m. Saturday, it
was your Sabbath. Why couldn't you spit on the
ground? Because your saliva would mix with the dirt and it would
farrow the ground in its work. And if you spit, you deserve
to die. You deserve for the elders and
the people and the children who can walk to pick up stones and
drag you outside the city and to smash your body until the
birds eat your remains. And I know that's graphic, but
that's what the law is for. Don't spit. You see what I mean? Now imagine if you have a habit
of spitting. And now you know that if you
walk outside, we're gonna hit you in the head with a rock.
Or take away all your money. Or shame you, put you on the
front page of the spitters at large. I mean, you know, we're
looking for these spitters and their spittle. Got the evidence
right here, this little bag next to my sandwich. Gross. How would you live? You'd live
in fear. That's what the law. Law is a set of rules to convict
through and by. The laws of Moses, the precepts,
are things that brought condemnation to the people of Israel. But
there's also the good side of the law, right? Because what
does Paul say? The law is good. Why is it good? There are several
things, and we've taught these things before from this pulpit
many times, many of us. The law reflects the nature of
God's holiness. The law establishes good and
proper etiquette when it comes to living together as a people.
Why were there dietary laws for the people of Israel so they
wouldn't die of heart disease? You see? Why are there laws about
alcohol use? Because if it weren't there,
everybody could abuse it without recourse. And there's always
the, you know, the anecdote. Well, you know, that little country
there has no laws, and well, they got no alcohol either. They
got no economy. They just like to have water,
that kind of stuff. And I'm being funny. I don't know. I'm not
interested in looking that up. The point is that sometimes these
things that are commanded of us show us something, and sometimes
they teach us something, and sometimes they establish a pattern
of life that will help us get along. and do what is good. I had a sister ask this week,
should I teach my children and grandchildren to not lie? Yes. Why do we teach them to
not lie? Because they lie. I mean, do we sit our children
down and say, okay, there's several things that you need to know
that you should never do. You should not lie. And the children
go, what's a lie? That's when Everything is going
well, and there's truth all around, and someone asks you about what
is really true, and you tell something different to deceive
them. Oh my, I never, who would do that? I mean, you know? No,
we don't teach our children not to lie so that we preemptively
stop them from ever lying. We teach them not to lie when
we catch them in a lie. We teach them not to steal because
it's wrong. The law is good, but what's the
ultimate purpose of the law being good? I'm going to hammer it
today. I'm going to hammer the unbalanced
side of Paul's argument for the law in the context of Ephesus
in the first century, and it's going to make some of us squirm
because we like the order of laws, right? Isn't that what
we want? We want to be told what to do.
We want to be told how to apply the Bible in such a way. Pastor,
give us three closing points to put on our refrigerator so
that we can practice this week. Here they are. Read your Bible,
read your Bible, and it goes without saying, thirdly, read
your Bible. If we're not doing that, we shouldn't
do anything else. And how many of us can actually
stop our minds from sin? If you figure that out, come
take my place, because I need to take notes. So the law, what
does Paul say? We know that the law is good.
Verse eight, the law is good. It's not evil. But the law is
only good when it is used lawfully. Now think about that for a second. I mean, have you ever heard of
an unjust law? Not from God's word. But have you ever heard
of an unjust law? Absolutely. The Pharisees had
unjust laws. You can read the Mishnahs. You
can read the Mishnah. You can read all of the laws
of the Jews and things that they added and things that they made
new laws that would try to circumvent old laws and get away with it. Especially the travel laws and
the perimeter laws and the cooking laws. It's a pandemic of living rightly. The law is good if it's used
lawfully. But there are some times where laws are just unlawful. I saw this as a picture this
morning. You know, the people who hid Jews during the Holocaust
were violating the law. And the people who killed them
were obeying the law. That law was not right, you see. Just because something's a law
in the land doesn't make it godly. But the law of God. The law is
laid down. Understanding this. You understand? That's an active, ongoing reality. The law is good if one uses it
lawfully, understanding this. So he explains what lawful use
of the law is. And this is the only lawful use
of the law. The law is not laid down for
the just. You ever been scared of going
to prison for trafficking crack cocaine or trafficking cocaine?
No, probably not. Some of you maybe, I don't know,
but probably not. You're scared of going to prison
for breaking into the Pentagon, stealing some papers? Probably
not. Why? Because you've never done
that. When we've never done something, we're really not fearful of being
in trouble for it. The law is laid down for the
lawless. The law is laid down for the
disobedient. The law is laid down for ungodly
and for sinners, for the unholy and the profane. I don't really want to spend
a lot of time on this, it would take me about ten minutes, but I want
you to look at what Paul has done. Ungodly sinners, unholy, profane,
striking, fathers, mothers, murderers, sexual sins, enslavers, haters
of people, liars, perjurers, false witness, whatever else,
covetousness, thievery, adultery. He just went through the Decalogue. He just went through it. He's
basically saying, look, the law was written. Even the Decalogue
was written for the lawless, for the disobedient, for the
ungodly, for the sinners, those who do these things. Those who
break these things. Those who don't obey these things.
That's why the law was written. Why? Why? So that they would
die. So they would be found guilty.
And I just want you to understand, this is not the only place. Everything
Paul writes, if you want a real hard slap in the face, in this
reality, go to Galatians and read that letter. Pay close attention. But it's
easy for us to pay close attention to the instruction rather than
it is the grace. We think that we're gaining some
merit while claiming to be under grace. We think that the gospel
works with the law, but it's in contrast to it. And that's why we have such ridiculous
evangelical methods. You know, I'm gonna tell everybody
how bad they are, and then when I tell them how bad they are,
I'm gonna tell them how good they can be. See, that's what
evangelicalism has become in America. That's the predominant
M.O. I'm going to get out here and
tell everybody who hasn't even thought about it. They've thought
about it. Everybody knows they've got sin in their life. I've met two people
in my entire life who've said they've never sinned. And you know that even when you
show them the law, they still think they've kept it. You're
not going to find somebody who thinks they've never sinned that
the Ten Commandments are going to change their mind. It's not going to happen. And
beloved, any of us who think that we are keeping the law of
God in our efforts and even by the power of Christ in any real
practical way are lying. As I was thinking about this,
I thought about how my father for over 40 years served with integrity
in law enforcement. Integrity, truth, honesty. And how many judges I know and
how many federal agents I know and people that work at the White
House and all this stuff and having pastored down at Glencoe
and stuff. I mean, I just know a lot of
law enforcement and a lot of judges and a lot of people in
the court systems just grew up around them. Yet none of them
ever have ever fulfilled the law, even though they are by
God's design to enforce it. And there's always a season where
somebody's suing somebody in some weird community because
they're taking down, you know, these gargantuan relics of the
Ten Commandments from courthouses. As if we've kept those laws.
Do you really want those laws hanging over you? Do you really
want it? It was laid down for the wicked.
It was laid down for the guilty. And beloved, if you read the
scripture and you read the righteousness of God, and you don't come away
knowing that you can't keep it, there's more to talk about than
just an understanding of the law and grace. The law was laid down for the
ungodly. It indicts, it convicts, and it sentences. The law brings
death. That's what Paul is saying. It's
not my words, it's not my opinion. It's syntactical. A, B, C. And that which is contextually
in the syntax of the text supersedes, trumps, and annihilates any other
ideology that is derived from any other study therein. That
which is there clearly overcomes all things which are inferred. Because we know that the Word
of God shows His people the simple ways of understanding these things. The law is good if it's used
rightly. So how is it used rightly? Look
at that. If it's used rightly, to kill. If the law is used rightly, it's
used to indict and bring the wage of sin, which is death. What other use? Oh, you know,
historically you got this use and that use. No, what does Paul
say? I don't want to talk theological philosophy. I don't want to discuss
history. I don't want to discuss a systematized
expression that has been handed down through 600 years. That's a whole different conversation
than shepherding the flock of Jesus Christ. That's a whole
different scenario. I've recently read up on some
new ideas concerning dark matter. I love it. I can't, I just, I
gotta stop subscribing to those things. I don't get the magazines
anymore, but I love the ideas that maybe a black hole is our
view of a whole nother universe. See, some of you thought, that's
stupid. I don't care. I love it. And I can talk about
it. I could talk about the math. I could talk about the ideas. I could talk about the what ifs. Quantum theory. Energy. Light. Light. We haven't measured the speed
of light. Because there's light we can't see, light we don't
know, you know? It's still nothing. It's still
nothing. All of that declares the glory
of God. It's not for us to grab hold
of because when we grab hold of one reign, we see that there's
a whole field full of wild horses out there. We've tamed nothing. The infinite glory of our powerful
Father is just that. But what we want to do is we
want to grab the reins and we want to attach them together
to some type of harness and tether it to our property that we have
the tax documents for and say, ah, this is my understanding,
this is my doctrine, this is my gospel. The law is good if it lays itself
down according to its purpose, which is to indict and to bring
justice. Is the law not there for justice?
For justice. That's why when we don't meet
it, we get penalized. Pulling out of a McDonald's in
California, Matter of fact, I was in Palo Alto, and if you've ever
been to Palo Alto, it's like Mayberry with four million people.
It's a small, quaint, packed community. And I pull out of
this thing, and everything's so pretty, and the sidewalks
are so pretty, and everything's so pretty, and there was a whole
line of just like cops with slick, like, you know, the really cool
uniforms. I don't know if they were getting
on a horse or a bike, you know, they had that kind of outfit
on. This is neat. And there was five of them lined
up, and when I got my wallet out of my pocket, I unhooked
my seatbelt, and the seatbelt was hanging right here. And I
drive by, and I'm like, look, kids, look at all those cool
cops with bikes. And I'm waving, and they all
wave at me. One of them went, whoop, whoop, whoop, turns his
little siren on. I'm waving. That's so cool. And
I buckle my seatbelt, and I get about half a block down the road,
and I look in the rearview mirror, and he's pulling me over. He comes up
to there. You having a good day, sir? Yes,
sir. Can I see your license, please, if you don't mind? There
you go. Oh, see you got Virginia tags on this van. So do they
wear seat belts in Virginia? Yes, sir. He goes, oh, you got
it on. Did you have it on when you came by me? I went, I don't
think I did. I didn't think so. Have a good
day. $150. I mean, you know, what
was the law for? Tax money. It was to punish me. for not
doing what was good for me. So we can learn what is good
for us by learning the law, but we need to keep it in perspective.
The reason that it's there is not to keep us from death, though
that is a benefit in the context of not stealing, not committing
adultery, not coveting, not bearing false witness, because some people
will kill you for that stuff. But when it comes to the spiritual
realm of redemption, to the gospel, It doesn't lead us there. It
lands on top of us and it crushes us, you see. So I'm not contradicting
myself. I'm putting things in perspective
as Paul has laid it out. Because if we don't understand
this, we're going to put our hopes and our attention on some
of the instruction over the gospel. So the law is bad if it's used
wrongly. How is it used wrongly? To control people. to distort the gospel, to put
a burden on top of people that they cannot meet, to cause people to fear, to establish a sect of unity
in the name of grace when it's really obedience to a law that
kills. And sadly, thinking that we're
obeying when we're actually not in the eyes of God. Or worse,
thinking that our obedience does something to merit our salvation.
And some of us are going, nobody thinks that. Yes they do, just
ask your neighbor. Go outside, knock on the door
of your neighbor, and ask them if they know anything about Jesus
and the Bible, and ask them how they get to heaven, how they
know they can have eternal life. And they'll all have some iteration
of doing what God expects them to do, and being what God expects
them to be. Go to the parking lots of any
evangelical church and just ask the associate pastor as they
come out. Ask the people coming to their
cars. How are you right before the
Lord? How are you pleasing before God? And they'll come up with
some answer that talks about how well they're doing and they're
no longer a drunkard or they're no longer a liar or they're no
longer a thief. That's a lie. It's not true. Beloved, I've
been called a liar a lot in the last year or so. And about which
I was called a liar for, I haven't lied, but yet I am a liar. And all Boy Scout merit of not
being a liar doesn't erase the fact that I'm a liar and it doesn't
matter. I haven't honored the Lord with every fiber of my soul
from conception. And so either way, if I haven't
glorified God in everything I've ever thought, desired, or didn't
even know, then I'm a liar too. And I'm an adulterer too. And
I'm a murderer also. Because there's not a, I've done
this but not this. If you're a liar, you're a murderer.
If you're a murderer, you're an adulterer. If you're an adulterer,
you bear false witness. You see? We don't get to pick
and choose how we do. We are all guilty. But here's
the crazy thing, is another way of using the law badly is to
beat the church up with it. Because I'm not a mind reader,
but I know how I think. And I've been around enough people
that think a little bit differently to get a good, I can get four
or five different ways in which I think people think when they
hear certain things. And I can promise you that some of us are
in a spot of a little bit of attention thinking, I'm not living
the way I ought to live. I'm not doing what I ought to
be doing. You are right. You are correct. You tell the
truth when you say, I'm not doing what I ought to be doing. Matter
of fact, you haven't been doing what you ought to be doing. And
right now you're not doing what you ought to be doing. And tomorrow
you're not going to be doing what you ought to be doing. Sound
familiar? The woman in Sychar. The commands of the Bible cannot
be used to control people. To uproot the peace that comes
by the gospel of grace. And if we misunderstand the point
of the law, don't do this, do this, don't touch, touch this,
don't eat, eat this, what we do is we lay down penalty of
the law. And we make all of us guilty according to the law.
And if we misunderstand the law, we miss the good report. We miss
grace, we miss love, we miss mercy, we miss hope. A misunderstanding
of the law preaches a false Christ. Christ did not come to give the
law. And God strike me dead if I ever
say anything different. From Moses you have received
the law. But from Christ you have received
what? Grace and truth. Christ is not the lawgiver. He
is not a lawgiver. He is the law fulfiller. He is
the completion of it. He is the answer to it. He is
the one who takes it away. He is the one who has suffered
the penalty of it fully and completely. The penalty. He takes it away. Not take the law away, but takes
the penalty of the law away. He fulfills it. He didn't earn righteousness
through obedience. He learned righteousness through
obedience, but he is righteousness in that process at all times
and forever. The law, when it's misunderstood, all
it does is create new laws. And sometimes those new laws
come in the name of grace, which are at odds with Christ's atoning
and finished And teachers teach these things by talking about
them, by thinking about them, by writing about them. They go
online, they create YouTube channels and everything else. They assert
and command and dictate and this, that, and the other, and mantra,
and they get a good little tiny following of a couple hundred
people. And then it's just this echo chamber of law while they
preach grace. You think a YouTube channel that
preaches the grace of Jesus Christ and Him crucified only and continually
will ever get much information or much attention? No. It's not going to. But yet we can all pick one.
Just pick one. Just pick one. Pick one of the
Decalogue and make it your banner and create you about five or
six mantras that go along with that and how everybody in the
name of Christ in the entire country is not fulfilling it.
And start you a channel to that end and you'll have thousands
of followers. You can monetize that thing and make money. Which
that's what that means. I'm so silly. You can do it. But we remove the offense of
the cross. Hebrews, as we've gone, you know
when it talks about the person that does this and remains in
sin and all that, he has no hope. And then the very next thing
we see and before that we see, it's all this, it's sprinkled
in as a reminder of what these people did in the rebellion when
God promised them eternal life through His power and His provision
without explanation. And then what they did is not
believe Him but decided what must we do in order to obtain
some type of life and focus. of success. And God said they
can just die out there. Teachers of the law like these
men and all these people here, they were teaching in ignorance,
making confident assertion, not according to grace and faith
by the Spirit but according to the law. And sometimes teachers
who teach this thing think they're teaching grace. Or that they've
segmented it to such a degree that they've got to hound it
over here and then hound it over here and balance it out. Beloved,
balance it out is not the answer. Preach it in the same measure
in which it's preached in the scripture. So when it comes up,
preach it. It's always good to infuse grace
and the gospel into every instruction. It's never good to infuse the
law in every measure of grace. That's ridiculous. Christ saved
his people from their sin, but you better do this. I mean, that's
the very thing that Paul fought against. We get to those things in community. We get to those things in charity.
We get to those things in love and good conscience and a sound
mind and all of these other things. We get there with a sincere faith
by loving one another and instructing one another and those who are
mature being patient. with those who doubt and so on
and so forth, the local church and everything that God has provided
for us in his sovereignty is sufficient for you to know very
clearly that you are not gonna stand in the condemnation of
your father. And when you find yourself in condemnation, what
does John say? He says, your heart condemns
you, but he is greater than our heart. And that's not a license to sin. but I don't have to stomp my
feet and talk about license to sin, that's nonsense. Who has
to talk, who has to teach that? Unbelievers even know better. Paul mentions it and he says
that's absurd, absolutely not. We don't sin that grace may abound,
put away that mess. Put away the flesh and its wickedness
and put away its flesh and its self-righteousness. You know
those come hand in hand. Teachers of the law who use it
illegally feed on the fear of those who worry too much when
they should be preached to the gospel. The gospel should be
preached to them. The hope of Christ should be preached to
them. So people who are worried over their sin need to hear the
grace of Christ. Because the one thing that's
true, and the scripture teaches us, Paul really deals us out
good in Romans 6 and 7, is the one surefire way of you remaining
in sin is to focus on the sin that you're trying to get rid
of. Is to focus on the thing that you wish you could change.
Is to really put your efforts into not doing something. I remember back at one of the
universities where we had a youth camp that we were doing, And
I won't get into any details of that because it was a hard
time. 1,000, 1,100 high school kids. And one of the knuckleheaded
pastors decided that he would bring an application to help
these boys through the seven-day camp not commit adultery in their
hearts. And so he bought him these big, thick, I can tie an
elephant down rubber band. And he put them on the right
wrist and he says, anytime you have lustful thoughts, you snap. And I nicknamed that summer camp
Snap Camp. Because that's all it was. That's
all it was. That's all you heard all week.
Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. So about Thursday, I started
taking those things up. I said, you know, how much have
you read your Bible? Your wrist is red, but your Bible's not. That was my joke. You should pack up and go home. That's not good. That's not good. These teachers rely on their
own understanding of things, they're confident in their own
personal standing, while resting in the wickedness. And they need
to be, they think everybody needs to be reminded of God's justice,
but it's the preacher of the law who needs to be reminded
of God's justice. It is the preacher of the law who uses it illegally
to hurt the sheep who needs to be reminded, you really wanna
go there? You really want God to judge
you by this standard? You know what it's there for,
right? To convict you and to kill you. You see why we can't conflate
the New Testament church and our living and the instruction
of the New Testament writings with the gospel and with the
law of Moses. A new law often appears by the
law of assurance of works, and if not that, it's salvation by
the assurance of works. And this destroys faith and it
destroys our understanding of faith. It destroys repentance,
which is a change of mind, which is evidenced by faith. Repentance
is not about stopping sin and putting sin away. And that's
not what the word means. It's never meant that. Ever.
Anywhere. It's about a transformation of
thinking. I am dead to sin because I am
alive in Christ. So I'm a, what? A new creation. But I'm not a new man. I have
a new man in me, the Lord. And by Him I live, by faith,
in Him who gave His life for me. This is Paul's claim. So the gospel is not preached
by saying, repent of your sin. That's not the gospel. That's
not even the precursor to the gospel. That's not what it means. I've been going through, I've
got a list of words, like 30. David and I were talking about it earlier
this week. There's a list of words that are transliterated
words, or words that are so far removed from normal vernacular.
Realize there's not but about three words in the entire New
Testament that were inventions. There is an English translated
opportunity for almost all the other words there, but we in
history have created new words, and so we don't need to create
new words. We need to just say. Change what you're thinking now
and listen and believe on what I taught you just now. That's
what Peter says to those Jews. You're thinking you're here,
you're thinking you're doing some things that are gonna warrant some type of
grace toward you, but it's not that. Change that thinking. How
am I supposed to change that thinking? Focus on that thinking?
Put thinking out of my mind? No. Think on something else. The gospel is not preached when
laws and commands are not rightly measured. What does that mean?
You're not going to accomplish it. So if you live today until you're
600 and you never tell another lie, you're still a lawbreaker. You see what I'm saying? And
that doesn't cause us to go, well, I'll just lie then by the
grace of God. There's instruction for that
as well. But our hope is not in becoming these things. So if I tell you what to do,
and Paul's going to tell us what to do, we're going to do them
in practice, but we're really not doing them. We're going to
fulfill some obedience in our life, just like we put our seatbelts
and other things, but we're really not obedient. In God's economy
of justice, it's being just like He is, Or you die. And you don't get do-overs. You
don't get to build a system of points. We don't get to look
at the day. There are pastors and preachers
who would preach that at the end of the day in the judgment,
there is going to be a measure of how much you have become perfect. Now what does that mean? Can you be almost perfect? You
know what almost perfect is? Bad. Well, I think this mayonnaise
is almost good. Eat it, find out. That hotel's
almost clean. That chicken on my plate's almost
cooked. You're not almost holy. Holy
is not a scale. It's complete separation forever. The gospel must overcome even
the instruction found in the Bible so that the saint, that
the child of God knows what resting really looks like as we're working,
as we're obeying. We're not resting in those things.
We're resting in Christ, but we're striving to godliness.
And I know some people are like, well, this isn't really important. I mean, no, beloved, I talk to
you all. I get your prayer requests. I
know that most of us are struggling with this very thing. That's
why it's going to be taught like this. Am I praying enough? And then
when we are, what do we do? I feel so close to the Lord.
Everything is so good. I know that I'm saved. And then all of a sudden, we
might not say it with our mouth, but we do say ugly words about
our neighbor in our head. And we're not praying. We're aggravated. Or maybe we
just don't want to. What's wrong with me? My desires.
I'm gonna be like I used to be. You ever felt that way? I wish
I could be like I used to be. How about being where you are
now? In Christ, forever, without fail. The gospel must overcome,
grace must overcome even the simple instruction in the Bible.
If we're not careful, we'll settle our seats on a new law thinking
that it's grace. And my role as a pastor, shepherd,
overseer, teacher, preacher is to make sure we don't. One of
my roles. Why? So that your joy will be
full. And then we go back to where we were last week. If we
want our joy to be full, not only do we rest in the gospel,
but we also do what the gospel teaches us. We do what Christ
teaches us. But don't conflate our standing
before the Father with how well we follow our instruction. But
there is a temporal joy. There is a temporal blessing
in obedience. And that's something that we've
heard a lot. We know this. The wrong use of the law As I've
said, convicts, indicts, and destroys. And I believe according
to what Paul is teaching Timothy here, it destroys the very love
of God in the body. The church is scattered and the
teaching that supposedly brings about change and conviction and
unity actually kills everybody around it. Am I wrong? And so love and mercy and grace,
this is the covenant of hope. We focus therein. So scripture
reveals the law of God. God's law is a revelation of
His holiness. God's law is teaching us that He is not like us. He is different and separated
from us in every way. Scripture reveals that we are
not God and no one seeks after God, nor can anyone be like God. Scripture reveals that the law
is different from the gospel. It's different in that it has
different promises. First, it's temporal. Second,
it's a promise that you will lose. And the law has a different audience.
We want to preach grace or we want to preach merit. Look at
the Pharisees. Look at the ministry of Jesus. Look at the Gospels. These people knew it, but they
really thought their obedience would satisfy God in some way
to their eternal life. Romans 8.3, there is now, I've
already said it several times, but there's now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of
life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and
death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh,
could not ever, ever with any possibility do. See, that's a
misapplication. Some people think if they had
been able to do right. They could have warranted and
merited and that's a very logical thing until we learn what Scripture
teaches. We are born into sin. We are
guilty in Adam. So God did what the law weakened
by the flesh could not do ever. How? What? By sending his own
son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned
sin in the flesh. Why? In order that the righteous
requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Now let me
stop there, and I probably don't have time to finish this teaching.
This will be the last thing I say today. What is the righteous requirement
of the law fulfilled in us? The law says we're guilty and
we must die. Jesus Christ died for us so the
law is satisfied. The law doesn't bring us life,
it brings us condemnation. Jesus took our condemnation. Paul says that's a legal use
of the law. That's lawful use of the law.
Preaching grace. Preaching grace means we preach
the fulfillment of the law where God destroyed Jesus Christ instead
of us. Where God killed Him instead
of us. Who we, who the law is fulfilled
in us, the righteousness and the requirement of the law, who
walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
And we'll see what he says there in the remaining parts of this
text. Look at that. whatever is contrary to sound
doctrine in accordance with the gospel of glory and of the blessed
God with whom, with which I have been entrusted. So let me very
quickly express that and we'll dig into that a little bit more
next week. In accordance with the gospel of glory of the blessed
God. So here we have this gospel,
this grace, this mercy that is the fulfillment of justice. Why? Because Jesus took justice. This
is simple gospel. This is something that is evident
in the understanding of the basics of regeneration. Because the
scripture teaches we cannot muster any righteousness. Christ who
was sinless stood in the place of his people and only he satisfies
the wrath of God for us. What am I going to do? Rest. That's faith. Well, I can't rest. God will have to give you faith.
You can't make it. God is happy with Himself. He's
happy with His essence. He's happy. He's blessed. He
doesn't need anything. He has given us good news. He's
happy with this good news. This blessed, great report. This God-speak. This God-spell. Good speech. This good report. This good telling. That's what
gospel means. God-spell. God-spell. It means good telling. And there's
a lot of ways in which that could be used. It's not just spiritual
things. Gospel is a word that has lost its meaning. But when we talk about God's
speech and God's good story, it is that He has given us to
His Son and has purchased us from the law of death. And Paul
says, I have been entrusted with this. You see, as a preacher
of righteousness, we've been entrusted with this. So we have
to be very careful because as I've told you all a thousand
times, if I've said it once, it's very easy to manipulate
everyone into fear and doing things the way it ought to be
done. It's very much easier to tell someone and a child that
if they don't eat their vegetables, that the sugar monster is going
to eat their feet and they go to bed at night. And I'm sorry, I shouldn't have
said that, because now they're just going, is that real? And you're all going
to go home and say, yes, eat your vegetables. It's so much easier. If you get
out of that bed, you're going to die. If you hit your sister,
you're going to die. See, I said that a million times,
and I meant it, but the law tells me I can't. The law of the United
States tells me I can't. Because I probably have one kid, the one that got hit last. Paul has been entrusted. He's
been entrusted with the law of God as a steward, and he uses
that law lawfully to show that we will die if we trust in it. And he uses that law lawfully
to preach grace, to show that the whole fullness of God's revelation
to his people is merciful revelation, not menacing revelation. God
is not a police officer or an undercover agent trying to find
out what you're doing wrong. He knows everything already.
For those of you who follow my social media feed, you've already
heard all the points of this sermon this week. Scripture is breathed out. The
gospel is in contrast to the covenant of law. The scripture
tells us that while holy wrath and justice is God's business,
His greatest business and His revelation of Himself is His
mercy toward His people and Christ Jesus by destroying and exercising
that justice on Him instead of us. This great revealed picture,
glory of good news. Jesus took on the law and its
consequences. Jesus, the God, the Holy One. Jesus Christ stood in the place
of His people and we are free. We are free. We are even free
to pursue a level of obedience that would just give us good
joy, but it won't give us the fullness of joy, because only
Christ can do that. And ultimately, we have a testimony
of righteousness, not because we've done well and obeyed rightly,
but we have been given the righteousness of Jesus Christ to our credit,
and we are clothed in His holiness. We have been snatched out of
darkness and placed permanently into the unrelenting hand of
our Savior, and nothing can snatch us away. God Himself cannot remove
you, beloved, from His mercy. Why? Because he's already killed
his son. The debt is paid. So as we take this table today,
this is what we're remembering. The law of God has crushed Jesus
Christ, a liar. an adulterer, a murderer, one
who beat his parents. Isn't that crazy? That's what
Paul says as a person that doesn't honor their father and mother,
they slap and strike their parents. I couldn't imagine. I wouldn't
be before you today. I mean, I couldn't imagine. Jesus was charged as guilty and
destroyed as guilty, but he was not, so his death and the justice
therein satisfied the wrath of God for us. When His blood poured
out, it is because He died in our place. Let's prepare our
hearts for the table as we remember that today. We thank You, Father,
for Your grace. We thank You, Lord, for the fact
that we, in our minds, we're always going to find that our
flesh wants to attach itself to a clear rule that would make
us measure ourselves against a worldly standard instead of
your righteous standard. And Father, some of us would
even get so overcome by your loving grace that we may even
say it doesn't matter if we sin, but Father, by your grace and
through your tenderness, you've shown us that that's not to be. So Father, help us. Help us to
live according to the testimony of the gospel. in obedience to
that which you teach us. But Father, keep us from ever
trusting in who we've become. As we always trust in who Christ
is and what he accomplished. Lord, as we long for the day
when we will become like him, when we will become renewed,
when we will be set forth without a sinful flesh. What a day. What an eternal day with no end.
And as we take this table this morning, Father, let us remember
that we are together in this grace. Help us to love one another
as you have loved us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.