We're looking here in 1 Timothy
1, 1 Timothy chapter 1. We looked a little bit at a couple
of these verses last week, but I want to look again. Now the end of the commandment
is charity or love out of a pure heart and of a good conscience
and of faith unfain, which some having swerved have turned aside
unto vain jangling, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding
neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. But we know that
the law is good if a man use it lawfully, knowing this, that
the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and
disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and
profane, For murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for
manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves
with mankind, for men stealers, for liars, for perjured persons. And if there be any other thing
that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel
of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust. Now we often hear men speak about
commandments, the commandments of God, and surely the Lord has
made many commandments. He didn't make many suggestions.
And you realize the Lord never asked anybody if they would do
something. He said, you must do this. He
said, this is the way it is. It's not debatable. The Lord hasn't asked anybody
to ratify His commandments. He didn't say, you know, y'all
do the best you can. He said, do this and live. And
the contrast of that was if you don't do it, you'll die. Now,
there's, it is a common thing, and of course this week's Grace
Gazette is on this very subject, using the law lawfully. And so
we must, if we're going to consider the law, we must do it in a lawful
fashion, a proper fashion, to do it as the Lord would have
us to. Now the Pharisees were great
men of the law, that Moses, that was given by the Lord to Moses,
and they were sticklers for it. And nobody could dispute that.
Paul said he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. The Pharisees
were very strict keepers, in their mind at least. of the law,
that is they kept the law as they thought keeping the law
is. Now you often hear that term, do we keep the law? Now if by
that a person means do we abide by every precept in the law and
do we walk according to it continually without fail, then the answer
to that is no we do not. But yet there is a keeping of
the law. As David said, thy word have
I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. There is
that keeping it as a precious possession. The word of God,
the truth of God is indeed a precious possession. And in that way,
we do keep the word of God. It is that which we believe.
I mean, we're here looking in this word. We didn't come here
with some theological book written by some great scholar of time
past and holding it up here reading it. We're not interested in that. I mean, I've read plenty of those
books. I've profited from many of them,
but they're very limited in that they only go so far as a man's
understanding will take him. Now many men who've written these
books were men of great understanding. But no understanding of a man
is of any use whatsoever to us apart from the Lord teaching
us. And the only place we're really
going to get his teaching is in this book. Because when men
rely upon the teachings of other men as the source of their understanding,
they will gain the understanding of that man. I'm not interested
in having the understanding of any man. Now, I can gain from
what men teach. We should. I mean, the Lord has
given teachers. And every time that we hear someone
speak the word of God, even many times with people that don't
have much of an understanding at all of it, yet the Lord can
teach us things. See, the Lord doesn't have to
have a perfect teacher to teach people. He can teach people things
by somebody that's pretty ignorant. In fact, he did that with the
Pharisees, did he not? Now, they didn't learn a whole
lot, But whenever Peter and John came before them, they took knowledge
of them, the scripture says, that these were ignorant and
unlearned men. Yet they said, how do they speak
these things? How do they know these things?
Well, there's only one way that any man can ever know the word
of God, and that is for the Lord to open his heart and mind and
teach it to him. And that doesn't mean that when
the Lord opens a man's heart and teaches it to him, doesn't
mean that he's gonna stand before men and teach other men that
truth. The Lord doesn't give the truth
to all men, to all of his children, and give them the gift of teaching.
That's not his purpose. He gives his gifts to his children
to benefit the body. And there are other gifts that
the Lord gives to his people other than teaching. You know,
we, the teaching gifts are kind of exalted in the minds of men
and quite often men love to have it so, do they not? I mean, you
know, where's the preacher that like somebody come pat him on
the back and tell him what a good job he did? I mean, that's just
in us. But we flee from it. We despise it, really. Because
I don't want somebody to tell me I did a good job. I want them
to tell me I heard about a great Savior. See, that's our purpose
in preaching is not so people will say, man, you really did
good. But it's, man, I saw the glory of Christ in some of those
things. That's our desire. That's the
end of the commandment. The purpose of the word of God,
from beginning to end, is to magnify the name of Jesus Christ. It doesn't make a difference
what it is, or you can open this book anywhere, and you can read
it. You can go over there and read
the genealogies. And that's some pretty dry reading. You know,
if you can even get through it. But I'm telling you, even those,
the reason those are recorded is so that Christ might be glorified. Because you see, the Lord has
ordained the life of every individual in the world for that one purpose,
whether in life or in death, whether in redemption or in destruction. I mean, the Lord has ordained
all men to serve the purpose that he would have for them.
Now, rebels against God will take issue with that. They'll
say, well, what right does he have to do that? Well, that's
not fair. Well, the Lord didn't ask you if it was fair. He didn't
ask you to critique it. He said, this is how it will
be. And those whom the Lord is pleased to show his truth, he
humbles them before him. And I can't say that I like everything
that God does. You know, there's lots of times I
don't like this. You know, when things happen
to us that make us uncomfortable, we don't like that. But we can
rejoice that the Lord causes all things to work together for
good to them that love God, who are the called according to His
purpose. And so it is. that the end of
the commandment is love out of a pure heart and of good conscience
and of faith unfeigned. Because whenever we declare the
word of God, we're declaring an unfeigned faith. We haven't
made it up. It's not fake. It's not something
that the elders got together and decided this is what we're
gonna teach. See, it is the truth of God. because it is unfeigned, it's
without any dissimulation. The truth of God doesn't change
and we don't have to come up with some sly manner in which
to present it to men. There are some out there, false
teachers I would call them, they have some attractive literature.
And they don't really come out and say what this is until they
got you in there and you've read about this good thing happening
and all the wonderful things gonna happen in the earth and
this, that, and the other. And they don't really ever come out
and tell you what it is because they don't want you to know.
Well, brother, we want you to know Jesus Christ is the King.
He's the Lord of glory. He's the Savior of sinners. And
that's all, the only ones that he does save is sinners. But
he saved sinners. He saved such sinners as called
upon his name. He's full of mercy. He's full
of kindness. Oh, who has known the mind of
the Lord? But he says here, some have swerved. Now we talked about
that last week, what swerving is. You're riding down the road
and you try to miss something in the road, you swerve. Well,
you get out of the track. And sometimes if you're not careful
and you swerve too far, you wind up in the ditch. And some have
done that. They have swerved because they
perceived some error and they swerved. Now, many accuse the
Apostle Paul of preaching grace to the extent that he would encourage
men to sin. And so some, seeing that as a
grave error, which it is, we would never preach grace in order
to encourage men to sin. That would never be the reason
we would preach grace. We would preach grace in spite
of the sin of men, in spite of the fact that we know that men
are sinners, yet we preach to them that Jesus Christ saves
men, not according to the works of the flesh, but according to
His mercy and grace. But some, having seen that as
an error, have swerved and they've wound up in the ditch. That's
what Paul says here. He said, some have swerved, have
turned side to vain jangling. They got off into something that
was contrary to the gospel. Desiring to be teachers of the
law. Understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. The first place of understanding
that a man's got to come to is that he doesn't have any true
understanding. Now, that seems contradictory,
but you see, the man who understands the most of God's Word is the
one who confesses, I know nothing as I ought to know. The man who
says, well, I've got all the answers. If you need to know
anything about the Word of God, just call me. Get on my website. Write in for my book and I'll
explain it to you. I've got the answers. There's
plenty of answer men out there. You can find the answers if you
ask enough people, you'll find all the answers you want to know.
But brethren, we're not interested in the answers of men. We want
to know from the lips of the Lord. these things. And so it
is that some desire to be teachers of the law, understanding neither
what they say nor what they affirm, but we know that the law is good
if a man use it lawfully. And so what would we think about?
Well, the first thing we have to do if we're going to talk
about a lawful use of the law is we'd have to talk about, well,
what is the law? Now there is a law, the scripture says, and
as Paul wrote in Romans, there is a law which is written in
the hearts of men. I would call that a natural law.
There is a law which has been written in that. Now the Lord
didn't write the Ten Commandments in everybody's heart. He didn't
do that. But he wrote the essence of the
truth of those things that men need to know. All men come into
this. This manifests itself in the
conscience. But it also manifests itself,
and I've used this illustration many times, that all men know
beyond a shadow of a doubt that it's wrong to steal. Now, they
might not know or think in their mind that it's wrong for them
to go over there and take something from you. There's a lot of people,
they can justify that in their mind in a heartbeat. In fact,
all of us really have a larcenous heart. I mean, we see something
we want and we can kind of, even if we don't go take it, we'll
be thinking about how we could take it. And we'll be thinking,
well, maybe it wouldn't be totally wrong if I took it. You know
what I mean? Because it was just laying there.
I mean, it doesn't look like anybody you know, has it, I mean,
couldn't I get it as well as somebody else coming along to
get it? I mean, see, all that boils up
out of a larcenous heart. So, a man might make that excuse
for why he would steal from another man, but I guarantee there's
not any man that will be glad if somebody steals something
from him. You know, if somebody takes something from you, you
don't like it, do you? The worst crook in the jail,
he might be in there for grand larceny, but somebody comes into
his cell and takes some little something out of here, he'll
be ready to kill somebody because they stole something from him. So that's the natural, the law
is written in men's hearts, they can't escape it. You know a man
might murder somebody, but you let somebody murder somebody
he loves or try to murder him, what's he going to do? He's going
to react against it. And so there is that natural
law that God has written in the hearts of every man. And then there is the manifestation
of the law that the Lord gave to Adam. And he said, don't do
this. He said, don't eat this. But he said, in the day that
you eat it. That sounds like he knew something,
doesn't it? Some people say, try to make
that say, now if you eat this. The Lord never said to Adam,
if you eat this. He said, you're gonna eat it.
And he said, the day you eat it, you're gonna die. Now, Brother
Thomas talked there a moment ago about the fact that the Lord
Jesus Christ was ordained as the Savior of sinners from before
the foundation of the world. Now, think about that for a minute.
If Adam had never sinned, what would the Lord Jesus Christ have
come to, who would he have come to redeem? Now, I know these
things in some ways are kind of outside the realm of our thinking
and they're deep things. But dear brethren, the Lord,
He has created the world to manifest the glory of His grace in the
redemption of sinners through Jesus Christ. See, He will have
glory. Now, He could have ordained to
have glory in any fashion that He wished to do it. But he ordained
that he would have glory in the redemption of sinners in Jesus
Christ. Now that's a glorious thing,
because you see, that's the basis of the gospel that we preach,
is that Christ is the Savior, and he came to save sinners.
Now nobody can be proud of being a sinner, can they? I mean, you
know, only a rebel against God could be proud of being a sinner.
I mean, sometimes you see the men, we were talking about this
yesterday, you know, they'll join up with motorcycle gangs
and other kind of gangs and stuff because they want people to know
that they're rebels against God. And all of us are sinners. and
only the grace of God could change us. And so, as it says here,
using the law lawfully. So we talked about the law, the
natural law, the law that was given to Adam, don't do it, but
he did it. And he plunged all of his posterity
into sin. Now did that make the sin of
Adam a good thing? Now, see, men get into all kinds
of thoughts in their mind. Why? Because they want to rebel
against the purpose of God. They get thinking, well, you
know, if Adam, I mean, if it was ordained of God that Adam
was going to eat that thing, how, well, we can accuse God. No, you can't accuse God. Why? Because if you asked Adam, Adam,
why'd you eat that? He said, well, Now Adam, he made
an excuse, did he not? He said, well, the woman is the
one that did it. But see, Adam, if the Lord ever
taught him anything, Adam would have said, you know, I was stupid.
I rebelled against what God told me. God plainly told me not to
do that. And I did it. And so it is indeed
true that God ordains all things that come to pass. But it is
also equally and absolutely true that man is guilty for everything
that he's ever done. Because every man that's ever
done anything did it because he wanted to. Now you don't like
that. I know a lot of people say, well
he made me do it. No, nobody ever made you do it. You did
it because you wanted to. You did it because it was according
to your nature. And so it is. So, you got the natural law,
you got the laws given to Adam, and then the Lord, in his determination
to manifest the glory of his chosen people that he chose from
before the foundation of the world raised up a nation the
nation of Israel and he said I'm going to show my particular
love and my choice of the people in the nation of Israel and he
manifested His grace and mercy to them in giving them the law. The law was not a curse. The
law was a good thing. Everything in the law is designed
for the benefit of man. There's not anything in the law
that would harm a man. Everything in the law that the
Lord gave to the nation of Israel was a good thing. It was meant
for their benefit. Unfortunately, you know what
men do? What they did? They rebelled against it. They
said, well, this isn't quite right. I mean, you know, we got
a better plan. You ever have a better plan?
I bet you every day you have a better plan. In your mind,
something, you have a better plan. I mean, when the tire goes
flat on the car. You say, you know, I wouldn't
have made that tire go flat. That's not what I want. No, it's
not what you want. But you see, God, He ordains
these things. Yesterday, I was going down to get a car down the state, and
I had a trailer, and I had a couple of ramps on that trailer. And
I left the house and I was going, Ed was going to go with me and
so he was going to meet me down in Brantford at 6 o'clock. I
left the house at 5.30 and I was going to be there, sitting there
waiting on him with the truck running. You know, that was what
I was going to do. I had a good plan. But when I
got there and I got out and I looked back at my trailer, one of the
ramps was gone. And I said, hmm, this is not
good. Because not only do I not have
a ramp on the trailer, but that thing's probably laying in the
middle of the road somewhere, and it's dark, and somebody's
gonna come on there and run over it. You know, and I'm thinking
of all these different things that could happen. So I turn
around and drive nearly all the way back to my house, and right
where I turned out on the road is where that ramp, it was laying
right in the road, fortunately. Nobody came along and ran over
it, I don't guess. I hadn't heard about anybody
running over it. I didn't see anybody in the ditch
there, so I don't think they did. And I got that, and then
by that time, I'm thinking to myself, you know, this is making
me late here. Ed's gonna be down there waiting
on me. So I had a better plan, but you
know, I got to thinking about that later. I don't know why. Well, I know
why in my own lack of concern or whatever that the thing fell
off because it was just strapped on that trailer and I thought
went through my mind, you know, I might better do something different
with that. That could come out. And I said,
nah, it'll be all right. Well, it wasn't all right. But
anyway, I thought about that and later, You know, everything,
when you go down the road, and you're going where you're going,
and the only thing you're thinking about is what you're gonna do
when you get there and the things you got on your mind. But right
beside you, four feet from you, is somebody coming from the other
way. And he's thinking about the same thing. He's not thinking
about you, you're not thinking about him. And think about every
day how many people pass each other within that far, one going
70 miles an hour that way and one going 70 miles another way.
Think about that. That's not very far, is it? And
so it doesn't take but just a moment for a person to be thinking about
what they're thinking and not thinking about what they should
be thinking about. And guess what, bam. Now, our times are in the Lord's hand. And I don't know what the purpose
of God was in that, but I thought about it later. Well, you know,
it's possible that, I mean, in thinking how we'll think about
these things, I don't, you know, expect to know. Perhaps it was
somebody that swerved out into my lane just You know, that if
I had not had to do that, if I'd have been 30 minutes earlier
doing what I do, what would have happened? But see, that's a glorious
thing when you think of the fact that the Lord has all these things
in His hand. And He protects us. But the nation of Israel had
that law. And they disregarded it. Now the law that they disregarded
was a complete law. I say it's complete, it's complete
insofar as it is the revelation of God to them. Now they didn't
quite grasp it, really, what it was about, because they thought,
as the Pharisees demonstrated, that the law was given to corral
men. See, they thought, when the Lord
Jesus came and he healed a man on Sabbath, and they couldn't
see mercy for looking at the letter of the law. Because the
law said you shouldn't do any work on that day. You shouldn't
do anything. They said, well, you're doing it. Says, y'all
went through the corn and ate corn on this day. Y'all picked
corn. I mean, this is unlawful. See,
they didn't know the law. They used the law unlawfully.
That's not what the Lord meant by it. David understood it. He said, now, you didn't want
sacrifice and offering. He said, that wasn't what you
wanted. And the Lord Jesus, he told them
what the law was, did he not? He said, thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy mind. and thy neighbors
thyself." So a lawful use of the law must always include,
or not include, it must have as its purpose. See, if we're
going to teach the law to somebody, what we must do is teach them
what the Lord Jesus said about the law. Because therein is the
essence of the law. Not in the letter of each individual
commandment. Now I'm not saying disregard
the letter of the commandment. It's never wrong to, it's never
right to steal. It's never right to do ill to
your neighbor. But the law was given to manifest. The Mosaic written law is given
to manifest the sin of men. And that's what Paul goes on
to say here. He said, knowing this, the law
is not made for a righteous man. See, the Lord didn't pick out
people and say, you're going to be righteous people and I'm
going to give you this law. A righteous man does not need
a law. The Lord Jesus Christ did not
need the written law. Now, the written law was a blessed
thing to him. He didn't disobey the written
law. He didn't disregard the written law. But he didn't need
the written law. That was not the thing there
was. Why? Because he had it in his heart and in his mind to
serve the Lord his God and to do his Father's will. He said,
I cannot do mine own will. See, our problem is not that
we came to do our Father's will, but we came to do our own will.
And we often reluctantly do our Father's will if we can't get
out of it or we can't figure out a way to get around it. That's
how our mind works. But the Lord Jesus Christ had
no sin. He had no thoughts toward those
things. No guile was in His mouth. But
He gave Himself And so, there's one thing, and I'm gonna leave
you with this because we're running out of time here. There's another
consideration of the law. You got the natural law, you
got the law given to Adam, you got the law given to the nation
of Israel written out in tablets of stone, but then, You got that
which I would call, I don't have a good term for this, but I think
it is that the law is a principle. Now Paul says in the book of
Romans, and you need to know this verse, you need to know
these verses. Because this is the bedrock upon
which God's people stand. This is our place of standing. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. Now listen to this. for the law
of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from
the law of sin and death. Now what Paul's speaking about
there is not the law in the sense of any of those things that I've
been talking about, although there's an application of it
to them, but rather it's about the principle of the law. See, the Pharisees, their principle
of the law was a principle of sin and death. I mean that's
how they looked at the law. But you see the principle of
the law that we've been given in Christ is not to look at the
law in that fashion. So we might read it like this,
for the spirit, for the principle of the spirit of life in Christ
Jesus has made me free from the principle of sin and death. See we're not, we're not in bondage. to a written
law. But we're willing bond slaves
to Jesus Christ. And if he said to do this, then
we find no place of rebellion against it. And we teach other
men that Christ is the fulfillment of the law for those for whom
he died. Now is the law still in effect?
Absolutely. Because the law is that by which
the sins of men will be judged. When men stand before God, it's
not going to be arbitrary. I mean, they're going to be judged
according to this. The Lord will say, did I not
say this? And did you do that? And each
one will have to confess. I don't know how it will be in
that day, but they wouldn't have any room to stand because the
Lord's judgment will be passed upon them for the breaking of
His holy law. All of it. Natural. See, men
sin against the natural law. They sin against God's written
law. Yes, they do. And most of all, they sin against
the principle of the law. Because the principle of the
law is thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul,
and mind. The principle of the law is that
which points men to Christ. See, he's the end of the law.
He's the purpose of the law. Christ is the one whom the law
points to. And the law, dear brethren, is
the basis of our salvation. You realize that? I mean, because
the Lord satisfied the law. He fulfilled the law. So you
can't preach the law lawfully if you don't preach it that Christ
fulfilled it for his people, that he satisfied the law. and
that the law cannot condemn us if we be in Christ. That's a
glorious thought. Now there's so much more we can
say about that. And you know, that men would
ever think that we think that men have now been turned over
to just do whatever falls into their mind and whatever, just
doesn't understand the principle of the law, the principle of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. The Lord came that we
might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. He came,
He's given to His people the fruit of the Spirit. He says
in one place, you were, when you had, when you walked according
to the dictates of your mind, He said you were free from righteousness. But he said, now being made free
from sin, you become the servants of righteousness. See, we've
been given the freedom to serve God. We didn't have it before
because we were rebels against God. I mean, we couldn't muster
up enough to do anything in the sight of God. But in Christ,
dear brethren, we come into His presence with singing. We come into His presence with
joy because we know that Christ is our Redeemer. He's that one
who has set us free from the law of sin and death. And we
no longer fear to come into His presence because of the broken
law. Now we do indeed fear Him because
we know what we are by nature. We know that we're mere creatures
and He's a holy God. That the only reason we can even
approach unto Him is because He's given us the privilege in
His Son. That's the only way we can. But oh, we come not here
as slaves, though we gladly serve Him. Oh, He's the glorious King. May the Lord give us a mind and
heart today to serve him in the principle of the law of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus.