I Did Not Come To Abolish But To Fulfill #3

This morning, we're going to be returning to our study of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5. Over the past few weeks, we've studied what Jesus meant when he was describing us as the salt of the earth or as the light of the world. In these next verses, we're going to be studying an introduction, if you will, on the law of God. Jesus doesn't get into his discourse on the law of God in the passage we're reading this morning, but the rest of chapter 5 after this is Jesus. explaining the law of God to his hearers, to his disciples, saying things like, you have heard that it was said, but I say to you, time and time again, explaining the law of God to them. So this passage is a bit of an introduction to that, and he anticipates one of the objections that the Pharisees would have against him based on what he's about to say. And so he addresses that objection in our text this morning. And my hope is that we'll see that Jesus and the gospel are not at odds with the law.

and that because of that, we shouldn't be at odds with the law of God either. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 5, verses 13 to 20. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. You are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished.

Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. We're going to be spending our time today just on this passage where Jesus says, Do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. Here he's dealing with the law of God. And the Pharisees and the scribes' understanding of the law of God, what it was and who Jesus was. And so before we get into the context of exactly what Jesus is meaning in this context, I want to talk a little bit about how Jesus fulfilled the law of God. He says, you know, the sum of it is...

I came to fulfill the law of God. And so the first question that ought to be on our minds is, how did Jesus fulfill the law of God? Well, he was born, he lived, and he died according to the law of God. In Galatians 4, verses 4 and 5, Paul says this, When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons. Have you ever wondered why Jesus came to earth born as a baby through Mary? Did he not have the ability to come riding on a cloud or a chariot or just descending the way he went up? You realize he could have. It wasn't that he lacked power or ability to come in any other way. So why did he come, as this passage says, born of a woman, born under the law?

Well, this passage tells us he came in that way so that he might redeem those who were born under the law. And so you and I, we are those who were born under the law, born under the condemnation of the law, born under the obligations to keep the law, born under the penalty of disobedience to the law. That's you and that's me. And so if we're to be set free, redeemed from our failures, then our Savior had to come and be just like us. He had to be born under the law. He had to do all that it required. He couldn't come and say, the law doesn't matter anymore. I came to save you and so we're just going to take the law and we're just going to set it aside. We're not going to worry about that anymore. I'm here to save you. He had to come. He had to take on our flesh. He had to be just like us. A man facing temptations so that we could be saved. If he had not done those things, he could not have saved us.

While Jesus lived on earth, he kept the law, all of it. He did everything that it required perfectly. He didn't fail in any way. Sometimes I've wondered why Jesus celebrated the Last Supper. Was it just to teach us about communion? He says, well, there's going to be this meal that they're going to have afterwards, so I'll need to teach them. So we'll give them an example, and we'll have a meal in the upper room to teach them. Now, that may be true, and I think there is some truth to it. The instruction of it. But why is it that Jesus and his disciples went up into the upper room and celebrated the Passover? Well, simply because they were observing the law and obeying it. His disciples came to him and said, Lord, where do you want us to go to prepare for the Passover? They understood, after having lived with Jesus and ministered alongside of him for three years, we're going to do what the law says. Where do you want to have the Passover? And so you see, Jesus didn't come and say, I'm above that law. We don't need to worry about that law.

Instead, he came and says, we're going to do what the law requires. It is true that Jesus, when he taught, often taught outside of the temple, but it's also true that he and his disciples after him first went into the temple and taught the law of God in the temple of God to the people of God. And finally, how did Jesus fulfill the law? Well, he fulfilled the law in his death. He died according to the law. Now you might say, well, no, he didn't. Jesus didn't need to die according to the law. I need to die according to the law and you need to die according to the law. But Jesus, he didn't need to die according to law. And that is the gospel in a nutshell is that you're right. He didn't need to die according to the law because he was perfect and hadn't broken it. And yet he died according to the law in our place. He satisfied the wrath of God against us. He paid the penalty for our sins.

He didn't come and wipe away the law and say, the judgments that God has against you, the sins that you've piled up, don't matter anymore. He came knowing that all of the sins that his people have committed throughout all time still matter in the eyes of God and that they can't just be ignored. They must be dealt with according to the law. And what does the law say about those who sin? They must die. And so Jesus died. to fulfill the law's requirement or punishment or penalty for sin. Not his sin, but our sin. And so Jesus, his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, all of the Old Testament law and prophecies pointed to him. He was the fulfillment of the law. Some of you who have children, maybe that are not little, little, but...

but maybe four or five or a little older, you may have had occasion to say to them that they should do something. And you may have gotten intense and said, you need to do this right now. I'm telling you, you need to do it. And you may have had your child look at you with this look on their face. And what their face is saying is, I can't. I can't. That face may also say, I want to. But they have some knowledge that they can't. And so they cry. And they get upset. They're exasperated. Because what's required of them is something that they can't do. And this is the law's role in our life, in the life of the people of God. It's to make us realize we can't do and haven't done the things that are required in it. The law is like, it's the diagnostic tool to expose all of our illnesses and all of our weaknesses and all of our failures, but it has no cure in it. It has no cure in it.

The law doesn't say, you've done all this bad stuff. Look at all these things that are wrong. Now, if you'll just do these things over here, that'll all be fine. The law doesn't do that. What the law says is, you've got all these problems. You've committed all these sins. You've got all this stuff. Now, you must die. This is terminal. And so Jesus came to fulfill the law. You and I couldn't fulfill the law. Haven't fulfilled the law. Don't want to fulfill the law. Romans 8, 3 and 4 says, what the law could not do. Weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as an offering for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. And so when we read our passage and Jesus says, I didn't come to abolish the law or the prophets.

do not think that I did. I came to fulfill. We should be understanding Jesus had a, his whole life was a fulfillment of the law. And the things he did in his life were the things that we couldn't do ourselves. We weren't even close to doing them. There's another way in which though Jesus fulfills the law. And this is the introductory part of what's to come. Jesus is going to, in the section that follows, explain or expound or open up the law. He takes the law and he says, well, you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you, and then he explains in greater detail the law. You have heard that it is said you shall not murder, but I say to you, you have heard that if a man is going to divorce his wife, he shall give her a certificate of divorce, but I say to you, he takes the law, the Old Testament rules, and he explains them more fully to the people of God. And so Jesus anticipates that when he does that,

the scribes and pharisees those teachers of the law were going to become angry at him because of his work he knew that they would accuse him not of fulfilling the law not of explaining it more fully but of abolishing it because what he's going to say to them in effect is what you know and what you've taught is not the whole story so you have either failed to go far enough or you have just misled the people and lied to them and that was a big deal Hebrews 10.28 says, Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. The law of God was important to the Jews. They cared about it. They spent their lives trying to teach it and explain it to people. Now, did they do it perfectly? No. In fact, Jesus' explanation of the commandments is an exposure of their failures to understand the nature of the law. But that's not to say that they didn't care.

that it was insignificant to them, that they didn't mind. They would have had a visceral response to anyone opposing their teaching or understanding of the law of God. It was their religion. And not all of their commitment to the law of God was bad. And so as a result, throughout Jesus' life and ministry, they did accuse him of breaking the law, of abolishing it, of not caring about it many times. In Mark chapter 2, as Jesus and his disciples were passing through the grain fields, it says this. They were making their way along, picking the heads of grain, and the Pharisees were saying to him, to Jesus, look, why are you doing what's not lawful on the Sabbath? Why have you taken our law and just thrown it aside as though it doesn't matter? To which Jesus responded, and I'm paraphrasing, don't you remember when David went into the temple and ate the showbread? And he's not a priest? That's against the law, isn't it?

but he was hungry. My disciples are hungry. Is it so wrong for them to eat if they're hungry? Would the law of God prevent that? Of course, the answer is no. And again, there was a time when Jesus healed a man, where this man was sick with an illness that says for 38 years. This is in John chapter 5. And there's this pool that they say the angels come down and they stir the water. And when the waters move in this pool, all these sick people just hang out around the pool and they wait for the water to move. And when the water moves, the first guy that gets into it, the first woman that gets into it, is healed of all of their afflictions. And the Bible says that the angels used to come down and do it.

They used to come down and stir the water. And so there was this miracle that all these people were waiting to be a part of. And there was this man who was lame. And he could never get himself to the water before the other people. When the water would move, they'd rush. And this guy, he'd try, but he couldn't get there. So Jesus sees this man. And he says, what's wrong? And he says, well, I'm sick. I've been sick for 38 years. And every time I try to go get in the water to be healed, somebody else beats me to it. So here I am. I'm sick. I can't get up.

And Jesus says, do you want to be well? The man says, I want to be well. And Jesus says, get up, take your pallet, go home. The man was healed. The man got up. He took his pallet. He went home. But when he was on his way, the Pharisee stopped and said, why are you carrying your pallet? That's work and it's the Sabbath day. And he says, you know, you have to imagine this guy. 38 years, he's not been able to do the thing he's doing right then. Somebody said, get up. And he tried. And after 38 years, he was able to get up. And he goes, you know, I'm going to do what the guy said. I'm going to take my pallet and I'm going to go home.

and he wasn't thinking, oh, that's breaking the Sabbath. I'm not supposed to carry this plank around with me. But the Pharisees cared about it. They came to him and said, well, what are you doing? It's unlawful for you to carry a pallet on the Sabbath. And he says, well, the guy who healed me, he told me to do it. They said, who told you to do it? Well, Jesus had slipped away. He was gone. The Scripture says that he lost himself in the crowd. He got away. So there the man's left holding his pallet, looking, going, I don't know who it was. And then later on, he sees Jesus and comes back to the Pharisees. And it says in verses 15 and 16 of John 5, it says the man went away and he told the Jews that it was Jesus that made him well. And then it says this, for this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. And so they understood Jesus' teaching to be opposed to the law.

He's not keeping the Sabbath. And time and time again, they accuse him. They try to catch him in plays on words or arguments with regard to the law and saying, well, is it lawful for this? Isn't it lawful for that? And what about doing this on the Sabbath and the other? Jesus knows this is coming. He anticipates it. And so he says to us very simply and plainly so that we can understand, do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets. I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. It's worth noting that the Jews would have had a very different understanding of the law than you and I would or do. They didn't want to be free of the law. They loved the law. To them, the law was their salvation. And so they would understand the abolishing of the law to have been a throwing away of their religion, an institution of chaos. All the order and everything they'd ever known was all going to be thrown out if someone abolished the law.

You see this sort of thing with the Sanhedrin, with the disciples. They come to them and they give them strict orders not to teach anymore. And they say, well, we have to obey God rather than men. But the thing that they say against them, they say, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching. Well, what was the result of it? Well, there was trouble. There was trouble for the Pharisees and the scribes. They didn't want that trouble. And so the disciples, similarly to Jesus, were similar to Jesus in that the Jews wanted to kill them. They wanted to put down the opposition. They didn't want to be free of the law. They didn't want it thrown away. And so Jesus anticipates this and says, don't think that I came to abolish the law. I didn't come to throw it away. I'm going to oppose you, but not in a way that abolishes the law. Jesus never said to them, you're wrong. I think one of the most difficult things in this section, we'll come to it next week. He says to his disciples,

unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And you think they had righteousness about them? These people who wanted to put him to death had some sort of righteousness about them, something that we were supposed to look at and say, oh, I've got to do better than that. I think we commonly would look at the scribes and Pharisees and we'd go, they're just hypocrites, there's nothing good there, there's nothing to be learned, they have nothing admirable in them. But then Jesus says, here, unless your righteousness surpasses theirs, you're not going to heaven. And so we're back on our heels having to look and go, they understand something about the law of God that I need to understand, and then I need to do better than them. Jesus never said, don't worry about the law anymore, I'll take care of it. Or, after I'm gone and I've died, it'll be fine. The law and the gospel, they fit together. I want to ask you a couple of questions. You may not answer them out loud, and that's fine, but I want you to think about them for a second. Who believes in and follows the New Testament?

Whose holy book is that? Of course, we're all sitting here thinking, Christians, right? It's Christians. Who believes in and follows the Old Testament? Whose holy book is that? Well, certainly the Jews. If we were to put ourselves at the time of Jesus, we'd say, well, it was the Jewish people. The nation of Israel was their holy book. I wonder if you walked out on the street today. Now, we're a bit of a control group here. But if you went out on the street and you asked them and said, okay, whose holy book is the New Testament? They'd say Christians. You said, okay, well, whose holy book is the Old Testament? I bet you're as likely as not to have people say the Jews and that the answer would not be Christians because we have the New Testament as opposed to or in opposition to the Old Testament. That was for them. This is for us. Now, maybe you did think Jews and not Christians when I asked about the Old Testament.

So then I want to ask a follow-up question and say, why don't we think that the Old Testament, why don't we think of it as something that Christians are to follow? We might not be willing to go so far as to say, I don't think the Old Testament's for Christians. But I think what we would be willing to admit, if we're honest, is that it pales in comparison and is overwhelmed by and is a distant second to the New Testament. And I'm using the Old Testament here simply as a placeholder, synonymous for the law of God. That somehow when Jesus came, the gospel just overshadowed the law and treated it in such a way as to put it out of mind and out of sight. Far, far away. It's become the sort of thing that we get good children's stories from. That that's what the Old Testament's for.

That it's there for us to learn about God's people in the past. It's sort of a historical document, if you will. It tells us about things that happened long ago to people who are not us. In light of the New Testament, it's just a distant memory. We have the gospel now. We don't need the law anymore. Jesus came and he lived and he died. He fulfilled the law. And so now it can be set aside. Well, this inclination, and I hope you do see this inclination in yourself because this inclination is actually addressed by Paul in Romans that I'm about to read to you. In Romans 6, he says, what then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Shall we take the law because Jesus came and died? Shall we take the law and just set it aside and say, yeah, we don't have to worry about that anymore? We can sin because Jesus died and we're under grace. Is that how we should live? Paul's response is, may it never be. May it never be that because Jesus fulfilled the law,

We take the law and say, we don't have to be concerned with that anymore because we're under grace. Shall we sin that grace may abound? Paul asks again in Romans, and again he answers, may it never be. And so like the Romans, we're tempted and inclined not to worry about sin anymore because Jesus came to say he dealt with all of that, and so I don't need to be concerned about the law of God anymore. It had its time and it had its place. But Jesus came and took care of it all. No longer my concern. Now the law of God is something we could spend a lot of time talking about and learning about. And I just want to give you a very brief overview of the three types of laws that were in the Old Testament. Because not all of them apply the same way in today's society. So what are the three categories of the Old Testament law? The ceremonial law, the judicial law, and the moral law.

So when you think of the ceremonial law, you go, what was that? That was all of the temple rites, the garb that the priests wore, the sacrifices, the blood and the burning and the incense and the altar, and all of that stuff was part of the ceremonial law. What was the purpose of all of that stuff? What was the purpose of it? Is there any reason for us to know anything about what the priests had to build and do and wear to obey the ceremonial law? Well, yes. All of that stuff pointed to Jesus. When you had to go bring your lamb and you had to bring it up to the priest, and I would describe the priests as butchers. The amount of time they spent covered in blood was a lot. And you had to take your lamb and you had to get the best one, the most valuable one to you, the one that could turn the most profit. And you said, okay, that's the one you have to give to God. And you say, okay, don't bring me the spotted one or the lame one or the old one. Bring me the nice new.

young, clean one. And you'd take it up to the priest, and you understood that there was a problem, that this little lamb was supposed to pay for, was a payment for. And what would the priest do? Well, he'd kill it. And he'd cut it up, and he would burn portions of it, and they would eat portions of it, and you would get a portion of it. And we could look at that way in the rearview mirror and go, yeah, they did these weird things back then. They had animals, but now we've got Jesus. I don't think those things have anything to do with each other. And I say they have everything to do with each other. Everything in the world to do with each other. That lamb represented Jesus. The reason you had to bring that lamb to the priest was because of your sins. And it had to die because there had to be a payment for sin. Its blood had to be shed. Its body had to be sacrificed. You had to give a portion of it to the Lord through the offering.

You have to give a portion of it to the priest for his sustaining. We pay our pastors, right? You got a portion of it. You had a celebration. You were glad. You took something that was very valuable to you and you offered it and it was killed to signify a payment for sins and to provide for the priest and to be a blessing to you. We meet all the time nowadays. That would not have been common back then. This would have been a feast day, a celebration day. They would have gotten together and this would have been special to them. All because of their sins and the need of their sins to be paid for, to be atoned for. The priests had to dress in a certain way to be holy. They didn't walk around with bells and all this garb and this oil and all these things regularly. They had their work clothes and then they had their sacrificing clothes. And it was made to make them look different, stand out, be holy. They stood in the place of God.

There's all kinds of imagery and types and shadows all pointing to what had to come, what would come, what Jesus would do. Well, when Jesus came, he fulfilled that part of the law. And so that portion of the law was all meant to point forward and say, this is what you need, and this is what God will provide. We have other pictures in the Old Testament of this type of thing happening. Abraham with his son Isaac. Before we have the law, he's going to take his son. He's going to kill his son. He's going to offer him up to God as a sacrifice. We have a pointing forward, a prophecy, if you will, a type in the Old Testament to teach us about Jesus. That's what the ceremonial law was for. Now, when Jesus came, all that stuff that was pointed to and said, this is going to happen, God's going to do this, Jesus did it. He fulfilled it. That part was now complete. That's why we don't do the things that the Jews did anymore in terms of offering sacrifices, because Jesus came and paid for sins once for all.

And so that part of the law has been fulfilled and is abrogated, which is a big word that means fulfilled and put to rest, no longer intact or necessary. The second part of the law that we mentioned was the judicial law. that says if people sin, there are sacrifices that they have to offer for their sins. But some of their sins are sins against God. Some of their sins are sins against men. And those things have to be dealt with. And there's various types of consequences for those sins. Now, who was given that law? Well, the nation of Israel, who were the people of God at that time, were given that law. It applied to them. Israel was a theocracy. It meant God was at the top. He was their ruler. He was their king. He gave them their law. When this happens, this is how you deal with it.

If the thief breaks in and steals, if it happens at daytime or nighttime, this is what has to happen. If he did it because he was hungry, then this is how you deal with it. If somebody's bull breaks out and gores somebody, you deal with it this way. If he does it again, this is how you deal with it. It was a law given to them about how to govern their life and their affairs. God was their lawgiver. Those laws were unique to them. They were not meant to be cut and pasted across all of civilization. And by cut and paste, you understand I mean literally like we're going to take this chunk, pull it out, and stick it in somewhere else. Just exactly how it was, that's how it's supposed to be. We could talk at length about the judicial law and what the Westminster Confession says about the general equity of the law and whether there's goodness in taking the principles and applying them. But that's not our subject today. The judicial law was given to the nation of Israel who were the people of God directly from his mouth. And so my question to you is,

Are you a member of the spiritual nation of Israel? Not a Christian, but one of those people like in the Old Testament. The answer is no, you're not. Do you live there? No, we don't. So these laws don't apply to us. Certainly not in the same way that they did when Israel was around. Now the third type of law that was given was the moral law. These we see most clearly demonstrated in the Ten Commandments. And these are still intact today. They teach us how to live what God requires of us and have promises of blessing and warnings of judgment if we disobey them. Now, which is the one that we would most like to do away with today? It's funny, I hear people often saying, I think Roman Catholicism is probably the closest manifestation to a reinstallment of the ceremonial law. But there's plenty of Protestants who want to return back to smells and bells and formalism and tradition and these things that we do. There's some attraction to ceremony still alive in us today, even if it's not exactly what the Jews did before Christ.

How about the judicial law? Well, there's plenty of people who would call themselves Christians who say, we need to return to a time where Jesus is Lord. And because he's Lord, his rules and his laws need to apply straight across in our society today. And then there's the moral law, of which of the three, I think that's the one that we're least likely to say, yeah, give us some more of that. What we need is more of that. That is the type of law, the Old Testament law, that's under attack constantly. That's the type of law that in our society we want to see abolished. We don't want any more of that. We don't want any more of being told no about those things. Where the Jews didn't want to get rid of the law, they didn't want to see it abolished. They had some love for it. It's interesting, in our society, we would not have been offended at the idea of the law being abolished. If you went out and asked a hundred...

People who call themselves Christians, would you like to see God's laws kept applied to society or would you like to see them reserved for just the church? I think the vast majority would say those laws are just for the, they just belong in there. They don't, God doesn't have anything to say to the people who aren't Christians or don't claim to be. We'd like to do away with those laws. And even in the church, God's no, his law has got lots of dust on it. His no has fallen out of style. Sin has been given a wide berth in the church. We could say out in society, and that's just obvious. Our concern ought to be in the church. It's been given a wide berth, saying no to people. Or God says. It's not the sort of thing you hear. And so we live in a time where our desire to have the law abolished has been, in many ways, fulfilled within the church. We don't want to be told no. We don't want to hear judgments. We don't want to be warned.

What we want is the gospel, but what I say to you is you cannot have the gospel without those things. You cannot have it. You say, well, yes, I can. I grew up, and that's all. We talked about the gospel all the time. We talked about Jesus, and we had altar calls, and we had prayer meetings, and we had all these things we did. It was all about Jesus. It was all about the gospel from the nursery on up through the worship service. Everything was about Jesus all the time. All I want to ask you is what's the fruit of that type of ministry been? Has it produced disciples of Jesus?

Or has it produced entitled men and women who are unwilling to be told no? Has it produced men and women that love God's Word and who know it? Or has it produced a multitude of men and women who excuse sin and never say no? Because they're Christians. They would say, we don't do that because we're Christians. We need to have grace. But what we fail to understand is that grace is the answer to a problem. Grace doesn't make any sense and has no value apart from guilt. Understanding your guilt. Then grace means something. Then it has substance. But if you don't know that you've done anything wrong or that there's a holy God or that hell is real and you're going there and it's not the kind of place you'd ever want to spend a minute, let alone eternity, if you haven't felt that, Fire burning under your feet. Grace is like, well, okay, I'll have some of that. Sure, it sounds good. You go through the potluck line. You say, well, I'll try some of this and I'll try some of that. That's got green stuff. I don't want any of that. Well, that green stuff is the law of God that you need. I was at a meal yesterday and I saw a little girl. Now, she had allergies to the food. I looked at her plate. I watched her. She took a bite of Cool Whip. And it's what she had on her plate. It wasn't on anything. It's just a big pile of Cool Whip.

And next to it, she had like fruit marshmallow salad. And next to that, she had some other sort of dessert. And I know the little girl. And I said, honey, where is your lunch? And she says, this is my lunch. There's no sandwich. There's no vegetables. There's no anything of substance. And she's a big old smile on her face as she eats the Cool Whip. And we laugh at it. And we say, well, that's cute. And that's sweet. And I said, honey, why aren't you eating any real food? And she said, because I'm allergic to everything else. that's on the table. And I think that's a good picture of the church today. We are allergic to everything except the cool whip of the gospel. That's it. Now, I don't mind if a little girl with allergies can only eat the dessert. Her mom and dad can go get her some real food she can eat later. But you and I ought not to be allergic to the substance of the gospel. The law of God is the substance of the gospel. It is the foundation of the gospel. And if you don't have that,

You have a gospel that's like a house built on sand. And as soon as the storm comes and the people who've believed in it face those trials, what happens to them? They collapse. Having no firm root, they're choked out. And you might be sitting here saying, man, you're talking an awful lot about the law. I feel like you're trying to drag me back to the Old Testament. We have Jesus. And I say, you're right. And if you're feeling that way, you're not unique. All you're feeling is the discomfort of realizing The things you've come to believe and become accustomed to are not the whole story. They're not the whole story. The law has a place, a vital place, in us coming to Jesus Christ. In Galatians 3, it says, Before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith. Now,

You remember when I talked about a child at the beginning, and I said, maybe you as a parent have said to them such a thing that they looked at you with big eyes, full of tears, and they go, Daddy, I can't do that. And if you're normal, what you thought was that I was saying you were being a bad parent. And there's a way to do that bad, poorly. But that thing that your child felt in that moment, maybe you felt that as a child, that thing you felt where you go, I can't, is a good thing to feel. provided that your father or your mother then says, you're right, honey. You're right. You can't. And I'm not saying these things to you because I want to crush you or because I want to discourage you or because I want you to be without hope in this world. I'm saying these things to you so that you realize there's an end to who you are and what you're capable of. You have needs that are beyond your ability to go get. That thing you can't do is obey. That thing you haven't done is obeying.

I want you to know you can't do it. I want you to know that when you try, you still can't do it. And that as a result of your inability, you fail and you sin. That's what you do. That's what you've done. And your kid goes, no, that's awful news. That's terrible. Why would you say that to your child? And I say, because then I want to say to them, that's why Jesus came. That feeling you have right now, that little sense of your inability is the thing that is just the tip of the iceberg of your inability to serve God. It's just the littlest part of it. There's a lot more that you don't see yet, but God sees. And all that stuff has to be dealt with, and Jesus came to deal with it. And if you'll put your faith in him, and you'll trust him, he will deal with it for you and before his Father.

Without the law, you'll never see Jesus that way. You'll never see him as being the answer to your problem. Not the problem of sickness in this world or the problem of broken relationships or the problems of singleness or any of the things that you have. The problem of sin. If we abolish the law, if we do away with it, we don't just lose the law, we lose the gospel. We lose Jesus. The law is God's tool to bring us to faith in Christ. And until men and women, children, feel their guilt before God and see it in some way, they will not come to Christ. They will not come. So what is the fruit of a church or a ministry that doesn't ever make people feel their need of salvation? The fruit of their ministry will be that when difficulty comes in the lives of their people, their people will fall away.

Their people will grow cold. Their people will fail. Because that's the example and the testimony that's been set before them. I was telling Vanessa last night about eschatology. Just a big word that means end times. And I said, you know, my frustration with guys who are post-mill is that they, you know, some of you may have no clue what I'm talking about. Just know that there are Christians out there who are all about Jesus coming back, and they're like, and he's going to come back, and it's going to be great, and we don't need to worry because of it. And I said, you know, honey, what I think is that if you went to those men privately and you said, well, what would you do with people when they're actually suffering under the burdens of life in this world, the trials that they face, the hardships that they endure? Would you just tell them, well, don't worry about it because Jesus is going to come back and make it all right?

I said, I think they'd actually go to them and they would comfort them and they'd bear with them and they'd say, you know what, it is actually very difficult to live in this world as a Christian and having hope is actually a grace of God and it's not some little easy thing that we get off the lowest shelf. I said, my problem is that their messaging and the way that they talk and the way that they speak is that they make it seem like it's this easy thing that you just grab a hold of and it solves all your problems. If you'll just take hope in the fact that Jesus is going to come back and fix everything, then the problems you have right now just won't be hard. And I said, I think it just presumes too much strength of the people you're talking to.

They're not actually as strong as you think they are. They don't have the faith that you attribute to them. We'd be better off to say to them, you know, we should say things like, I believe, help my unbelief. Give me today my daily bread. Just today. Help me not to worry about tomorrow because today has enough trouble of its own. I think the reason we don't like the law is because it makes us feel bad. I think the Jews liked keeping people in a state of... fear and dependence. And Jesus did come in some sense to set them free from that, that fear and that dependence. We say, no, I'd rather, in our day, we say, I'd rather be strong in my own strength. I'd rather provide for my own self. I don't have any needs. And so the law is absolutely essential for us to see our needs, to be shown our needs and our inability to provide for them. And so it's a great comfort to me and should be to you that Jesus says,

I didn't come to abolish. I didn't come to abolish the law. I didn't come to do away with it. I came to fulfill it. I came to meet the demands of my Father, to satisfy His wrath against you, and to teach you what it means to live and be like me. That should be a comfort to you. Because implicit in that is that He will help us do it. That our inability is not the reason for us to set aside the law. but it's the reason for us to come to God and ask him to help us do in his strength what we can't do in our own strength. And so what good would we be as Christians if we had no idea what it meant to live like a Christian and to behave like a Christian? What we should say yes to, no, what we should say no to. We would be weak Christians, vulnerable Christians, false Christians. So what's my application? What I want to do is simply exhort you.

to study the law of God. And I don't say that as though it is any way diminishes the gospel. I want you to study the law of God. You should read the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. It's all fun and games except for a few genealogies from Genesis 1 through about Exodus 20. But once you get past Exodus 20 where the law is given, all of a sudden it becomes this tough slogging. Things that we're like, well, I don't know what that's about, what that means, and our eyes kind of glaze over. That stuff right there is what you need. If you went to the doctor and said, doc, do some blood work and figure out what I'm deficient in. If I was your doctor and I did the blood work, I'd say what you're deficient in is the law of God. You need an injection of it. Here's an example of it. I realized this in my family a few weeks ago. I won't ask you to raise your hand for sake of embarrassment. How many of you could name the Ten Commandments in order?

Just think, could you do it? Confidently. Not like, well, I, maybe, some of them. If you can't say with confidence, yes, I know the Ten Commandments in order and I'd accept the short form. That's all the evidence you need that you don't know the law of God. And how are you going to love Jesus and become like Him if you don't know the Ten Commandments? You should learn them. You really should learn them. Start with the short form and then learn all of them. Learn the whole thing. First commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. That's right. That's the short form. Learn the long form. Some of them are quite long. Some of them are quite short. Learn them. They'll provide for you a framework to process the rest of Scripture and your life and your own sins. What sins am I committing? Get a copy of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. I'd love for you to get a copy of the Westminster Larger Catechism and read it on the Ten Commandments.

There's a very simple structure. What is the commandment? What does it mean? Two questions. What does this commandment, which fill in the blank, require of you? And then there's an answer. And it's not a short little, like, be good. That's not what it says. It'll tell you in list form, this is what it requires of you. What does it forbid? And then there'll be a list. These are the things it'll forbid. And it's like, it gives you help. Help to do what? How does it help you? The way it helps you is it shows you all of the ways in which you need Jesus. That's what it does. Will you be encouraged when you read about the Ten Commandments and you learn what all it means? No, that by itself will not encourage you. It will discourage you. You will get frustrated. You'll get discouraged. You'll think, I don't want to do this anymore. But then you should remember what Paul said in Galatians is that the law is our tutor to lead us to Christ. And so when you read those things and you say, you know, I don't do that. I don't want to do that. I don't know how to do that. I haven't done that. You'll say, wow.

But I'm supposed to. God requires it of me. And even when I don't do it, I'm failing. I'm sinning against God. I need Jesus to pay for my sins. You could go on a lot longer. I would be content if you would read the Pentateuch without eyes glazed over and you would memorize the Ten Commandments. It would do your soul good. Do your soul good. So do it. Do it. Let's pray.