These Words Shall Be On Your Heart

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one in the room that has a cough. I'm listening to you guys while I've been praying. Hopefully the Lord will deliver us from these things, but really these things teach us that this world's not our home. The Midwest has a lot of nice things about it. This is not one of them. So if you go further north, the cold is beautiful and consistent, and I think more enjoyable. If you go further south, there's less of it, and that's nice. We sort of live in this place where... Freezing rain marks our existence about as bad as it gets. And for those of you who live in Marion County, they decided they weren't going to plow the rest of the year unless there's more than four inches. So however the roads are, that's how they're going to be for a while. So I guess you'll need to pay some more in taxes. Now, I'm glad you're all here this morning and that you came to the house of God to worship. We're going to be continuing our study in Deuteronomy chapter 6. Our text is part of what's called...

the great Shema, okay? It's not the whole part, but it's part of it. It's a prayer. It's sort of the guiding principles of Judaism, okay? It contains the greatest commandment, the one that sums up the entire law. This commandment, this passage tells us, should be continually upon our hearts and on our minds. It's the central thought and directive of the Christian faith. There's nothing that's more central to what we believe and what we're to be. And so my hope this morning is that God will impress his law upon our hearts, even as it exposes our failures and our sins. My hope is that it will be our tutor and our guide to the cross of Jesus Christ. Would you please stand now as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 9. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, our passage starts with a statement of the... Our passage starts with the statement that the Lord is our God and that he is one. There's two things that we're told. One, that God is our God, and two, that he is one God. He's monotheistic. Now, we could go off onto a long explanation of the difference between monotheism and polytheism, and that's not my point. That's not what we're going to do. What I want to say to you is that...

I'm not concerned that in our day, what we're going to do is try to mix together different religions or different gods with our God. What I'm concerned is that we are going to try to accommodate our God to our society and to our own sensibilities. We're going to try to make him predictable. We're going to try to make him safe. We're going to try to make him approachable. What this verse teaches us, though, is that there is no idea, there is no God, there is no priority, there is no impulse, there is no desire of ours that is his equal. He is singular. He is alone. There is nothing and no one in all of creation that is like him or can be joined to him. Most of our desires and most of our priorities are to try to yoke God.

to something that we care about? What are some of the things that we might do that with in our society? Maybe our own temptations, maybe the church more broadly. Politics, anyone? We want to yoke God to a particular set of political ideology. And it's not just in our society, perhaps it's just the Republicans who want to do that. But you have to realize that historically, it's not just Republicans who want to do that. Everybody wants to do that. Everyone wants to say, we're doing these things because God is like this. These are God's priorities. And there may be some truth in some of what they say, that some of the things that are their priorities do have overlap with God and his word. But God is monotheistic, and he does not fit into any of your political ideology. Okay? God would be a disruptor of your political theology, your political ideology. If he showed up...

at any of the caucuses, if Jesus walked in, I suspect it would be worse than when he showed up to the temple. What had they tried to mix in with God at that point? Well, they loved money, so they wanted to make money. He turned their house into what he calls a den of robbers. And so he came in and he flipped over the tables and drove the people out with a whip because they tried to make him in their own image. And we must always be on guard against doing that. And listen, there's no one in this room. who's not susceptible and is not doing this. You are doing it. The question is not if you're doing it, it's how you're doing it. How is it that I want to fashion God into something that is more agreeable or palatable to me? Our God is one. He is not to be joined together with any part of his fallen creation. John chapter three, verse 31 says, he who comes down from above is above all. He who is of the earth is from the earth and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all.

He can't be joined to it. One of the mysteries of the Christian faith is the hypostatic union. It's a big theological word. What's a hypostatic union? Well, it's just a term that's meant to describe how is Jesus fully God and fully man? How do you put those things together? And there's various heresies that have arisen over the centuries as to how that might have been done. Because in our brains, we can't say he's 100% God and 100% man. It doesn't seem to be compatible to us. But there it is. He is 100% God. He is fully the Son of God, and he is fully the Son of Man, born of a woman. So God is not one that we can put into a box. We can't slap our stickers on him and say, this is what's important to God. This is what he's like. It happens to be all the stuff that is important to me.

We have to avoid this constant desire to bring God down to our level and to make him more palatable and accessible. You know the song, Who is Like Our God? When I looked in the bulletin, I was like, we almost got to it. We sang Our Great God. I didn't tell John, but the first verse of Who is Like Our God says this, the Lord is not our equal. Really? Really? He doesn't need the help of man. Who could ever give him counsel? Who could ever stop? His sovereign plan. Though men may boast of wisdom and be filled with pride within, who is bold enough to answer when his maker comes to question him? What is that verse getting at? It's getting at this point I'm making that God is not our equal. He's not our peer. He's certainly not our debtor. We're not the boss. He is God and there is no other. And there's none that we can conceive of individually, corporately. There is no other.

false God that can rise up and be considered the same as him. He is alone in who he is, and he is above all things. There is nothing and no one that is like him. Then we come to the next verse, which says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. If I had to ask you, do you like that verse or do you not like that verse? What do you think? You're like, well, now you're making me think about it. I'd never thought about it before. Do you like it? I don't like it. I mean, I like, I love it, but it puts pressure on me that I don't like. What pressure am I talking about? Well, he says, you shall love. We like love. That's good, right? And then it goes into all this with all of your heart and with all of your mind and with all of your strength. It's like, it's so, it's so everything, you know? And I'm left being like, well, I don't do that. I can't do that. And so I don't like being told to do things I can't do.

None of us like to be told to do things we can't do. You who are parents, don't you have your kids? This isn't part of your job to teach them that they can do things they didn't think they could do. Don't you push them. But don't you also realize that there are things that they cannot do. And not just be for a little while, but there will be things they will never be able to do. And so we take issue with this idea in our hearts that we would... give all of ourselves, not because we may not want to, but because we're not capable of doing it. And so here's the danger. When we're not able to do something that's required of us, what do we immediately want to do? Somebody say, what do you want to do? And someone says, you have to do this. And you're like, I can't do that. What do you tell them? That's not fair. What'd you say, Daniel? You take issue with it. Gabe, did you say something? I thought you mouthed something.

We take issue with it. We go, that's not right. And the sum of all of our impulses is you need to lower the standard. It needs to be attainable. That's the only reasonable thing to do. That's what would make it fair. Now, I'll ask you a question to make my point. If someone owed you a million dollars, you'd be like, I'm going to be rich, right? And if they came to you and they legitimately owed you the money for whatever reason, there was a real legitimate obligation they had. And they came to you and they said, man, I can't pay that. I think that's a crazy amount of money. I could never pay that. In fact, I think you're unreasonable for expecting me to pay something I could never pay. What would you say as the lender? Oh, you're right. Sure, okay. I'll just, how much can you afford? Okay, 20 bucks. Sounds good. You'd realize all of a sudden you'd be like, we have a problem here.

The problem is that you owe something you can't pay. The problem is not resulting from the lender. The problem is resulting from the borrower. The borrower has a problem. They can't pay. And consequences come to those who can't pay. But we have this idea with God that because we can't pay, he ought to lower the standard. He ought not to expect of us and require of us things that we're not capable of. But I ask you, is the fault with him or is the fault with us? Is there something wrong with his law and his word because we're not able to keep it? No. And if you were the lender who was rightfully owed a million dollars, it would not be your fault that the borrower couldn't pay it. It would be their problem. And there would be consequences for their inability to pay. Now, I realize many of us probably have in our hearts this idea of forgiveness and it being important.

And being gracious and being merciful. Even the story of the man who, you know, the slave who owed his master a ton of money. And he came and begged for mercy. And the master granted it. And we say, yeah, that's what should happen. That's what should happen. And I'm going, well, we'll come to that. We'll come to that. But before we come to that part of it, you have to realize what compelled that slave to go beg of his master for mercy. What was it? What did his master say he was going to do? Sell him. Sell him off and his family. Sell him off.

Divide them up. Get what he could for them. Because he was owed for. Would the master have been wrong? We say, well, he'd be wrong because it was slavery. We say, well, there was a debt to be paid. Why do we live as though those who have debts to be paid ought always to just have their debts ignored and have somebody else bear the cost of it? That's not the way it works. Even with God, that's not the way it works. He doesn't just go, oh, no big deal. You really screwed up, but you couldn't possibly held to account for all of the things that you've, all the sins you've committed. So we'll just write off a bunch of it and deal with the part you might be able to make some progress on. That's not how God is. Every sin must be fully paid for. And our inability to do it, our inability to love God with all of our hearts and all of our minds and all of our strength, there's no fault in God requiring that of us.

He's not wrong for requiring that of us. Our inability to do it is the problem. And because we have the problem, it doesn't mean that now God has to lower his standard. He would cease to be God if he lowered his standard. In effect, he would say, you know, what you did is not that big of a deal. Now I'll ask you, what happens when someone sins, fails in some way, and you come to them and all you say to them is, oh, it's not that big of a deal. You don't need to apologize. In the short term, we go, it's sweet. We've all relieved the pressure. What's likely to happen? They may hold it over your head or you're likely to go do it again. Haven't you done this with your kids? Haven't you decided that it was the gracious thing to do to not discipline them, to warn them and to tell them and plead with them and promise them things if they obey and you go through this whole, and then they fail again. And you're like, why are they doing that? It's like, well, because.

You told them that there weren't consequences for their actions. One of the first things you have to learn as a Christian, and this is the whole purpose of the law really, is to show you there's an inescapable problem between you and God. Inescapable problem. You can't talk your way out of it. You can't run far enough away from it. You can't pay it with any amount of effort that you put into it, even for your whole life. You can't solve this problem. That's the whole point of the law. Paul says, I didn't know what sin was until the law came in. He didn't know there was a problem until the law came in and all of a sudden it crushed him. It crushed him. But too often we go, ah, we're in Christ now and we have Jesus so we don't have any of that anymore. There's no need for that. And I mean to tell you that you're wrong if you think that. But that is not the gospel. The gospel is a solution to a problem with eternal consequences. Jesus coming.

And dying for his people is what you need. It's what you have to have if you have any hope of standing before God. Because what's communicated in this passage and in all of the law and throughout the whole scripture is that there are things that God requires of you because he's made you that you are incapable of performing to him for him. And he will hold you account for your failures. And he won't feel bad about it. He's not doing you wrong by being just. We are made. to feel our inadequacies. We're made to feel the danger that we're in. Maybe your cars slip on the way to church a little bit. That split second, you know, before all the technology kicked in to straighten it out, that's nothing compared to what you, the fear and the trepidation and the anxiety that you ought to feel when you consider what God requires of you. All of your heart, all of your soul, all of your might.

You ought to be feeling at this point uncomfortable. I don't want to hear about, I don't like this. And I mean to tell you that if you feel some of that, you have just barely scratched the surface of it. What was it that those men at the preaching of Pentecost, what did they feel? What caused them to cry out, brethren, what must we do to be saved? A little bit of fear? A momentary encounter with God at a distance? No. They saw, in part, the holiness and the glory of God and their own sinfulness. And they went, what must we do? What can be done? That is the exclamation that must reside in the heart of every Christian. And if it does not reside in your heart, not a Christian. You haven't come to that point yet. Now, maybe it'll be dramatic or maybe you'll always have felt some sense of fear or weight with regard to your sin. But that is something that Christians never escape entirely.

And don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying you should walk around carrying around the weight of your sin as though there's not any forgiveness through Jesus Christ. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying if you want to believe in Jesus, he's always the solution to a problem. And if all you focus on is Jesus and not the problem he solves, he will become meaningless to you. You'll live as though you don't sin on a regular basis or a daily basis, or that when you do, your sins are not serious or that offensive to God. But they are. He doesn't wink at sin and ignore it the way that we do. If he did, he wouldn't have sent his son into this world to die for little insignificant things that he could have pardoned in some other way. So does God require something of us that we're incapable of doing? Absolutely. Is God just in doing so? Yes. Is God gracious for doing so? Yes. Graciousness is an interesting thing.

It's a kind thing to show someone their failures and their lack while there is still time for it to be remedied. Not by them, but there is still time for it to be remedied. It's actually a kindness to show them the problem. For God to come and to reveal himself on the mountain in such a way that they cried out, Moses, you come speak to us, but not him, because who has ever spoken to God and lived was a gracious thing for him to do, to instill that. fear in their hearts was a kindness. The problem was they forgot it constantly. They forgot what they felt at the mountain. They didn't adequately communicate to their sons as they're told to do in this passage about that day. And this necessity of us loving God and loving our neighbor is as true today as it was when Moses first said it.

When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he didn't blush in answering that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might. And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. In these is the entire law and the prophets. Everything that the Old Testament has to teach us is summed up in these two statements. Love God with every part of your being and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the point of all of the... of the law and you're like well you said earlier the point of the law was to expose our sins and i said that's absolutely right it's meant to show you all of the ways in which you don't love god with all of your heart soul mind and strength and you don't love your neighbor as yourself the whole point of the law is to be a flashlight shining into the darkness and showing you what's there that's what it does and that's why we don't like it but to not have it is to remain in the darkness

I think we have a misunderstanding about what graciousness is. I said that this is a gracious thing for God to do. And as I was thinking through it, I thought, you know, I think we misunderstand graciousness. We think of graciousness as being an overlooking or an ignoring of a fault. It's a minimizing of it. Well, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't that serious. It wasn't that big of a deal. That's not what grace is. Grace has no need to minimize the severity of the fault. No need to minimize it. No need to... set some of it aside. But many times when we're being gracious, that's what we're doing. We're saying, well, it was offensive, but not that offensive. It was bad, but not that bad. I hope they don't do that again. We think of grace as being the downgrade option. The whole point of it is to downgrade the intensity of the situation. And that's not what grace does. At least not in this passage, that's not what grace does. If you believe long with me that it's gracious for God to

point out their inability and that it's a gracious thing for him to do it, then you have to go, how is that gracious? He's not minimizing their faults. He's exposing their faults. This graciousness intensified the situation. It pinned their shoulders to the wall. It would not let them avoid the reality of what God required. And many of us, I'm afraid, are simply unwilling to have that amount of moral pressure put on us. We will not submit to it. We will not have someone tell us that we're wrong and that there is no excuse for our behaviors. We just won't do it. We have our justifications. We have our reasons. We have all of the things that we've believed to justify our actions. And when God's word comes along and says, no, we say, you can't say that to me. Yes, he can. And yes, he does. And if we stiffen our necks and rebel at that point, We're fools. And so the point of the law really is, the gracious point of the law is to bring those who are unaware of their sins to a knowledge of their sins and to remember their inability. That's actually the point. Moses goes on and he says, these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. What were the words he was commanding to them? Was it not the law? That's what he was binding up on them. These things shall be on your heart.

And then as he goes through the rest of the passage and he says you should talk about these things and teach these things and when you're walking and when you're sitting and wherever you go and your home should be marked by these things, you get the idea that this is not a once in a while thing. This is to be a perpetual thing, a remembrance. It's supposed to always be on your heart, what God requires of you, how you fall short. The goal of believing in Jesus is not that we would forget our sins, but that we would remember them and along with them, the one who came to save us from them. This is how the law is meant. It was given to be a tutor, a tutor unto Christ. It is the only way you'll find him. You know, the first verse of Amazing Grace is another song. I don't know why I was on such a kick about songs as being helpful. I thought, I wish John would sing these songs this week, but I didn't tell him in time. First verse of Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace, how great. Who saved what? A wretch like me. Do you think of yourself that way?

I mean, really, when you look in the mirror at yourself in the morning, you think, ah, wretched man that I am. Every now, good. Take a lesson from him then. We would all do well every now and then to look at ourselves in the mirror and go, you're a wretched man. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost. I was lost. You ever get lost? You always know how to get through it. You always have the answer. You always got the plan. If other people just stick to their parts in your plan, it'll all get fixed. Only Jesus. You see, we sing these words, but we don't consider them the way we should. We don't think they're about us. They're just, they rhyme really nice, you know? But we would do well. I'll tell you what. You'll have more joy and contentment and peace the more you think about yourself as a wretch. It's counterintuitive. It doesn't make any sense.

But that's the way it'll work. If you think of how awful you are and the things that you do, and instead of minimizing your failures and sins, you tease it out and you go, there was so much, there was that thing I did. And then there was all of this, this that went into it. There's all of these desires and corruptions and impulses that I have that nobody else knows about, but I know about them. And they're in there and they've worked themselves out in my life in this way and in that way and in the other way. And I do my best to control where it shows its miserable face. But I know what goes on inside my heart. Then you'll feel like a wretch. And you'll think, there's no hope for me. And you'd be right, except that what you just realized about yourself, and you still don't understand it fully. God knows it fully. And that's who he sent his son to save.

But if you won't acknowledge who you are, if you're always trying to present well, then you don't love Jesus. He's not sweet and precious to you. And so when God says to us in his law, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, you ought to feel it just sit on your shoulders. And you ought to realize, I can't carry that. And it's not a failure of fear. It's not a failure of obedience. It's not a failure of honor. It's a failure of love. Did you notice he says, you shall what? You shall love the Lord your God. That is the primary response that Christians ought to have toward their God. You ought to love the Lord your God. Now, I'm not saying that fear and honor and reverence and obedience and all of those things, I'm not saying they don't have a place. They do. But the most foundational thing that ought to be, that is required of us is that we love our God.

more so than that you serve him. Last week, I was like, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth, man. Last week, you were just like, oh, that they would do, they would hear and do. That was the title of the sermon last week. Oh, that they would hear these words of mine and do them. But they won't do them if they don't love first. And the greatest commandment we're told by Jesus was that we love the Lord our God. Love really is a hard motivation. It's the hardest one because it's vulnerable, because it's open. Do you know why I think people don't get married today, young people? They're afraid of being hurt. You're not afraid of that, Lucas? No? Has Courtney not hurt you yet? I don't get hurt. I'm tough. Courtney, has he hurt you? Listen, everybody knows he has because we all who are married have all felt it. The men won't admit it, but they feel it. And the women feel it. And so we don't want to be hurt. And so we don't love. We're afraid if we put ourselves out there.

In the dating process, they might break up. We might fall in love only to find out that the person we've fallen in love with doesn't love us in return. That's painful. So we won't love because it's vulnerable. I'll be by myself. I'll take care of myself. I'll see to my weaknesses myself. I'll keep my joys to myself, my sorrows to myself, my sins to myself. I'm afraid of getting hurt. Listen, marriage is tough. And the fact that it's tough is no reason not to do it. It's also the sweetest gift that God can give you apart from his son. He didn't make you to be alone. It's not good for you to be alone. Your spouse will drive you nuts. They will sin against you and hurt you on purpose. And it'll be more pain than you've ever experienced before. And it's all because of our sinfulness, not because that's how God intended it to be. And in the midst of all of it, God is working in our lives and in our spouse's lives and in our children's lives if he gives us children to accomplish his will.

Because in marriage, all of a sudden, it's like the one thing in life that you can't, you know, you can't get out of. I mean, we get out of it all the time in society, but it is the thing that when Christians commit to it, they ought to understand you can't get out of this. You're stuck. How do you know that? You're not married. But every married person has felt that. They feel like they're stuck. And it's in that minute that you realize that you need Jesus Christ and your spouse needs Jesus Christ. And if you're going to honor him and your marriage is going to make it, Lord help you or you won't make it. But he will help you and he does help you and he has helped you. He does call us to things that we're incapable of to show us our need of him. But that vulnerability, that exposure, many times we're unwilling to feel it. It's scary. And I mean to tell you, if you'll go with me on that in your relationships here, whether your marriage or...

If you're single, I'm telling you, it's all the more true with God. But you may not realize it as much. The exposure that you have with God is far greater than any exposure you'll have with anyone else. He knows the secrets of your hearts. He knows the things nobody has ever heard you say or seen you do. And it may be that he's the only one who ever knows them, but he knows them fully. And so we're to love our Lord, our God, with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We're not capable of it. His law shows us our inability to do it. And if he left us there, it would be a thoroughly depressing state of being because we would be without hope in the world. What would you think for a moment? If that were the case, what would you teach your children? Would you teach them to live that life? It's not what the world would do. The world would say, hey, like, eat and drink and be merry. Get as much pleasure out of this life as you can because there's nothing but sorrows and hardships and burdens.

for those Christians. But God tells us that we ought to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. And then he tells us that we ought to teach our children the same thing. We're to remind ourselves through teaching them, through talking about his law, to keep these things at the forefront of our mind. He says, you shall teach them diligently what things, these commandments, which commandments, the law of God that he's giving to us. You shall teach them diligently to your sons. You shall talk about them, not your children, but his laws. You shall talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. It's like he wants you to make constant connections between what he has said and the world that you live in. And he wants you to verbalize those connections, talking about the failures, talking about the shortcomings, talking about the sins.

He wants his law to be so imprinted in your heart and in your mind that as you live your life, you can't help but make connections between what he has said is good and what he's forbidden and what's going on around you. He wants you always drawing these observations and doing this analysis. You do it in other areas. There are other things that when it happens, you're immediately thinking about all the consequences of that and how it's going to affect and whether it's good or whether it's bad and whether it should be done again or done some other way. We all do this. God says, do it with my law. Do it with my law. Teach your children to do it. Teaching your children requires analysis of current events in light of God's law. Okay? If you have kids that are older and are able to...

perceive what's going on in the world or have some opinions about it. You know, I'm probably into teenage years, but the years are coming for you guys. You're going to need to interpret the world for them because the world's going to get big really fast. Okay. They're going to go from like it just being you guys and your family and the church people. And at some point the world's going to open up and they're going to have to figure out what in the world, like they come to church and people talk up, you know, nobody gets divorced to church and everyone's happy and, and we're all well behaved. And there's all these like, There's this bubble that they live in, and then at some point they go out, and all of a sudden it's like, that's not how it is, right? Jenna, you faced this right at school, right? It's like, those kids aren't the same, are they? It's like, what in the world? Where'd they come from? They came from the world, and you're going to be surrounded by them. And how are you supposed to live with them and interact with them? I don't know, crawl into a hole and ignore them. No, because you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself. So you're supposed to think, whenever I want to get away from those sinners,

Because they scare me. God told me to love them. How am I going to do that? So you parents are going to have to speak with your children and talk to them about what's going on. You know, J.D. Vance and Elon Musk are walking around with their kids on their shoulders. And that's sweet. They've got kids and they're having them be a part of work and they're making children great again, you know. But you should be able to be thankful for that and also observe that Elon Musk is not a good father. And you should be able to tell your parents that because everyone, what do you know about Elon Musk? He's like super smart. He's super wealthy. And he's an adulterer. And he has some good ideas and he has some bad ideas. And you should be able to sort that stuff out with your kids and explain to them that you're both glad that their kids are showing up and that that's a good thing and that there's a lot more to be desired and expected of from God regarding our fatherhood. What does it profit us to gain the whole world and lose our souls after all?

That's what it means to talk to your kids about these things. And draw them out and figure out what they think. Nobody else is probably talking to them about these things biblically. And so you have to know what's going on. And you also have to know God's law. Or you only talk with them about the political end of it, which is worthless in comparison. Talking about God's law is one of the ways that you'll help yourself to remember it. This includes the analysis that I've just mentioned, but it also includes confession of sin. How else do you talk about when you rise up and when you sit down and when you go away and when you're at the water cooler and when you're at the mom's group and stuff? Like, how do you talk about God's law? Well, probably the lowest, easiest entry point is simply to talk about yourself and how you've broken it. When someone looks at you and says, how are you doing? And the truth is not, I'm tired. The truth is some other thing, like we've been fighting with my spouse or I'm scared about my kids because they did this or we got money problems or whatever.

Did you talk about that? And you say, you know, I'm worried about these things and I've got these fears, but this is what God says about it. The look on my face is the result of me trying to sort that stuff out. And I haven't got it all figured out yet. It would be a good habit, an exercise for you. When you sin, when there's some obvious sin in your life, you should get out the Ten Commandments and figure out which ones you broke. Because it won't just be one. There will be multiple of them. Just figure out which ones you broke. You probably won't break all of them in one fell swoop, but you...

You probably get half of them if you think about it for a little bit and the motivations behind it, and it would be a good exercise for you to show you what Jesus came to save you from. Then he talks about binding. This has a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And we're like, what? What's that all about? Okay, just think of jewelry, okay? What is the point of jewelry? What's it supposed to... Martin, why in your movement can't anybody wear jewelry? Why can't... Where you've come from. Why is jewelry just so bad? Because it adorns. It draws attention, right? It says, look at me. And all of you should know that. That's what jewelry does. That's what makeup does. That's what blue hair does. That's what tattoos do, okay? All that stuff is adornment. It's meant to draw attention. Look at me. Jewelry is meant to make us look attractive and fashionable and pretty, okay? It often is an indication of vanity, okay?

And I realize that half my boys are probably wearing necklaces and bracelets right now. And this isn't the first time I've said this about them and to them, okay? But it's meant to communicate something, right? It's meant without words to communicate to you who's looking at me something about me. What this passage is teaching us is that God's law and our conformity to it ought to be the thing that people notice. What does Paul warn the women against in the passage Martin was... Pointing out that women's adornment shouldn't be merely external. The braiding of hair and gold and all these other sorts of things. They're not meant to lie about who they are. Because whenever we see pretty people, we immediately think good people. Because bad people are ugly and attractive people are good. We don't think it, but it is what we think.

And so we try to make ourselves attractive so that people will think we're good. But we lie. That's what Paul's getting at. He's saying, stop lying. And particularly to the women, stop lying. Stop dressing yourself all up and lying to everybody about what kind of woman you are because all of that adornment is what the harlot does. Let your adornment be internal, a gentle and quiet spirit. Let that be what people notice about you. Let that be what they observe. So mind these things. There's a sign on your hand and it's frontals on your forehead. Write them on your doorposts of your house and on your gates. Writing God's law on your doorposts and your gates, it's really an allusion to, anyone want to guess? Say it louder, I'm going old. The Passover, right? What did they put on their doorposts? Blood, right? I mean, that's it. Go home, decorate your house. No.

But that blood was necessary. And it was a communication that said, don't kill my firstborn. And it was significant enough that it was the sort of thing they were supposed to remember. Not the painting the blood, but the eating of the lamb, the Passover lamb. That was something that they're told explicitly in the law. Do this every year as a remembrance of the Lord sparing your firstborn sons. So what does it mean to... Write God's law on your doorposts and your gates. It means simply that you would remember what you've been saved from and that you would communicate about it. We've talked a lot this morning about seeing how we fall short of keeping God's law. And yet God's mercy overcomes all of our sins and he forgives his people. And he testified to that.

and demonstrated that initially in them painting blood on the doorposts of their homes when they were in Egypt so that the death angel would pass over their house. He was merciful to them. And so as you talk about God's law and you talk about how you've fallen short, you should also be talking about and remembering his mercy to you, which are new, the scripture tells us, every morning. So what do you talk about during the day? Seeing what we should be talking about, remembering. God does see our sins fully and completely. They must be dealt with. They must be dealt with. They must be paid for. And through Christ, which we are led to by the law, showing us our failures and our sins, we come to him. And at his cross, we find forgiveness for our sins. And so we ought to be a forgiving people because we are a forgiven people.

Don't get tired of forgiving people because you always need forgiveness. I always need forgiveness. Remember when the question of forgiveness comes up and you go, you know, you've just done this too many times. I'm done with it. I won't be nasty or mean to you, but I just want you to know I'm going to hold on to that one and I'm going to remember it. That that is wicked. That's wicked. And you know, you're going to have to fight just to forgive. Things that happened a long time ago. You'll do it initially. In some ways, it's easy to do initially. It's like five years later when it's hard to still be not upset about that. But God forgives us our sins. He washes them off of us and he looks at us as his children and loves us. Not because we're good people, but because we're forgiven people. Forgiven sons and daughters. So, to wrap up, make yourself a student of God's law.

Make yourself a student of it. Let it cut you. Get it out and let it do its work. When you read the law, and by the law, I mean the law, but I also mean all of Scripture. When sin is being diagnosed or confronted or exposed in Scripture, think to yourself, what about me? In what ways am I failing like this? What do I need mercy for? That will not come naturally to you, but it is necessary that you do it. The goal is not to depress you. I thought about this. I'm like, I'm going to depress these people. They're going to be so upset. And listen, if you're upset, you didn't hear it. Because what you're being made to face just for a little bit of time, God is fully aware of all the time. And he didn't go, well, nah, no, that guy's no. Her, it's too far gone. He loves you. He loves his children.

With a perfect love, an unwavering and unchangeable love, it's immovable. As miserable as we are, his love for his people is immovable. And so you're free to recognize and to acknowledge all of your faults and sins because in him we have forgiveness. So study his law, get to know yourself, and trust in Jesus Christ who takes away the sins of the world. Let's pray.