I want to open with a very interesting passage, a scripture from Deuteronomy chapter 27. You all are going to have a part, it's going to be a responsive reading, because at the end of each little section, it says, all of God's people say, and then the answer is amen. Of course, amen is the biblical response that says, let it be so. Let it be so. I don't know if you're aware of that, but when you pray and say amen, you're saying, may the words of that prayer are the words of that confession. By the way, when we do a confession of sin on Sunday morning, let the words of that confession of sin be so. Let that be mine. So, just so you all know, you have a part to play, it'll be fun as people come up and meander in and they go, what in the world is tonight about? Deuteronomy chapter 27, beginning in verse 15, but a little history. God's people were told to get on these two mountains, and the priests would stand in the bottom of the mountain, and they would cry up these curses that if you disobey the law of God, if you disobey the rule of God, this is what should happen to you. And so you can kind of imagine these people in these mountains, and the priests are yelling up to the mountains in unison, and this representative of all the tribes of Israel are there. And the Levites, that is the priest, shall declare to all men of Israel an allowed voice, verse 15, cursed be the man who makes a carved or cast metal image, an abomination to the Lord, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret. And all the people shall say, men, cursed be anyone who dishonors his father and his mother, and all the people shall say, a man, cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor's landmark, and all the people shall say, men, cursed be anyone who misleads a blind man on the road, and all the people shall say, a man, cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to a sojourner, that is a traveler, the fatherless and the widow, and all the people shall say, men, cursed be anyone who lies with his father's wife, because he has uncovered his father's nakedness, and all the people shall say, a man, cursed be anyone who lies with any kind of animal, and all the people shall say, men, cursed be anyone who lies with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother, and all the people shall say, a man, this is in the Bible, y'all, cursed be anyone who lies with his mother in law, and all the people shall say, a man, cursed be anyone who strikes down his neighbor in secret, and all the people shall say, a man, cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood, and the people shall say, a man, cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them, and the people shall say, a man, what do you do with that? Interesting question, isn't it? As you read through the Old Testament, and you encountered God's law, how do you interact with that? And I was asked to come and talk tonight about the law of God, the law of God, which most of us think we hear the law of God, we think the tin commandments, and that is certainly the basis of the law, but there is much more to it than just that, as you saw in our reading here. I want to be honest with you, when I was in high school, I don't know if your high school did senior pranks, our high school did, and we did several my senior year, one of my favorites is our soccer coach had one of those little samurai jeeps, y'all remember those jeeps they were about as big as a match box car and about as safe, there were these tiny little things, and we got everyone on the football and soccer team together, and we actually put, we had to take apart pieces of it, but we actually put that jeep in bark's hall, like right in the middle of the hallway of one of the main buildings in the school building, and so you walk in and you're getting to your locker and you're like, well there's a jeep there today, how do I get around that? It was a great practical joke and pleased until we got in trouble, that's confession of sin, but we'll have that some other week, but I say that because a lot of way God's law is like that, it's kind of like a jeep sitting in the middle of the hallway, it's kind of hard to ignore, right, it's kind of hard to pass over it and say, yeah, that, you know, it doesn't really matter, how do you interact and deal with the law of God as you see it in scripture? Tertullian, who's one of my favorite people to read, probably not yours, but an early church father, he said that the law had to be understood in the same way that you understood Christ on the cross. Now listen to this, he said, because Christ on the cross was surrounded by two thieves that stole the purpose, that were thieves, and he says the law of God, if misunderstood, can be misunderstood two ways. There's two ways to steal the true meaning of the law of God. The first way is to make the law just a moral code that we have to follow as Christians. Do this, do it better, do it harder, and you'll get into heaven, maybe some of you, right, but if you go down that route with the law, then you have stolen its purpose, that's what Tertullian said. And he said on the other side of the law is relativism, that you can steal the meaning of the law by saying, I mean, you know, the law is there and Deuteronomy 27, but, I mean, let's be honest, we don't have marker stones anymore, and I know most of these problems aren't really there, and the law is just sort of what I feel in my heart, relativism, that I will just do what I think's right, and God will just sort of judge me based on what I think, right? Both of those, both of those, by the way, make you in charge of the law, not God. You see, you're in charge, God said, here's the rules, you keep them, you say, well, I'll keep some, not keep some, but it's mine to do. Here's the rules, and you say, well, they're good suggestions, God, and I'll think about them, right? Both of them steal the purpose of the law, I love that illustration from Tertullian, because if you come to the church, and let's just take an example, you're really struggling with hopelessness and despair, I mean, let's say, you know, you're coming in with a broken marriage or you're unemployed or you're coming to the church and you're in need. And you hear moralism, you know what you're really hearing? You're really hearing, you're not good enough, go away, or you're not good enough, there's nothing here for you, and it actually confirms your despair. It tells you, you have every right to be hopeless, you know, that's pretty discouraging, it's not the message of the Bible. On the other side, you come in and you say, I'm here and I'm in despair, and we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm glad you're despairing. Well really, you're supposed to kind of figure it out on your own. That person goes away, and all they can do is distract themselves with entertainment, with idols, all they can do is go and say, well, if I can't find hope in God, then I have to go find it somewhere else. And you desperately go in a relativistic sense and just try to find something that tells you you're okay, and yet you have the law of God which is neither of those two things. It is neither just moralism or just relativism, it's something else. So I hope that peaks your interest as we go in. I think it's very, very helpful that the people in the Reformation in the 16th, 17th century, they looked at God's law and they said, you know, here's some helpful categories. Now they were very clear that these categories don't answer every question. There's overlap. Sometimes you read a specific law and you're going to say, well, is that moral, is that ceremonial or is that, you know, what is that one? And the Reformers would have said, well, you know, it's not perfect, but at least it's a way in which we can have the discussion of when we read our Old Testament and we see God's law laid out. How do we understand it? How do we work through it? And they said that it's divided into three parts. The first one is the moral law, and there's a Bible verse there from Romans 2. This is written on our hearts as well as given in the Ten Command, I'm sorry, that's my note. It's not the Bible. Those are different, by the way. The Bible is on a higher authority level than my notes, just in case you're new. For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. All who've sinned under the law will be judged by the law, for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who we justified. When Gentiles who do not have the law by nature do what the law requires, they are the law to themselves. Even though they do not have the law, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. While they're conscious also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on the day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. You see that the law, actually the moral law, is actually written on your heart. What does that mean, Jerry? Well, it means this, that yes, in the Ten Commandments it says, do not murder, but there's something written on our hearts that tells us that murdering another human being is wrong, right? You don't have to read that one to get it. We know in our hearts that stealing is wrong. We know that slandering someone is wrong. You see, we know, although sometimes we, because we're either more holistic and we think we can do it ourselves, or we're relativistic and we just kind of shut our ears and entertain ourselves, but we know that we were built for a higher purpose. We were built and wired to be relational with the God of the universe, and that plays out. That's in the law. We know that, and we know and we haven't done it, because we feel that emptiness. So, the moral law, and Jesus actually doesn't disband this one. He actually, in his conversations in the New Testament, says, by the way, the moral law goes much deeper than you think it does. You have heard Jesus says that you shall not commit adultery. I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has committed adultery in his heart. Or out of the heart, come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slandering. So Jesus says, you know what, actually, that moral law goes deep, and it's a heart issue. It's not a moralistic issue. Go do this set of things, and you'll be okay. Avoid this set of things, and you don't. I remember going to a church one time when it was sort of a, you know, don't smoke drinking and you and date girls who do kind of mentality, you know, don't, don't, don't. But the law actually says, that's written on your heart, and you know that God wants you to be on this path. I love the illustration that's used by Tim Keller and everyone who listens to Tim Keller, that he pulls out his cell phone, and he says, you know, if I came to you and I said, this is one of the worst hammers I've ever owned. I can barely hammer a nail with this thing. What would you do? You would go and go, you know what, that's actually not a hammer, that's a cell phone. You're using it for the wrong purpose, and that's why it's not working. You see, and God gives us the moral law to say, I wired you and built you for a purpose. And your greatest joy will be when you're doing what you were built to do. Now let me say that negatively. You know the things that destroy our lives, most of them are good, they're just not good in the way we use them, right? Money is good, but it's not good if it's used for greed, right? Money is good within marriage, but it's not good if it's used in other ways, that most of the things that we seek as idols quickly become that, not because they're evil in themselves, themselves, themselves, and grammar teacher in the room, thank you. But because we make them crooked and wrong. So secondly the reformer said, you know there's also the ceremonial law, and these were laws in the Old Testament, and this one's a little peculiar, there's laws in the Old Testament that point us to Christ. They point us to Christ, and I've written a few down there for you so you can look at them, but they're things such as, you know once a year, you need to go and you need to take this bull or these goats, and you need to kill them because you're a sinner, and you need to do that for forgiveness of your sin. But built into the ceremonial law is a statement that says by the way, that's not enough, you need a Messiah, you need Jesus Christ, you need a Savior, because guess what? If Jesus hasn't come, you've got to come back next year and do it again. You see, this works for a year, but someday God says I'm sending you a permanent solution that is found in Jesus. By the way, it's a beautiful, beautiful picture, and I know this is probably horrifying for us, but if you think about the Old Testament law, if you did some kind of horrible sin, and God convicted you of it, I mean you had to bring a large bull to the temple, but you probably didn't keep that near the temple. You probably kept it out in your pasture, and I don't know how many of y'all have ever tried to get a cow or a bull to move, so low, right? They're a little easier in herds, but I mean you're literally walking down the street, tugging on this thing, and everyone's like, man what did Jerry do? It must have been horrible. Look, look at that, wow, but there was an intent there, right? There was an intent there, it's one of the reasons by the way in John 2 why Jesus gets so mad when he goes to the temple and they're purchasing their animals. You see, because what they're doing is they're repenting without having to really repent. They're confessing without having to really confess, but there's a place in the Old Testament where we have these laws that point us in direct us to Jesus Christ, actually a quote from the book of Hebrews down there, so I think it's the second paragraph in years. For since, and for those of you who are new by the way for my teaching, I give you outlines and I try my best to follow them, but you have to give me grace when I make that mistake, and sometimes you have to find out where I am and the thing. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come, instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshippers have once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of their sins. But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year, what I said, right, that the ceremonial law in the Old Testament was there to remind you of your need for a Savior and to show you God's provision until He came. And you may be going, Terry, that is the weirdest thing I've ever heard, but you know what? He does it for you and I too. We call it the Lord's Supper, but what do we do in the Lord's Supper? We do this in celebration of what God has done until He returns. It's this very tangible sign for us, not a law, but a celebration, by the way you can do a whole sermon on the use in the Old Testament and New Testament on food and the Old Testament. God usually, usually I'm sure you can find some like verse and you know Malachi or something, but usually in the Old Testament, God sustains His people with water and bread. So there's mana, there's water from the rock, but in the New Testament, God usually provides for His people bread and wine, and it's usually in a sit-down meal setting or festival like a wedding, and then interesting that in the Old Testament is a, here's sort of the things you need to get you on the journey, in the New Testament it's much more, here's the celebration food because the Lord has come. The ceremonial piece looking forward to Christ is over, he's here, the kingdom has arrived. You see that celebration in there? And so we look at the book of Hebrews and look at this next section. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said, sacrifices and offerings, you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me, in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said behold, I have come to do your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. When He said, and this is the author of Hebrews giving some commentary on this, by the way, somebody asked me this week, they wrote me an email and they said, you know, what's the greatest commentary on the Old Testament? And I wrote back the book of Hebrews, true, by the way. When He said, you have not desired or taken this, the whole I have come to do your will, He does away with the first in order to establish the second. By that we will have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ, Jesus, once for all. So there's a sense we're in the Old Testament, the moral law still stands, it is an instruction manual for how God wired us. Don't murder, don't steal. When you do, you're like a cell phone being used as a hammer, and it will break you. The ceremonial is, here are some rules for you to do as a people until the Messiah comes, but he's here now. The third is what the reformers called the civil law. These were laws specific to God's people, because they were a political state, right? The nation of Israel was actually a nation and we would say about those that they too, when Christ comes and the gospel becomes available to all people. And in 70 AD, if you're familiar, the Jewish nation was dispersed with the destruction of the temple. And given to Caesar what is Caesar's? The end of Romans, I think I quote there, where it says, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, where there is no authority except from God. And those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God is appointed. Those who resist will incur judgment. A lot of discussion there, but let me just say for this, Paul wrote that about a government that eventually killed him. Right? So that probably means I should go ahead and pay my taxes and obedience to the government. Does that make sense? That whatever that means, is there a place where I say, whoa, this government and my faith can't live together. And there is that point and people have to interact with that and deal with that. But we're no longer called to live by Old Testament law that was set up to run the nation. You know, laws that are just political in nature. And as you read your Old Testament, you'll come across some of these kind of odd laws and you know, you're kind of like, oh, whoa, what is this? One of my favorites is if you come up, if you're driving down the road and you find a dead body and it's exactly on the halfway mark between two cities. Who's responsible for the murder? You can go ahead and see there's a little bleed over here, right? Moral law, don't murder, political law. How you deal with that is a Jewish nation, Israeli nation, people of God. And the answer is, well, where's his head? Because that's the city that's got to find the murder. Very interesting. What are they saying? Moral law, they're saying, murder's an issue. And you've got to step into that. Civil law, they're saying, you know what, if we're going to be a nation run by God and have a king, you know, Saul or David, we've got to work some of this out. And so the Bible, the reformer said in the Bible, we take the moral law is still applicable but we now live in countries that may or may not be Christian. We certainly have a right to speak into the political process to be part of the formation of government and that's a very biblical principle. That makes sense. Kind of flew through that. Any questions? Cool. Overview of the law, this goes more into the 10 commandments. But before I do that, let me step back into our Deuteronomy 27 passage that we started out with. Pretty fascinating passage, you know, cursed be the person who does this. And all God's people say, let that be so. Let that be so. But let's look at it a little more specifically. The people of God are shaped by the law of God. How are they shaped? Look in Deuteronomy 27 at the first and the last curse. The first one is in verse 15. Cursed be the man who makes a carved or cast metal image and abomination to the Lord, a thing by the hands of a craftsman and sets it up in secret. And all the people will say, amen. The last one in verse 26. Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them. And all the people shall say, amen. The bookends of this narrative, of this proclamation of God's law says the people of God will be spiritually different. Spiritually different. They will not have idols. They will be exclusive in worshiping the one true God. And they will seek to follow Him as He has revealed Himself. That the people of God will be spiritually different. And you say, what does that mean? And I say, well, good news. There's some more curses. Because what does it mean to be spiritually different? It means to begin with you will be socially liberal. Look at this. Verse 18 is one of my favorites. Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind man on the road. Why would you do that? I mean, why would you find a blind person on the road and just get, oh, you looking for a Jerusalem? Let me show you where Jerusalem is. I don't know why you would even do that, but apparently it's a problem. There you go. Verse 19. Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to a traveler. Right. And then you can look down at verse 24. Cursed be anyone who strikes down his neighbor. Right. And there's others in there that say the people of God because they are spiritually different will be socially liberal. By the way, that's the exact opposite of our culture, isn't it? Our culture says you need to be socially conservative. You earn every penny you can earn and you hold it as tight as you can hold it. Earn every penny you can earn and hold it as tight as you can hold it. Circle the wagons. Don't give to them, but the guess what? There's more curses. Because not only are we supposed to be socially liberal, we're supposed to be sexually conservative because the people of God are spiritually different, we are called to be sexually conservative. And this is all this passage. Cursed be anyone who lies with his father's wife, anyone who lies with animals with his sister. And you say, wow, is that a problem? That's a problem today in our culture because our culture says you're to be sexually liberal. Right. Free love. Don't get married. Just move in together. Try it out. See if it works. But because we're spiritually different, the people of God are called to be sexually conservative, socially liberal. In blatant opposition to a culture that is not spiritually different and will be socially conservative and sexually liberal. And that comparison I would hold has been true all throughout history. That is one of the marks of the people of God. And it's a way in which the law of God shapes us to say, this is what we're made for. We're made for a greater purpose and it shows up in how we live and how we deal with our stuff, but also how we deal with our relationships. And in the culture, stuff tends to be horded and relationships tend to be cheap and thrown away. But we're going to be the opposite. That's pretty powerful, isn't it? And so as you look at the law of God and you turn to Deuteronomy 5 and we look at sort of the core of God's law and Deuteronomy 5, the giving of the 10 commandments. By the way, Deuteronomy is important because the law is originally given, the 10 commandments is given in Exodus 20 and there's this great line at the beginning of Deuteronomy that says, it is 11 days journey from Horeb by way of Mount Seer to Kadesh-Barnia in the 40th year. Wow, I mean, talk about getting stuck in an airport, right? 11 day journey in the 40th year. Well, we know the story that they rebelled against God, there was some descent. God said, this generation will die in the desert, but then to come to Deuteronomy 5 and it says, verse 1, Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, hero Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak and you're hearing today, you shall learn them and be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with, and next word is so important with us. You know what Moses is saying there? He's saying, none of you were there, but when God made that 10 commandments in Exodus 20, they were for you too. It was an everlasting covenant. It was a covenant of how we should live as the people of God and he's going to give it to you too. You see that it gets passed on from generation to generation. So what is the first four? Maybe the first five? By the way, it's a great scholarly debate about whether the tablets had five and five commandments or four and six. I don't know, I'll let you all figure that out. The question is, is honor your father and mother a commandment that shows you how to worship God? So he's your father in heaven. That's the closest relationship you have. It's the indicator of all of the relationships in a sense. Or is it the first one for relationships that are horizontal? I think the answer's both, but you know it probably wasn't half and half on the tablet, so I don't know. I'll let you all figure that out. Commandment one, that we are to worship God alone, who we worship, the exclusivity of God. By the way, many people today scoff at this, and one of their complaints of Christianity is, how can you claim there's only one God? That is so great buzzword for the post-modern world in tolerance. Great answer to that is, so are you saying you don't tolerate people who only worship one God, just to be clear? And you'll find that most of them say yes, and you go, well, intolerant seems to be spreading, doesn't it? So it might be more about who we're worshiping than how tolerant we are, just as a thought. But the Bible is clear, who you worship, who you worship, you can only worship the one true God. If you were a Jew and you were at a football game, they didn't have those, those actually come from King James, who brings us our King James Bible, by the way. He was the guy who started that. He published after the King James Bible, he published a book called The Book of Sports, and he told all the Puritans that they couldn't have Bible study all day on Sunday, that they actually had to let people go outside and play. And that's important, that's important. We should remember that as a church, right? That there's a piece of rest that sometimes is just about rest. But if they were doing that, and those Jews were holding up a Bible verse in the Old Testament, they didn't have John 316, they would have held up Deuteronomy 64. Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You see, exclusivity, exclusivity. But now a lot of people then come to the second commandment and they say, don't have any idols, and they go, oh yeah, that means don't have any other gods. So are you saying that God really has nine commandments? And he just says the first one twice, or is there a difference between worship the one true God and don't have idols? And I would hold to you that there is, that the first commandment is who you worship, the second commandment is how you worship, that there is actually an order to worship. There's an order to worship. And I'm excited this summer in July. We're actually, we're going to finish John and then in our main service on Sunday morning, go through the book of Jonah. And which is another fun Old Testament fact, and the New Testament, people are on water all the time. They're sailing here and there. The Old Testament, I think Jonah is the only God that gets on the water. And the point there is don't do that. But after Jonah, we're actually going to have a sermon series on our order of worship. Why when you come in and you open our order of worship up, does it have that here and this here? And it has an affirmation of faith and a confession. Why is that there? You know, why is that? And we're going to talk about that in our sermon series and have a sermon on, you know, why we confess sin and a sermon on why we read God's word and then preach from it and things of that nature. So I'm excited about that. There's a how we worship is important. Number three, of course, goes to the heart of worship. Verse 11 in chapter five, you shall not take the name of your Lord in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. A lot of us have used that one with children and said don't curse. And let me just hold to you that that's true, but it's not enough. Let me put out there and we can do a whole series on the Tinkamamas. I know that. I'm kind of flying through quickly. I'm like one of those speed trains that you say that, but let me just put this out there. If you call yourself a Christian, then you carry the label of Christ in your name so that everything you do is attached to the name of Christ. I think you should call yourself a Christian by the way. I'm not telling you that the message there is don't. Don't go home and go. Jerry said not to ever call myself a Christian, ever again. No, no, no. The answer is we are Christians, but we're actually carrying the Lord's name with us. And so everything we do becomes a representation of that. The heart of worship is a desire for God, a pursuit of God. See, it's not about following the rules to get into heaven. That's a desire for me. Right? I want heaven. So I'm going to do this. The moral law is a hard after God and God has told us who he is and how we should live in him. The fourth win to worship, that there's actually a rhythm of worship. This is obey the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days shall you work. By the way, I think one of the greatest problems in our culture with teenagers, college students, young people, is they have a five-day work week. Then they have a Sabbath to self. And if they're not too tired, they have a Sabbath to God. Think about that. And I'm not saying you have to be in your job six days a week. The concept of career wasn't here for these people. They lived and worked on a farm for the most part, rag or cultural. The idea was you get up and you serve and you do it to the glory of God. But one of those days, you take out to worship the Lord. But as we go and worship ourselves on the lake or wherever we go, we need to be aware of that. Right? Now you say, does that mean I can't golf anymore? I would say, I think that means that when you've golf, you should do it for the Lord. Invite a non-Christian friend to go with you. It's the thought, right? So you're taking something that is leisurely, but you're doing it as an offering to the Lord. So thoughts. All right. Fortunately, I'm going fast enough. We can't argue. All right. What is the image of God means relationally? This is honor your father and mother. It's the first commandment that comes with the promise so that it will go well with you and the land that to reconcile with God. And you see this in the New Testament. Jesus says, you know, if you don't forgive others, right? If your heart is one of bitterness and grudges, then what does that say about your heart condition? And here you see that same thing that you need to honor your father and mother. Now honor is different. I will say this, then obey dictatorially, right? And there's some of you who may say, my parents, you know, are believers. And one of the things they tell me to do is not to go to church. You can honor your parents. Now there's a hard line there and a lot of discussion. But the Bible is clear that we are to honor our parents. That that relationship is so formative in our life that it affects both our vertical relationship with our father and our horizontal relationships with everyone else. It's why when you were dating or when your children are dating oftentimes, if, you know, your son's dating some girl, you say, well, what's the mom like? Or if your daughter's dating someone, you might say, how does he treat his mother? Because that's how you'll treat you, right? Okay. The next set, you go, oh, good, we're finally done with God. We can now move on to the horizontal. Let me hold to you. The next ones are actually also vertical because if you are made in the image of God, then that has repercussions. Those made in the image of God has repercussions on how we're to interact with them as well with the moral law. And so the very first one is don't murder. Don't take the image of God out, right? Don't remove the image of God. The second one is don't commit adultery. Well, if in marriage, the two become one, in essence, adultery is pulling a sunder. The image of God joined with another. See, it's an attack on the image of God. The commandment of do not steal is an amazing thing because oftentimes we think of possessions as bad as Christians, but here the Bible saying, your possessions define you. That's scary, isn't it? Your possessions define you, and so that when someone steals your stuff, they're stealing your identity. It's a lesser attack than murder, but it's an attack on the image of God. It's an attack on the image of God, and the sanctity of your extended self, right? A lot of discussion we can have there, much bigger topic. Ask Tim next week, he's coming to teach. And then finally, the sanctity of reputation. You can tarnish the image of God and me by getting up and it says, don't bear false witness. That has a very specific phrase, very specific for a law court. It has implications for gossip, but it really means don't go to court and stand up and go, I mean, I'll tell you that Jerry, when he comes to church, he's usually drunk when he's preaching, and sometimes he stops preaching to place a bet with his bookie. You know, I mean, don't do that if it's not true. It's not, by the way, for those listening on tape, yeah, goodness. But we are to honor the image of God in each other and not tarnish it with false accusations. And then the final commandment in the moral law, of course, is contentment. And you say, no, no, no, it's don't covet. I say, yeah, and in the New Testament, that's contentment, because why do you covet? You covet out of unbelief. See, if the first law is true, then all you need is God. What is coveting? Covening is saying, God's good, but God in a corvette, that would fix it. You see, God's good, but God and end, or maybe even God's good, but He can't really help me here. But if I had that, I remember one summer I put in above ground pools for a job, a fascinating summer, gave me tons and tons of stories to tell. That's good for a pastor you need those. But one, we put in four pools in this one neighborhood, literally, literally, put a pool in for the first family. And then about two weeks later, we came and put a pool in for the family next to them. And then about two, three weeks later, we came and put a pool in for the family next to them. I mean, not two days later for the family next to them. If only the first family had been named Jones, it would have been perfect. But there's a sense of that, isn't there? And the last commandment says, you were not made to be a cell phone used as a hammer, right? You were made to find your contentment in the Lord. That's who it is, not in this stuff, but in the Lord. And so there's our directions. I want to transition now as we kind of move through all that and say, well, what do I do with that? I want you to notice also Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, the position of the law? What do I mean by the position of the law? Moses doesn't go to Egypt and say, here's the law of God. Everyone who's in, meet me out by the red sea tomorrow. Moses goes and he says, God will deliver you, act in faith. Make this meal, put this blood over your door because by the way, you're a sinner and you need to do this every year until the Messiah comes, but he will come and the Lord will deliver you. And when he does, he's going to tell us how to live in a way that we should live in our Father's house. The place of the law, the position of the law, comes after redemption. It's not the method of redemption. A personal example, I know, I've used this before, but my wife and I adopted two kids from the Ukraine years again, a seven and a 12 year old. So they weren't infants. They were cognizant of what was going on around them. Well, we felt the Lord call us to do that and so we started pursuing them. We went through all the paperwork and the legal documents. We went over to Ukraine and bribed people with peanut butter and chocolate and worked our way through the system of getting the right forms and the documents. I say bribed, by the way, for those of you who are going, whoa, that's my pastor, tipping. In the Ukraine, the government doesn't pay anyone. They give them IOUs and so you make all your money off tips. I know that's foreign to us, but you have to think of Ukrainian government officials the same way you think of waiters. They provide a service and if you're thankful, you tip them. Very bizarre, hard to imagine how we won the Cold War. And we start this process and we finally get to the place where we're in the court and the judge says do you want to adopt them? We say yes, here's the you know, here's the dossier. He approves the dossier. You have permission to adopt these kids and goes, by the way, do you two want to be adopted? There's an active faith there for them. Do you want to go back and live in the orphanage or do you want to go to America with this mom and dad? And they said yes, but I want you to hear that in that illustration, we adopted them. And actually if I could back up, it was God who called us, I wasn't listening, my wife was listening at first, but my wife just said, hey, we're supposed to adopt those two kids. The Lord's telling me that. And as you read your Bible, if you want to lens for reading the Bible, one question. Every story you read in the Bible asks this, who starts the process of redemption in this passage? And every time it'll be God, right? So that the position of the law comes after redemption. So when we got home and we've got little rust there and he's in his bedroom and he's throwing his dirty laundry on the floor and we go, hey, guess what? We don't do that in the hardwood household. We actually put that in a laundry basket and then we do the laundry. It took a while to learn that, probably did for some of your children. They might still be learning yet. Russ is. But it was never a, you know, if you want to be part of the hardwood family, you better do that right. It was always a because you're part of the hardwood family. This is what it means. And that's the way the moral law has to read to us as believers. Because we're adopted children of God. We're called to not be cell phones beating on hammers. We're called to live according to our purpose and that purpose is given to us. And I want to close here by simply giving two things. One, Jesus actually has a parallel to the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount. Right? The Sermon on the Mountain is God, is the New Testament equivalent of the Old Testament given to the law. Now there's no tablets because Jesus was the word made flesh. See, he didn't have to have a tablet. He is the word of God. He can just talk. Here's the most fascinating thing about Matthew 5. Jesus never gives a law because he's the fulfillment of the law for us. So he just gives the blessing. Blessed are those who hunger in thirst. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who persecuted for my name's sin. In other words, the blessings of perfect obedience to the law is yours if your fate is in me. And that need, Jesus says the law has been perfected through me. I say that because I think a lot of times we're very aware that Jesus died for us. I think sometimes we forget he lived for us also. And he lived the life according to the law so that you and I can be adopted sons and daughters of God. And the death and resurrection of the Christ is the act in which makes that access point for those who look forward to it and for us who look back at it as our point of salvation. So that our righteousness is found in Christ not in ourselves. We're not moralists who say try harder. We're not relatives who says, I don't really even know what to do. We're Christian to say, God did it for me. But because I live in God's house now, the law has meaning for me. Which is one reason why you have the quotes on the back page. I gave some quotes here, law to a non-believer. Great quote by John Owen, who is a Puritan writer. Most parties pretty boring, but he's got some great stuff. In case you're going to go out and buy the works of John Owen, just to warn you. But he's very clear here in saying you can't be a sinner in the side of God. You have to accept the righteousness of Christ for that salvation. Then an eyewitness account from Young Hung Lee. I chose an eyewitness account instead of a narrative out of a book because the conversion experience is really one where you come to see your unrighteousness and the need for the law of God to both judge your heart as without hope but also save your soul because your hope's in Christ. Listen to this. Then began a meeting of the like of which I'd never seen before. Nor wished to see again, unless in God's sight it's absolutely necessary. Every sin a human being can commit was publicly confessed that night. Pale and trembling with emotion, an agony of mind and body, guilty souls standing in the white light of their judgment, saw themselves as God saw them. Their sins rose up in all their vileness until shame and grief and self-loving took complete possession. Pride was driven out. The face of man forgotten. Looking up to heaven, to whom Jesus who they betrayed, they smoked themselves and cried out with bitter whaling. Lord, Lord, cast us not away forever. Everything else was forgotten. Nothing else mattered. The scorn of men, the penalty of the law, even death itself seemed a small consequence if only God forgave. We may have other theories of the desirability and undesirability of public confession to sin. I had mine, but I know now that when the Spirit of God falls upon guilty souls, there will be confession and no power on earth can stop it. But you hear that this, I can't live the law. If I'm a moralist, it doesn't work. But there is a law. I can't be a relativist. And all this left is for me to look at Jesus and say, forgive me. Powerful. And in doing so, we become like, I hope you are. And if you're not, I hope you take that journey and ask Christ into your heart tonight. The law to the believer, Leslie Nubegan, who then goes and says, the law for us becomes a joy. The law a joy for you. And I wrote these down at the end. I've been pudcing around with these. I was on a staff team once where we did this. We said, what is the joy in the Ten Commandments for the Christian? And we've worked on them over the years and I go back and tweak them, but I give you my current version. Love the Lord alone, right? So love the Lord. The joy of that commandment is you can love God passionately, fully. You can come Sunday morning and you can raise your hands and say, it's all about him. No idols. You can worship God as he deserves because we've been told how to worship the Lord. Powerful. You can have a free heart to revere God's Word. You can hold up your Bible and say, this book is different than every other book. It's the Word of God. And I can live my life by it. And when I come upon hard times, I can find my comfort here. You can rest in God deeply. So powerful. How often do we try to find our rest and other things? And it doesn't work with the joy of the moral law. As God says, find your rest in me. My yoke is easy. My burden is lying. You can have a heart number five on your mother and father. You can have a heart that is free to honor your imperfect parents. And by extension, your imperfect friends, spouse, children, relationships, you can love the people around you even in their sin. You can even love yourself because the image of God in you has power because it's being redeemed by the blood of Christ. A heart is free to breathe life into other people. Not only do we not have to be murderers, but as Christians, we can actually speak in to murderous situations and claim for the right of life. We actually celebrate that here in this church, the sanctity of life Sunday. But there's so many other venues for that. Do not commit adultery. We have a heart not to sexualize people. Not to make them less than human. We have the right to be generous to other, a heart free to be generous. Number nine, a heart free to build up others' reputations. Not only do we not have to not rare false witness, we can actually say encouraging words and use our Christian walk as a way to build up others. And then ultimately we have a heart free to be content with what you have in the Lord. Powerful stuff. The law of God prevails in our life. And in doing so, it gives us permission to have Christian liberty. And you say, what is that? And I say, come back next week. It goes that's the topic. Let me pray. Father, thanks for this evening and for your moral law. And Lord, I pray that everyone in this room understands that you give it to us as adopted children so that we might know you, that you're not a distant father whom we know not, but you're a father who reveals himself and his character in such a way that we can live as children of your household and be spiritually different. And a culture that cries out in hopelessness and despair. In Christ's name. Amen. If any of y'all have questions, you're welcome to come chat and talk. I was watching my clock and it's coming to an end so I wanted to release the whole. But thank y'all for being here.