God's Law or Legalism

Guest (Male): But the good news of the gospel is this: Jesus Christ has taken upon himself the consequences of all our sins. He took that upon himself at Calvary. And there on the cross, he took the wages, the consequences of death.
Guest (Male): This is HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. Today's message: God's Law, Love or Legalism. Enjoy and remember you can always catch up with past messages and stay up-to-date with HopeLives365 and Pastor Mark by going to HopeLives365.com. And now, Pastor Mark Finley.
Mark Finley: Some time ago, a friend of mine walked into a gym in Washington State and he saw these rules on the wall of the gym. Please be courteous at all times. Allow others to share the equipment while you're resting between sets. Keep your hands and feet from all moving parts and weight stacks. Use provided disinfectant and towel to wipe off equipment and benches after use. Rack all weights and dumbbells after each use. Always use a spotter when attempting maximum weights. Don't use chalk on any of the equipment. And profanity is not allowed in the gym. Now, when you think about it, don't these rules seem to just reflect plain old common sense? Isn't complying with these rules just exercising consideration for others? Aren't some of the rules based on keeping members of the health club safe? Then what I'm asking is: why is it necessary for the rules to be posted in plain view? Shouldn't everybody just automatically know what's safe and sensible? Shouldn't people just naturally want to be considerate of others? Ever so sadly, that's simply not the case. In fact, ever since our original parents selfishly chose to go their own way in the Garden of Eden thousands of years ago, sin has changed us inside. No longer do we naturally want to do what's good and right and unselfish. Quite the opposite. If it were up to us, we very likely would want traffic lights to turn green every time we approached one so we could drive right on through without waiting. Never mind that people on our left and right had to wait for us. But to prevent total chaos and disaster, we human beings have made traffic laws that we must obey. But not just traffic laws. We have laws and rules all around us: city, county, state, and federal laws; building codes; dorm rules at school; and later in life, homeowners association rules; and yes, traffic laws. You know, there are even laws for playing games. So many rules and laws exist that a huge percentage of people spend their lives creating and enforcing them. We have attorneys, law enforcement officers, judges, and courts. We have a vast criminal justice system and an overloaded system of prisons for those who break the law. So again I ask: why are all these rules and laws necessary? The answer is simple and clear, and it's found in the book that contains the principles that are the basis for all good and sensible laws ever formed. That book, of course, is the Bible. Yes, the moral principles of the Bible are the foundation for everything from laws against murder to rules posted on a health club wall. The Bible tells us that long ago in heaven, there was no such thing as sin or selfishness. God ruled the universe, and countless sinless angels lived in his presence. Every living being God ever created lived in perfect peace and happiness. Not long ago, a major controversy arose in the southern United States over the placement of a monument inside the main entrance to the state judicial building. The heavy stone monument was engraved with the Ten Commandments. Now, can you imagine that a long time ago God would ever have needed to prominently display his law in heaven to remind perfect angels to keep from sinning? Would he have needed to engrave his commandments in the base of his throne where the angels could see them? How unnecessary that would have been. And do you know why? Because God's law was written not in stone or on some heavenly billboard, but in the heart of every angel in God's presence. They kept his law because they wanted to, from the inside, not because they had to on the outside. Do you see the difference? But when sin entered the universe, first with the fall of heaven's highest angel, Lucifer, who'd become Satan, then later with the fall of Adam and Eve, our first parents, things changed. God's law no longer lived on the inside as a set of natural desires. Instead, the natural desires of fallen beings were selfish and in rebellion. So now, God's law had to be stated. It had to be spelled out. It had to be written out on tables of stone, and human beings from then on would need external reminders of God's law. In a moment, I'm going to share with you some wonderful good news, news about how any one of us can once again have God's law inside us, even though we fall short, even though we fail, even though we sin. But before that, let's take a look at exactly what we're talking about when we talk about God's law. This law has always existed, of course, because God's law is simply a description of his own character. His character is love, and God has always governed the universe he created on the basis of love. When sin came along, God defined love. He spelled it out, described how love behaves when it's lived out in real life. But the rebellion against God's law that began with Adam and Eve continued with their immediate offspring and has continued with each generation down through time to you, to me. Remember in the book of Genesis, it talks about Cain, one of the sons of Adam and Eve, who became angry with God for accepting the offering of Cain's brother, Abel, rather than his own. He was so angry that he committed the first murder in all human history. He killed his own brother Abel. Soon God came to Cain, and as Genesis chapter four, verses six and seven record, he asked Cain, "Why are you so angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at your door." Now, if Cain hadn't already known of God's law, God couldn't have talked to him about sin. Why? Let's let the Bible answer that question. First John chapter three, verse four: "Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." That's in the New King James Version of the Bible, but in the King James Version, it says, "Sin is the transgression of God's law," or sin is the breaking of God's law. In Romans chapter four, verse fifteen, the scripture says, "Where there is no law, there is no transgression." So let's put those things together. Sin is lawlessness. It's acting in rebellion against God's law. And the Bible defines sin as the transgression or the breaking of God's law because if there is no law, there is no transgression. And if there's no transgression and no sin, you don't need a Savior. And if you don't need a Savior, there was no need for Jesus to come to the cross. And if he didn't come to the cross, he wouldn't have to die for sin. So if you do away with the law of God, you do away with sin. And if you do away with sin, you do away with the need of a Savior. And if you do away with the need of a Savior, you do away with the reality of the cross. Because Jesus came as our Savior to die because we broke his law. So what is sin? It's lawlessness. It's acting in rebellion against God's law, choosing selfishness instead of love. And God says that if there were no law, there'd be no transgression, no sin. So we see that God's law was in effect even in Eden. Much later in time, God delivered his people Israel after 300 years of slavery to the Egyptians. By then, the Bible says that Israel had lost sight of his law of love. So God came down in person on Mount Sinai, where he wrote out his law with his own finger on tables of stone. Now, catch this point. God didn't write out the Ten Commandment law on sand to be washed away. He didn't write it on parchment to be crumbled or burned. God wrote the Ten Commandment law with his own finger on tables of stone as the eternal code of his conduct. He met Moses there on the top of Mount Sinai, gave him those tables of stone, and told Moses to take them back down the mountain to the Israelites. Here's what scripture says, Exodus chapter twenty, verses three to seventeen. First commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me." Second commandment: "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that's in heaven above, or that's in the earth beneath, or that's in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those that hate me, but showing mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments." Let me ask you a question about these first two commandments. Are they relevant in the 21st century? In the 21st century, God says you shall have no other gods before me. When people have made pleasure their god, and Hollywood their god, and the stars of Hollywood and the sports stars their god, and when they've made gods of their cars and their homes and their clothing and their possessions, the Ten Commandments come echoing and re-echoing down the corridors of time: you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make unto thee any graven image. Why not? Because if we worship God through an image, we limit who God is. Third commandment: "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." Has that commandment been done away with at the cross? Not at all. Sin is still the transgression of God's law. And then the fourth commandment: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor the stranger which is within your gates." Why? "For in six days the Lord made heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." If there ever was a time that we need to look back to creation—we live in a world where many believe we evolved, where we're simply no more than skin covering bones, a genetic accident. Sabbath reminds us that we were created by God.
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Mark Finley: In this age of rush and hurry and tension, we need a day of rest and worship. And God says remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. And take the fifth commandment: "Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord God is giving you." Honor your father and mother. In a day of where the Bible says children are disobedient to their parents, there is a call back to respecting and honoring father and mother. "You shall not murder." In a day when bombs drop and there's wanton killing and murder in our streets, in a day when prenatal life is not regarded and abortions are everywhere, God says you shall not kill. Then the Bible says, "You shall not commit adultery." Adultery, the illicit relationships, immorality all around us. You see it. Divorce is so prevalent today. Immorality is so prevalent today. God says, "You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Don't drag your neighbor's name through the dust. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house, nor covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that's your neighbor's." You know, it's estimated that more than 35 million laws have been drafted by men and women to control behavior. But here in Exodus, in less than 300 words, God wrote out a code of conduct that covers all human behavior. But unlike the defective and sometimes even unjust laws that men make, the Bible says Psalm nineteen and verse seven: "The law of the Lord is perfect." The law of the Lord is perfect. When Jesus came to earth, he made clear that this perfect law was an expression of his love. When asked to define the law, Jesus responded in Matthew twenty-two, verse twenty-seven to forty, by summarizing the Ten Commandments. He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Now notice the next two words: "On these two commands hang all the law and the prophets." You see, some people say, well, Jesus came, he gave the new law, the law of love. If you summarize the entire Ten Commandment law, you can summarize it in one word: love. The first four commandments reveal how loving people respond to God. The second table of the law, the last six commandments, reveal how loving people respond to one another. So you can summarize the entire Ten Commandment law with one word: love. You can summarize it in two expressions: love to God and love to your fellow man. Some people think that Jesus was teaching something new then. He certainly wasn't. In Deuteronomy six, verse five, he says love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. In Leviticus nineteen, verse eighteen, he says love your neighbor as yourself. So Jesus was simply taking the principles of the Ten Commandments and summarizing them for this rich young ruler. That's why he said on these two commands hang all the law and the prophets. It would be wonderful, of course, if each of us naturally wanted more than anything else to be unselfish and to love God and love our neighbor wholeheartedly. But we're born selfish. We're born wanting our own way. We're born with an attraction to the opposite of God's law of love. Our great enemy Satan knows this, and he encourages it constantly. He tells us that God's law exists to take away our freedom. He says that God's trying to deny us freedom of choice. But did God deny Satan himself, once called Lucifer, the ability to choose freely? Not at all. Lucifer freely chose against God, against his love, against his law. Did God deny Adam and Eve the ability to choose freely? No, they chose selfishness instead of love. Does God deny you and me the ability to choose freely? No, we can choose every day how we live, the choices we want to make. We can either choose to make loving choices or selfish ones. We can even choose to walk right off a cliff. Do you remember that old poem about the cliff and the ambulance? It's quite an amazing poem, but let me just summarize it for you. There was a meeting once in a village on a high cliff. And in that village, the children had been playing and many of the children had been falling off the cliff. They would play soccer, you know, and kick the soccer ball, and it would roll toward the edge of the cliff, and the children would run after it and fall off. And so there was a city council meeting in that village. And all the city council met and they argued: what shall we do? Children are falling off the cliff, they're breaking their legs, breaking their arms. And somebody said, we don't have enough money to make a hospital when the children fall off the cliff. And somebody said, I know what we can do. We can buy an ambulance. We could do that. And when the children fall off, we could have the ambulance whisk them away to the hospital. Then an old man stood up. He said, "I have an idea. We can build a fence to keep the children from falling off the cliff." You see, what do we want: the fence or an ambulance? Thank God the gospel provides both. The law of God is the fence to keep us from stumbling and falling. The gospel of God's grace is the ambulance that leads us to the Savior when we have fallen. You see, even a cliff with a fence guarding its edge isn't enough. Look, God's law isn't here to take away our freedom. It's here to protect us truly from losing our freedom. It's here to protect us from the consequences that always and surely follow stepping off into selfishness. Can we step over, around, or through the fence and step right off the cliff anyway? Sure, people do it every day. And because we do, we end up falling to the rocks below. Does God abandon us? Does he scold us and say, I told you so, I warned you with my law, but you wouldn't pay attention, so now you just have to suffer the consequences? Not at all. God not only puts up the fence at the top, he also provides the ambulance down below in the place of healing. That's what's included in the word gospel. The gospel is the good news that even when we sin, even when we choose selfishly, God has a way to put everything right again. The ultimate result of sin, of choosing against God's law, is death. Romans chapter six, verse twenty-three says: "The wages of sin is death." But the good news of the gospel is this: Jesus Christ has taken upon himself the consequences of all our sins, all our selfishness, all our lawbreaking. He took that upon himself at Calvary. And there on the cross, he took the wages, the consequences of death. He died there in our place. And because he did, we can live even though that we have sinned all of our lives. Let's read Romans chapter six, verse twenty-three again, only this time we'll read the entire verse: "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." In place of the wages, the consequences of sin which is death, God gives us the gift of eternal life because of what Jesus has done. No, God never meant his law to be a burden for us, or for it to restrict our happiness. On the contrary, God intended his commandments to be a fence of protection, ensuring our freedom and safety and shielding us from the sorrow and guilt and pain that always follow when we fall off the cliff into sin. Now, remember a few moments ago when we talked about how in heaven, long ago, God didn't need to write out his law because living by that law of love was the natural desire in the heart of every created being? Wouldn't it be wonderful if, instead of our natural desires being selfish, instead of loving, we too could have God's law inside of us? Instead of the law being a set of rules outside of us? Did you know that that's precisely what God offers to do for us? If we want it and ask him for it, he will once again put his law inside of us so that it becomes our natural desire to keep it and live by it. Here's what God says about his people in Hebrews ten, verse sixteen. He says, "This is the covenant that I will make with them: I will put my law into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them." Now, what's the difference between God putting his law in our heart and God putting his law in our mind? God puts his law in our mind so we know it, so we understand what he wants us to do. We know what transgression is; we know what sin is. Jesus, in fact, did not do away with the law. Matthew chapter five, verse seventeen, Jesus said, "Think not that I've come to destroy the law or the prophets. I've come not to destroy but to fulfill." How did Jesus fulfill the law? Fulfill doesn't mean do away with. Jesus filled the law full of meaning. Take, for example, the law that says thou shalt not commit adultery. Jesus said if you look at a woman with lust, if you gaze upon her with lustful thoughts, you have broken that commandment. Because the opposite of thou shalt not commit adultery is thou shalt live a life of purity. What about the law of God that says thou shalt not murder? Jesus said if you get angry with your brother—because anger leads to murder. And is anger as bad as murder? No, but it's still a violation of that commandment. And what's the positive command: thou shalt not murder? The positive command is live at peace with your brother. So every one of these commands that are stated in the negative can be placed in the positive.
Guest (Male): You've been listening to HopeLives365 with Pastor Mark Finley. We hope you've enjoyed today's message and remind you that you can find more in our many ministry resources at HopeLives365.com. And you can support this ministry by going to HopeLives365.com/donate. And now, a final thought from Pastor Mark.
Mark Finley: To write God's law in our mind means that we know it. To write God's law in our heart means that we love it. When God's law is inside of us, when it's in our minds and hearts, it's our delight to keep it. We no longer keep it because we have to, but because we truly want to. We keep it because we're filled with gratitude and love toward the one who made the law. That's what it means to keep the law from love and gratitude instead of from fear or duty. Jesus said, "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15). First John 5:3 adds this: "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome." Obeying Jesus is not legalism. It is the response of grace. And the book of Revelation tells us that at the very end of time here on this earth, there'll be only two groups of people: those who love God and those who don't. Those who've chosen the way of love and those who've chosen to continue in selfishness. And those who've chosen the way of love, God says in Revelation 14, verse 12: "Here are they who keep the commandments of God." Let's pray and ask God to write his law in our heart and in our mind. Father in heaven, we thank you that you've given us a fence, a guidepost to protect us from wandering off the cliff of selfish destruction. We're thankful, too, that if we fall, there's an ambulance to take us to Jesus, the grace of God. Now, Lord, write your law in our heart so we love it, and your mind so we know it. This is our prayer in Christ's name. Amen.