Please turn with me your Bibles to the book of Romans, chapter 13. That's Romans chapter 13, verses 8 through 10. Romans 13, verses 8-10, I'll be reading from the New King James Version. Please pay careful and reverent attention to the reading of God's Holy and Inherent Word. Owe no one anything except to love one another. For he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet, and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this thing, namely, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Thus by the reading of God's word, may the Lord bless the reading and the preaching of his word to our hearts and to our lives. this day. A few weeks ago, I attended the wedding for Janelle Jefferson and Charlie Lund. A few of you were there as well. And I'm sorry to report that I have made some mistakes when I was at the wedding. I don't go to weddings very often, I guess. Sometimes I forget some of the rules. And I got there, for example, and I came into the sanctuary and I just sat down. And you're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to wait for the ushers and they take you to your seat. And the other mistake I made is that I sat on the wrong side of the room. They've got the bride's side and then they've got the groom's side. And I sat on the groom's side. Well, you know, I really don't know the groom that well. I really know the bride. So I sat on the wrong side of the sanctuary. Now, I don't think I ruined the wedding. I don't think that I ruined it. But I'm still sorry I did those things because the whole reason for me being there in the first place was for me to honor these people that were getting married and to show my love for them. And of course, the way that you do that is by following the protocol. And you don't interfere with what's going on. You try to follow all the rules if you really want to honor people at their wedding. Well, in the same way, God has given us rules to follow. He's given us his law so that not only can we honor him, but also so that we can show love for one another. If we want to love people and honor God, there are certain rules to follow and laws to obey. And we need to be aware of those rules and be aware of those laws and put them into practice if we're really going to show love for God and love for one another. I've got a couple of things I'd like to show you from the scripture passage this evening. First of all, we must fulfill the law of God. The scripture teaches us in this passage that you and I as Christians, as God's people, are called upon to fulfill the law of God by obeying the law of God in our lives. And that's very clear from verse 10 of Romans chapter 13. Notice what the Apostle Paul tells us by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. in verse 10. He says, love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. Now it's very clear from verse 10 of the passage that God intends that we show love by fulfilling the requirements of the law. And there are actually a couple of other scripture passages that talk about the importance of fulfilling the law. And I wondered if I could I go through those passages with you. Please share with me, if you would, to Matthew chapter 5. I'm going to ask you to keep your Bibles open in front of you, if you don't mind, this evening during the sermon, because there are several passages that I'd like for us to look at together. And I suppose that I could just read those passages to you, but frankly, what we're talking about is so very important that I really want you to see it in your Bibles for yourselves. I want you to be good Bereans, and I want you to know that what I'm saying is scriptural and biblical. And so I want you to see these verses for yourself. The first passage is Matthew chapter 5, verses 17 through 19. And as you probably know, this is from the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is going to say all sorts of things about the law of God in the sermon. on the mount, but in particular he tells us something about the fulfillment of the law in Matthew chapter 5 verses 17 through 19 and I'd like to read those verses to you once again in the New King James Version. Jesus is speaking and he says, do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. Now that's that word again. The word I want you to notice is the word fulfill. Jesus says that he came in verse 17 to fulfill the law of God. Sometimes people get the impression that Jesus set aside the Old Testament law and that he came into this world preaching a completely different law, or at least a law that somehow lessens the severity of the Old Testament law or something like that. Somehow, in one way or another, he set aside the Old Testament law. But that's not the case. Here, Jesus makes that very clear. Now, why do people say that? Well, people say that because Jesus is saying all sorts of things about the law in this passage, and we listen very carefully to what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount about the Law of God. We think that Jesus is setting it aside, but actually what Jesus is doing in this passage is he is trying to strip away all the false teaching that the Jews have been promoting concerning the Old Testament law. That's really what Jesus is doing here. You know, for example, when Jesus says, you have heard that it was said. Well, Jesus never says that phrase, you have heard that it was said, when he's talking about something that was written. in the Old Testament. When Jesus says, you have heard that it was said, he's really talking about the false teaching, the false classes that the Jewish rabbis put on the Word of God. And so that's why Jesus is trying to clear up what the false teachers have been saying. He's not trying to make any corrections to the Old Testament law of God. There's no way you can correct the law of God. It's perfect just as it is. Jesus is not trying to change it in any way. What Jesus is trying to do is He's trying to clear up some misunderstandings that people sometimes have about the law of God. So keep that in mind when you look at verses 17 through 19. Jesus is very clear here. He says, I didn't come to destroy the law or the prophets. I came to fulfill them. And then notice what Jesus says in verses 18 and 19. And once again, you want to notice very clearly the word fulfilled here. For surely, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever, therefore, breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men, so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Now, some people are under the impression, especially when they read verse 18, that when Jesus talks about fulfilling the law, He's talking about fulfilling the law in his own earthly ministry. In other words, some people think, mistakenly, that Jesus is going to keep all of the law of God and that's really what he's talking about here. Now, Jesus did keep all of the law of God, but that's not exactly what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5, verses 18 and 19. Jesus is saying, And he's talking about the future here. The reason I say that he's talking about the future here is because he says heaven and earth won't pass away until everything is fulfilled. Well, what's going to be fulfilled? Well, what's going to be fulfilled is the law of God. That's why Jesus came. Jesus came so that the law of God would be fulfilled. Not just in his earthly ministry, not just during his time on earth, but in the lives of his people. You and me. You see, one way that we can look at the ministry of Jesus, one way that we can look at what Jesus came to do, is to see him as someone who causes the law of God to be fulfilled. In other words, Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, sent his Holy Spirit to the church, to you and to me, so that he might raise up a people, a people who would do the law of God, a people who would obey the law of God, a people who would fulfill the law of God, until he comes again. And that explains, I think, what Jesus says in verse 19 of the passage. He says, whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, as Jesus meant so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. We really emphasize the law of God a lot in the Reformed churches. That's one thing that's very distinctive about our church and the churches that are related to us. Now, we don't do that because we want to be different, because we want to separate ourselves from all the other churches. You know, we regret the fact that we're so separate and so different from so many other churches. What we're really trying to do is we're really trying to be faithful to the Word of God and to the ministry of the Lord Jesus, that ministry that's continuing even now in heaven. And what did Jesus say that you and I are to do? Well, we are to teach the law of God. Even the parts of the law of God that some people might consider unimportant or insignificant. There are no unimportant or insignificant parts of the law of God as far as Jesus is concerned. The whole law of God is to be taught and the whole law of God is to be practiced. Now, we do not find acceptance with God. We are not justified by keeping the law of God. We do not enter into the kingdom of God by keeping the law of God. Those things happen when we put our faith in Jesus and we repent of our sins. But our place in the law of God, our place, I should say, our place in the kingdom of God, is determined by how well we teach the law of God and how well we keep it ourselves. We enter into the kingdom of God by putting our faith in Jesus. But our place within that kingdom, once we have entered into it, is determined by our obedience to the law of God and our teaching others to do the same. Jesus is zealous that the law of God be fulfilled, not just in his life, but in our life. Let's look at one other passage. Romans chapter 8. The passage of Matthew chapter 5 really is about the work of Jesus. That work of Jesus is continued and brought to fruition by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit applies to us the redemption that was accomplished by Jesus for us on the cross. And notice what the Apostle Paul says by inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Romans chapter 8. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son into likeness of sinful flesh. On account of sin, he condemned sin into flesh. But the righteous requirement, or requirements, depending on your version, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit. You see, the work of the Holy Spirit is to give us the grace that we need to keep the righteous requirements of God's law. That's why we study God's law as much as we do. That's why we talk about it as much as we do. We want that for us. We want to glorify God by the way that we live our lives. And how do we go about glorifying God in the way that we live our lives? Well, we keep the law of God. And we don't do that in the power of our own strength, because we don't have any strength to do that. That's what the apostle Paul is talking about in Romans chapter 8, when he says that the law is weak. Now there's nothing wrong with the law itself, but it's weak because the law does not contain within itself the power for its own accomplishment, the power for its own fulfillment. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. Our flesh prevents the law of God from being fulfilled in our lives. But Christ and the Holy Spirit sets us free from that infirmity so that by His grace, we might fulfill the law of God in our own lives. There's one other passage I want us to look at. Actually, there are a couple of others. But the one I want us to look at right now is Ezekiel chapter 36. Please share with me, if you would, Ezekiel chapter 36. Verses 22-27. And I should tell you before we start to read that this is a prophecy concerning the blessings of the new covenant. What's the new covenant going to be like? What's the covenant of grace going to be like when Christ comes and confirms that covenant for us and for God's people? Ezekiel chapter 36, starting with verse 22. Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, I do not do this for your sake, O house of Israel, but for my holy namesake, which you have profaned among the nations wherever you went. And I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their midst. And the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when I am held in you before their eyes." Now, this is a very interesting passage, because notice what the Lord is saying to his Old Testament people. He says, you have profaned my name. By your conduct in the presence of the nations around you, you have profaned my name. And I am determined that my name be glorified. And so I am going to take the initiative. I'm going to take matters out of your hands, and I am going to make sure that my name is glorified. And not just glorified in a general way, but actually glorified in you, my people. And notice what he says. Verse 24, For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you. and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Now the scripture says in verse 25 that the Lord will sprinkle clean water on his people. I actually think that this is what Jesus was talking about in John chapter 3 when he says you must be born again. You must be born of the water and you must be born of the Spirit. A lot of people read that verse in John chapter 3 and they think that Jesus must have been talking about baptism when he said you must be born of the water and born of the Spirit. But Jesus doesn't actually say baptism, does he? He says what? And he was talking to Nicodemus during that passage. He was talking to a man that either knew or should have known his Old Testament scriptures like this one in Ezekiel chapter 36. So this sprinkling with clean water is the work of the Holy Spirit cleansing us. Cleansing us of our sins. But notice what it says next, verse 26. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes. And you will keep my judgments and do them. You see? So what's God going to do in this new covenant? He's going to take out the heart of stone and replace it with the heart of flesh. And what's so special about this heart of flesh? Well, this heart of flesh is going to have the Lord's Holy Spirit within it. And the Lord Himself and the person of His Holy Spirit will cause His laws to be fulfilled in us. That's really a remarkable work that the Lord does here. He's concerned about his own glory. He is profaned when his people disobey him, especially when they disobey him in the sight of the nations. The people of Israel were supposed to be a great blessing to the nations. Remember that promise that God made to Abraham, your descendants are going to be a blessing. But they weren't, were they? So much of the time, whether we read the Old Testament, we read one heartbreaking story, a failure after another. And what's the reason for that? It's because God's Holy Spirit Well, it's not changing these people yet, at least not to the degree and to the extent that he promised he would in his passage in Ezekiel chapter 36. That's why we study the law of God. That's why we study the Ten Commandments. We study them in our Sabbath school classes. We study them in church on the Lord's Day morning. We study them at our Sunday evening services. We study them in our private devotions. That's the reason there's so much attention given to the law of God in the Westminster larger catechism and in the Westminster shorter catechism. It's because God is teaching us how to live. He wants us to live a life that's pleasing to him. He wants us to glorify him in the way that we conduct ourselves. And we ought to want those things, too. If we really love Him, if we really want to glorify Him, we will. The law of God actually has three different uses. That's what Reformed theologians like to call it. Three different uses. First of all, the law of God teaches us our sin. And that's what we read in passages like Romans 3, verse 20. The law of God teaches us our sin so that we come to Christ in order to be forgiven and in order to be saved from the power of sin in our lives. The second use of the law of God is to restrain our sin. The world is in a much better place than it would be otherwise, thanks to the fact that the Ten Commandments are so well known in our society. You can go to schools and courthouses and churches and find the Ten Commandments displayed on the outside, and why is that? Well, part of the reason is because when people read these things, when they read that God said, thou shalt not steal, people are less likely to steal. The word of God, I should say the law of God, actually restrains our sin, prevents us from sinning more than we would otherwise. But the third use of the law of God is that the law of God is the rule for our life as Christians. We don't believe that by obeying the law of God we earn anything in God's sight. We don't believe that by obeying the law of God that we merit anything in God's sight. But God has changed us, transformed us through what Jesus did for us on the cross and through the work of His Holy Spirit in our hearts. So that now that we have been saved, we fulfill the law of God. in our everyday walk. Now a lot of people, when they hear the Ten Commandments, they say, okay, well that's Old Testament. I don't want to hear about the Old Testament. I just want to hear about the New Testament. I'm a New Testament Christian. Don't tell me about the Old Testament. I don't want to hear about that. That's really the wrong way to think of it. You and I are not New Testament Christians. We're biblical Christians. We want to put the whole scripture into action in our lives. We want to apply the whole thing to our lives. Many people, I think, are influenced by dispensational theology. Some of you may be familiar with that term. Some of you may not. But the dispensational theology breaks God's revelation into sections. And the one section doesn't overflow into the next section. The one section stands by itself. And then when that period of time is over, when that dispensation is finished, you see, then we move on to the next dispensation. And such people say, well, the Old Testament law, especially the Ten Commandments and the laws of Moses, have to do with the Mosaic dispensation. They don't have anything to do with us. But you see, our passage in Romans chapter 13 really puts the light to that, doesn't it? Because in Romans 13, what do we have? We have some of the Ten Commandments being repeated for us. These Ten Commandments still apply to the way that we conduct ourselves. And notice what Paul says. He doesn't say just these particular commandments from the Ten Commandments. He says whatever other commandment there may be, we're supposed to fulfill them all. The theology of the Bible is not dispensational. The theology of the Bible is covenant theology. It's an organic whole, beginning in the book of Genesis all the way through the book of Revelation. What we have is an organic whole to Revelation, to the Bible, so that we might use it all. to glorify God in the way that we live. And that brings me to the second point I wanted to show us from the scripture passage, which is that we must fulfill the law of God by loving one another. That's what we see in Romans chapter 13, verse 8. We must fulfill the law of God by loving one another. Loving one another is the sum of the law of God. If you click on that file on your computer, the one that says the law of God, if you click on that file and read the document that's inside, what you'll have is a list of the law of God. And if you close that file, that file that contains all the laws of God, you'll notice that the title to that file is love. The love of God is the summary and the law of God is the expansion. We love one another by fulfilling the law of God. Now, this might seem a little counterintuitive to us because we're used to thinking of love as one thing and law as something completely different. We've got a little different attitude. We've got a little more positive attitude, I think, some of us might. when it comes to the love that we ought to have for one another, it may be quite not so much esteem as we should for the law of God. But here we see that these things are not at odds with one another. Here we see how they meet together and how they help each other and how they ought to combine for one another. We see this, I think, more clearly when We look at each one of the commandments. We accept the fact, I hope, that God knows more about love than we do. And if we were just to rely on our own wisdom about how we ought to love one another, we would make all sorts of mistakes. I was talking to somebody a few weeks ago about how it is with couples that are in love with each other. If you take a man and a woman, and they fall in love and they profess their love for one another, the temptation for this man and this woman eventually is to become physically intimate and to have sex before they're married. And that seems like a very natural thing for them to do. After all, they really love each other, don't they? But the scripture teaches us in passages like this one that love is lawful. Love always agrees with the law of God. You can't think of love, or at least you shouldn't try to think of love, as something that is outside the boundaries of God's law. God's law applies to all our relationships in life, and God's law actually teaches us how to love each other. Look at the laws that are talked about here in Romans chapter 13. One of the commandments, the seventh commandment of the Ten Commandments actually says, you shall not commit adultery. Well, how does this help me to love my neighbor? Well, if I take that commandment seriously, I will honor my brother's marriage and his marriage bed. I will not tempt my brother or my sister to any unclean or unchaste words or actions." We'll take the next commandment. The commandment says, you shall not murder. That's the sixth commandment of the Ten Commandments. Now what does this mean exactly? Well, it means among other things that in my relationship to my neighbors, to my brothers and sisters in Christ, I will not harbor any anger or resentments toward them. I will do whatever I can do to give them life and not take life from them. You know, there's a beautiful example, I think, of this in Proverbs chapter 13, verse 24. Have you ever been to Walmart or something, and the mother has got her children with her, and the children start acting up, and they're out of control, and they're yelling, and they're screaming, and they're shoplifting, and they're throwing tantrums, and you think to yourself, I could do just so much a better job at disciplining that child than this mother is doing right now. Have you ever thought that to yourself? I know I've thought that. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. I don't know, but I think that. And why do we think that? Well, it's because we know what the law of God teaches us about child discipline. It tells us what we're really going to do if we love our children. If they start to act up, if they start to misbehave, the law of God teaches us what we should do. We don't just stand there and think, oh, that's cute. You know, there are so many tantrums, you know, but I'm not going to discipline them because I think I'm going to bruise their feelings or something like that. We don't think that. Proverbs 13, 24 says, He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly. You see how the Word of God teaches us how to love even our children. And then the next commandment says, You shall not steal. If I really love my neighbor, I will respect his property. And I may even help him to try to increase his property in his worldly estate, as the Catechism teaches us. The next commandment says, you shall not bear false witness. I will not only not gossip about my brother and sister in Christ, but in my own heart, I will endeavor to seek, to think, and speak highly of my neighbor. I will have the best possible opinion that I can of my neighbor if I truly love my neighbor. And the next commandment says, you shall not covet. For me, as well as for you, brothers and sisters, if we really love one another, there will be no petty jealousy. There will be no envy. of each other's positions. We'll be glad for another person's success, and we'll be sorry for their failures. We'll be happy with whatever blessing they receive from God, even if you and I don't receive the same blessing. Why is that? Because we love one another. So remember the commandment that says, you shall not covet. Sometimes it's very hard for us, I think, to say, How the law of God applies to love in every situation. I'll give you the best example that I can think of. The Bible teaches me in the book of Exodus that I am allowed, or permitted I guess is a better way to say it, I am permitted to defend myself. against someone who was trying to take my life. So let's suppose that my neighbor starts to break into my house in the middle of the night and I believe that he's got evil intentions and so I shoot him dead. The Bible tells me that I have the right to do that. This passage in scripture teaches me that love does no harm to a neighbor. How is it possible that by keeping the law of God that pertains to my self-defense and shooting my neighbor dead that I haven't harmed my neighbor? Well, if you can answer that question, you're a good theologian. Let me tell you what I think. I think what the Bible is teaching us is that even if we shoot our neighbor dead when he is trying to attack us, we do him no harm Why? Because we have ended his wickedness in this world. We have not allowed him to follow through on whatever wickedness he has planned. And he will stand before God having done less wickedness. than if we had simply trusted our own instincts, trusted our own pacifism, trusted our own intuition, and forgotten what the law of God says concerning our self-defense. The law of God must be fulfilled, because the law of God teaches us how to love. It teaches us how to love God, and it teaches us how to love one another. Please join with me in a word of prayer. Lord, we thank you that you have taught us these things in your word. We pray that you'll help us to put these things into practice in our lives, and we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.