We're continuing our study entitled, Written with the Finger of God. We have been examining the law of God in covenantal context. The definition and the purpose of biblical law has developed in the Puritan teachings of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This is sermon number 48, and it is part 16. We are still dealing with the first commandment. We're talking about the negative aspect in the first commandment. That is what are the sins forbidden in the first commandment. Our text for this series is Deuteronomy 9 verses 10 through 11. Then the Lord delivered to me two tablets of stone written with the finger of God and on them were all the words which the Lord thy God spoke to you on the mountain from the midst of the fire and the day of the assembly. And it came to pass at the end of 40 days and 40 nights that the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. Shall we bow our heads in prayer? Our most holy father, we thank you for the privilege once again to come and to consider the teaching of the holy word. Especially, oh God, how we are to behave ourself according to the law that you have given to us. It is a law that is given to all man. It affects all mankind. We are required to meet the commands and the demands of this law. And we know that since the fall, man is not capable of coming to terms with meeting the demands of the law. And thus you have given us one who will be our righteousness, who seeks to keep your law on our behalf, and it is in his righteousness we keep your holy law. We thank you, O God, that you provided a Redeemer, one who would save us from the condemnation of the transgression that was taking place in the Garden of Eden with Adam. That we through Christ can be restored rightly to you, and we then are positionally in Christ with you. But even though we are positionally correct, we know that our estate is to progress forward in your righteousness. Give us understanding, give us commitment, determination to go forward to keep your law all the days of our life by the grace given to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Now we've been looking at question 105. What are the sins forbidden in the First Commandment? The answer that the Westminster Divines gave, and that's what we're going through very carefully, the sins forbidden in the First Commandment are atheism, that is, in denying or not having a god, idolatry, in having or worshipping more gods than one, or any with or instead of the true God, the not having and avouching him for God and our God, the omission or neglect of anything due him, required in this commandment. Ignorance, forgetfulness, misapprehensions, false opinions, unworthy and wicked thoughts of him, bold and curious searching into his secrets, all profaneness, hatred of God, self-love, self-seeking, and all other inordinate and immoderate settings of our mind, will, or affections upon other things, and taking them off from him in whole or in part, vain crudelity, unbelief, heresy, misbelief, distrust, despair, incorrigibleness, and insensibility or insensibleness, under judgment, hardness of heart, pride, presumption, carnal security. Just one minute, if you will. tempting of God, using unlawful means and trusting in lawful means, carnal delight and joys, corrupt, blind, and indiscreet zeal, lukewarmness and deadness in the things of God, estranging ourselves and apostatizing from God, praying or giving any religious worship to saints, angels, or any other creature, all compacts, and consulting with the devil, and hearkening to his suggestions, making men the lords of our faith and our conscience, slighting and despising God and his command, resisting and grieving of his spirit, discontent and impatience at his dispensations, charging him foolishly for the evils he inflicts on us, and ascribing the praise of any good we either are, have, or can do to fortune, idols, ourselves, or any other creature. Now, we continue on, having dealt with pride, We're going to move forward to what the divines called carnal security. The question really is, what is carnal security according to how the Westminster divines define it? And why is it considered wrong? Now, cardinal security is an easygoing confidence that everything is going to be all right, when we have no legitimate grounds for such confidence. That's called carnal security. We are trusting everything will go okay according to the plan of God, even when we have no legitimate grounds for having such confidence. Isaiah 28 and verse 15 says, Because you have said, we have made a covenant with death and with Sheol, we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through it, it will not come to us. We have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves. It is carnal security that basically leads people to say, peace, peace, when in reality, there is no peace. We've seen that happen throughout the history of the church. It's one of the great cries for compromise. It was compromise that caused the downfall of the mainline Presbyterian Church in America. Rather than battle with that which was teaching against the Word of God and the historic doctrines of the Reformed faith as enlisted in the Westminster Confession, there came a cry for peace, not truth at all cost, but they simply laid down their Bibles and said, peace, peace, when in reality there was no peace. As a result, the church was compromised greatly. And we have to be careful that we do not find ourselves corporately or individually in that situation, because carnal security involves a complacent attitude toward sin, toward the truth. It is a lukewarmness, and it has an indifferent attitude toward God. And this, my friends, is wickedness. It is wicked because it dishonors God, whom we ought to seek earnestly and serve Him faithfully. As it were, it commits us to do the whole Word of God. It is not to leave us to a man-made religion. It does not seek our own happiness, to our own contentment, but that we would have our happiness, contentment, and our joy based upon knowing that we are honoring God in all that he commands of us to do as his followers. And it is a deception our own self. It's a delusion. Instead of knowing and facing the real truth about our condition, we make peace with it. We make peace with sin too often that way. We do it personally, and therefore we can see it happening corporately within the body of the Church of Jesus Christ. We can never speak to peace that which is not truly of God. His truth and His teaching is ultimate. And we do not cry peace when there is no peace. We fight, as it were, metaphorically, to the death for the truth. We do not compromise. I'm getting tired of people saying weird doctrines that aren't even within the teaching of the Holy Scripture, and they seem to get offended when I disagree with it, and they say, are you saying I'm not a Christian? What's the first thing we often do? We back up and go, oh, I'm not saying that. Yeah, well, I'm going to change my pattern. If you aren't believing the fundamentals of the Christian faith expressed through the evangelical commitment of the gospel, yes, I have questions about you as a Christian. I don't care if it offends you. I'm not worried about your offense. I'm worried about the offense of God. And if you're teaching what is not according to the scripture, you may be in danger of not only damning your own soul, but damning those who cure you. My first concern is not your protection, but the protection of God's good name and all that he has delivered to us by means of revelation, through the work of his Holy Spirit. So we never ever cry peace when there is no peace. We never settle with sin. We never compromise the church in order to bring peace. Better to go to war and lose than to surrender when it was not a time that we should surrender. We have got to become the church militant again. That's what the church is called in the scripture. That's what we ought to be as the part of that kingdom of God in which we are seen as his warrior. We are his army to go forth and to bring the truth to a dying world. You can't bring truth where there has been compromise, whether it's personal or corporate. So never let us get to the point of ever thinking, well, we'll settle in order to tone down whatever the conflict might be. No, no. I say ratchet it up. Make the conflict real. If it's truth, stick with it. If they don't like it, tell them to get out. Truth must be our priority. And the only standard by which we know that there's truth is the Word of the Living God. That's how we build our kingdom that God has given to us on the person of Christ who is the living word, and it is the word that he has given to us through his spirit and written for us by which we continue on propagating that truth of God. Let us have that spirit. Let us catch that second wind, as it were, and stop pussyfooting around with these people. We need to stand up and say, no. You're wrong. You don't like it? What, you don't think I'm a Christian? I got a great question. I don't think you're a Christian. If you believe this, it's going to send you to hell. We need to catch that understanding. We have compromised. We've become politically correct over a period of time. We have constantly learned to say, peace, peace, when in reality there is no peace and there's no place for peace. The compromise will be too great. It will be too much for us. Will the divines next speak about the tempting of God? What exactly do they mean when we say the tempting of God? The gospel record of the temptation of our Savior truthfully gives the key to the meaning of this expression. Matthew 4, 7, Jesus said to him, that is to the devil, it is written again, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Tempting God means to deliberately or carelessly act in a wicked or foolish manner, and counting on God's goodness and power to keep us out of trouble that should come upon us because of our actions. You understand that? tempting God is doing something deliberately or to act in a very careless way in which it is foolish for us to act in that manner, but we are what? Counting on the goodness of God and his power to bring us out of the trouble we have gotten ourselves into because of our carelessness, or perhaps it is our deliberate action of a wicked or of a foolish manner that we have set forth. We have got to be careful how that we tempt God. It's not tempting God and trying to say to God, we'll prove this or prove that. It's you acting deliberately or foolishly in a way that you think God's going to pull your fanny out of the fire. No matter what I do, if I did it with good intentions, God will deliver me. No, he won't, not necessarily. Not at all. Why should he? Why would we believe God would take someone who has in a deliberate or careless way acted with wickedness or at least at best foolishly and put themselves in a situation in which they need to be rescued and they were counting on him to do that even if they had done wrong? It's not a question of your intention. It's a question of following the law of God. You can have all the good intentions you want. As Charles Spurgeon once said, hell's full of good intentions. Good intentions is not what God wants of you. He wants from you what he demands that you do, say, and how you act in this life. Here's a good example. For Jesus to have jumped off the pinnacle of the temple, trusting in God to send angels to protect him from bodily injury, that would have been to tempt God. which is forbidden by the scripture. Why? Because there was no need for him to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. He had nothing to prove there. It was Satan tempting him that he would do what was deliberately wrong according to what we know would endanger us in order to get God to prove We could not come to a bad end at that point. That's what we have to avoid doing. This is sometimes the mental attitude that often is expressed about Calvinists. There's an old saying, it was actually a joke at one time, They would say, do you hear about the Calvinist that fell down the stairs? And he got up, and he dusted his pants off, and he said, I'm glad that's over. But he knew that going down the stairs in the way that he did was going to end in a situation of causing trouble. We dare not tempt God. You don't go out on the road, stand in front of a Mack truck, and say, if God wants me dead, the truck will hit me and kill me. If not, it'll go right through me. I got news for you. Not good. If you do that, you'll die. And I'll say, you were dumb. And God will say, man, was he dumb. You ought to know better. do what is right, correct, just, and righteous. We never try to do that which is wrong that good may come. For a person to neglect ordinary care and precautions to prevent sickness or accident, I'll leave my wife out of this at this point. and theft, yet claim to be trusting in God to keep him safe and in good health, when he is tempting God by doing that which he should not do, it amounts to tempting God. That's what it amounts to. We are not called to attempt to God in anything that we do. We use wisdom. We use the wisdom and the knowledge that God has given us to act all right in the way that we govern our lives daily. There are times we don't stop and think about what we're doing. fight ourselves at times perhaps in trouble. But I say to you, that's why we are to always be engaged in everything that we're doing in this life consciously, carefully. We are to have our mind on our state constantly before God. And we're not to tempt him, nor to try to go and push, as it were, the envelope. Because at some point in time, in the providence of God, he's going to jerk the chain around your neck till you choke to death, because you tempted God. You've said, I can do this, And even if it is dangerous, God will deliver me because he's God. That's not what the scripture teaches. The scripture warns us to be cautious, careful in our lives. To take everything under consideration and to do it in a way that would be pleasing to God. Do all things in moderation. It doesn't matter whether you eat or you drink or how you live your life, you always do it in moderation. Do it in a way that you know you will not put yourself intentionally or carelessly in a situation in which you could have grave danger to yourself. We must get away from the thinking today of the church who lives this way. We don't live this way. That's why we believe in the law of God. The law of God teaches us to love God and to love our fellow man. It teaches us to love ourselves, preserve our life, have integrity, properly according to that which is commanded in obeying the law of God in every area of life. Being conscious of who we are, what we are, and what we're doing at all times. The next thing the Westminster divine spoke to was this thing of using unlawful means. This expression means doing evil that good may come. That is, trying to accomplish good, that is, to have a good purpose, by doing something that is wrong and sinful. But you're saying, through doing what is wrong, I'm trying to bring about good. Romans 3, the Apostle Paul writing says, and why not say, let us do evil that good may come. As we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say, their condemnation is just. You cannot pragmatically live in this world and say, I can do evil if the outcome is good. We are not given such liberty. We are not pragmatic in that way. We do not believe the way that the existentialists believed, the way that William James taught in his psycho-philosophy, the way that John Dewey, picking upon that, talked about the self-actualization of the individual. And as long as it hurt no one else, you could do whatever you need to do, including wrong, if it benefited you. because the only question is what will benefit you. Now, they were cautious enough to say you can't hurt someone in bringing something to pass, but as long as that which is the outcome has a direct benefit to you and does not interfere with the self-actualization of another, it is okay. does not ever turn out that way. The benefit will not be the right benefit for you and the scripture says no man lives as an island to himself. All consequences of every decision of your life will affect somebody. whether you see it directly or whether it is an indirect effect. No one lives to himself, says the Bible, no one dies to himself. You must not ask, can I do evil that good may come about? No, you cannot. Kind of goes back to the time, I don't know, maybe many of you did have questions that were giving in philosophy classes. If you knew what Adolf Hitler was going to eventually do, and you had the opportunity when he was young to kill him, would you have done so? And the answer from scripture is, no, you could not. You can't do evil that good may come about. We only react to actions, to transgression. We cannot act, we cannot be thought police, we cannot project what we think a person may say or do. The scripture never gives us that option. We all want to. Don't get me wrong. We all want to say this is going to come fast or that's going to come fast. We need to do something to stop it before it happens. The problem is you're forever trying to put together that type of mentality in the world, in the world you live in. For example, trying to write laws to stop things that have not yet taken place. You can't write a law in order to wipe out sin. For example, and if you thought you could do that, if you think you can write enough laws to wipe out sin, boy, you're foolishly stupid. That isn't gonna happen. You cannot do it. It is an impossibility. Now, can you write laws after the fact to correct transgressions? Yes, you can. But you're not able, you're not smart enough to be able to understand how to write laws ahead of time. Now, understand, when I say laws, our laws are really just statutes. is what God gave us in these Ten Commandments. All we do is implement the Ten Commandments into society. And the more complex a society, the more we have to figure out how God's law then will have to apply in that complexity of life. But we have to be careful. We cannot do evil that good may come. Oh, I know it's a temptation. but we're still not allowed to do it. There's been many people who have advocated such a course, but it is not the course that God has called us to. We live by his law. We live and apply the principles of his law in our society, and where we have not the law thoroughly enough, then we adjust the law to cover that situation. If we can think of that situation and know that there's a biblical principle, a law that will cover that, then we have to try to cover it as much as we can. But there are things you can't imagine that comes to pass. You think about what laws were used in Israel and how we differ today in a modern technological society. Clearly, there have been changes and advances. And there's grave questions, but you can't answer all of them. You can try to find out areas and say, well, you know, we're doing this and this. We need the law of God. But there could be something new come up that has not been considered. And you could not have foreseen it. But more importantly, we cannot, in our life, ever do evil that good may come about. Well, it's important for us to remember these things. we here again are learning to govern our lives. And you know as many things, excuse me, as many things as we are being told here in this commandment, and the divines have said we need to be careful not to get involved in these kind of sins, you'd think the first commandment would be enough for all of life. And yet there's nine more commands to go through. Nine more thou shalt do this, and nine more thou shalt not do these things. We have always got to consider these things. There are many things that the law of God says to our life, how we are to govern it. I hope and pray that you will consider these things, how important they are to us. to consciously begin to eliminate things like this from our life, that we may honor God in the way He wants honored. It's not left to us. It is not our happiness that is His interest. There is joy in the Lord. There is rejoicing in His salvation. There is contentment through His Spirit. But our happiness in a self-centered way and a self-loving way is not God's interest. God's interest is that His holiness is uplifted among men. For when men live to the glory and honor of God, they will not only glorify God, and honor and do the things he's commanded, but they will be doing those things he's commanded for us to do with our fellow man. And so it is vitally important that we have this mind in us and that we live in a way that would be pleasing to our God. in all these things Christ would be lifted up, and all men would be drawn toward him. May we learn to be good Christians, law-abiding Christians who have been saved by the grace of God. Those works that we are speaking of are not meritorious, their works of necessity in the mercy God gave us unilaterally by His grace in Christ. May we keep those things in mind as we walk daily in our life for Him. Shall we pray?