There is civil law which was given to Israel as a nation when Israel was a special nation, picked out of all the peoples of the earth, called into existence as a nation to be in covenant with God in something of a theocracy where God himself was the king. And even the kings of Israel were to be God's vice regents. So the civil laws given to Israel came to an end when God's dealings with Israel as a nation, as a theocratic nation, ended in AD 70 and certainly at the coming of Christ. Ceremonial laws refer to those laws having to do with worship in the Old Testament. Who could come into the presence of God? Well, people who were not ritually unclean, people who had kept a kosher kitchen, and people who had gone through the sacrificial system to come into the presence of God. You had to keep the ceremonial laws. They taught you the holiness of God. They taught you, over the course of your life, your own unholiness. and your need of a Savior, your need of a Lamb to be provided by God Himself. And those ceremonial laws of necessity came to a conclusion in Christ. He is the fulfillment of all that the ceremonial laws pointed to. But the moral law, which we will see, which we saw, was written on the heart at creation and which was given again to Israel in written form at Mount Sinai twice. The moral law is God's will for all people at all places at all times. In other words, it's always right for people to honor and to have as their one God, the one true God, and have no other gods before him. It's always right to honor your parents. It's always and every place right not to kill or steal or lie or to covet. We went through in some detail for two weeks the importance of this moral law, these Ten Commandments. It's the written expression of the character of God. What is God like? Well, he communicates. He tells you what he's like. It's been written down. What is God's will for all people? He's given us the Ten Commandments. It's so important that he wrote it on the human heart of creation. And then we looked at how sin, acting like sandblasting, even more powerful than pressure washing is sandblasting. And sin, over the centuries, has sandblasted the image, excuse me, the law of God written on our hearts, such that like an old tombstone in a cemetery, you can hardly read anymore the law of God written on the human heart. And so the promise of the new covenant, which God promises he's going to do a new thing, he says, I will rewrite my laws on your hearts. No longer will it be merely external to you. Everybody who's born again in my new kingdom will have it written on their hearts again. And then Ezekiel says, that is the promise that will be fulfilled in the new birth. I will take my stylus, so to speak, and not write it on tablets of stone, I will write it on the human heart. She will have an internal as opposed to an external motivation to keep my laws. The Lord Jesus Christ upheld the moral law of God. His apostles upheld the moral law of God. The standard of judgment on Judgment Day will be the moral law of God. All people will have to stand before God and give an account. It will be amazing for us that we will have broken all these same laws that non-Christians have broken, but that someone has paid the penalty in our place, and we have his perfect record of law-keeping contributed to us. And so while others are taken away for committing the same sins, the same crimes against God, so to speak, we will be saved through the grace of another. The rule of life, the pattern, the template, so to speak, for believers is the moral law of God. How are we to live? Well, God tells us, I'm to love you with all my heart, mind, strength, and being. How do I do that? Keep my commandments. How am I to love my neighbor? Keep my commandments. The first table of the law, laws one through four, have to do with God. The second table of the law, five through ten, have to do with how we treat our fellow human beings. I know I'm loving God when I'm keeping His commandments. I cannot be loving God and disobeying His commandments at the same time. I cannot be loving my brother and disobey God's commandment at the same time. And finally, we saw that the foundation for biblical evangelism, the kind of evangelism that's done in the Bible, the kind that we should be doing today, but tragically many times isn't being done, is to use the law of God to humble and to convict and to show the sinner that they need a Savior, and then after the law comes the gospel. There is a Savior who saves guilty sinners. Guilty lawbreakers are saved by one who never broke God's law, but was counted a lawbreaker in your place and received your punishment, and you will get his righteousness as a gift. Biblical evangelism is law and gospel. It's not grace, grace, grace, love, love, love. It's the law first. This is the standard. I am holy, holy, holy. Here's the written expression of my holy and righteous character. I don't measure up. I'll try to measure up. And so we try to follow the law and we realize after a time, some longer and some shorter, they come to realize I can't live up to the standard of this God. And then we see that it would take something greater than us. It would take something, someone outside of us to save us because we can't save ourselves. And then we will look to a savior. Why do most people in our culture yawn when you talk to them about Jesus Christ? Why do so many churchgoers on Sunday morning appear to be bored and indifferent about Jesus Christ? It's because they've never been biblically evangelized. They've never come to see themselves as deep-dyed sinners who have broken the law of God and under His wrath and judgment. And so they could be really very worldly and uncaring about the things of God because they don't see their necessity. For years, we've shown the Holiness of God videos, every few years, every third or fourth year in Sunday school. Why do we do that? Because if God is holy, holy, holy, then sin is a terrible thing. It's a damnable thing. And against the white-hot holiness of God, sin is shown in its darkness, in its wickedness. And if God's so holy and sin is so terrible, who could be saved? Let me tell you about a Savior. You know, there are many people who think that the penultimate of life, the highest goal, is to come to see the doctrines of grace. And there are people who have an intellectual understanding of the so-called doctrines of grace who have never been humbled before God. They have never come to see God as He is. They've exchanged one set of incomplete or inaccurate biblical data for another group of biblical data, the doctrines of grace, But it's never moved them. They have never seen God as holy, holy, holy. They have never seen themselves as a guilty sinner who should be groveling on their faces in the ground before this God of whom they have offended. Whose sins are a constant offense in God's nostril. And so we show the holiness of God videos because even we who claim to have seen newer data, better data so to speak, on the revelation of God in Scripture, if we're not careful, We ourselves will be found to be those who we just exchanged old things for new things, but it never touched our heart. Do these things humble you to the ground? The depravity of man, the unconditional election of God, the definite atonement of Christ, the irresistible grace that draws us though we are rebellious sinners, the persevering grace of God in keeping us? Those are humbling doctrines to man and Christ-exalting doctrines. Today we're going to look at what a person is like when they become a Christian. The Bible teaches evangelical obedience. Evangelical obedience means Christians keep God's law. But that term is a good term in church history because that's how our Protestant forefathers have used the idea of how Christians respond to the law of God. We don't respond in this wrong way. We don't respond in that wrong way. We respond in a gospel-centered way. The word gospel, which is the word evangel, evangelical obedience, is gospel-centered obedience. I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free. I don't run in the path of your commands hoping to earn brownie points, merits, and favors with you, and so you'll somehow like me. I'm accepted in Christ, and it's because of Christ that I'm accepted. My law-keeping is the mark of whether I'm being a faithful or rebellious son or daughter. It doesn't earn me my relationship with God. It shows me if I'm really walking with God in love and obedience. We're going to review for a minute how God's moral law is the child conductor to lead us to Christ. We defined the phrase child conductor last week. Number two, the believing sinner looks to Christ alone for salvation. The gospel is Jesus Christ doing everything for the believing sinner. And then number three, we'll look at evangelical obedience and how the attitudes by which a believing sinner, a Christian, keeps God's law. Let's look at the first one, a quick review of how God's moral law is the child conductor to lead us to Christ. The phrase child conductor is probably the most accurate translation of the Greek word in Romans where Paul talks about... Romans or Galatians? I just drew an anahistamine blank. It talks about the law as a tutor. Some of the older versions, perhaps the King James, use a schoolmaster. Some of the modern versions use tutor. But it really isn't a tutor as we think of a tutor, and it really isn't a schoolmaster. It's like a child conductor. Forty percent of the Roman Empire was slaves. And every household that was middle class and above had one or more slaves. And the prime slave was your child conductor because it was his job to take children by the hand each morning, and I tried to come up with a Latin name for Reginald last week, and you take little Reginald by his Latin hand and you conduct him to school, and you stay there at school and you wait until he's through, and then you take him by the hand and you lead him home. That person who conducted your child and was responsible to seeing that they got there safely and got home safely was the child conductor. Not exactly a tutor, not a schoolmaster, a child conductor. Paul says, The law of God, the moral law of God, the written expression of God's character, the Ten Commandments, is the child conductor that leads us to Christ. If properly followed, the law of God will lead us to Christ. Well, how does that work? Well, it's the law of God that convicts me of my sin. Conviction is a word that comes from law courts. These are the charges against you. You're found guilty. Paul says, you know, I wouldn't have known what sin was, except thou shalt not. If I had not had an objective standard, I wouldn't have known, I wouldn't have been able to see my sin. Unless there's something that I can see myself against in stark relief, something to compare myself with, how do I know how I'm doing? Well, I know what I'll do. I'll be like other people. I'll use people around me, and however they're doing, if they're kind of being really nasty, I'll be a little less nasty, and I'll feel good about myself. I won't compare myself with the most virtuous people in society, because that'll make me feel bummed out. I'll feel guilty. So, I'll try to find somebody lower in the moral totem pole than I am, and I'll feel good about myself, and I can get through life. That's the way most people live their lives. Which way is the wind blowing? How are people doing? How are people at work acting? How do people in this neighborhood act? How do people at this school? Oh, I want to fit in. I don't want to stand out. So I'll just kind of raise or lower my median obediences here, my kind of lifestyle to the people I'm around. I'll be this way with this people and this way with these people, but I will never look to God's law because that would convict me. The moral law convicts us of our sins. And another thing Paul says in Romans chapter 7 says the law provokes our sin and reveals that it's in our heart. Sin that is in the human heart is like an allergy. For example, I'm allergic to dogs. I'm not allergic to cats. I have a daughter who's allergic to cats. And she functions very well until she goes into your house and you have a cat. And she'll begin sneezing and her head will begin to fill up. She will have an allergic reaction. The histamines in her body set off by that thing which he's allergic to will make her begin to suffer. Okay. Well, God's law, and because it's from God, again, it's a law. How dare anybody break my freedom? And who is he to give it to me? As Jim Packer says in an article, we hate God's law because it's a law. Because of who it's from. And I'm allergic to God. He better leave me alone and not crab me and tell me what to do. And so being around God's law provokes my sinful heart. I used the illustration last week of a condominium in Galveston where people were fishing off the balconies right under the surf, which was right below them. And how that's not a good thing, because if you do surf fishing, you need really big weights on the end of your line. And to get it out there, you have to kind of swing it. And every time it swings out, many times it swings back. Imagine that. And it breaks the windows of the condominiums below you. So they put up signs in all the sliding windows going out to the balconies, do not fish from the balconies. A lot of people who never even thought about fishing from the balconies go, great idea. And it just provoked them to do it. And there was a custodian who was wiser than the management who says, why don't you just take the signs down and you'll cut your breakage? They couldn't see how that was true, but they were losing so many sliding doors and windows that they decided to try it, and they cut their breakage by, I don't know, something like 60%. Why? Because those laws were provoking people's sinful hearts. Well, the Bible says that God's law, because it's from God and it's a law, provokes the rebel hearts of sinners. And then sin is revealed to be in me. Paul said, I wouldn't I didn't realize this was part of my life until I came up against God's commandment and I saw that it's in me. You shall have no other gods before me. Hey, I'm in love with myself. You shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. You shall not have any graven images of God. You shall keep the Lord's day holy. You shall honor your father and your mother and on down the list to thou shalt not covet. Well, that provokes me to sin, and it shows that it's in me. It's in me. I can remember the frightening reality in college during the eight months when God was preparing me to be saved, and the growing realization that I lived in a messed up world, and that I had seen it after a few months of living in my fraternity, and I saw it on the streets and in the ghettos of our land, and I saw it in the riots on the college campuses, and I saw it in the wars that were going on at that time. And as sad as that was, the realization that whatever that is, and I didn't use theological words because that would be way too convicting, whatever that was, it was in my heart. And about the time I come to this realization, the gospel comes to me. I knew of no way of changing the human heart. I know people who went off into being revolutionaries because they thought they would change society. But as one revolutionary said, I don't know anything that can change the human heart. Ah, but I came to discover the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself could change the human heart. God's moral law condemns my sins. It not only says, thou shalt not, but there's a condemnation in the Bible. The soul that sins shall die. There's a commandment given in Eden. You are to obey me 24-7, 365 days a year. And there was only one negative prohibition. Do not eat from this tree because it'll totally mess up your life and your posterity. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The soul that sins shall die. I will require one sin. Any one sin will be capital punishment. In fact, any disobedience in Eden was capital punishment. And then in the Old Testament, God brought down capital punishment. There are only 30 capital crimes in the theocracy of Israel. You say, well, that's a lot of reasons to be killed by the civil government. Well, there are many countries around the world that have many more numbers of reasons than that for which you can be executed. But in Eden, if you think about it, any sin would get you out of Eden and you would die. Any sin was a capital crime. My sins are condemned by the law of God. If I'm not a perfect law keeper, then I'm a law breaker, and then I'm a condemned law breaker. And people who think... I'm going to back up. People, when they're first around the gospel, because they're coming out of darkness, they don't have usually 100% light right at the beginning. So they begin to have dim light that things aren't as they should be in their life. And they want to clean up There's some more life a little bit. And then, whoa, standards are higher. I don't think I can just lift up my loafers and step over this. I might have to kick pretty high to get over this. And, oh, it's harder than I thought. And there's more wrong with my life than I imagined. And so they try harder. People hear about Jesus Christ being the Savior for sinners, and they go, right, I need to go to church more. If they mean I need to go to church more because there I will find out how to be one with this Christ, to be right with this Christ, yes, but most people think because they're on a self-help, works-righteousness mentality, by going to church this will please God and that will make up for the bad things I did wrong. Okay, I broke these commandments, so I'll go to church and read a chapter of the Bible as if that's somehow a payback. The Roman Catholic Church calls it penance, paying God back. You do wrong things, you better do some right things. You did this wrong, we'll say ten Hail Marys and ten Our Fathers and things like that and it'll make up. The Bible does not teach penance, paying God back. It teaches repentance, breaking with your sins, leaving off, stopping your sins and turning to God in a plea for a new heart and a new life of obedience. Well, eventually you come to despair and you come to the place of saying, I can't save myself. I can't do it. I have tried. Some people who are real careful and strong-willed and industrious may try for a great length of time. Other people may have a shorter period of time, but you have to come to the realization at some point, I can't save myself. I can't make myself measure up. I can't do this. If you're really smart and really strong-willed and have lots of energy and lots of self-discipline, Like a Martin Luther. He'd go, if you've got to be perfect in this Roman Catholic scheme to be saved, then I'm going to be perfect. And so he would scrupulously go over his conscience and look for everything that wasn't done perfectly toward God. And then you'd go to the confessional and you'd confess for hours. Well, yesterday I... And he'd start and go through this list and his confessors would get so tired. But he understood their theology better than they did. Look, if you got to get to heaven by your works, then I better get cracking. I better get going here. But then the harder he tried, the more scrupulous he was. I mean, all it takes is a glance at dinner. And Brother Theophilus over here, he had 12 peas on his plate. I only had eight. I'm really hungry. And I wished I'd had those extra four peas. And oh, I just coveted my brother's peas and back to the confessional. Now, some of you are like, he could have had my peas. You know, I don't like peas, but that's not the point. That's not the point. The point is, it can be something very small. Many of us have been to see the movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What did Edmund betray his family for? Some candy. And I wept when I saw that because I've betrayed Christ. I've betrayed people for little sweeties, little babies of life. It's not for my country. It's not for the atomic bomb. It's not for the massacres of millions that I've done all of my sins. It's for little, piddly, stupid, selfish things that I have sinned. And we have betrayed each other. We have betrayed our God and our Savior. I can't save myself. If I'm to be saved, it has to be somebody outside of me. And Luther would call this our alien righteousness, not an alien from someone from another planet, someone from outside of creation. God would visit this planet. God would be a perfect man. He would live under the law. He would perfectly fulfill the law. He could substitute for the innocent for the guilty. He could bear my sins. He could give his perfect record of law-keeping, his righteousness, as a gift. So, two things. I don't have the guilt and condemnation of my sins, the shame. Christ took the shame. Instead of being crucified naked, as in reality in the movie, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they mocked Aslan the lion and they sheared off all of his beautiful mane. So he looked pitiful. They jeered and they yelled at him. You look sick. You look like nobody great. It's like crucifying Christ naked. But he bore our shame. Our sins all have a shame attached to them. Our sins are shameful. He bore our guilt. He bore our shame. He brought the consequences, the condemnation of our guilt, and the carrying out of that consequences, our damnation. So there's nothing left by which God is angry in the least bit for the believing sinner. And that he gave his perfect record of law-keeping. The ceremonial law came to a fulfillment in Christ. The theocratic laws of Israel, the civil laws, which were in some sense the outworking of the moral law in a civil society, comes to a fulfillment in Christ. And the moral law continues on through Christ and is now here in the kingdom of God. We live according to these laws. But I am imputed because of Christ. I am counted as the very best citizen, the very best law-abiding citizen that has ever lived. I'm counted as Christ, blessed is his Father. The Bible says that God loves all of his creation with a general benevolent love. But he loves his elect. He loves his people. Exactly. Exactly. They say exactly like he loves Christ. He doesn't kind of love me like Christ. The Bible says he loves us in the beloved. He loves us in and through Christ. He loves us as if we were a little Christ. That is amazing. Life changing truth. I come to look outside myself and I find a Savior who saves sinners. Who saves lawbreakers? But as long as you're sitting here thinking, yeah, but I've got to clean up my life, yeah, but I've got to do that, yabba, yabba, yabba, you're not saying you can't save yourself and you need to look to Christ. And you'll never have assurance of salvation, some of you who have come to Christ, until you learn to rest in Christ. Christ is the basis of my standing before God, not me. Christ is the basis of whether or not God looks at me at any one second with favor or not. It's because of Christ. It's not whether I've had a good week or a bad week. a good month or a terrible month, a pretty good year or my worst year ever. It's because I'm in Christ. And so I despair of looking at myself, and I look to Christ. You're taking the Word of God at face value, that you are accepted by God at this millisecond because of Christ. On Judgment Day, when there's nobody around you but you stand before God, and your life is played out, and you go, I'm worthy of condemnation. It's all true with everything the devil said and a thousand times more. But you will be saved by the work of Christ and nothing else. And our life of obedience shows our love for Christ. But it isn't our merit. It isn't an accumulation of new righteousness because everything is still a little bit tainted by our remaining sins. But I have full forgiveness. full love, full acceptance, full righteousness because of Christ. I'd like you to turn to Galatians chapter 2. The Bible says there's two ways to get to heaven. You can be perfect, or you can trust in Christ. You've got those two options. I want to give you some sad news, though. If you determined, with the clearest thinking and the greatest resolve and the most superhuman self-discipline ever envisioned on this planet, as of right now, to be perfect the rest of your life, and amazingly, somehow, you pulled it off, you'd still go to hell. Because look at all the sins you've committed up to this point. So no human being since Adam can get to heaven by being perfect, by obeying God's laws. So don't be deluded in thinking you can get there. What about all the sins? What's going to pay for all the sins you've already committed, even if you were perfect 24-7 for the rest of your life? In Galatians, Paul's describing the false understanding of law-keeping, of viewing the law as like a ladder, and each law is like the rung of the ladder, and by keeping it, I'm climbing up the ladder. And there are people who teach this. There are churches that teach this. There's a whole system of Roman theology that teaches, my obedience adds to what Christ did. You know, Christ is great. We talk about Christ in the Roman church, but he doesn't really save anybody. He just provides this really big down payment. And you just keep on mailing in all of your good payments, all of your good works, all your life, and Christ's down payment and all of your works will get you to heaven, or maybe a couple million years in purgatory. But hey, you'll eventually get there. And the book of Galatians is written exactly against this theology. You can't be a good Roman Christian and read the book of Galatians and see that you're wrong and not see that you're wrong. Let's pick it up in Galatians 2 beginning in verse 15. We ourselves are Jews by birth. Okay. Paul speaking to him by himself and his associates who are with him. We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners." Now, I don't think Paul's going, Gentile sinners, patui. I don't think he's using it as kind of a sneery, self-righteous term, although the Jews would speak of Gentiles as sinners. But he's basically saying, we're Jewish sinners. We're not Gentile sinners, but we're all sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified, declared righteous by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. He says, we're not declared righteous by God. God's the one who pounds the gavel. God's the judge who says, I declare you righteous. You may stand before me for eternity because you have this righteousness. It's not what you do by keeping God's law, he says, but through faith in Jesus Christ. Now again, how is it through faith? I receive the monstrous gift from Christ of His righteousness by faith rather than the piddly-dabbly little amalgam of my creepy, undone righteousness, that I try to say, well, here it is. Is this going to do it? He goes, how pitiful. You're so prideful to even think that would work. It's prideful to reject the work of Christ and think, I'm going to cobble together my own little thing here and then, God, how about this? You know, scrap your son. How about this stuff I did here, right here? So we also have believed in Christ Jesus. We Jews have to believe in Christ, just like you Gentiles, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. Because by works of the law, no one will be justified. It's impossible. You've got your sin which you inherited from Adam. You've added your own sins. You will never make yourself righteous before God by law-keeping. In verse 21, In teaching about this work of Christ, he says, I do not nullify, I do not make nothing, the grace of God. For if justification were through the law, if you could get to heaven by law keeping, that Christ died for no purpose. Put it to you bluntly, if you could be a good Buddhist and obey the laws of Buddhism, and a good Muslim, and a good Zoroastrian, and a good Hindu, and go down through all the different things, and a good Jew, and Christ was. stupid to go to the cross when you could just get there by your own efforts. Hey, I kind of jury-rigged this whole little thing, I've been kind of working away, I've got a little boiler down here, I've got a tinker toy set, and I've made my own righteousness. Won't that suffice? If you could do that, then why in the world would Christ go to the cross if you could just cobble something together? Don't insult him. Do you see, just even trying to bring your own righteousness is a huge insult to Christ. It's saying, you are so stupid, I could have done this myself. You go, I would never say that. No, your actions show that though. There have been people who sat in this congregation and think, yes, but I still must do something to merit His salvation. I must clean my life up a little bit. I must try to be better. I must try to deal with these things in my life and then Christ can save me. The Bible doesn't teach that. It doesn't say, bring your good works, add it to what Christ did, and the two of you together. It's Christ alone, plus nothing. The Reformers were right in telling the Roman Church, you're all wrong. It's not Christ and my good works and my payments I mail in all through my life. It's Christ alone, because only He has done what is necessary to save any one believing sinner. It's not making myself good enough. It's not cleaning up my act. It's not dealing with those one or two really stinky things that are running around naked in the street and I really need to put them in the backyard and keep them out of sight. No, it's coming to Christ as I am. You know, some of the hymns we sing. Nothing in my hands I bring, only to that cross I cling. Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me. O Lamb of God, I come. It's not by keeping the law, that's by trusting in Christ. And if you think you have to clean up your life, you have to make yourself better, you have to climb up the ladder a little bit higher before Christ can reach down and save you, then you haven't understood your sins and you don't understand God's way of salvation. God made him, Christ on the cross, who knew no sin, to become sin. on the cross, he was counted sin, that we, believing sinners, Jew or Gentile, that we, believing sinners, might become the righteousness of God in him. With all of my sins, all of my wickedness, all of my failings, I am counted as Jesus Christ before the Father, through nothing of my own doing, by the sheer grace of God. And so we exult in Christ, we glory in Christ, we give him the credit, Yes, I am a debtor to mercy alone. Of covenant mercy I sing. Debtors to mercy alone. I can't turn to anything that I have accomplished in my life and say, that right there and Christ got me in. Now this yokel over here, he was kind of stupid and he didn't get it. But see, I contributed a little smidgen of my own here. My pride doesn't let me cling to anything that I might contribute. only what God has done for me in Christ. Let me close in the last seven minutes to look at how this person who has been taught by the law of God that they're a sinner and they need Christ, the law of God points to Christ and that he is the one who gives you his righteousness and he takes your sins upon himself. You're born again, God supernaturally works in your life and makes you a new person. Then what is my attitude when it comes to obeying these laws of God? Is it just drudgery and duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh It's interesting, for those of you who watch the Chronicles of Narnia, Edmund was the boy who betrayed his family and betrayed all the creatures of Narnia, and betrayed Aslan in a sense. And for the little sweeties of Turkish delight, and he said, the queen said, you know, serve me and you can have a kingdom. What about my brothers and sisters? Well, kings need servants, don't they? He goes, yeah, my brothers and sisters be good servants. And so she promises him a kingdom. And he says, you won't believe my palace and what I rule over. It's an ice palace. It's cold. It's sterile. Antiseptic. There's nothing about it. There's some of the creatures she has killed, the frozen statues in the courtyard. There's nothing grand and glorious about her kingdom. It's all hollow. It's all sham. It's all imitation. I'm over here having fun. Give me another snowball. Let me chew on an icicle here in this kingdom that I'm so much enjoying. No, I don't want to have the world over here that's beautiful and happy and birds are singing and people are making music and beauty. No, snowballs and icicles, that's for me. That's the good life. Could it be that your taste testers are all screwed up? Your taste buds are messed up, your ability to appreciate beauty and goodness is messed up, and the problem is not with Aslan and his kingdom, the problem isn't with Christ and his kingdom, but all of your measuring sticks, all of your meters are messed up, and you're skewed in your perception of reality. Could you be skewed in your perception of reality? If I came to Christ, it's the closet for me, and God's going to stick liver and Brussels sprouts under the door, and I'll be sitting in the darkness, feasting on junk. Yuck, you can take it. Well, again, that shows that you believe the devil's lie, that God's a real mean, Scrooge-like person who gives no good gifts. He will not part with one good gift to give to people who've come to Christ. The Bible says, rather, to show you what a lie this is of the devil. that he did not spare his only son. He didn't take the angels from heaven. He gave his own son. If I give you my very best, you're a wicked sinner. What makes you think I'm going to treat you shabbily now that you're my dearly adopted son? Oh, don't dishonor Christ by thinking of him this way. He is the greatest savior a sinner could ever have. God gave you his son when you couldn't care a bit. And would you dishonor him in thinking, oh, he's going to treat me shabbily if I come to him. He didn't spare you as his son. He gave you his best gift. Did you see that? Don't dishonor him by thinking if I came to Christ, it'll be misery. On the contrary, the Bible says there are times in your Christian life when it's joy, unspeakable and full of glory. God would save a sinner like me and make me like his son and give me his son's righteousness. Strip off the filthy rags of my lousy disobediences. That's not a fairy table. That is the biblical truth. That is the gospel. In Jeremiah, God promised, I'm going to create a new covenant with Israel because they can't keep my covenants. I have written my commandments on their heart and they've taken their sandblasters out and they have blasted away my law on their heart. So I've given them on tablets of stone. And the first set of tablets was broken. I gave them another set of tablets. But they can't keep it because it's outside of them. No matter how much extrinsic motivation I give them, extrinsic means from outside of you, they don't keep my commandments. So God says, I'll give you a promise, I will write a new covenant, Jew or Gentile. I will write it on your heart again. I will re-inscribe it. I will take my stylus and I will re-inscribe it on your heart. You'll have intrinsic motivation. This is figurative language. It's not that we have tattooed hearts. I can see a little crass lotus going, right, like a tattoo on my arm, only it's on my heart. No, it's figurative language. God is going to give you intrinsic motivation where you want to do the things that currently you don't because you're unconverted. Your heart hasn't been changed. In Hebrews chapter 8 and Hebrews chapter 10, That same covenant promise is repeated in saying that's now being fulfilled in Christ. And the new birth is when God comes and writes his law again on your heart. I'd like you to turn to a couple of verses and we'll close. In Galatians 5.22. Paul's talking about the warfare and the believer between remaining sin and the work of the Spirit and the constant battle. Verse 22 and 23 is about the work of the Spirit. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness or meekness, self-control. He doesn't call it fruits. It's fruit, but it's one big cluster. And the entire cluster of nine semi-fruit make up the one cluster of spiritual fruit. And then he says, against such things there is no law. Or to put it another way, this is what the law of God produces in your life. You're not breaking God's law when the Spirit produces His fruit in your life. If you find yourself breaking God's law, then it's not the fruit of the Spirit. You know, what would this world look like? What would a family look like? As the fruit of the Spirit is carried off, it won't be perfect, that will only be perfect in heaven, but it will be substantial, it will be real, there will be real love in this marriage and in this family, there will be real joy, peace, peace despite circumstances and certainly peace with God, patience with one another. You know, imagine what it would be like, imagine how much patience my wife has to be married to me for all these years. But I experience her patience in our marriage. I hope she experiences an occasional some for me. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. You won't see kindness in the school cafeteria. You won't see kindness down the block. You won't see kindness at work, but you'll see it in a Christian family, in a Christian marriage, in a Christian home. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. Our culture so hates goodness that you're a goody-goody. Oh, you stupid person. So, being good's a bad thing. So, maybe being a baddy-baddy. That's right. I'm bad, man. I'm really bad. Well, perish the thought. Pity you. You're a bad person. You're glorying in what should be your shame. And it's wicked to you to be good. How perverted your measuring meter is for reality. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. Gee, if you don't have a contract witnessed by a thousand people in blood, nobody is faithful anymore. People aren't faithful to their marital vows. They're not faithful to any kind of thing in the culture around. There used to be a time when there was a higher percentage of Christians. You could shake a man's hand and his word would be his bond. His word would be his bond because people were faithful. And then meekness, meekness isn't talking trash to one another and making other people look bad so I can look good. But being meek is having strength under control, like a giant stallion that doesn't need to be always strutting its stuff to be insecure, but has a strength under control. And self-control, our culture knows nothing about that. I'll conclude in asking If I'm a Christian and I'm saved by the grace of God, are you really sure the Bible teaches that I am to live according to God's laws? And I'll conclude by looking at Titus, chapter 3. According to my atomic clock, I'm over by five minutes, but to the clock that's run on batteries, I'm only over by three minutes, so I'm going to go with the battery clock here for two more minutes. Titus chapter 3, verses 3-8. We ourselves, now Paul's writing to Titus, we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice, that's having a bad attitude, and envy, hated by others, but that's okay, we were hating them in return. Isn't that what it was like in your BC days? But, the great words of the Bible, but, when the goodness and loving kindness, covenant mercies of God our Savior appeared, He saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, it wasn't by our own law keeping, but according to His own mercy. How did He do that? By the washing or cleansing of regeneration, that's the new birth, and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Okay? whom he poured out on us richly, lavishly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, being justified, being declared righteous by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This saying is trustworthy. We would say that you can bank on this. And I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. Now, what does he mean by good works? Well, he's already explained it for us in chapter 2. So, go back to chapter 2, verse 11. For the grace of God has appeared, this is the work of Christ, bringing salvation for all people, red and yellow, black and white, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness, all lawbreaking, and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. The opposite of lawlessness is good works. He saved you from being a lawbreaker to becoming a law keeper. And so he says, grace leads us to be law keepers. not lawbreakers. Evangelical obedience is finding what you never imagined to be true, that your fairy tales can come true, that God loves sinners and changes their heart, and your renewed heart that he promised in Ezekiel, that's carried out in passages of the New Testament. The renewed heart wants to do things it never wanted to do before. I delight to keep your law. Let me read for you six verses from Psalm 119. I've taught through Psalm 119 many times. It's my favorite psalm, I think. Listen to how the renewed heart thinks about the Word of God. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes. In the ways of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. My soul is consumed with longing for your rules at all times. Your testimonies Your laws are my delight. They are my counselors. I have chosen the way of faith most. I have set your rules before me. I run in the path of your commandments for you have set my heart free. Lead me in the path of your commandments for I delight in them. I delight in your commandments which I love. Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked who forsake your laws. I hasten and I do not delay. I want to keep your commandments. The Earth, O Lord, is full of your covenant love. Teach me your statutes. The King who has given his life for you said, Obey me. I will give you the power to do so. Keep the laws of my kingdom. So be it, Lord Jesus. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, you have given your Son for us. He has saved us out of the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom run by Satan. the kingdom of coal, and onions, and garlic, and leeks, and skunk cabbage, and all the sour and nasty things of this world, and brought us into the kingdom of light, and sweetness, and fresh bread, and warm cookies, and cold glasses of milk, and the righteousness of Christ, a full and complete atonement for all of our sins. You have placed us on a solid ground before your Son. You have not saved us to continue to be rebels in your kingdom, to be juvenile delinquents in your family, but you have saved us to be Christ-loving sons and law-loving subjects of your kingdom. May it be so. May we make a difference in our lifetime, not by going out of the way to finding outstanding, extraordinary things to do, but by keeping your laws. May we glorify you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.