From Greenville, South Carolina, we present, Let the Bible Speak. Let the Bible Speak is the radio ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, preaching Christ in all His fullness. This is Alan Kearns with you once again and I trust you'll stay with us for the next 30 minutes as we let the Bible speak. Today we're entering our second week of studies in the general subject of God's law in relation to the cross of the Christian and in this week's studies we're going to be considering the permanence of the moral law. There's a lot of unbiblical teaching on this subject And a lot of the ills of the modern church can be traced back to a fatal misunderstanding of the relation of the Lord of the Gospel. Hence while David traced the stability of his walk to the fact that the law of his God was in his heart, as he says in Psalm 37, 31, and Paul stated that he delighted in the law of God after the inward man, We have Christians today rejoicing that they have no obligation to keep God's law whatsoever, or at least they think so. There's something seriously wrong with that kind of Christianity, so we're going to look at the permanence of God's law. I trust, as I say, you'll stay with us for the rest of the program and today's study. I hope also that you'll remember to be in touch with us if you haven't yet written or called for your cassette or CD copy of our Let the Bible Speak electronic magazine or whatever you want to call it. It's on CD or on cassette, a magazine of devotion and challenge, music and message that will be an encouragement to you. Get on our mailing list and we'll send the new copy to you each month as it becomes available. Also remember Dr. Penosian's message on Islam, and you should write or call for your copy of that without delay. So, write to us at Let The Bible Speak, 1207 Haywood Road, Greenville, SC 29615. or call us at 866-877-LTBS. 866-877-5827. Be of my wit, O Lord, Lord of my heart. God be all else to me, save that thou art. The light is on by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light. Be thou my wisdom, thou my true word, I am only in thee, thou in me, Lord. Though it be wedding, and I will be one. Be Thou my battle shield, sword for the fight. Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight. Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my life's guard. Raise Thou me heavenward, O power of my heart. I need a weapon, but in victory one, May I reach heaven's joys, for pride and strife, On the high I've come, or ever before. Evolutionists are getting rattled. They have been used to getting their own way and labeling their opponents as unscientific or obscurantist for so long that they can't bear the heat when scientists challenge their assumptions. I've been commenting regularly in the running battle between evolutionists and the proponents of intelligent design as an explanation of the origin of the universe. Here's another story that shows how the evolutionists' feelings of vulnerability is manifesting itself. And I'm quoting, educated as a geologist in her native Hungary, Inigo Farkas knows, understands and firmly believes in the science behind evolution. Still, she was caught off guard last year when a visitor to the Museum of the Earth, where she volunteers, angrily confronted her, denouncing evolution and insisting the museum teach creationism instead. I had a difficult time getting out of the situation, said Farkas, a retired Cornell University librarian and volunteer at the museum for the past seven years. It got personal and very negative, and I got so flustered and frustrated that I know I didn't make much sense trying to explain myself. With challenges to the theory of evolution becoming more widespread and sometimes hostile, museum director Warren Allman developed a special workshop and a 13-page guide to help volunteers and staff answer questions about evolution, creationism and intelligent design. And there I close the quote. Imagine, highly educated and experienced evolutionists are now being prepped somewhat the way the Mormon Church trains its missionaries to give prefabricated answers to questions that raise doubts about the spiel they have for years fobbed off on a docile public as truth. Having read some of the literature produced by the proponents of biblical creationism and the proponents of intelligent design, I can tell you that it will take more than a 13-page booklet of canned responses to quiet the questions that the spokesmen and women for the evolutionary lie will have to face. This is a time for Christians to become more and more educated on the truth of creation and the lie of evolution. There are abundant materials, especially from the various groups such as the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis. And there's a voluminous literature to help us. The more we know, the better we'll be able to turn the light of truth on the deception of Darwinism. Years I spent in vanity and pride, Caring not my Lord was crucified, Knowing not it was to me He died on Calvary. Mercy there was great, and praise the same, God and bearers fortified to reign, There my burdened soul found liberty and recovery. I got spurned at last, my sin I'd heard, Then I trembled at the blow I'd spurned, Till my guilty soul in mooring turned to gold. Mercy there was great, and grace was free. Pardon there was small, divine to me. There my burdened soul found liberty and glory. Oh, the love that drew salvation's plan! Oh, the grace that brought it down to man! Oh, the mighty God that got its plan at Calvary! At the top of today's broadcast, I said that we were going to commence this week studying the permanence of God's moral law. And to draw attention to the immense importance of understanding what the Bible teaches on this subject, I said that there are a lot of Christians, professing Christians, rejoicing that they have, they believe, no obligation whatsoever to keep God's law. When they sing, free from the law, all happy condition, which I'm quite happy to sing in context, they do not mean what I mean, They're free from the condemnation of the law, they're free from the law as a covenant of works, they're free from the law as a basis upon which they may get right with God. They think they're free from keeping God's law by rendering any obedience to it. And I'm here to tell you that that is simply unscriptural. So today we're going to commence our study of the permanence of the law. And in order to do that, So, we're going to start at rock bottom. Definition is always important before you get to exposition. So, we're going to start off with a definition, biblically, of what we mean by the term, the Law of God. We're turning to the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew's Gospel, chapter 5. Last Sabbath evening, I brought the first of a series of messages on the law of God. I sought, before I got to preach anything about the law, to establish why we were doing this. I have to confess that it is with great trepidation that I do so, And I must confess that the more I study to come to preach to you, the more I feel in my own heart and in my own soul the personal inadequacy to deal with it and the personal unworthiness to deal with it. This is a great searching subject. The more I've studied the law of God, the more I've come to realize Something that it's easy to profess with the lips, but it's a different thing to feel in the heart. Just how very, very far short of God's standard, even as a Christian, I fall. That thought would be very depressing. except that when we study the law of God, it drives us to Christ, in whom it is perfectly fulfilled. It drives us again and again to see that He is our righteousness, and that we bring nothing to God for our acceptance, save the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. I trust as we continue to look at God's law, that it will be a matter that will search out every heart. Last week I thought of the very fundamental subject, why God gave the law. Tonight I want us to go a little further and deal with some words, or should I say the subject raised by some words spoken by the Lord Jesus in Matthew chapter 5. We'll read simply two verses, verse 17 and verse 18. The 17th verse is a verse we'll come back to on another occasion. But tonight reading 17 and 18, paying particular attention to the message of the 18th verse. Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tickle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." The word law sounds deceptively simple. It's one of those words that we automatically feel we understand. And yet, The truth of the matter is that far from being a simple term, it is one of the most complex terms employed in the Scriptures. In the Bible, it has a very wide variety of meanings. For example, in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 14 and 15, the Apostle Paul says that the Lord Jesus Christ, by His death, abolished the law of commandments. Now that sounds very plain and straightforward. He abolished the law and commandments. But in Romans 3, verse 31, the same apostle vehemently denies that faith, and by faith he means the gospel, makes void the law. And the term that is translated, makes void, is precisely the verb that Paul had used in Ephesians 2 when he said, Christ abolished the law of commandments. So in one place he says, Christ by His gospel abolished the law. In another place, he denies that He abolished the law and says rather than abolishing it, He actually established it. Now, plainly, the Apostle Paul was not contradicting himself. He was simply using the term law in very, very different ways. If you turn to the Scriptures, you will find that there is a variety of usage. And I'm not going tonight, just for the sake of time, to go through the Old Testament and the New Testament to show you just how wide is the variety of usage of this Word. At times it speaks of the entire Word of God. At times it speaks of the Old Testament revelation. At times it speaks of the Ten Commandments. At times it speaks of the ceremonial law that God gave through Moses. At times it speaks of a general governing principle within a person. It has a very wide variety of meaning. Perhaps the easiest way to sum up all that the Bible has to say about law is to think of it in its three categories of moral law, ceremonial law, and civil law. The moral law deals with divine directives by which God commands men and governs their beliefs, their worship, and their practices. both in private and in public life. It's moral law. Ceremonial law is the law that God gave to Israel to foreshadow the coming realities of the gospel. The ceremonial or ritual laws of Israel, you would say, are passing pictures of permanent principles of faith and practice. Then there was the civil law. That was the law that God gave through Moses to Israel as a nation to govern them and the theocracy that the Lord had instituted among them. Now, the Bible teaches that the ceremonial law has been done away in Christ. That's what Paul meant in Ephesians 2 when he said, Christ has abolished the law of commandments. It's gone. The civil law no longer binds any nation except Israel, though the moral and spiritual truths behind those particular civil laws are binding. For example, it is not binding on the Congress of the United States that they adopt stoning. as a method of capital punishment. In Israel, there was no lethal injection, obviously. There was no electric chair, and there was no hanging. It was death by stoning that God commanded. But that civil law in its peculiar details is not held forth in the Bible as binding now upon nations. I don't want to get off the track, but I think I do need to say something. That there are many today, well let me rephrase that, there are some today, they would like to be many, but there are some who deny that the civil law has ever been abrogated, and they are advocating a return to the precise details of the Code of Moses, They call themselves theonomists or sometimes reconstructionists. They even castigate the great Calvin himself as being heretical in this point. Strange thing is, most of these people are Presbyterians. And yet, on this point, they have to jettison the Westminster Confession of Faith, which teaches exactly what Calvin taught and what I have been saying, that the ceremonial and civil law have both passed. from being binding on the consciences of man. This theonomy is a dangerous thing. Clearly, the United States in its Congress should conform its laws to the moral and spiritual truths of God's law. That's clear. And if there's any hope for this country, It will be because God raises such a spiritual consciousness in the nation that the political leaders will be brought to the place of conforming the legal code of this nation to the spiritual truths that God has revealed in the only nation He ever personally ruled on earth, namely, the nation of Israel. Those spiritual standards still hold good. It is a scandal beyond all hope of understanding. It really, I was thinking a little of this today, it just is mind-boggling how far we have come. It is a scandal beyond our capability to understand. When we think how far this nation has sunk into humanistic godlessness, how that in the highest courts of the nation, the wickedness of hell is now enshrined as national morality, how that that which grieves the heart of God and tempts His fury and His wrath is now embraced wholeheartedly. We are told that the danger to the nation is not from the lawless, but from the people who would seek to turn the nation to the standards of God's Word. We are in trouble. Clearly this nation and every other nation should legislate morality. Let us hear no more of this humanistic garbage that you cannot legislate morality. It is quite true that by legislating morality you don't make man moral. Sometimes you just make the price of their being immoral too high. for them to pay. If that's the best we can do in the nation, then let's pray God that we will do it. But having said all that, it is a dangerous thing to bind the consciences of God's people to the civil code of ancient Israel. I read in the onomous production that justification is by grace, sanctification is by law. Of course, that is entirely foreign to the Word of God. Salvation, including sanctification, is all of grace through faith in Jesus Christ. That grace will produce a conformity to God's law. The law has no power to do that. So civil and ceremonial laws were temporary. adopted to particular people with particular needs at particular times. But the moral law is something very, very different. It is permanent. You've been listening to Let the Bible Speak, the radio ministry of the Free Presbyterian Church of North America. I hope that you found today's broadcasting a blessing to your heart. If you'd like to email us, our email address is ltbs at freepres.org. Or if you'd prefer, you may write us at LetTheBibleSpeak 1207 Haywood Road, Greenville, South Carolina 29615. We would love to hear from you. If you'd like to know how to be saved and how to be sure you're saved, we'd like to send you my booklet, A New Beginning, and I think that you'll find it very helpful. Each quarter we publish a free full-color magazine, Let the Bible Speak Quarterly, with a good variety of Bible teaching and testimony. It's available to all who request it. If you'd like to receive more information about the Free Presbyterian Church of North America and its ministry, we'd like to send you our booklet, Separated Unto the Gospel. Or if you'd like to have tape or CD copies of the messages here in Let the Bible Speak, you may have them by contacting us. Or you may visit us on the web at letthebiblespeakradio.com. Now that's a lot of information to digest all at once, but you can find it all on our website, LetTheBibleSpeakRadio.com. There you'll be able to listen to and download our programs, visit our online bookstore, and read a text version of each day's commentary. So visit us today at LetTheBibleSpeakRadio.com. This is Alan Kern saying, thank you for listening. I trust that you'll join us each day at this time, Monday through Friday, as we let the Bible speak. You.