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 saying hello to you and welcome to Let the Bible Speak as we continue our study of the law of God. For a number of weeks due to a prolonged period of overseas preaching engagements, I'll not be able to comment on the topics of interest that I have been referring to day by day on the program. That, however, will give us a longer period in each program for each day's Bible study. And as I've been saying, given the vastness of the subject we're covering, I think that will prove a very good thing. I hope that you'll stay tuned for the rest of today's broadcast as we consider the subject of what the Bible terms the curse of the law. We appreciate the constant flow of interest and response that we receive from our listeners. We're glad to be able to make some valuable resources available to you, and these are all free of charge. We have mentioned at times various special messages on cassette or CD. We have said before you our Let the Bible Speak full-color quarterly magazine, which always makes interesting reading. And recently I've been mentioning our monthly Let the Bible Speak audio magazine, a CD or cassette with testimonies, Bible studies, and music to bless the heart. Now, you may obtain any of these, or all of these, by writing or calling us here at Let the Bible Speak. If you're writing, our mailing address is Let the Bible Speak, 1207 Haywood Road, Greenville, South Carolina, 29615. And our toll-free telephone number is 866-877-LTBS, 866-877-5827. Our website is LetTheBibleSpeakRadio.com or the abbreviated form ltbsradio.com and there you'll find many items of interest including our broadcasts commentaries on topics of interest both in audio and text versions and of course our internet bookstore so I hope that you'll make sure to visit us soon at ltbsradio.com so whether you write or call toll-free or get on the internet at ltvsradio.com we trust that you'll be in touch today Arise, my soul, arise, shake off thy guilty fears, the bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears. Before the throne my surety stands, Before the throne my surety stands, My name is written on His hands. Chiming moon-tea bears, Received on Calvary, Pay for effectual prayers, They strongly plead for me. Forgive him, O forgive, they cry. Forgive him, O forgive, they cry. Nor let that ransomed sinner die. I now am reconciled, God's farming voice I hear. He owns me as his child, I can no longer fear. With confidence I now draw nigh, With confidence I now draw nigh, And Father, have a father's pride. Tonight we come to the fourth in a series of studies on the law of God. I want us to direct our attention to the words of verse 10 of Galatians chapter 3. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. For it is written, Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. There's an awful majesty about the law of God. I'm going to make three very simple statements. I trust you'll think of them, ponder them very deeply, because though they're very easily made, they are statements that show us what the law of God is all about. The law is a transcript of the nature of the God who gave it. It not only states what God wills, but it reveals what God is. The law is a transcript of the very nature of the God who gave it. And the law is the voice of heaven's authority to men on earth. It is the voice of God to men. It comes as the voice of a sovereign, as the word of the King of kings, as the imperial declaration of right and wrong, from God to His creatures. And then the law is the rule and the standard by which God now judges men, and by which God will judge men at the end of the age. When you put those three things together, You will understand why I say that there is an awful, and I use the word in its proper meaning, that which inspires awe. There is an awful majesty about the law of God. Understood in its spiritual fullness, God's law, is a terrifying thing to sinners. But men, by nature, refuse to consider the spiritual fullness of the law. In the mistaken belief that God's holiness will not be too hard on their sinfulness, sinners have lost all true sense of sin and of need. Thus, they proudly try to obtain eternal life by the works of the law. They try to make themselves acceptable to God by offering to Him something that they do. When they do this, they are obviously saying they don't know God's law. They don't understand the inner fullness and spiritual meaning of God's law. They don't understand anything of the nature of the God who gave that law. And they don't begin to understand anything of their own corruption, their own depravity, and their own wickedness. In that ignorance, sinners by nature always proceed to some attempt to justify themselves by what they can do. That's the deadly error that the Apostle Paul is combating here in the words of Galatians 3 and verse 10. He quotes from the book of Deuteronomy 27, verse 26, and says, Cursed is everyone that continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. It's interesting that in Deuteronomy 27, that is the last of a long list of twelve curses. Read that chapter in Deuteronomy. And again and again and again, the Holy Ghost says, Cursed be the man. Cursed be he. Cursed be he. Cursed be he. And then he reaches this great climax. And in the words of Paul, he says, Cursed is everyone who does not continue in everything that is written in the book of the law. to do every single part of it. Tonight, I want us to think of this great subject that the Apostle here raises, the subject of the curse of the law. The curse of the law. Let me state first and very simply that the law exposes sin. for what it really is. That's clear in the text. Because of the law, all sinners stand unmasked. Because of the law, sin stands in its true colors. It appears to man, once the law comes home to their heart, exactly as it appears to God. No smugness. No self-righteous Phariseeism can possibly withstand the conviction and the penetration of the law of God. Take the case of the man who wrote these words in Galatians 3, when he was known as Saul of Tarsus. Looking back in those days, this is what Paul wrote, Romans chapter 7, starting at verse 8, toward the end of that verse. Without the law, sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once. Now let me explain as I go along here in very simple terms. Without the law, he says, sin was dead. That is, sin lay there. It was nothing to take notice of. It was nothing that perturbed me. It was not stirred up to accuse me. Sin was dead. I was alive without the law. That's how I looked in myself. Perfectly at home with myself. Perfectly accepting of myself. By the way, let that be. And I haven't time to go into this. It's just a shot across the bow, as it were. But let that be a warning against all the philosophies and psychologies of this age that tell you the key to life is feeling good about yourself. There was no man ever felt better about himself than Saul of Tarsus in his unconverted state. But he was living in a heartbeat of hell. He said, I was alive without the law once, But when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death." In other words, before the conviction of the law, sin was unrecognized for what it really was. Oh, I have no doubt Saul of Tarsus would have said, yes, I am a sinner. I mean, he wasn't. such a heretical fool as to deny that he was a sinner at all. But saying that with the lips and feeling it with the heart are two very different things. He would have said with the lips, oh yes, I'm a sinner. But in his heart, he was quite at home with himself. He was a man at ease with who and what he was. He was proud of his righteousness. He was not as other men are. He was better than other men. And I have to say, by the standards of man, that was an absolutely true judgment. So here's a man, unafraid of the judgment of God, never trembling at the holiness of God, never skipping a heartbeat at the thought of meeting God, You see, the Law had not come home to his heart. He knew the words of the Law. He had learned even the number of the letters that made up the words of the Law. He knew everything technically about the Decalogue. But the Law had never come to his heart until one day God took that Law And he used it as he had never done before in the heart and life and conscience of Saul of Tarsus and the man who had been at ease, proud of his righteousness and unafraid of judgment. He found that the law shattered his pride. It made him tremble with fear at the holiness of God. It made him tremble with fear at the thought of death and judgment. He felt himself naked as he stood, condemned before God by the standard of his law. For the first time in his life, Saul of Tarsus felt the curse of the law. Now he saw his sin the way God saw his sin. Let that sink in. That, my friend, is the first exercise of God's grace when He moves for the conversion of a soul. Men do not sue for mercy. Because they do not see their sin. They may say with their lips, Oh yes, I'm a sinner. But they do not see their sin as God sees it. At ease with themselves, proudly making their way through life. They have no fear of God. They have no fear of death. They have no fear of eternity. They have no fear of hell. It's a common thing for people to believe, God must let me into heaven. When people think that way, they're simply saying, like Paul, I was alive. Only in their case, they are saying, I am alive without the law. The commandment has never reached my heart. I have never been brought to see sin as God sees it. When God did that in the life of Saul of Tarsus, He taught him a lesson that Paul never forgot. You take the writings of this great apostle and see how he deals with this subject. He writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 56. The sting of death is sin. What is it that makes death such a terrible thing? It is sin. If there were no sin, death, First of all, it would not exist. But even if it did exist, it would have no terror. And the strength of sin is the law. Writing to the Romans in 8.2, he said, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Now let me just cut through an awful lot of difficult stuff and say, that is a description of the ministry of the gospel. So, the ministry of the Spirit through the Gospel has made me free from the law of sin and death. What a description for the law of God! What is Paul talking about? He's talking about the moral law of God. How does he describe it? The strength of sin. That's how he describes it. He describes this holy law of God as the law of sin and death. Now that raises a question. How can Paul write in Romans 7, the law is holy, the law is just, the law is good, and then call it the law of sin? How can he do that? Well, the answer is very simple. That the law of God stands related to sin very closely. Something like cause and effect. Listen to the testimony of Scripture. 1 John 3, verse 4. Sin is the transgression of the law. Romans 4, verse 15. Where there is no law, there is no transgression. Chapter 5 and verse 13 in Romans, sin is not imputed where there is no law. Now notice what Paul is saying. It is the law that makes sin, sin. If there were no law, there couldn't be any sin. Wouldn't matter what you did, it would not be sin. Because what gives sin its moral character is the existence of the law of God. It is the law that makes sin sinful. It is the law that reveals the true viciousness of sin. It is the law that shows sin to be what it truly is, a rejection of the holiness of God. Now, the law of God exposes sin for what it is. You can say that academically, that's what it does in the Bible. But you can perish with an academic knowledge of what the law says and does. I want to stress that to you tonight. You can perish As Saul of Tarsus would have done had he not met with Christ on the Damascus road. You can perish with your head full of the technical or academic knowledge of what the law is, says and does. But it's a very different thing when the law of God actually comes to the heart. And it destroys your view of yourself. That's why I so much hate this modern psychology of this feel-good religion. Just feel good about yourself. Man, there's no hope for you until you stop feeling good about yourself outside of Christ. There's no hope for you until all your pride is absolutely destroyed. All your self-righteousness is absolutely destroyed. There's no hope for you until your view of your past and your present, your actions, your thoughts, your character is all wiped out and it is replaced with God's view of you and your deeds and your character. That's the hope you have. That's the only hope. The law rips the mask off sinners. This is what it means for a man to come under conviction of sin. I think that's something in these easy-going days of empty believism. I hate to use the word believe even as an ism, because it is such a precious word in the Bible. But nonetheless, we can do no better in these days of empty believism There is hardly any room for conviction of sin. We have bred a race of preachers who are afraid of conviction of sin. The last thing in the world a church nowadays will do is allow a sinner to come under deep conviction and groan under the weight of a sin. I am all for pointing the man to Jesus Christ. I'm all for saying that there be no hindrance between the soul and the Savior. But my friend, I am also all for letting God's law do its job. And that job is to expose sin for what it truly is and allow for no excuses. Let me stop there. If you're in this meeting tonight, you say, I am a sinner, but the law of God has not yet done its work. When the law of God comes in, it just rips away all the excuses and it leaves you standing before God. You bow before Him and say, Lord, everything that Your law says about my sin is true. Everything that it witnesses to my heart about the depravity and corruption and wickedness of my soul is true. I plead guilty with no excuse. It's the first thing the law does. It exposes sin for what it really is. 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.