All right, remember tomorrow your paraphrase of Ovid is due, and we're gonna keep reading Fantasties as well as a class, and Josephus is due in two weeks. Those are your assignments, all right? And today we're gonna talk about law. We're gonna talk about law. We live in a world of laws. We are surrounded by laws, and there are laws at this school. Let's think of a few of the laws that we have at this school. Anyone? Boys aren't allowed to have long hair. Some of you are dancing on the edge there. Living on the edge between masculinity and femininity. Interesting. Not an edge I want to live on, but anyway, Jackson? Yeah, you can't wear just whatever you want to wear. Of course not, of course not. Even if we didn't have a uniform, and we don't have a very strict uniform at all, because laws are made for the unrighteous, you only have to be as strict as people are rebellious in their hearts. I don't know if that makes any sense. The only reason we really have uniforms is because it's just much cheaper and much more practical. But you'll notice your uniforms, you can wear a blue shirt, a red shirt, a white shirt, I think you can even wear a green shirt. I can't remember last time I looked, but you can wear navy pants, khaki pants, navy skirts, khaki skirts, plaid skirts. It's really not what you think of as a typical uniform. It's really more of a practical shopping thing. And then you can wear pretty much whatever sweatshirts you want. Now you can imagine some schools have to get real strict with their dress codes. What causes a school to have to get more strict? Crop tops. Interesting. Crop tops. Yeah, sure. It's when the kids, in a spirit of revolution and rebellion, are constantly trying to break the laws, whether the laws are stated or not stated. Are there social laws that aren't necessarily written in the manual, but they are just something you learn out in society as it pertains to dress? Yeah, of course, of course, right? Boys, if they're going to wear earrings, have to wear it on one ear, on the left. Is that how it works? That was the rule when I was a kid. Now, I guess boys can wear earrings just like girls. No? All right. Well, good. I'm glad you all have some sense of decorum still. And are your social laws different than the social laws of other kids in other parts of the country? Are your social laws as Christians different than the social laws of non-Christian kids? And you can kind of see that on display. What are some other rules we have around here? We're surrounded by laws. There are certain laws going on right now about who gets to talk and who has to listen. And if you want to speak, you know, what sort of a behavior you have to have to speak. You know, when you were a little kid, you had to raise your hand to speak, right? And in here, you typically have to raise your hand to signal to me to stop talking so that you can then have a turn talking. But if I weren't talking, you could talk without raising your hand, right? But you can't all talk at the same time at really loud volumes, right? Those are all laws. And as you get older, you don't need the laws to be formally enforced necessarily. You just kind of learn things like don't blurt out when other people are speaking. That's just how to have friends. But that's a law. What are some other laws we have around here? I have some laws, some very strict laws, and that is you don't walk in the mud. That's one of the ones that I am very particular about. You don't walk in the landscaping. You don't put your greasy, oily fingers on the nicely painted walls so that we don't have to paint them every single year, right? The wall doesn't need your fingerprints on them or the residue of you. It's not necessary, right? So I have a lot of little persnickety laws about the way things are kept up and whatnot. We have laws about seating. There's seating laws and there's making loud noises in class laws, right? There's laws about you're not able to play boyfriend, girlfriend or play married until you're ready to have a baby, right? And when you're ready to have a baby and raise a baby in the fear and the admonition of the Lord, then you're allowed to pair up and decide who marries who and who gets to, you know, pretend like their boyfriend, girlfriend. And like, of course, if you violate that law, then what happens? you get kicked out of the school. You get kicked out of the school. And that's unfortunate because the school is where you connect with most of your friends. And so if you're kicked out of the school, it's going to be a hard time keeping up with your friends. And then you'll be blocked from all the chat groups because the parents will be concerned about you. And so that's why you want to just make sure you keep the rules. You want to keep the rules. And it's not really our rules, just God's rules. If you're going to pretend to be married, pretend to be boyfriend, girlfriend, like all the pagans do out there, We're not, you're not allowed to do that. Now, if you're ready to get married and ready to have a baby and raise that baby and provide for that baby and get the father's permission and all that stuff, then hey, maybe you're ready. I don't think any of you are ready just yet, but you're close. You're so close. So, you know, you know, don't, don't screw it all up right here when you're right about to cross the finish line. Make sense? Oh, we got rules. There's rules everywhere. Now rules involve two different things. One, it's order. Laws establish order. The law of gravity, for example, is establishing some order in this classroom. Our papers and our computers and our bodies aren't just floating around and sticking to the ceiling. And, you know, it would be a strange classroom, wouldn't it? But we have some, some order because gravity is pulling us all in one direction toward the center of the earth. And that's very, that's very beneficial for us. But law is also, law also involves compulsion. Those are two very important terms. Compulsion. There is compelling reasons and compelling force to obey the laws. Like the no pretending to be married, no dating and sexting and boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, when you're not ready to raise a baby, that law, you are compelled to obey that law by the consequences of not obeying that law, right? And we sometimes need consequences, don't we? Because we might be willing in our heart, we might want to do the right thing, but it's so hard because she's so pretty, right? She's so pretty and finally a girl likes me and that's never happened in my entire life. And I can't let this one pass. Well, no, so you need compelling reasons to say no to the bad girl, right? or the bad boy. And you need reasons to make sure that your parents know you're falling into this kind of temptation so that the school can help you out by sending the bad girl or bad boy off to be with other bad girls and bad boys. Right? Make sense? Now, there's other types of law. Here's the four categories. I want you to write these down. These are terms, and this will be on your testing quiz. There's scientific laws. Scientific laws. such as the law of gravity, the laws of thought, the laws of thermodynamics. Benjamin, would you go ask if you could close that door over there? I'm hearing that video really loud. There's also, well, in scientific laws, real quick, you need to get this. Sometimes, as scientists, you recognize patterns And after a long period of time, you can develop a hypothesis as to what's going on with that pattern. And if it continues to seem true, and there's no contradictory evidence, that hypothesis turns into a theory. And eventually it can be accepted by all as a scientific law, like the law of thermodynamics. It's recognized as a pattern, there's a hypothesis, eventually that hypothesis is tested, it becomes a theory, and eventually that theory is so universally believed that it's the law of Thermodynamics. Makes sense? That's a scientific law. If you throw a football in the air, according to what scientific law will that come straight back down? The law of gravity. Very good. And there's also customary laws. These are laws that are customary to a particular civilization or to a particular society. Laws about the way you dress and the way you do your hair. Laws about etiquette and manners. For example, does the Bible command us guys to open doors for ladies? It doesn't explicitly say that, but we have customary laws in our society that the stronger should aid and use their strength for the weaker, or the more noble should be honored by the less noble. And that's why men open doors for women. You're practicing being a servant leader and honoring others. Of course, that's not explicitly taught in the Bible, but the Bible does teach parents and pastors, et cetera, to teach children how to honor others. And how to honor is different in different societies because they have different customs. In Japan, you don't do a very hard bro hug, you know, keep it in tight, bring it in tight, bang. No, you bow, and there's customary ways in which you bow. It used to be customary for girls to do what? curtsy, that's not as customary anymore. Makes sense, those are customary laws. And you have moral law. This is the next category, moral law. And the moral law governs things like selfishness, covetousness, racism, lying, stealing, etc. That's the moral law. And then you have the fourth category, which is civil law. Civil law. And that governs things such as murder and theft. Now one more term. Sanctions. Sanctions is a term you need to remember. Sanctions are those negative consequences which are administered to you if you break these laws. Benjamin, can you go ask them to mute the laptop in here or do something so that We don't have to hear that laptop? Maybe you can turn it down on the laptop? And what are the sanctions for all these various laws? What are the sanctions if you break the moral law and commit a sin? Are there punishments? Yeah, from your parents, from your church, from God, hell, right? Curses, right? Administered by Jesus, right? Exactly. What about the sanctions for civil law? Jail. Yeah, jail, straight to jail, straight to jail. Fines, scourgings, floggings, public hangings, depends on what country and time you live in. And are there sanctions for violating scientific laws? What if you violate the laws of thought that we learned in logic class? What are the sanctions for that? You become dumb. That's right. And nothing you say makes any sense. and people no longer listen to you and you lose all your influence. What about if you break customary laws? Like you don't hold doors open for people, you let them slam in other people's faces. Are there sanctions for that? Will you face negative penalties and negative consequences for this sort of behavior that's not customary? Eventually, yes. You will have trouble in your life. That's what sanctions are. Very good. after having gotten all those terms out of the way, there's different things we can think about here that are very interesting. And that is, what are the relationships between these different types of laws? Like how do they overlap? Do they overlap? For example, pornography. Is that a moral law or a civil law? So it's definitely a moral law. Is it a civil law? Should it be a civil law? It should be a civil law, right, because you have prostitution involved and you have oppression and other things that should be criminalized. Absolutely. So it's a moral and a civil law. What about stealing? Is that a moral or a civil law? Both. That's right. It's a sin and a crime. That's right. and the sanctions should be administered against these from the civil authorities and the ecclesiastical or church authorities because it's a sin and a crime. What if something is like racism in your heart? Is that a crime? Should that be sanctioned by the civil authorities? Should it be sanctioned by your church authorities? Should the church say to you, no more Lord's Supper for you, and if you don't repent, you're gonna be kicked out of the church and lose all the means of grace and the benefits of being a part of a church, if you continue to be a big fat racist. Should the church do that? Yes, because if you don't repent of racism, you go to hell, right? That's the church's domain. Now, but what if you are committing crimes against people like murdering them or beating them because of their race? Is that moral or is that civil? That's both. Very good. Good. We got that. What about wasting money? If God gives me $1,000, what are the laws as it pertains to managing that $1,000 properly? I have to steward it well according to the laws of the Bible, right? But what if I just take that $1,000 and I put it in a suitcase and I toss it into a lake and it sinks down to the bottom of the lake? Am I stealing? Would I go to jail? Did I break any laws? But did I break any moral laws? I broke moral laws, but I didn't break criminal laws or civil laws. Did I steal? I stole from God as a bad steward, but I didn't steal from the bank, and so it's not a crime. Isn't that interesting how you think about all those various things? What about saying yes sir and no sir? What is that? Someone says moral, others say customary. That's interesting. Some people say both. Yes? Yeah, so maybe you are intentionally saying sir or ma'am or not saying sir or ma'am. in a way down deep in your heart, which is sinful, which would make it a moral law. If you're like, uh, yes sir, right? That's violating the moral law. That was me imitating Amelia and other people. She does not do that. What if your parents ask you to say yes sir and no sir as a part of how you are being taught to honor and you refuse to say sir, or ma'am, would that be a moral violation or a customary violation? It's both, that's right. The custom of that home and the law of that home is to show honor by saying yes sir or no sir. But you could imagine a place and a time where to show honor, you don't have to necessarily put a sir after the end of a yes. But I will say in normal customary society, if you go, ha, yeah, yeah, That's less respectful than if you say yes, and that's slightly less respectful than if you say yes, sir. But somewhere in there, there is a customary law which is governing society, and will there be sanctions for those who refuse to follow those laws of custom? Yes, trust me, when you go to your job application and your job interview, there you will meet the negative sanctions of perpetually violating customary laws. Right? Exactly. Exactly. So, the relationship between various types of laws, customary laws, scientific laws, moral laws, civil laws, very interesting to discuss. And, you know, this is not something we know perfectly. It's things we have to use wisdom and the Bible and, you know, consider the opinions of other people throughout time so that we can come to a right understanding of how all of these types of laws interact with one another. It's very complicated. That's what I'm saying. It's very complicated. Is abortion a moral or a civil law? It should be both. That's right. It should be both. It should be both. What about the right to choose and the government promising to defend the rights of women to choose? In their case, they're making criminalizing abortion the actual sin. and legalizing abortion, the actual righteousness. So they believe that the moral and the civil law are connected, only their moral law is flipped upside down. You understand what I mean? For them, for us to say abortion is illegal would be morally wrong. because they call evil good and good evil. But you can notice, though, in that everyone agrees to some extent that the moral law and the criminal law have some overlap, right? They're not exactly the same, but there is some overlap. Now, what about laws as it pertains to the Lord's Supper and baptism, or preaching or worship on the Lord's Day, or laws as it pertains to teaching true doctrine as opposed to false doctrine. What would we call those types of laws? Or what could we call them? We could call them ecclesiastical laws or church laws. Those are laws as it pertains to the worship of God. Where do we see some of those? We see those in the Bible, like remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Is that a worship law or what we might call a ceremonial law or an ecclesiastical law? Is it? It's moral, but is it a civil law? Is keeping the Sabbath a civil law, or should it be a civil law? In the past, in our own government, there were laws that kept businesses from opening on the Sabbath. Isn't that interesting? That's right, there were laws. If you work for Chick-fil-A, there's a law that you're not allowed to work on the Sabbath. That's interesting. So is the Sabbath a moral law or a civil law, or is it just a ceremonial law? A lot to discuss. And I'm not trying to answer all those questions today. but I'm just trying to point out to you that it's a complicated subject that's also very interesting to consider. Now, do customary laws change? Do they change? Yes, okay. But do moral laws change? Moral laws don't change because they come from God, right? Who himself does not change. So if moral laws do not change, there must be some ground or some basis upon which they are established. And what is that ground or that basis that we can know, these are the moral laws, this is what does not change? The Bible, that's exactly right. The Bible, that's right. Now that's of course what we teach here at this school. But I want you to know a couple of other theories about where this comes from. If the moral law, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not etc. If that's always been the case, and it does not change, then it has to be grounded on something fundamental. There has to be a way in which we can have certainty about that. And we say it's from the Bible, but not everybody likes the Bible. So they come up with other theories to justify their laws, and one of them is called natural law theory. You need to write that down, that's a term. That's the law of Jiminy Cricket. Y'all know Jiminy Cricket? Isn't that, is that Pinocchio? Let your conscience be your guide. That's what he taught. Let your conscience be your guide. Today we follow our hearts, but Jiminy Cricket said follow your conscience. Follow your conscience. And what's the problem though with following your conscience? Well it's not always right. Your conscience is not the same thing as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit uses your conscience, but your conscience has to be trained and discipled. That's why if you sit under good teaching and you study your Bible, your conscience can be trained so that your conscience is in alignment with the law of God and can become a great tool for righteousness. But not everybody's consciences are trained properly. Make sense? Some people think some things are wrong that aren't wrong. They add to the law of God, they take away from the law of God because their consciences aren't trained by the law of God. But what if we said, yeah, but what about everyone's conscience, like the majority, almost everyone's conscience? Could we follow that? Could we follow the collective will, the collective conscience? Would there be problems with that? Could we know for certain that this is right and this is wrong because people throughout all of time have believed that murder is wrong? Say, we believe that murder is wrong and we will stand up for this principle because It's natural. Everybody just kind of intuitively knows this. Go to the Philippines, go to China, go back in time. Everyone knows it's wrong to murder. But is that true? Is that true? What about babies? Is it wrong to murder babies? But not everyone agrees on that one. What about to murder Jews? Is that okay? No, but not everyone agrees on that. What about to murder missionaries that show up on your shores and not only murder them, but cook them and eat them? Is that gonna be a problem? That's a problem, but not everyone sees that as a problem, you see, because even though man does have a conscience and man does have the law of God written on his heart, to some extent, man perverts it and corrupts it and adds to it and takes it away. And isn't it true we all would like the laws of God enforced on others, but just not so much on us? We want to be the exception to the rule. We want to cut in line, but we hate when others cut in line in front of us. So that's the problem with quote-unquote natural law that's just intuitive to man. The problem is man assists sinful. And so it's not consistent. It can't be, in my opinion, it cannot be a consistent basis upon which to build a society and a just society. Do we have a consistent basis upon which we could build a just society and say, we need to follow these laws. These don't change. These are the laws of God. And that comes from the Bible, right? Now, there are those, especially since the Enlightenment, and here's the third type of theory as to where law comes from, either the Bible or natural law, intuitive to man. The third theory is that there is no God, basically, but that over a, basically, it's hard to explain, but basically, as long as you don't hurt other people, and you follow the golden rule, then that's, That's our axiom, that's our foundational truth. You can see there's no God, it's all about man still. As long as you don't oppress anyone, as long as you tolerate others, as long as you don't hurt anyone, it's fine. Does anyone know the name of that modern day philosophy? It's essentially libertarianism, if you've ever heard of that before. Libertarianism, and it comes out of the enlightenment, Men Like Immanuel Kant, Have you ever heard that we should be tolerant? Have you ever heard that phrase before? Yeah, we should be tolerant of others. That's sort of this mindset, but not because God says so, not according to God's laws, but just because we don't want to hurt other people and we want to be good to other humans. That's another theory as to where it comes from. It doesn't come from the moral law of God being written on the hearts of people, and it doesn't come from the Bible, it comes from general human goodwill, and that we should all wanna do unto others as we would have them do unto us. But that of course is gonna break down as well. Because the big problem with all laws is that man is sinful, right? Laws cannot save, laws cannot build a just society or an equitable society, they can be used, but unless the spirit of God moves in the hearts of people, it's a fool's errand. Make sense? We are all, without the Spirit of God, wanting to make exceptions and apply the rule to others and not to ourselves. All right. So last question we gotta think about. Should we enforce biblical laws on a society that doesn't love Jesus and doesn't have the power to fully obey them? Should we enforce Let's use adultery, for example. Is adultery a moral law or a civil law? According to the Bible, what is it? In the Bible, it's both. But in our society, non-Christians generally think of it as moral, maybe. Some of them don't even think that's wrong anymore. But let's go back 20 years, back before it turned into clown world. Like in the 80s, everyone believed adultery was wrong, morally. but you didn't get criminally prosecuted for it. But if you went back a few more years, you would get criminally prosecuted for it. In what sense is adultery interacting with the civil sphere, with inheritance and money and things like that? Benjamin? You're screwing up the family tree? Yeah, you're messing up that person's family tree. In some sense, you could be stealing the inheritance from one man to another. And that's one of the reasons why it's a capital punishment in the Bible, because not all forms of adultery, but some forms of adultery in the Bible are capital punishment because you're basically stealing someone's household and their whole inheritance and disrupting the entire social order. But that's, I don't wanna go off on that particular tangent, but you can see how it might be difficult to enforce adultery laws on a society that hates God and hates Jesus. But should you? If Christians, let's say a minority of Christians were to gain power and had the ability to write the laws and enforce the laws, should we criminalize adultery? Interesting, interesting. Should we criminalize sodomy? like it is in the Bible. Should we criminalize... Should we criminalize littering? Is that a moral law? Is littering a moral law, a criminal law? It's criminalized now, you know. If you litter, it's a major fine. It's also a moral law and a customary law. You will be publicly shamed. Littering today is like worse than anything. Littering and smoking, it's like where you can abort your baby, you can turn yourself into a boy, and you can commit adultery. Just don't litter or smoke, right? That's how stupid our society is, right? But here's the three purposes of the law from the Bible. I want you to write these down. First of all, The Bible teaches that the law evangelizes. The law evangelizes. Now I need to explain that because that can sound kind of wonky. Evangelization is technically the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But the law has a, an aspect of that and that the law is brought to a person's soul to convict them of sin so that they become aware of their need for Christ in the gospel. Make sense? So in the process of evangelization, the law is step one. You don't know that the good news is good until you first hear the bad news. That's why preachers should preach the law so that people can know they need a savior. So the law does that. If we were to run a society, it would be good to criminalize certain things and to condemn certain behaviors so that people knew, hey, that's wrong. Hey, we're not Christians. We weren't raised in a Christian school. We're raised by pagans and we have pagan worldviews. But these Christians who are running us, they say, hmm, adultery is a sin and it's a crime. You will be penalized with a fine or you will be, or this or that will happen to you. I'm not saying that you have to execute them. Obviously, you can't evangelize them if they're dead. You're trying to work with non-Christians here. So it's an incrementalist sort of a thing. And this is a very complicated subject. We're just chatting about it. But you would want to criminalize it in a sense that you would want to fine it. You wouldn't want to bless it. You wouldn't want to allow them to steal the inheritance from other people. You wouldn't want that to be promoted. You would want it to be kept quiet. in the closet, shameful and criminal, and if you do it, you get in trouble. Because that would teach people, at least to some extent, that that's wrong, right? You don't know littering is wrong if you were raised to just litter all the time. But if a law is passed against littering, you're trained over a period of time, hey, that's bad, that's bad. So the law can condemn people so that they know they need a savior, but also, and I've already kind of mentioned this, the law teaches over time, the law's a tutor, shows people how to live. All right, who here, when you get in the car, puts on their seatbelt? Does anyone here regularly not wear their seatbelt? You don't wear your seatbelt? Now notice, one person raised their hand and said, I don't always wear my seatbelt, and we all looked at them and was like, Whoa. You don't wear your seatbelt. Okay. But listen, but listen, when I was a kid, this is the point I'm trying to make now. Now you're not on trial. You're not on trial. She's now defending herself. Right? This is how crazy this is. Watch. When I was a kid, no one, no one wore their seatbelts. Hardly. It wasn't a thing. But they began to promote it, and to teach it, and to preach it, and to put it on billboards, wear your seatbelt, click it or tick it, and then they began to criminalize it and force it. And now everyone thinks, if you don't put your kid in a seatbelt, you're an evil monster. See, because the law, I mean, have you ever seen a kid, like, sitting in the front seat with no seatbelt? You're like, that parent should have their children taken from them. I grew up sleeping in the window, like, of the car. Like, on road trips, I'd just get up there and sleep in the top, by the windshield. Because the laws train people. The same can be done for other types of laws, because the law teaches, the law trains. It passes down certain acceptable behaviors. When I was a kid, people drank inside their vehicles and their kids slept in the back windows and they had shotguns in the back of their trucks and people would pile in the back of a pickup truck and drive down the highway. You'd see kids and a dog in the back of the truck, shotgun in the back window, open beer. That's just how country people just drove around all the time. It wasn't even a thing. But they passed laws against all of those things and now all those behaviors are seen to be as like, that's the worst. That's the worst. When I was a kid, everyone smoked cigarettes. Everyone smoked. When I was in the military, everyone smoked. It was just normal. But then they began to pass laws and to preach against it. And now, to smoke a cigarette is so shameful, people have to walk like a hundred feet away and go around the corner and hide like a leper. Because that's what laws do. Laws teach. And laws condemn. So even though society wouldn't necessarily have the ability to follow Jesus's laws from the heart, it would be good for Christians to teach the pagan society through law. So for example, when missionaries showed up in various islands civilizations back in the 1800s, and they found people cannibalizing one another, They began to teach and they began because they had the power, because they had muskets and they had organization and law and civilization. They would take over the population, right? This is totally not cool anymore, but if you show up at an island and you are immensely powerful and you can run the government and you're a Christian and you have guns and civil order and civilization and the island is in famine and disease and cannibalizing each other, you're in charge, okay? And then you pass laws. No, no, no more eating people, right? No doing that. Just simple stuff. And you begin to teach them through the law, you teach them, because the law is a tutor that teaches people how to be civilized and how to live. That's what basically would happen in many colonies and many missionary endeavors. Of course, there's a lot of evil stuff out there too, but that's basically what the idea was. And The law does this, it also restrains evildoers. This is also very important, that's the third thing. It helps in evangelization by condemning, showing the need for Christ. It also teaches and it also restrains evildoers. At some point, some people just need to be executed. There are evildoers out there and it needs to be restrained. Some of the laws that we have in our school, It's not because we want to make life hard for you. It's so that to restrain some of the typical temptations and evils that happen in high school, right? And so you use the law to teach and to evangelize and to restrain and to restrain. If you didn't have these laws, we'd all be turning into Lord of the Flies in not too long. All right, can the law change a heart? Can it regenerate, cause someone to be born again? Can it truly save? No, that's works-based salvation. That's salvation by law. That's what we call the Galatian heresy from the scriptures. But the law is a tutor and a teacher that can lead men to Christ and restrain evil doing in a society. Make sense? So a lot to talk about, a lot to think about with the law. I hope that sparks some of your imaginations. And we are done.