I'll turn with me and your copies of the scriptures. If you have them to first Timothy, as we continue our occasional study of that epistle, that pastoral epistle will continue first Timothy chapter one, picking up where we left off in verse eight, first Timothy chapter one, verse eight, Paul writes. Now we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. Amen. To begin looking at this scripture, we have in verse eight, the law and its character. What is the law and is it good? Paul begins by saying, now. He's referring back to what he said in verse 7 concerning teachers of the law. Paul has said that these false teachers are causing trouble. And now he clarifies the issue is not the law itself. He wants to be crystal clear. The problem is not the law, but the misuse of that law by these false teachers. The law itself, we are told, is good. He says, we know. Paul, the other apostles, even Timothy himself, indeed all Christians who rightly understand the law know that the law is good. Paul wants to emphasize that the law, that's referring back to the whole normative religious system of the Old Testament, the rules and regulations, especially as they're expressed in the Ten Commandments and the Mosaic Law, this is good. It's not bad, it's good. The goodness of the law, though, here is especially with respect to its utility and its purpose. In other words, Paul, what he's saying is that the law is useful. These teachers of the law, these so-called teachers of the law, they're causing trouble in the church. But the problem is not that the law itself is bad. The problem is that these teachers are misusing, abusing the law. That's why Paul adds this condition to his clarification. He says, if one uses it lawfully. So the issue is not that the law itself is bad, rather the law is useful, but it's only useful if or when, that is, one uses it lawfully. Maybe a good illustration for what this looks like is when you're using a tool. A perfectly good tool can be a terrible thing. in the wrong hands and when used for the wrong purpose. You all will know from my social media posts and from previous lessons, I've been doing a bit of gardening in my backyard. I'm coming off of a week of vacation. It was very productive. We got a number of tea olive and some cedars in. We've got some some purple bushes and we've got even a rose bush now. And one of the problems I ran into in putting in my garden is that some of my soil is very rocky and very clay filled and there are lots of old oak roots. We've removed several trees and there are roots in the ground still. And wouldn't you know it, a tool like a shovel is a perfectly good tool for digging around in most dirt. but it does precious little good when you're at the base of an oak tree trying to dig a foot long hole and a foot deep in roots and rocks. What do you need? You need a pickaxe. And so we have to make sure we're using the right tool for the right job in the right way. And the problem Paul is highlighting here is that the law, it's not that it's a bad tool, it's a perfectly good tool so long as you use it in the right way for the right purpose. And the problem is when you misuse a tool, when you use it for the wrong purpose, what will happen? Well, you may incur serious bodily harm. You might even lose your sight, so to speak. And what's happening with these false teachers and their abuse and their misappropriation, their misapplication of the law, is not only is it causing them to be led away from Christ, but it's also causing other Christians to be led away from Christ. It's leading them into vain, that is, useless speculations. And this is what happens when we don't use the law properly. So Paul prefaces his positive statement, his positive point with a negative statement. He says, understanding this, the law is not laid down for the just. By way of a strong contrast, Paul intends to remind Timothy why the law was given. It was laid down, and that by God. It's a divine passive. God laid it down. Not for the just, Paul says, referring to the one who is morally upright, one who is righteous. It's not for the just. I think it's worth pointing out here. Paul, when he writes not for the just, he uses a singular adjective. It's referencing a single person. Then he uses, in the subsequent long list that we'll look at in a minute, of all the other sinners, the opposite of the just, he uses a plural adjective to describe that contrasting multitude. It's the one just person, whoever that might be, versus this great multitude, this horde, of lawless, disobedient, ungodly sinners, unholy, profane, those who strike fathers, from murderers, sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, etc. The law was not given for that one just person, whoever that might be, but for all these other people. And so we need to ask, who are the proper subjects of God's law. Why did God lay down his law? You think about the whole Old Testament system, but especially the Mosaic rules and regulations, and especially in that the summary which is the Ten Commandments, which you'll see come out in this list of vices, this list of really a vicious people. Who did God give his law for? Was it for a righteous person? For a just person? No, it was for all of these multitude of sinners. Sinners are the proper subject of God's law. Now Paul's point here is not to exclude redeemed men, those who have believed in Jesus Christ and been saved. Of course, they are, as believers, still subject to God's law. It's still useful to them. Elsewhere, Paul will write of his own redeemed self, I delight in the law of God. And so we know that the law of God is still useful to believers in the New Testament. And we know in the Old Testament, David was a man of faith. He wrote two very extensive Psalms on the law of God, praising it for its excellence. And so we see both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, the law remains good and useful even to believers. But what Paul here is emphasizing, what he wants to remind us of, is that the law is not laid down for the just. God enacted and gave the law, the Mosaic law, not for some singularly righteous person, that he might look at the law and know how good and moral he is and justify himself before God. That's not why God laid down the law at all. And that's one of the ways in which these false teachers were wrongly appropriating the law was to make division in the church to say, we're the righteous ones. We do these things rightly. And so we're righteous and we stand before God as righteous because of what we do in accordance with the law. And that was a wrong application. all over the place, even in the life of Jesus' own ministry. are interacting in this prayer situation. This is the Pharisee standing by himself, prayed thus, God I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, even like that tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get. And so this is an illustration of the misappropriation, the misuse, the abuse of God's law is to take it and to run through the commandments and say, Lord, I'm so thankful that I'm not like this. I'm not doing X, Y, or Z. I'm not like that person. And we compare ourselves to the law and we say, yeah, I'm a pretty good person. Or we think a little bit later in Luke 18 of the rich young ruler. or the rich ruler, doesn't say he's young, but says, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments, do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother. And he said, all these things I have kept for my youth. And when Jesus heard this, he said to him, one thing you still lack, sell all that you have and distribute to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me." Now the point of that's not that he had really kept all those commandments and this was the one thing he was missing. We see that in his response. He heard these things, he became very sad. for he was extremely rich. And Jesus, seeing that he'd become sad, said, how difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. And see, the use of the law is not to say, yes, I've kept that. I've kept that. I've kept that. All these things from my youth have I kept. If that's the way that we're using the law, we are abusing it. We are using it wrongly. And so the question we need to ask ourselves is this. When you look at the perfect law of God, What do you conclude? Do you look at the law of God and you think about the Ten Commandments and you say, well, I'm a pretty good person. I'm not perfect, but I'm better than that guy over there. Is that our response? Do we conclude, all these I have kept from my youth. If so, we have failed to use the law lawfully. Well, if God did not lay down the law for the just, that by it we might justify ourselves before him, then we should ask, why then did God lay it down? Clearly, he did so for the masses who are the opposite of the just. And Paul goes on to describe the variety of this vicious multitude in a series of six groups. He begins, not for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient. And this is the first group. In contrast to the just, Paul highlights the lawless and disobedient as the first among the proper subjects of God's law. Though they live as if there were no law and are unwilling to submit themselves in obedience to it, yet the law was laid down for them. It's an interesting thought. They are living lawless lives, disobedient lives, and yet God has specifically given the law for sinners such as them." It goes on in the second group for the ungodly and sinners. In the first group, Paul characterizes the unjust with respect especially to the external authority of God's law. In the second group, he describes them more personally in terms of their personal relationship with God. They live as people who do not revere God, who do wrong in his sight. That's the idea. We start seeing an emerging in this list as we go on, that this is actually echoing the Ten Commandments. Here, especially, the first commandment is in view. And then as we move to the next group for the unholy and the profane, there's probably echoes of the third and the fourth command. Paul describes what men become as a consequence of their sin. Though God created man for his own holy service, yet sin has rendered him useless to that glorious purpose Having defiled themselves and become impure by their own sin, man has been reduced to an estate and a condition that really is worse than being commonplace. You think about this. God, when he created man, created him to be a priest guarding the garden, a representative for him as a vice ruler over creation, endowed him with all the necessary gifts and put him in a place where he could have this great opportunity to serve God in the garden. We were created to be priests of the living God. And yet what are we reduced to by our sin? So often the psalmist speaks of us in this way. We become like beasts. You imagine, you were created to be a prince, so to speak. And sin reduces us to this point of being a filthy animal, a wild animal. And that is what it means to become unholy and profane. We've lost our special place. And it's not just that we become commoners, but we become worse than commoners. We become beasts. While Paul characterizes the unjust masses in terms of their legal, their personal, even their ritual relation to God. And then in the next three groups, Paul continues to characterize the same masses, but now more so in terms of their relationship with one another. So if the first several listings and descriptions that characterize these unjust people really deal with the first table of the law, now we're moving to the second table of the law, for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murderers. In other words, the law was given for breakers of the 5th and 6th commandments. The law in Exodus 21-15 says, whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death. Moreover, whoever curses his father and his mother shall be put to death. And cursed is anyone who dishonors his father and his mother. Start to think a little bit about what exactly is the law that God gave for such sinners. The sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, was given also for these the breakers of the seventh commandment. Sexually immoral here refers to all those who commit adultery, fornication, rape, incest, sodomy. It includes all those with unnatural lusts, unclean imaginations and affections. The law was given to them for them. It says, if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both shall surely be put to Death. And if a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death. Are you starting to see a pattern emerge about what the law says for sinners such as these? Paul adds men who practice homosexuality. Literally, he writes man-betters. It's better translated, I think, homosexuals, because Paul is characterizing sinners in a way that is more comprehensive than just their actions. You might say, well, practices homosexuality leaves a door open for those who don't practice but only have the affections. That is not the case here. Certainly in Paul's time this would refer to male prostitutes, pederasts, but it would include people in our own day who are characterized by homosexual behavior and also homosexual affections. Just as the law regulates all our actions and all our thoughts and all our affections in every category of sin, the same is true here. Paul goes on, enslavers, liars, perjurers. These refer to those who break the Eighth and Ninth Commandments. Enslavers or kidnappers, they make their living by stealing men into slavery. and liars are those who speak the truth and perjurers are those who speak the truth while under oath. God's law was given to these. His law says whoever steals a man and sells him and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to, anybody want to take a guess? Death. And if a malicious witness arises to accuse a person of wrongdoing, And if the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. You shall purge the evil from your midst." Now, it's not explicit there, and certainly would comprehend more punishments than just death, but the idea would be, in capital cases, if the consequence would have been death, what happens to the individual who purges himself, who lies? whatever would have happened to the person he was bearing false witness against, and often it would be death. And so God has laid down the law, and Paul lists these vicious people And he does so to remind us that God's law almost invariably sentences us to death. Even in the cases where there's a lesser punishment, it's really a mitigation. We all know that sin's wages, whatever they may be, are always ultimately death. And so here's the problem. Well, if God gave the law for such unjust sinners, and the law that he gave largely condemns us to death, then do you think we're making a little bit of a mistake when we take the law and we use the law to say, yeah, God, I deserve to live because I'm a righteous person? Do you think maybe when we do that we've missed the point of why God has given his law? We make a grave mistake when we abuse God's law for our own self-justification. It was not given for that purpose. Rather, as Paul writes elsewhere, by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin, and the law brings wrath, and it came to increase the trespass, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death. What then is the good and lawful use of the law? One of its uses is to reveal sin, to teach men what sin is, and especially what are the consequences of sin. The terrors of the law, Matthew Henry writes, are intended to tie the hands and to restrain the tongues of those to whom it was given. And so the law being used lawfully in the case of these unjust people is to reveal to them the heinousness of their sin and the consequences that will surely come, namely the wrath of God and the judgment of death. And yet they misappropriate it to say these are the reasons why they should live because they're good people, because they've kept the Mosaic law. Well, the apostle concludes his list of vicious people by summing up in order to bring all sinners and all their sinful thoughts and all their sinful affections and all their sinful actions under the law. He writes, and whatever else, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted." It's as if time and ink will not allow Paul to exhaust the depths, the heights, the extents of human depravity. He doesn't even constrain himself anymore to the Ten Commandments. You'll notice that. Up to this point, he's been alluding to the Ten Commandments and he's been showing the right use of them, how they condemn sinners But he says, whatever else? There are other sins besides these specific ones he's highlighted that are likewise the reason God has given his law. But it goes on, he says, is contrary to sound doctrine. It's interesting, even though he's been using the law, as sort of the model for what he's been talking about. Now he says it's contrary to sound doctrine, whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. There are other things, other sins we can commit, other duties that we have that may not be comprehended in an explicit fashion in the Mosaic law. That the gospel The doctrines, the sound doctrines in accordance with the gospel, the glory of the blessed God, it comprehends, honestly, a larger category. I think one example, let me just...one example. We see this all throughout the epistles of Paul, where you'll have a section of doctrine and then you will have a section of application. And while Paul often does make use of the Old Testament law, and the Mosaic law especially, and the Ten Commandments, he does not do so exclusively. Just one example, chapter 2 of 1 Timothy, just going on to the next page. It says, first of all, then I urge you in supplication, prayer, and intercession, and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings, and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good. And he might say, well, because the fifth commandment says, honor your father and mother, and that's stylistically representative of higher authorities, and so therefore we should pray for kings because of the fifth commandment. That would be entirely legitimate, actually. But what does he actually argue? He says, this is good and it is pleasing in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. And so what you find is the pattern of Paul's epistles very often is to lay down doctrine and then to draw implications and applications of Christian duties or to warn us of certain sins based on the doctrines of the gospel. And we should be paying attention to these things. right living flows from true doctrine. Actually, the problem with all these lists of vicious, vile sinners is that they don't understand the truth of the gospel correctly, right? They are sinning and they're breaking God's law, but the real problem is that they do not know God, they do not know Christ, they have not believed the gospel, and so they violate the law of God. They're living as contrary to the law of God. It's also contrary to sound doctrine. A professor of mine at Greenville Seminary once defined theology as doctrine for living to God through Christ by the Holy Spirit. I wonder what is your attitude concerning the doctrines of the gospel? It's a big issue, the true teaching that Paul is trying to encourage Timothy to fight for. And we ask, what is the consequences of false teaching? Why is Paul so concerned about these false teachers misusing and abusing the law? It's because it's dangerous. They've got a tool in their hand and they are using it wrongly and they are hurting themselves and they are hurting others. And that is what happens when we are exposed and start to believe false doctrine. And so Paul is very concerned here that we believe right doctrine and that we live accordingly to it. May I just conclude briefly from our Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 19, verse 6, concerning the law of God and its usefulness to believers. It says, although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works to be thereby justified or condemned, Yet is it of great use of them as well as to others in that as a rule of life, informing them of the will of God and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly, discovering also the sinful pollutions of their nature, hearts, and life. So as examining themselves thereby, they may come to further conviction of humiliation for and hatred against sin, together with a clearer sight of the need they have of Christ and the perfection of his obedience. just likewise of use to the regenerate to restrain their corruption and that it forbids sin. And the threatening of it serves to show that even their sins deserve and what afflictions in this life they may expect for them. Although freed from the curse thereof, threatened in the law, the promise of it in like manner show them God's approbation of obedience and what blessing they may expect upon the performance thereof, although not as due to them by the law as a covenant of work. So as a man doing good, and refraining from evil because the law encourages to the one and deters from the other is no evidence of his being under the law and not under grace." There's a lot going on there. My point is simply this, the law remains useful to the believer. We should make use of the law as a rule of life. It should show us how we are to serve God and how we are to live, how we are to serve one another and love them. It is the standard for that. But what I want to especially emphasize in closing tonight, it is the rule of life and yet the thing that motivates a Christian, the thing that empowers a Christian To do any of this is ultimately a thankfulness, a love for Christ. It's the truth of the gospel that ought to compel us. That should be the primary motivation. We look to the law and it gives us good direction. We want to honor God in that. But the thing that drives us to do it and empowers us to do it is the truth of the gospel. It is Jesus Christ, his person, his work, what he's done for us as sinners. The law was given ultimately to drive us to Christ and that we might see him in all his excellence. And from that, seeing what he's done for us is to then motivate us in our obedience to the law. We cannot keep the law the way a Christian ought to keep it unless we love Jesus Christ as he's revealed to us in the gospel. Let that motivate you as you use the law. Use it lawfully. Don't use it to self-justify. Use it as a rule of life. Use it to restrain yourself from sin. But in those uses, make sure that what's really motivating you is your love for Christ. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word which is truth. Would you bless to us, help us to meditate on these things. Lord, help us to know indeed that the gospel is of the glory of the blessed God and that you've entrusted it to us, Lord, as you entrusted it to Paul and faithful pastors throughout the generations, and now you have entrusted it even to this church. Lord, would we steward the gospel in our own hearts, and would it motivate us to serve you and to serve one another. In all our duties, would we be motivated by your gospel. In all our refraining and fleeing from sin, would we be motivated by your gospel. I pray this in Christ's name, amen.