The sermon you are about to hear was recorded at Grace Baptist Church, Cape Coral, Florida. For additional sermons and more information, visit our website at truegraceofgod.org. And this morning, we are going to be again in verses 17 through 20. If you recall, two weeks ago, we were in this same text. And I said that we would return here to examine more closely some of the ideas contained here. So we'll be looking again at Matthew chapter five, verses 17 through 20. That's page 810 in the Bibles that are provided for you. Oh, how I love your law. It's my meditation all the day. How often do you hear these words or these kinds of words from the common evangelical Christian? These are true words. They're the words of Psalm 119, 97. They're Holy Spirit-inspired words, infallible. They're beautiful words. But unfortunately, they're not the kind of thing that we hear often in the American church today. Unfortunately, many American evangelicals have become almost allergic to God's law. Any praise of the law, any sincere desire to be obedient to God's law, any call for men to conform their lives to the law of God, it's decried as legalistic. decried as unloving, decried as not being gospel-centered. But the psalmist didn't feel this way. He loved the law of God. He meditated on God's law daily. He sought to be obedient to it with his good works. And so ought we. Love God's law. Seek to be obedient to it. Performing good works. Because as Paul says in Romans chapter 7 verse 12, the law is holy. The commandment is holy and good and righteous. As we see in our text this morning, Jesus commands continued adherence to the law of God. And I hope that as a result of studying this text this morning, we can, by the aid of the Spirit, be rid of our own allergy to God's law, and instead come to love God's law, that we would seek to meditate upon it, that we would seek to be obedient to it. So follow along with me as I read Matthew chapter 5, verses 17 through 20. Jesus says, Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly, as I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. And we see in this text, and what we'll learn as we study this morning, that God's law is forever central to his plan to redeem fallen man, to govern his creation, and to glorify himself. That God's law is forever central to his plan to redeem fallen man, to restrain and to govern his creation, and to glorify himself. And so if you're taking notes, I just want to follow this brief outline. We're going to look at the three uses of God's law. The way that the law of God functions. The first use is the law teaches us. The law teaches. The second is that the law restrains. And the third is that the law guides. The law teaches, the law restrains, and the law guides. Two weeks ago, as we looked at this text, we did so in perhaps a more exegetical way than I'm going to do this morning, but we took away from our study last time Number one, that Jesus fulfills the law, as he states here. Number two, that Christians must obey the law. And number three, that God demands perfect obedience to the law. Jesus leaves no room here in this text for a disregard of the law of God. Even now that we are under the grace of the new covenant, we are still obligated to be obedient to God's law. And so we took some time to understand what is it that Jesus is talking about when he talks about the law of God? What does he mean by that? And what does he mean when he says he fulfills the law? Well, Jesus is a first century Jew, and so when he speaks of the law, he's speaking of the law as it was given in the Old Testament. And if you recall, we divided that law into three different parts. There's the ceremonial law, the civil law, and the moral law. The ceremonial laws are those Old Testament laws concerning the sacrifices, concerning the priesthood, concerning cleanliness, concerning worship that you read about in Exodus, in Leviticus. The civil law are those laws which govern the nation as an ethnic national entity, the nation of Israel. These are the laws that you find in the Old Testament regarding marriage or slavery or inheritance or property. And then there's the moral law. The moral law, it's different from the civil law and it's different from the ceremonial law in that the moral laws transcend the Old Covenant. The moral law applies to all people at all times in all places, not just to the nation of Israel. The law to not murder, as we find it in the Ten Commandments, was not only a law for ancient Israel. It was also a law for Adam in the Garden of Eden. It's a law for us today. The law to have no other gods before me was a law for the nation of Israel, it was also a law for the nation of Babylon, and it's also a law for the nation of the United States of America today. These laws are transcendent. They apply to all people. And the Ten Commandments, as we find them in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, are a summary of God's moral law. Every sin, every transgression of the law, every act of disobedience can be traced back in some way to a transgression of one of these ten commandments. And so the moral law of God, it defines what's right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what's righteous, what's evil. The moral law of God defines what sin is and what goodness is. The reformed theologian Francis Turton said this about the law. He says, there is no case so special, no circumstance so extraordinary as not to come under the same rule and determination in the word of God. The word of God, God's commandments, God's laws address everything that we would consider either right or wrong. Every ethical issue, every moral issue is only moral or immoral because of the law of God. But Jesus says here in verse 17 that he is the fulfillment of the law. He says, don't think that I've come to abolish the law. I've not come to abolish it, but to fulfill it. And so he fulfills the ceremonial law. We talked about this two weeks ago. And that he is the perfect sacrifice. He is the true high priest. He is, as John the Baptist called him, the lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world. All that those old ceremonial laws were pointing to are fulfilled in Christ. It's through his death and through his mediation as our great high priest that we are able to come into God's presence at peace with him. Christ is also the fulfillment of the civil law as well. He is the true Israel, as we see in Matthew chapter two. And all those who are in him, Jew or Gentile, are the true Israel with him. And so God's people no longer are a national ethnic entity, but rather it's a pan-national, spiritual, multi-ethnic entity, the church. That's the true Israel. And it's in Christ that those civil laws are fulfilled. But Jesus is also the fulfillment of the moral law in a different way. Christ fulfilled the moral law by being perfectly obedient to it. not failing in any way, not transgressing the law in any way, doing all that was demanded of him by God. He did not fail at any point. And he fulfilled it on our behalf, because we can't. Thus he became our righteousness, since we had none of our own. So the ceremonial law and the civil law that are given to us in the Old Testament, these are fulfilled in Christ and they're no longer binding upon the Christian today, though we can learn much from them. But Christ did not abolish the moral law. He didn't do away with the moral law as though it were not binding on us today. It's still binding upon the Christian today. given Christ's statement here in verse 18, nothing will pass away from the law. And by this he means that moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments. And so the question for us this morning is, in what way does the law function for us? How are we to use that moral law today? In what way are we bound to the Ten Commandments? Is our salvation dependent upon our obedience? Is the law merely a helpful guide that we can choose to follow or choose not to follow? It doesn't really matter because we're not under law, we're under grace. Well, Protestants have historically understood that there are three main uses of the moral law, and understanding these uses of the moral law is incredibly helpful for the Christian to grow in Christlikeness. I've already mentioned them. The law teaches us, the law restrains us, and the law guides us. These are the three uses of the law, and I want to take each one of them in turn. First, the law teaches. The law, the moral law is a teacher that teaches us what God demands of his creation. The moral law is a teacher that shows us and teaches us who we are in light of his demands. It shows us our true state before God. The moral law for us removes any doubt concerning our own miserable, sinful souls. So that the man who looks at the law of God, it's like he's looking into a mirror that reveals to him exactly who he is. A lawbreaker. A sinner. One who is guilty before God. Anyone who breaks the law of God is guilty of sin. The Apostle John tells us this in 1 John 3. He says that sin is lawlessness. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness is what he tells us. So anyone guilty of sin breaks the law of God, brings guilt upon himself, and therefore is liable to the punishment which God has instituted for sin. And what is that punishment that is instituted for sin? It's death. It's wrath. It's condemnation. Paul tells us in Romans 6.23 that the wages of sin, the payment of sin, is death. And this is not just merely a physical death. It is physical, but it's more. And it's worse. It's a spiritual death. It's an eternal death. The prophet Ezekiel tells us in Ezekiel 18 that the soul that sins shall die. This doesn't mean that those who sin a lot will die. This doesn't mean that those who commit the really bad sins will die. The soul who sins, period, will die. Anyone who sins at all in any way, anyone who breaks the law of God at all in any way. You children probably know the answer to this question. You can just answer it in your heads. But question 31 of our children's catechism is this, what does every sin deserve? The anger and judgment of God. What does every sin deserve? Not just the big ones, not just the heinous ones, not just the ones that we're all revolted at, but every sin. What does it deserve? The anger and judgment of God. This is what Paul tells us in Romans 1, verse 18. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. All of it. The violation, lest we think that there's any small sin that we can kind of get away with, that we're not gonna bring God's wrath down upon us because we've committed it, the violation of one of God's law equals the violation of all of God's law. Breaking one of God's commandments is the same as breaking all of God's commandments. This is what the Apostle James tells us in James 2.10. He says, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it. And in our texts this morning, in verse 20 of Matthew chapter five, Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll never enter into the kingdom of heaven. You have to be more righteous than even the scribes and the Pharisees, the most righteous people on earth. You have to be more righteous than that. Even they are not good enough. Even they have not kept all of God's law. Because they've not kept all of it, they've broken all of it, and they'll never enter into the kingdom of heaven. Sinning is law-breaking. Law-breaking deserves wrath, and God demands perfect obedience to that law. And in case you might not be terrified by these truths, let me read a few more verses to you. Psalm 143.2, no one living is righteous before you. If you think that maybe you're good enough, you're not. No one is righteous before God. Quoting Psalm 14, Paul says in Romans chapter three, as it is written, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. In their paths are ruin and misery. The way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Paul is describing every single person. Paul is describing you. He goes on to say, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. God reveals his law. God demands that we keep his law. He tells us that all who break his law will face the unbearable torment of his wrath. And then when we look at our lives, what I have done, what I have failed to do, and measure it according to the standard of God's law, I know, and you know on a visceral level, my guilt. That knot in your stomach that tells you things are not right. Things are not going to go well for me. I will one day be found out. I will one day pay for what I've done. In other words, God's law shows us that we're sinful, that we're lawbreakers. God's law shows us that we are condemned. Paul talks about this in Romans chapter 7, in verse 7. He says, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. Do you see how the law reveals to us that we're guilty of sin? John Calvin commenting on this verse, he says, for if by the law sin is not dragged from its lair, it destroys wretched man so secretly that he doesn't even feel its fatal stab. Sin, it operates in secret. So often we don't even know it's there, we don't even recognize that it's there. It slowly rots our souls until at some point God gives us a glimpse of His law and we see it. And we see what we're like. If you're at all familiar with Oscar Wilde's book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, what a powerful image. This beautiful young man that everyone wants to be like, everyone wants to be friends with, but there's this picture, this portrait of him that really accurately portrays what he's like. Full of scars and is ugly and putrid. It's a reflection of his soul. It's what the law of God is like for us. As John Calvin says, the law drags covetousness out of its lair and shows us, in all of its ugliness, what's true of us. People cannot bear to look into the mirror of the law of God. It's hard to come to terms with who you are. We live in denial. We develop coping mechanisms. And the most common coping mechanism that we develop to deal with this vision of who we are that the law shows us is we seek to replace it with a counterfeit law. We seek to do away with God's law because we know we can't keep it. We know it condemns us. We seek to replace God's law with a different law that we can keep. So we can feign righteousness. We can pretend righteousness. We can pretend like we're good, like we're not condemned. People can't deal with their own guilt. They can't deal with their hopeless future. But the only way that you can pretend to be righteous without actually being righteous is to assert a law other than God's. This is what the Pharisees did. This is what made them legalistic. Perhaps you've substituted a law, a man-made law, your own law for God's law. Perhaps you think that you're righteous because, well, when you measure your life according to this other law, well, you're great. You're righteous. You're doing what you're supposed to do. Perhaps you've been baptized. Perhaps you go to confession, you go to mass, you do penance, and so you think because I adhere to that and my life conforms to that law, I am righteous before God. That's not God's law, that's not God's standard. Perhaps your law is not the law of the papists, perhaps your law is the law of comparison. At least I'm not like that. As long as I'm not as bad as the next guy, I'm righteous. You think that you're okay because you're not, I'm not Hitler, I'm not Osama Bin Laden, I'm not Jeffrey Dahmer, but slightly better than Hitler is not God's standard. Perfect righteousness, perfect obedience to God's law is his standard. And none of us measure up. So the law shows us our sin. The law shows us our wickedness and reveals to us who we truly are. But the law can do nothing about it. Obedience to God's law cannot make us righteous. Because so many people, when they're shown God's law, they seek, oh man, I'm going to do the best that I can. And yeah, I've failed in a lot of ways, but hopefully at the end of the day, I've got more good deeds than I have bad deeds, and God will count me righteous. But Paul says in Romans 3.20, by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight. That is, God will not consider anyone to be righteous because of their obedience to God's law. You can't earn salvation from God. You can't do enough good to merit forgiveness. We had our chance at that, brothers and sisters, and we blew it. Every single person here has blown it. If you live your life thinking that your good works will make you right with God, you are a walking dead man. There is no hope in the law. Paul says in Galatians 3.10, for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. There's no hope in the law. Those who seek to be saved or forgiven or to have their guilt removed or to be righteous because they've kept the law, they're relying on a curse. And they will be cursed. So have you honestly measured your spiritual state against the law of God? Do you think that you're good enough to get into heaven? Do you think that you'll be fine because you've got enough good works stored up in your account? The road to hell is paved with supposed good works. And the more you rely on them, the further down the road you get. Let's take a good look at the law and see how we measure it up. Have you ever lied? You've broken the law at every point if you've ever lied. So James tells us. Have you ever taken something that didn't belong to you? Have you ever taken God's name in vain? Have you worshiped God only or have you considered yourself, your desires, your needs to be more important than that which God desires? Have you ever been lazy? Have you ever been cruel? Have you ever been selfish? Have you ever committed adultery? Have you ever looked at pornography? Have you ever dishonored your parents? Have you ever been drunk? If you answer yes to any of these, you are a lawbreaker. You are a sinner. And the wages of sin is death. Even now, the law is showing you that you're in danger. Even now, the law is like the great cosmic flashing red light that's pulsating in your soul, warning you. Because God pursues the lawbreaker with a vengeance. It is His wrath that you deserve, and it is His wrath from which you must flee. But where does one flee from the wrath of God? Where could one go to escape the omnipotent, omnipresent wrath of the Almighty? While natural man may think that the only option is to run from God, the gospel reveals to us that the only place of safety from the wrath of God is in God himself. And that instead of fleeing from God, we must flee to God to be safe from his wrath. Because while God condemns us for breaking His law, He also offers forgiveness to those who humble themselves, repent of their sins, and entrust themselves to the Savior, Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul tells us, again, 1 Thessalonians 1.10, that Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come. There's nowhere else you can go, friend. You know that you're guilty. You know what you deserve. You know that there's no way of avoiding that which you deserve. But there is one way. There's only one. And that's in the one who delivers us from the wrath to come. That's in Jesus Christ. Why? Because he himself took the guilt of all who repented their sins and trust in him upon himself, and he himself received that wrath that we deserve. So that all who trust in him will not receive that wrath, but will receive forgiveness, cleansing, eternal life. There's only one place of safety for you, that's in Jesus. Seek Him, plead for mercy, repent of your sins, and you'll be saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. There is no condemnation, there is no wrath, there is no punishment for those who are in Jesus Christ. So let God's good law erode any confidence that you might have in anything other than Jesus. All other ground is sinking sand. Where we have failed to obey the law, Christ has fulfilled it. And he offers his righteousness, his fulfillment of that law to us. Do you see how God's law is a teacher, and how it's a good teacher, how it's a teacher that we need? It teaches us who we are, and that knowledge then ought to drive us into the arms of our Savior. The second use of the law is that it restrains. God's law restrains the evildoer. When you tell your children, stay out of that candy in the cupboard, you can't have it, verboten, off limits, You know, they can reach the candy. They can physically get the candy themselves. It's within their power to take the candy. There's nothing physically restraining them, but that command that you gave them, that parental law, as it were, does have a restraining effect on them, doesn't it? Because the command comes along with threats. Spoken or unspoken, right? If you take the candy, you will be disciplined. If you take the candy, mom and dad will be displeased. And so the child, though he can get the candy, oftentimes he won't go for the candy. The law has restrained him. Such is also the case in civil society. Civil laws act as restraints. You might cheat on your taxes and get away with it. It's possible. The tax laws will not stop you from cheating on your taxes. But I'll tell you one thing, they do have a restraining effect on me, even though every single one of us pays an ungodly amount in taxes. I don't wanna deal with the penalty for cheating on my taxes, so I'm not gonna cheat on my taxes. Parental laws and civil laws function in this way and they have this restraining effect because they are based on that archetypal law. God's law, God's moral law, which itself has a restraining function. For the common unregenerate fallen man, the law of God restrains him from committing worse evils than he has already committed. Again, Francis Turton says this, he says, in this sense, it's like a bit holding sinners within the bars of external discipline that the world may not become a den of robbers. And you may say to yourself, well, with this Jeffrey Epstein stuff going on right now, the world seems to be a den of robbers regardless. Yes, those men who are especially wicked and sinful are not held in check by God's law, but the common man is. John Calvin says, hindered by fright or by shame, they dare neither execute what they have conceived in their minds nor openly breathe forth the rage of their lusts. And this is what Paul's referring to in 1 Timothy 1, 8 through 10. He says, 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 the disobedient, for the ungodly and the sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoral, for men who practice homosexuality, and slavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. In this sense, The law is given for unbelievers to restrain them from committing worse evil deeds than they already do. It's given that the law would condemn them in their sinful actions and then it might restrain them from worse evil. All men know in their hearts what is right and wrong. All men have a knowledge of the law. This is what the Apostle Paul talks about in Romans 1 and 2. This is where the guilty conscience comes from. You break the law, you know you've broken the law, and you know that at some point the other shoe is going to drop. It's gonna happen. You will receive justice for breaking the law at some point, and that's a terrifying thought. Even just living with the knowledge of that reality can be a terrible thought. This thought, the guilty conscience, this alone keeps men from sinning more than they otherwise would because men are terrified of the curses of the law. And they ought to be terrified of the curses of the law. And so we have to thank God that he's given his good law to all men and that all men know his law. If he had not given this law, orderly, peaceable society like that which we enjoy today would be utterly impossible. And so for this reason, we should feel no shame in proclaiming God's law as a church, along with God's gospel. We proclaim God's law and his gospel to one another, we proclaim it to our neighbors, we proclaim it to the spiritual powers and authorities, and we proclaim it to the civil magistrate. The society that honors God's law and upholds it as the standard for right behavior, that's a blessed society. When Christians call out the sin in an unbeliever, we're not being unloving. We're actually loving them. Number one, we're using the first use of the law and showing them their sins that they might run to Christ. Number two, we're loving them and our neighbors as we seek to restrain them in their wickedness with the law of God. When we say that marriage is exclusively the union between one man and one woman, that it should be criminal to execute one's own children, that men acting like women and women acting like men is an abomination to God. Far from being bigoted, we're actually loving our neighbors. We are being used of God to restrain further wickedness in our society that would harm more of our neighbors in more egregious ways. This is where the modern-day gospel-centered movement has failed our neighbors. In a desire to be winsome and attractive to the unbeliever so that they would be more willing to hear our message, we've downplayed the importance of the church's role in proclaiming the law of God. And as the church has lost its legal voice, lost its ability to call out sin and proclaim God's law, society has lost restraint. The church's refusal to call out evil for fear of offending has led to a gospel with no persuasive power and no bites to it. It's led to a society that has descended further and further into debauchery, into sin, and into death. Such a society has a muted conscience. Such a society will continue to perpetuate injustice. Such a society will have no ears to hear the gospel. Why? Because after all, what law have they broken? From what wrath do they need to be saved? Each man is a law unto himself. Brothers and sisters, we have to preach the law as well as the gospel if we're gonna be faithful to what God has called us to do. Finally, the third use of the law. The law teaches, the law restrains, the law guides. This third and final use of the law, the law guides, it's like the law is a rule of life for us. It's the standard of how we ought to live in this world. It's the standard of right and wrong that we as Christians are to be obedient to, not to be justified, not to be saved, not to make it into heaven, but simply because God has commanded us to. The Christian, has a desire to be in the will of God. Perhaps you've even said that yourself, I want to be in the will of God. But so often this desire to be in the will of God takes the form of knowing what God's secret particular will is for me in this particular situation. Is it God's will for me to buy this boat? Is it God's will for me to marry this man? Is it God's will for me to take this job, to move to this city, to go to this university? We wanna know the will of God so we can do the will of God. And it's good and it's right to desire God's will. But so often we focus on these things that God has not revealed to us while ignoring the things that he has revealed to us. God has revealed his law to us. God's not gonna come speak to you in a dream and tell you who you ought to marry. But he has already told you the type of person that you ought to marry in his law. It's highly unlikely that God will send a prophet to you to tell you the vocation that God has chosen for you. But God has already revealed to you in his law that your primary vocation is to glorify God in all that you do. God's will for your life is to obey his commandments. That's it. When you do that, you please Him. When you do that, you are happy. When you do that, you're walking the road of blessedness in this life. When you do that, you're living within God's will for your life. All those other questions, approach them with care and with prudence and with counsel from other people, but don't expect God to give you a special word concerning them. And don't think that marrying the particular one that God has willed for you to marry will make you happy all the while you're disobeying his clear commandments. It's not going to happen. The law of God is a rule of life for us. In our text in Matthew 5, 19, Jesus says, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Just because obedience to the law doesn't save us does not mean that obedience to the law doesn't matter. It does matter. We obey not out of a fear of the curse that comes from the law. No, there is no curse for us. Christ has become that curse for us. We obey not out of fear, but out of love. Love for God and love for his law. Just as a son who loves his father endeavors to obey his father when the father gives him good commands. It's not drudgery. It doesn't ruin our fun. Obedience to the law is not something which enslaves us. It's something actually which liberates us. There's great freedom in being obedient to God's law. That's how God designed free men to live, in accordance with his righteous standard. It's not legalism to insist on keeping God's law. The Apostle John tells us in 1 John 5.3, God's commands are not burdensome. John read this morning, Psalm 19.7, the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. Sweeter than much honey from the honeycomb. The Bible doesn't leave any doubt about the goodness of God's moral law. It's good for us. When asked what the greatest commandment in the law is, what does Jesus say? It's love the Lord your God. And the second is like it, love your neighbor. And these two are greater summary, further summarization of the law of God. What does it look like to love God? Are we free to love God any way that I want to, according to my love language? No. To love God means to keep his commandments. That's what it looks like to love God. This is what Jesus tells us in John 15, 14. You are my friends if you do what I command you. Do you want to be a friend of Jesus? Obey him. Obey his law. And then John goes on to define what love is in 1 John 5, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. That's what loving God is, obedience to his commandments. And while the Christian must never think that he's righteous before God because of his obedience to God's law, we must understand that we cannot love God without obedience to his law. He who fears God the most loves God the best. And further, for the one who wants to be like Christ, obedience to the law is the way to do this. It's the only way to be like Christ. Certainly we can't be obedient to what God has commanded us without the spirit of Christ in us. But when we have that spirit, he produces in us obedience and holiness and conforms us to God's righteous law. The very law that Jesus says here that he fulfilled. Do you wanna be like Christ? Fulfill the law, be obedient to the law as Christ was obedient to the law. And of course, we know that in this life, even as believers, even with the Spirit of God dwelling inside of us, we're never gonna be perfectly obedient, are we? Every single act of righteousness that we perform is going to be stained with sin in some way, isn't it? And I know you feel this, brother and sister, As you seek to be obedient to God, as you seek to please God, and you're reminded of your failure all the time. Man, I really tried to do what was right in this situation, but then I get on the other side of it, thinking I did what was right, and my motives were all off. Is there anything in me good at all? Am I capable of doing anything good? Am I capable of being obedient to the law of God? Don't be discouraged. In Christ, even our imperfect works of righteousness are acceptable to God. Listen to the way that our confession puts it. The Second London Baptist Confession, chapter 16, paragraph 6. It says, believers are accepted through Christ, and thus their good works are also accepted in him. This acceptance does not mean our good works are completely blameless and irreproachable in God's sight. Instead, God views them in his son. And so he is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, even though it is accompanied by many weaknesses and imperfections. Yeah, our obedience to God's law is always gonna be imperfect. We're always gonna fail. But brother, sister, you are in Christ, and God looks upon you in love, and he sees you as righteous, and the deeds that you perform are acceptable in God's sight because of Christ. And so when you get to heaven, God is not going to be lying to you when he says, well done, good and faithful servant. Do you see now why Jesus says here, the one who relaxes the least of the commandments is the least in the kingdom of heaven? Refusing the law, downplaying the law, ignoring the law is a denial of one of God's greatest gifts to us. The law did not save us. It had no power to do so. It only had the power of death for us when we were outside of Christ. But even then, even when we were outside of Christ, like Paul says in Galatians 3.24, it was the law that pushed us to Christ. It was the law like a teacher, like a tutor, that led us to Christ. It was the law that awakened in us the dread of God's wrath. It was the law that drove us to the Savior to receive pardon for all of our law-breaking, that drove us to the Savior to receive perfect righteousness that only He can provide. And it's the law that shows us how to love God, how to live in gratitude for the unmerited grace and mercy that He has showered upon us day after day. And now for us as believers who are in Christ, the law of God is now the law of Christ, showing us the way of Christlikeness. It's the standard by which our sanctification and our holiness is measured. Before conversion, the law drove us to Christ. And now after conversion, the law shows us how to be like Christ. Oh, how I love your law. Can you say that? I hope that after this study today, we can all say it with far more sincerity. The law teaches us who we are. The law restrains wicked men. The law is a rule of life for Christians, showing us how we are to love and to honor God. So let us take heart in the words of our Savior here. Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Let's pray. Our great God and heavenly Father, you've been so good to us and you have showered your blessings upon us, even your good law. that would have been a source of condemnation and curse for us, except for your son, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect fulfillment of it. So I pray that you would be with your people, that you would strengthen us in our faith, that we would continue to look to Christ as the great law keeper, and that in looking to him, you would enable us to keep that law as well. We pray these things in Christ's name, amen.