Our Scripture reading this evening is Galatians chapter 5. Galatians chapter 5. The text for the sermon is the first verse of chapter 5. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. And be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the book of Galatians, as you probably know, has as its theme, justification by faith. That entire book with that theme was written to the Galatians due to the fact that the Judaizers had come into the church of Galatia after Paul had been there. And they came with a new twist to the Gospel. They confessed that they believed in Jesus Christ. But, they insisted that it was necessary for Christians to keep the Old Testament law. Believe in Christ for salvation, but you must also keep the law. That means you must be circumcised. You must keep certain aspects of the Old Testament law. And that might sound at first to be rather innocent. What could be wrong after all with keeping the law of God? Jesus kept the law while he lived on the earth. The disciples kept the law or strove to do that even after Jesus left. They would still go to the temple at certain times and pray there. And Paul, on his second missionary journey, when he took Timothy with him, first had Timothy circumcised before they continued on in that journey. So what really could be wrong with merely keeping the law in addition to faith in Jesus Christ? But Paul condemned that new aspect of the gospel, as these Judaizers put it, in no uncertain terms. In chapter 1, he called it another gospel, that is, a different gospel. Not a gospel that's just slightly different and therefore not perhaps as good but acceptable, but a different gospel. And anyone who preached that gospel, he said, must be anathema, must be condemned even to hell. The reason is simply this. It gave a small part of the salvation of the people of Galatia into their own hands. They must keep the law in order to be right with God. Anne says, Paul, that's not what salvation is. You are right with God. You are justified only by faith and not by any works that you add to your righteousness. What about that Old Testament law then? Our relationship to the law, said Paul in this epistle, has changed with the coming of Christ. In Galatians 3.13, he makes it plain that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. The Old Testament church was under law. It cursed them. But now we have been redeemed from the curse of the law by the cross of Jesus Christ. Is there a purpose to the law? In the Old Testament, the purpose was that it was a schoolmaster that would lead and guide the church to Jesus Christ, governing all aspects of their life and bringing them to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. But we are no longer under that law as a schoolmaster says, Paul, that day is finished. Chapter 4, speaks of an unregenerated man as a child that is under bondage to the elements of the world, serving the things of the world and the gods of this world. Paul used the analogy of Hagar and Sarah and said that Hagar and her children were under bondage and that the Judaizers were like that. They were under the bondage of keeping the law. A dreadful situation. But the Galatians, he said, are free. The children of the promise, the children of Sarah, those who are of Abraham who are by faith, they are free. They have liberty. And so now here in this chapter, he begins with the words, stand fast therefore in that liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free. We might wonder how a book like Galatians and how a verse such as Galatians 5.1 applies to us in the 21st century. And at first it might seem as though really this has nothing to do with us. We are not compelled by any Judaizers in the congregation who are saying to us, now listen, you have to keep the Old Testament laws, otherwise you will not be righteous. We do not have Rome breathing down our neck and saying, you must keep our laws, otherwise you will not be righteous. We don't have any of that. But nonetheless, this is a needed word for us to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Bondage comes in many ways, both for an individual as well as for a church. In a sense, you could say that we walk as God's people down the pathway of life and that there is a deep ravine on either side of us. And on the one side, there is the deep ravine of legalism, of a list of do's and don'ts that you have to keep in order to be right with God. And on the other side is the deep ravine of Antinomianism, that is, that we throw the law away and that we don't keep any of God's laws or commandments anymore. They don't apply to us. Both of these things are a form of bondage. Bondage to law or bondage to sin whereby we let sin become our master. In fact, we are prone Our sinful flesh is prone to one or the other, depending on the circumstance in life, so that sometimes I might tend to go in this direction, and other times I might tend to go in the way of legalism. The text prohibits that. It demands of us that we do not give up our Christ-given liberty, but that we continue in it and not go back to any form of bonding. Let's examine this admonition under the theme, standing fast in our Christ-given liberty. Well, notice in the first place the meaning. What does it mean, this liberty we have? Secondly, the possibility of standing in that. And finally, the command to stand fast. What is this freedom, this liberty that we have given to us by Jesus Christ? Liberty is a term that is applied to those who have been a slave, who have been locked away, as it were, into some kind of bondage. Liberty has two aspects to it, therefore. On the one hand, it is a deliverance from something, from some kind of enslavement, some kind of bondage. And on the other hand, it is the liberty to go forth outside of that, and to do what you could not otherwise do. Freedom to something good. Deliverance from an evil, a bondage, and deliverance unto that which is good. Freedom. In this text, the Apostle speaks of a yoke of bondage. Now, we are all familiar with the fact that we are, by nature, enslaved to sin. And you might think that's immediately what is on the foreground here, but it isn't. The yoke of bondage refers to some kind of bondage whereby a man has a yoke on him. A yoke, as you well know, is something put on the neck of an animal that will then be used to turn that animal as he works, that will be used to drive him on or to prevent him as he pulls a wagon or as he pulls the plow. There is a certain yoke of bondage that the Apostle says we must avoid. Christ's liberty is a deliverance, therefore, first of all, from the bondage of the law. The law is in every way good. The law is the revelation of God's righteous will. You want to know what God loves and what He delights in? Go to the law. It will show you that. You want to know what God hates and what you must by all means, therefore, avoid? Go to the law. The law shows what is God's glorious will for His people. It is a good thing. The Old Testament law, the ceremonial law, was good in that it was a schoolmaster or a governor that would lead and guide the people to Jesus Christ. It did that, first of all, in the ceremony, sometimes very directly, as the high priest stood before the people in his white robes. It was a picture of them coming to Jesus Christ, who is the glorious high priest. As the Lamb would be slain and then burned on the altar, it was a picture of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world. The temple, too, pointed directly to Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Other aspects of the law of God pointed or directed their attention to Jesus Christ, not as directly. The laws that governed the nation as they were under Jesus Christ, the King would direct them in their life together as neighbors, as citizens of the kingdom, There were penalties for stealing from the neighbor, penalties for adultery and for all of the other violations of the law. The law directed them in their life in the home as far as husband and wife, as far as parents and their children. The law directed them in their work, in the way that they went about their labors as husbandmen and as farmers, as masters and as slaves. It was given to the Old Testament saints as to children. They did not have the Spirit of Jesus Christ. They did not have their eyes opened with understanding. As much as we have it, they were in some ways like children. They were in a dispensation of types and shadows, and they needed a governor. They needed someone to watch over them and to direct their lives, even as our little children need the firm hand of a father and mother directing them in their life. But there was a bondage to that law. The bondage was exactly due to the fact, first of all, that they couldn't keep it. They could not. It drove them to Jesus Christ from that point of view because every time they read the law, they saw that it condemned them. It wasn't the fault of the law. It wasn't as if God gave them a law that was beyond them so much as the fact that they were sinful. They were the problem. They were unable to keep the law. The law was good. It required of them only that which is good. But they were sinful. Part of the bondage was also the comprehensiveness of it. That it absolutely governed everything in their life. all aspects of their life. They must keep every last precept of God's Old Testament law. Every ordinance down to the last jot and tittle of the law, line upon line, precept upon precept. They must always be going back to the law and keeping every demand. That was a burden. That was a yoke upon the neck of the Old Testament Israelite. Anytime the Israelite would even think about doing something, they first would have to go to the law and say, what does the law tell me here? How does it guide me in my life? It governed them. It governed what they put on. It governed how they sowed their field or whether even they would sow the field. Sometimes the law said, no, this year you may sow nothing. It governed them and what they ate. It governed the sacrifices that they would bring to the tabernacle and when they would bring them and when they would go there to worship and how they would prepare the Passover and think. Precept after precept governed their whole life. The greatest burden for the Israelite is that they began to see the law as a means, as a way to become acceptable to God. That's not the way God intended it. He never gave the law as, in this sense, if you keep this law, then you will earn a righteousness with Me. Then you will be those who are righteous in My sight. That's not why God gave the law. It was intended to drive them to Christ. But the Israelite began to think, this is my way of being acceptable with God. You can understand how it would happen that way. The law came to the Israelite and said, this is God's will. Keep this law and you live. And living is living with God. It's being in fellowship with God. So that the Israelite began to think, if I keep the commandments, then God will find me righteous. He will justify me. And that became an even greater burden. What did a man experience under that law of God? Only condemnation. The law condemned him. It accused him every single day, you have not kept all the precepts of my law. And if you could say, but I have done everything that the law demanded of me today, and what I ate, and what I wore, and how I sold the field, all these precepts I have kept. Yet the law would come back and say, but the heart of the law is love God. It isn't merely the external, but it's the heart. Love God with all these things and in all that you have done. And the law condemned them. The curse of the law, therefore, came upon Old Testament Israel. And the curse is, of course, a death sentence. You must die for your sins. That's what the law said to them. No favor with God was ever possible, therefore, for those who tried to earn their favor with God become acceptable with God by keeping of the law. Only condemnation and guilt and judgment. And every time they broke the law, the law for a way of taking care of their transgression, the law would send them back to the precepts and say, keep the law. This is what God demands of you. The holy God. heaven and earth. But they never could. The only thing the law did was drive home their inability and increase the consciousness of their sins and their guilt. Liberty is freedom from that bondage, from that yoke of the law. The law that demands perfect obedience The law that it drives them to obedience. The law that condemns them because they couldn't do it. They couldn't. Freedom from the condemnation. Freedom from all those ordinances. Freedom from the effort to try to be acceptable with God by keeping precepts and laws. That's liberty. That's what we're delivered from. there is also a freedom unto something. Liberty on the positive side is the freedom, the state of being approved by God and being given both the right and the ability to serve God, which they could not do rightly under the law. It's the state, first of all, of being approved by God. What the book of Galatians calls Justification of being declared innocent and right before the law of God. So that when one stands before God in this approved state, there is no condemnation. There is no guilty verdict. There is no announcement of judgment or condemnation. And the result of that is a freedom. Freedom from guilt. A freedom from shame. A freedom from all condemnation. It's the consciousness that one is accepted by God rather than condemned. That God will not hold a person guilty, but that God instead declares a man to be innocent, to be righteous. It is a relief from the condemnations that a man knows that he is approved not only by God, but that approval does not rest on anything that He has done. It isn't as if He has earned that righteousness with God. And it isn't as if His righteousness continues to depend on His own works. As if, now if I don't do this again today in exactly the right way, then at the end of the day I will again be condemned. It's the freedom from that. Of knowing we are righteous apart from our works or anything that we can possibly do. Those who experience that have the exhilarating liberty from the bondage of the law. But it's more than that. It isn't merely that we're approved by God. That's glorious enough. But it's also the right and the ability to serve God. This is a power that is worked in the lives of God's people. Freedom, you understand, is not that a man now rejects the law, that he says, the law means nothing to me. I put it away from me. I may live as I please. No, the law of God is still good. The law of God still sets forth what is approved by God. It's a good thing. And it isn't in this freedom that we now become independent so that a man may do as he pleases, that he may say, no one any longer may ever tell me what to do. I have liberty. Man is not now nor ever will be independent so that we can live on our own. We are a creature. We are created by God. We are dependent upon God. We do not become independent. But liberty is the state of one who is able to serve God according to the demands that God lays upon us. To live according to the will of God with joy, with delight. That's part of our liberty. Because God fashioned every creature according to His will to fit into God's glorious plan, to fit in the creation that exists here, to fit in the creation that God will one day create, the new heavens and the earth. God has fashioned every creature according to God's perfect plan. And God has given a law for every creature according to the very nature of the creature. God has a law for the beasts of the field. God has a law for the angels in glory. God has a law for man. And so long as man lives within the boundaries of that law, he can love God and live with Him in perfect covenant fellowship. Liberty is the ability to live within God's will for us. Whatever that may be. What that is, is to live with God. That's God's unique place for man. To live as a covenant creature with God in fellowship. God created man with a soul different from the animals. Able to know spiritual things. Able to know God. God gave man a mind that is able to make plans that is able to have purposes in mind, so that he can know how to serve God, how to worship Him, and how to please his God. God gave man a will so that he can make choices, so that he would say, this is what I do not wish to do, but this is good, and this is even a better way to go. Man has a will to make those choices. Liberty for man is the freedom, therefore, to live in harmony with God's will for man. Obeying God, loving Him, living unto Him, and seeking His face in covenant fellowship. Doing that, you understand, and that's why it's liberty. Even though we're keeping the law as we do that, it's the law now of liberty as James describes it. Because it's not by compulsion. It's by free choice that God's people obey their God. It's not either by running to the law and checking. Now, let's see, what does the law have to say to me here? It isn't line upon line that we always are figuring out. Now, what does the law have to say? It isn't that. But it's rather living unto God because we know what His will is. And because we love that will, that's the liberty that we have. And then especially this, that as we live as a man who has this liberty, he then lives in the will of God, keeping the commandments of God, not in order to get acceptance, not in order to be approved by God, But he lives in this law of God because he has acceptance. Because he already is declared righteous. And he wants to thank God for that great work. This is our liberty that Christ has given to us. And now the command comes to us to stand fast in that. Is it possible? Is it possible for us to stand in that liberty and not go back to the yoke of bondage? To understand that it is indeed possible and how it's possible, we have to understand how Christ made us free. Because there's the power to stand in the liberty. Liberty is something that is earned in the cross of Jesus Christ. Christ, by His suffering and death, made us to be free. And that's because He took our place. Because He represented us on the cross as the Head of the elect. He went there for our sakes. He took our place. He took our guilt. For all the violations of God's law, He went there in our place. The curse of the law that was pronounced upon Israel and upon us. He took that curse willingly upon us when he was nailed to the accursed tree of the cross. The word of the law that said, thou shalt die. Jesus said, I will take that upon myself. He was willing to take all the punishment for every sin, every violation of God's law that his people would ever commit. And he did that. in perfect obedience. Again, as our representative, he would obey the law where we could not perfectly, and out of love for God, every day of his life he got up with this thought, How will I serve my God today? I come to do Thy will, O God. This is what the book says of me, and this is what I will do today. All his life long, he sought to do his will. He knew that will perfectly. He knew whatever God had demanded of Him as the Mediator. He knew whatever God's law demanded of Him as a creature. And He went out of His way to fulfill every obligation of the law. His delivering us by paying for our sins and His perfect obedience comes into the clearest and most vivid focus in the cross. There is His perfect obedience. Willingly, He went the way of shame and sorrow and suffering and death, because that was His Father's will for Him, that He suffer the dreadful death of the cross. He did so all the while, declaring His love for His God. He took the cup of God's wrath and did it out of love for God and His people. He endured that. That infinite wrath, that dreadful, sin-punishing wrath, He bore it entirely. The wrath of God that pushed Him away. The wrath of God that put Him to death. That, people of God, is the price of our liberty. A price had to be paid because we are not only under the bondage of the law, but under the bondage of sin and death. He accomplished that. The sin is paid for. He satisfied the justice of God. The guilt is removed and the curse is gone. And the righteousness that Jesus earned by His own perfect obedience all His life long, including the cross, that perfect righteousness can now be imputed to us so that that righteousness becomes ours. God declares us to be righteous. God declares to you and to me, you have never broken one of my commandments. Not once. You are righteous before me. You stand before the bar of God's judgment and God the judge says you are innocent of any transgressions. Anything. You have never sinned. You are righteous. There isn't anything that can be added to your righteousness. There isn't anything that you can do or may do or ought to do. You are absolutely, perfectly righteous in Jesus Christ. You are delivered, therefore, from the condemnation of the law. Christ is more. By His Word and Spirit, He doesn't, by His suffering and death, He freed us from the guilt and earned the right for us to be delivered from all the bondage. But by His Word and Spirit, He works that liberty in us. He causes the gospel to be preached, the official proclamation of the good news As the man stands in the pulpit sent by Jesus Christ, this is the word that he brings to us in the pew. He says, salvation is accomplished. Your sins have been paid for. They are absolutely gone in the blood of Jesus Christ. We are righteous in Him. And that same preaching of the Gospel works faith in us and faith bonds us to Jesus Christ. We take hold of that and we are by that faith justified. We are justified. The righteousness of Jesus Christ becomes ours and we know that that righteousness is ours in faith. And we are acceptable in the sight of God. It isn't merely that something happened long ago and then when we die we find out about it, but by faith it becomes ours. We are righteous as if we never ever sinned. There is no condemnation. We have the adoption of sons. He does more. By that same Word and Spirit, He works in us the power of obedience. He frees us from the shackles of sin. No longer does sin hold us. No longer are we under that bondage of sin. He destroys it. We're dead in sin. Dead in sin. Absolutely incapable of doing one thing good. Totally incapable and inclined to every evil. Sin and Satan were the master that we had as we were born into this world. And we were their willing slaves. But God, through Jesus Christ, delivers us from that bondage and makes us free to serve God. That's really astounding. Those who were enslaved to sin are now free to serve God. And that freedom to serve God means, first of all, that they have the ability. God gives us the ability to serve Him. He works in us the will and the to-do of His good pleasure. By His grace, He works in us this power, that power of willing obedience, so that we want to serve Him. The law of God is written upon our hearts so that we not only know the law, but it becomes that law of liberty that we want to keep the commandments of God. He plants in our heart a new life. A life that can never sin. Can never sin. It is so pure. It is a life from heaven. It is a life from Jesus Christ Himself. So that that life never sins till the day that we die. We delight to do His will out of gratitude. That's our motive. That's our desire. Jesus Christ frees us. And that then is the power. That's the power that enables us to live out of the liberty, not out of the bondage any longer of sin and death, not out of the bondage of trying to earn our righteousness by keeping the law, but the freedom to serve God even as God has commanded us. We have that liberty in Jesus Christ. And now the command comes. Stand fast in that liberty. Do not become entangled again with the yoke of bondage. It's an absolutely necessary admonition that comes to us who are in that liberty. It comes, first of all, to the Galatians. We might wonder, why does Paul write this? Why does Paul come in this verse and say, be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage? We could understand that if he was writing to the Jews. that the Jews lived under the Old Testament law, and then they were delivered from that bondage, and now they're going back to the Old Testament laws. But he writes here to Gentiles. They were not under the Old Testament law. They never had to be circumcised. They never had to bring the Lamb to the Passover feast. They are Gentiles. Why does Paul write, Be not entangled again? In the first place, you understand that Paul refers to the law because the Judaizers were seeking to bring these Gentile Christians under the domination of the law once again. You have to be circumcised. You have to keep these Old Testament precepts in order to be right with God. That was the gospel that these Judaizers were bringing. The Gentiles had never been under the Old Testament law, but they had known a bondage, a yoke of slavery or a bondage they had known in their life of idolatry. In chapter 4 of Galatians, Paul describes the kind of bondage that the Galatians had lived under previous to their conversion. We read in Galatians 4, verses 9 and 10, But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunder ye desire again to be in bondage? Turning again to a form of bondage, observing days and months and times and years, Now if you think about it, that's exactly what idol worship is. You've seen pictures of people worshiping idols. What are they doing? They bring their food or they bring their candles or they bring their incense sticks to their idols because what they are trying to do is make their gods happy with them. Maybe they have some bad, sad, or hard incident in their life, and they think, oh, my God is angry with me. So they go running to their Buddha, or to their Allah, or some other God, and they try to placate their God, to make their God not to be angry with them any longer. Or maybe they want to be sure that their God does not become angry, so they bring their gifts, hoping that they can make their God happy with them. That's a form of bondage. Because you never get out from underneath that. You're always trying to make your God happy with you. Paul says, why do you want to go back to that? You remember what it was like to serve those idol gods and to try to no avail to keep your God happy with you? If you go back to the law of the Old Testament as the Judaizers want you to do, that's where you're going. Back to the same old bondage. And it doesn't work. You never will make your God happy with you by your own works. It will never happen. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free. Don't go back to the yoke of bondage. It's a different yoke, perhaps, when the Jews bring it, but it still is a yoke of bondage. It comes to us with the same word today. Surely this means that we must reject any effort to have the Old Testament laws put back on the church. There are those today, you know. They're called theonomous. who believe that the Old Testament laws have to be reintroduced to all of America, and they call upon us, the church, and all the church in America, be sure now that you take those Old Testament laws and write your congressmen and work out there to get those laws back in place. And then, if you do that, and if we can get those laws back in place, then God will bless America once again. You've heard that line. It can sound tempting. The Old Testament laws, after all, would put those murderers to death. The Old Testament laws would take care of the immorality in America. It's tempting. The Word of God to us says, don't follow after that. That's not how the blessing comes upon a nation. America is not Israel. You must not go back to a yoke of bonding. and become a theonomist. The Word of God rejects all forms of legalism. All new laws that anyone here would put upon others in the congregation. A list of do's and don'ts that you are sure everybody here ought to live by or that someone else tries to put on you. That's a hopeless way. A way of trying to make God happy with us if we will live according to a certain list of do's and don'ts. Legalism. Once you go down that pathway, you'll understand that you have to keep all those laws perfectly, absolutely perfectly, if you would be right with God. And that will never happen. The implication of the text is this. We are prone to that. We are prone to follow laws. Legalism. And I say the text implies that because a more literal rendition of the text would be, stop being entangled again with the yoke of bondage. That's the direction you're heading. That's to which you are prone to go back to bondage. Stop going there. That's the admonition that comes to us. Rather, stand fast in your liberty. To stand fast then in the liberty to obey this command from a negative point of view means that we reject absolutely every effort to restrict our God-given liberty. History has shown that this is always a great battle. In the Old Testament, the Israelites began to take the form of the Law, and they would keep the form from an outward point of view. They would even bring their sacrifices. But you know what the prophet Isaiah said about Israel. This people draweth near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. It was only an external show. And God hated it. Take your sacrifices away from me. I don't want any of that. The Pharisees were zealous for the law. They built hedges around the law so that they could say, we have kept the law of God even beyond what it requires. Jesus said, except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees and the scribes, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. They have no righteousness. Even if they could possibly keep the law from the heart, that righteousness will not get them into heaven. Rome in the Middle Ages became a hotbed of legalism, works righteousness drawn out to the most horrible degree. These are the requirements, and if you do these things, the church will say, you are innocent. God approves of you. The Arminian does the same thing really. Arminianism preaches Christ crucified to the high heavens, but it still says, ah, but there is something that's up to you. Not only must you believe in Jesus Christ, but you must continue on the path of obedience all the rest of your life. It could happen that you obey that you believe in Jesus Christ, but that down the road you fall away from Him, that you no longer are obedient to Him, and then you will be lost. Legalism. Keeping the laws. That's the way to heaven, finally, for an Arminian. And today, with the conditional covenant that is being proclaimed from almost every pulpit, even Reformed and Presbyterian pulpits, That conditional covenant has, as a condition, faith and obedience. And you must obey continually in order, finally, to be approved of God. That's part of your righteousness. Your faithful obedience. The danger is real. The danger is not only real from the point of false doctrine, some of which I have given you, but the danger is real for me and for you personally any time we do something with the thought, oh God will really like this. He will really approve of me if I do this. What are you doing? What are we doing when we say that? to become accepted with God on the basis of what we have done. If I do this, God will approve of me. He will like what I've done today if I do that. That's legalism. But that's dreadful. Because it's an offense against the cross of Jesus Christ. It is saying that, yes, Jesus earned my righteousness, but there is something else that I have to do in order to have God become happy with me. I earned that. We must absolutely reject all forms of legalism. All forms of legalism. Legalism imagines sometimes that if we have enough rules in a church or a school, if we have rules and laws, we can keep ourselves faithful. Rules have a place. Rules are necessary sometimes for good order. You have to have a rule about when Church starts on Sunday. Otherwise, it would be chaos here. You need a rule. You need rules in schools so that people pay their tuition on time. You need rules for good order. But rules will never keep us faithful. It didn't work for the Pharisees. It didn't work for Rome in the Middle Ages. And it will not work for the Protestant Reformed churches. Rules. will not keep us faithful to the Word of God. That's not how we live. We live out of our freedom. That's what God commands us. You have liberty. You have the righteousness in Jesus Christ so that the law does not condemn you. You have the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who gives you the power to fight sin and the power to live unto God. The verse is simply saying to you, live out of that power. You have the liberty. Stand in that liberty and live out of that liberty. That's how you must live. Not according to law. Now, that doesn't mean that the law is now dismissed. That the law now is merely a suggestion that it would be nice if you would keep the law. It would be nice if you didn't have idols. It would be nice if you didn't commit adultery. That's not what the law becomes. Merely suggestions. So that God now isn't very fussy any longer. If you break one of the commandments, that's alright. Absolutely not. The law must be strictly preached, says the Heidelberg Catechism. We absolutely hold to that. Sin must be disciplined in this congregation if it is not repented of. Sin against the law must be disciplined. We must endeavor with all that is in us to keep the commandments of God. Is that a contradiction now? I just said we don't live by law. And now I say, but we strive and must strive to keep the law of God. That's not a contradiction. Because now we live according to the Law, you understand, but not to earn our righteousness. We live out of the Law of God because we are righteous in Jesus Christ. Not to become acceptable with God, but because we have been saved by God. And we are grateful. And we show it by living according to His Law. When that is true, you understand, that takes away the danger that Paul very really describes in the rest of the chapter. That we say, oh, I'm free. I have liberty. I may live according to whatever whim I want to. That's not so. Living unto God. Living out of love for God. A man will never steal from his neighbor out of love for God. A man will never desecrate the Sabbath day because he loves God. We won't live that way. We have liberty. And that liberty is the obedience that flows out of thankfulness to God. That's the highest liberty. The highest liberty that we will one day have is when we go to heaven and we will not be able to sin. And every thought we have will be in harmony with God's righteous will for us. And every activity will be in harmony with God's righteous will for us. That's the highest freedom that we will ever have. And we will have it forever. But people of God, you have that liberty. Now, in principle, stand fast in that liberty. Live out of that liberty. Amen. Let us pray. Father in Heaven, We thank Thee for that liberty that we have in Jesus Christ, for deliverance from sin, for the righteousness that is ours in Jesus Christ, and the power that works in us out of which we live unto Thee ever, O Lord. Give us that strength and that liberty. In Jesus' name we pray it. Amen.