Turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 1. 1 Timothy chapter 1, we're looking at verses 8 through 11. This morning, before I get into that though, Micah, you got a kid or something I heard. You gonna tell us? You have another new kid. A son. Did you name him? Rory Sampson Hurd. I like it. Very good. Well, congratulations. Nine pounds something? All right. That's a good start for Sampson. Rory Sampson, very good. Praise the Lord. We're glad for that. 1 Timothy 1, 8-11 is the text we have today. A few weeks ago on a Sunday night, I preached chapter 1, verses 3-7, and we learned there, when we were looking at that text, that there were people in Ephesus who were abusing the Old Testament genealogies by adding additional names to the list and trying to find their own families in those lists. It was kind of an obsession with Jewish people that they would do that kind of thing. In fact, it got to be such an obsession that some rabbis started making rules about, like, when you could actually do the study of genealogy, certain hours of the day, in order to limit how much people were doing that. And so it was an abuse of the scriptures. And an abuse of the scriptures like that would cause division in Ephesus because many of the members of the church there would have been Gentile. And obviously they wouldn't be in the genealogies at all being Gentile. And so they would have no way to measure up to this sort of pseudo-fake spirituality that these people were engaging in. And Paul charged Timothy to teach no other doctrine than what Paul had already taught. So don't get off into the weeds here. Don't get off on these tangents. And we still see the same kind of nonsense today, by the way. Some of you probably remember the big Bible code thing that was going on a few years ago. There's some books out about it, videos out about Bible codes, and everybody trying to find Barack Obama in the Bible, stuff like that. Really quite bizarre. I think somebody's standing out the front door and they can't get in. So we might need to, yeah, check on that. And so this bizarre stuff happens also with stuff like the blood moons thing that went on a while ago. And it happens with like identifying the Antichrist and all this kind of crazy stuff. And so we got to always be just true to the Word of God. In this context, the Apostle Paul explains In verses 8 through 11, he starts by explaining that the law is good that it's excellent He's not saying look just because they abuse Parts of the law of God doesn't mean we should just throw the whole thing out He's saying that he emphasizes that the law is good and it's excellent and in the text He gives us three reasons why the moral law of God is excellent Now, the first reason why is in verse 8 and the first part of verse 9, and that is because it has an excellent purpose. Verse 8 says, It has an excellent purpose. There are people today that are teaching this idea New Covenant theology that we don't have to worry about the law of God anymore that we don't have to You know pay any attention to that We're under a new covenant the law of love and so therefore we don't have to worry about the Old Testament moral law of God and yet here you have the Apostle Paul in the book of Timothy especially in verses 9 and 10 doing what laying out, basically repeating the Old Testament moral law of God. And so it's absurd. It's absurd to suggest that the law of God has been put out of the way completely. Jesus said that he came to fulfill it right down to the jot and the tittle. He wasn't saying, I came to abolish it. That's not what he meant by that. What he meant was that he came to fulfill that law and to actually give a fuller understanding of what the law was teaching. Not take away from it, but actually get to the spirit of the law of God. the word good means. Now we know that the law is good. There's only a few things in the Bible that are described as good. One of them is God. Jesus said, there's only one that's good. When the rich young ruler came to him, he said, good teacher, what should we do, what must I do that I could get eternal life? And he says, there's only one that's good, and that's God. There's only one that's morally excellent. In the book of Genesis in chapter 1, at the end of each day of creation, God said what? It is good. Before sin came into the world, creation was morally excellent up until that point. You get to Psalm 19 verse 7. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. And so the law is also called good. It's called morally excellent. Paul adds his amen to that and says the law is morally excellent. It has a excellent purpose. Therefore, the law should not be abused. We know that the law is good if, there's a condition right there, if it's used lawfully. In other words, if it's used for the purpose for which it was given. My wife has a bread knife at home. Pampered chef, right? Some of you ladies have been a pampered chef. I don't know if they do that anymore. Pampered chef parties. And she bought this bread knife at the pampered chef party. And my wife used to make a lot of bread. You can see that. Ate a lot of bread back in that time. Before we had Jonathan, who's allergic to wheat. So we don't have a lot of fresh bread anymore. But it used to be that she needed a knife that would cut the bread in nice, even slices. That's the problem, right? You get fresh bread straight out of the oven, and you do a hat job on the thing if you don't have a good knife. Well, she bought this knife. It cut on both strokes. Just a wonderful knife. Nice, even pieces of bread. You slap some butter on that, it melts all over. It's good. Not making you all hungry, right? Well, that knife had a lawful purpose. It was made for the purpose of cutting slices of bread. The moment that I take that knife and I plunge it into the back of my neighbor, that is what is known as an unlawful use of the Pampered Chef bread knife. That is not the reason that knife was created. It was created to cut nice, even slices of bread, not as a way for me to off my neighbor. Right? So that would be an abuse of the bread knife. In the same way, the law is good if you're using it for the purpose that God created it for. If it's being used consistently with the purpose of the law of God. That's what it means to say, lawfully. Again, back in verses 3 through 7, let's go back and look at it. In verse 3, he says, "...as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith." The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. That's the ESV translation of that phrase. The aim of our charge is love. King James translates that the purpose of the commandment is charity or love. It's referring to the commandments of God. I don't think he's talking specifically here about his charge regarding teaching doctrine. He's referring to the commandments. He's saying the purpose of the commandment Love and Jesus said that love the Lord your God with all your heart soul mind and strength to love your neighbor as you love yourself And that the commandment is should create this pure heart good conscience and sincere faith verse 6 Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussion Desiring to be teachers of the law Without understanding either what they're saying or the things about which they make confident assertions These people were making confident assertions about things that they didn't even know about He's saying They're making these ridiculous assertions, and now he's saying, but you know, the law, just because they do that, doesn't mean that there's a lawful use of the law of God. They're doing an unlawful thing. They're adding to the Word of God, saying there is a right use of that law. What is that right use? Well, this lawful use would include the idea as a means of awakening repentance in the ungodly and profane, in the context of what we're about to see here in verse 9. It was the law of God has a purpose in setting, in revealing The holiness of God. God is the law giver. And the law reveals something about his character. And by virtue of comparison and contrast, it also reveals something about our character. It reveals that we need Christ. That's the purpose of the law. Galatians chapter 3 verse 24 says, the law is a schoolmaster to teach us that we need to be justified by faith. The law reveals that we have nothing to offer God. No way that we have any righteousness of ourselves. And it drives us to the foot of the blood-stained cross where we see that Jesus is our only hope. If you think for a second, if you think for a second that you've got something to offer God, you are lost. If you think for a second your church membership or just anything that you bring to Christ to sort of give you standing with God, you're lost. Our righteousness is as filthy rags before God. And the law reveals how filthy, really. So Galatians 3 24. Look also at Romans 3 for a minute. Romans 3 19 and 20. Romans 3 19 and 20 also gets to the purposes of the law of God. Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. Now the purpose of the law of God here is to stop the mouth of self-justification. When you're sharing the gospel with someone, you point out their need of Christ, what do they do? Ah, I'm not that bad of a guy. I'm a pretty good person, really. I'm better than most people. I haven't killed anybody yet, you know. And so they're good people, they think, in their own minds. But then you bring up the law of God and you show them, hey, look, have you ever lied? Have you, not have you, but you know, how many lies have you told? How many times have you stolen? How many times have you committed adultery or even looked with lust at someone, Jesus said? How many times have you blasphemed the name of God? You bring up the commandments of God, and what does it do? That mouth of self-justification stops. because the conscience, as Paul says in Romans, bears witness that it's true. The law of God is written on our hearts. You don't even need to teach it to somebody. They already know it. They know it's wrong to lie. They know it's wrong to steal. They know it's wrong to commit adultery and to blaspheme the name of God. They know all of that innately, and the conscience will bear witness that these things are true. And so this is a lawful use of the law of God. Romans 3 verse 20 goes on to say, for by works of the law no human being will be justified in the sight since through the law comes knowledge of sin. So another purpose of the law is to define what sin is. It brings knowledge of sin. Go ask the average person on the street. Ask the average Christian in the pew. Define sin for me. What is sin? They've heard about it from the time they were in like the nursery in the church, right? But ask them to define what it is, and most people can't give you a biblical answer. The answer is in 1 John 3, verse 4. Sin is transgression of the law. It's rebellion against the law of God. It's not measuring up to your— failing to measure up to your full potential, right? It's nothing man-centered like that. You've broken the laws of God, and that's what sin is. And then Romans chapter 7, the Apostle Paul says, I wouldn't even have known what the covetousness was sin apart from the law of God. He said, if the law didn't say it, I wouldn't have thought that being covetous was a problem. But the law revealed it to him. And so these are lawful uses of the law. They're not the only lawful uses. We'll talk about another one as we get further on in the text. The law should not be abused. And the third truth about this excellent purpose of the law of God is that it's designed for lawbreakers. Guess what? That's all of us. It's designed for lawbreakers that we would see our need, as we've been talking about. But look at verse 9. The law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient. And we'll stop there for now. Lawless and disobedient. I'm taking lawless and disobedient as kind of an umbrella term for everything that's about to come in this list of lawbreaking. kind of summarizes all of those things. Lawless, according to the complete biblical library, is a conscious contempt for the law that is broken. This isn't just somebody saying, well, I didn't know. You know, you might drive through a speed zone that's been changed to 45 miles an hour that was like 70 miles an hour before. You might be able to say, well, I just didn't know that they changed the sign, right? But when we're talking about lawlessness in this context, it means conscious contempt. It's knowing what the law is, and knowing that you've broken it and being glad that you did. It's made for the lawless and for the disobedient. This lawless term has to do with attitude. Disobedient has to do with action. In other words, you just won't come into subjection to the law of God according to Dean Alford's New Testament for English readers. You just refuse, you actively refuse to come into subjection to the law of God. Greg Bonson in his book Theonomy and Christian Ethics says, Paul can actually say that the law was made for, in essence, aims to hold back the lawless, rebellious, ungodly, and sinful. The law represses the ravages of sin in a person's life and in society. It halts the sinner with the authoritative demand of God, even if only for a little while. The work of the law of God is written in the heart of man, helps curb—it could be a lot worse, believe it or not. It could be a lot worse in our culture if God had not placed the law of God on our hearts. And we didn't have some, our conscience bearing witness with it. And so the law serves that purpose. The second reason why the law of God is excellent is because it defines sin and sinners clearly. It leaves no room for doubt or no room for speculation. The second part of verse 9 down to verse 10, it does this. We've got a series of descriptions here. Some of these are paired off in pairs of two. Others just kind of stand on their own as I handle them anyway. That's how I'm going to do it. but it defines sinners clearly. As we approach this section of the sermon, this section of the text, I want you to know that you're gonna find yourself here in the text. People all the time are trying to find themselves in the Bible. They think they're some great hero, you know, I'm like King David, or I dare to be a Daniel or something, right? Well, really, this is where you find yourself in the Scriptures, is in the description of sinners. Because that's what we are, apart from Christ. So we have these descriptions in the first part of verse 9. I'm going to use the 20th century New Testament translation here because it seems to reflect the meaning. Irreligious and wicked in the next part of verse 9. We've already mentioned the lawless and disobedient, but then it says for the ungodly and sinners. Ungodly and sinners. When we're talking about someone who's ungodly, we're talking about someone who has a lack of reverential awe before God. This isn't just some general term for unbelievers. This is talking about a specific attitude. They lack a reverential awe for God. They have no sense of when they're gathering to worship, that God is involved with this thing. that we're gathering not just in each other's presence, but as we gather, we gather before God. And we're here to worship Him, not to be entertained, not for us to put forward our own agendas, whatever those may be, but we gather together in the house of God to worship the living God. And when we do, as Ecclesiastes 5 verse 1 says, we need to be careful about what we say. when we come into the house of God. We need to have some sense of that. You see that throughout the Old Testament and New Testament. There ought to be a sense of God. Unfortunately, that's often lost in the church today. It's gone. And so the ungodly could be describing the average church. A lack of reverential awe before Him and sinners. Just people that are living ungodly lives, unholy lives, walking in rebellion against God. So the irreligious and wicked, you go on here to the next pair of terms, for the unholy and profane. Unholy and profane. Those who have no relationship with God. And profane describes lacking any religious sensibilities at all. No religious sensibilities. Now here in the Bible Belt, that's kind of hard to imagine. But our team just got back from Syracuse, New York. And about 10 years ago, when I first went up there to plant a church up there, the experts up there were telling me that the average person in Syracuse was three to four generations removed from regular church attendance. Three to four generations. Now here in the Bible Belt, we take a little bit of pride in being the Bible Belt, having churches on every corner. It's not really a Bible Belt, it's a church belt. Lots of churches, not a lot of Bible. And now we have people moving in from all over the country that are coming from places like Syracuse, New York, right? That are coming like this, three to four generations removed from any regular attendance in the church. And we're gonna, I think in the Bible Belt, churches are about to start figuring out how to talk to people who don't have a history of Christianity. How to share the gospel with them biblically, not backing down from one word of it, but addressing these worldviews that are coming in. You're gonna see changes here is what I'm getting at. And so irreligious and wicked, ungodly, sinners, unholy, and profane. And so really these are violations of the first four commandments. You get to the next description, and interestingly, you've got a description of the violation of the fifth commandment that we started talking about today in our catechism. And then you get to the next part, those who strike their fathers and mothers at the end of verse 9. Striking fathers and mothers, the rebellious children. Children who will not obey their parents and go so far as actually literally hitting them. Does happen. Does happen. Sometimes they'll even murder their parents. You read about that in the newspaper every now and then. You think, how in the world did they get there? Well, it started with Not clean in the room. So young people, let me just say to you, as we learn about this fifth commandment in the catechism, pay attention. There's a promise in the commandment. If you obey your parents, what will happen? Life will go better for you. Your parents know some stuff that you don't know. I'm always trying to convince my four-year-old of this. You know, I actually know some things. More than you, you know? Don't do that. And she's four going on and 18 or something, right? So, but it scares me a little bit because rebellion, we look at it when they're four and isn't that cute? It doesn't, it's not long, it's not cute anymore. It's not long and they're sitting in jail somewhere. What's happening when you're disobeying your parents, young people? What you're doing is you're saying to God, God, I will not have authority in my life. God is the ultimate authority. In fact, he's the one who gave you the fifth commandment. In fact, he's the one who established your parents be your parents. And so you need to obey your parents. They'll go well with you if you do. And the fact that you don't reveals something about who you are. If you are habitually, constantly rebelling against your parents, you may not be a child of God. In Deuteronomy chapter 21, nobody likes to talk about this, Deuteronomy 21, 18 to 21, it says if you've got a rebellious son, and he won't stop being rebellious, and he's probably hitting his parents, something like that, he should be executed. I'm not saying we're gonna gather you all the kids up in the parking lot and stone you to death today because you've been disobeying your parents. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is, is that if you got what you deserve, that's what you get. God is very merciful. He's very patient. And we don't have a law that says that right now, but young people, you can thank God. You can thank God that that law doesn't exist right now. That's a proof of God's mercy in your life. He's not giving you what you deserve. So that's a violation of the fifth commandment. Rebellious children. The law is given for them to help them see that they need Christ. So parents, as you're disciplining your kids, do it with love. Be patient. Don't make them angry with you. You know, don't provoke them to anger, as Ephesians says. But bring him back to the law of God and say, look, I'm not just disciplining you because I'm ticked off at you. I'm disciplining you because you have violated the law of God, and if this continues, it doesn't end well for you. So that's rebellious children. The sixth commandment is dealt with in the next, in the next term. Murderers. Murderers. Murderers of any kind. The literal translation in the Greek could be man murderer. In the King James, it's translated manslayer. It's the only time that this term, in this way, appears in the New Testament. And it includes all forms of murder. So it's not just talking about homicide. It's also talking about manslaughter. You know the difference, right? Homicide is premeditated, right? You're planning it out. Manslaughter might be an accidental murder, but all of it is included together. And I would add to this the idea, it's just the murder of any human being. Any human being. And I would say to you that that would include a description of people who've had an abortion. And I don't say that in a mean way. And I don't say that without compassion. Because at the same time, we recognize that we're all guilty of breaking these laws. But here's what we need to know. That when it comes to abortion, that sin can be forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. And if you've had an abortion, you don't need to—if you're in Christ, you don't need to carry the weight of that around and just continually beat yourself up with of these sins in this list, you can recognize that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. And you don't have to carry that load of guilt. I want to be very clear about that, because I don't think I always am. I need to be clear that the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin, every sin, even murder. You know, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6, he also has a similar list over there in verses 9 through 11. What does he say in verse 11? Such were some of you. Past tense. Yes, that's what you did, but that's not who you are now. Who you are now is a child of God. Who you are now is adopted into the family of God. Who you are now is forgiven because of the blood of Jesus Christ. God takes murder seriously. Exodus chapter 21 verse 12, he prescribes the death penalty for those who murder. And so, you know, the Bible does say in Ezekiel 18 verse 20, the soul that sins that shall die. This is part and parcel of the gospel. It's coming face to face with the fact that our sins deserve death penalty. But Jesus took the death penalty on behalf of sinners. He paid the price. He took the punishment that we deserved as he hung upon that cross. This is all part of the gospel. We'll see that more later as we look at verse 11. So murders of any kind, and then we get to verse 10. And in verse 10, the very first part of the verse, we have two descriptions of sexually immoral men who practice homosexuality. So I'm just summing this up in my descriptions as sexual perverts. And so, the first term, sexually immoral, is translated in the King James as fornication. It's an old term, we don't use much anymore, but it's still a good term. It's from the Greek term, pornos. And it has to do with habitual practice of immorality by heterosexuals. The habitual practice of immorality, sexual immorality, by heterosexuals. Now the word pornois is a word we get, it's a term that we get our term pornography from. In our day and age, there's never been a time where pornography has been more accessible than it is right now. Every one of you, or a lot of you anyway here, have a phone in your pocket where you can access it any time of the day or night. The habitual practice of immorality by heterosexuals would include the use of pornography. And Paul warns in 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 9, people who are guilty of that will not inherit the kingdom of God. This is not being talked about much in churches these days, although it's probably the most common sin from pulpit to the pew. There's been surveys done about pastors and their addictions to pornography. It's everywhere. Let me just urge you, these sins that we're looking at here, you know, sometimes people look at that and say, it doesn't hurt anybody. Oh, yeah? Well, it hurts your soul. You could go to hell. You know, someone who's right with God, they're supposed to have freedom from these things. Jesus saved me from my sins. Well, really, which ones? Which ones did he save you from? Did he save you from that? Did he save you from these other things in the list? If he hasn't saved you from those sins, you need to look at yourself. That's the whole point of 1 John. 1 John is a way for us to know whether we have confidence, to have assurance in our faith. When we, as Christians, I'm not saying Christians will never do these things. What I'm saying is when Christians live that way, they have no assurance. When you live that way, you have no confidence in your relationship to God. How can you? You've been looking at stuff that you shouldn't be looking at, right? And then you act as if you're a Christian. Listen, I know how it is. I've been in churches long enough. And I know for my own life what it is. When you come to church on Sunday morning, what you see here is not necessarily reality. The facade that we put forward is not necessarily what we are. So let me challenge you, beg with you, plead with you. And I say it to myself as much as I say it to anyone else. We must do battle with sin. Be warring against sin, because sin is warring against you. It will destroy you. You cannot. You cannot. take fire into your bosom and not be burned. It's a drug. It creates patterns of thinking in your brain that is very similar to drug abuse. You get a similar high that you get from doing drugs with this stuff. And that will kill you. That will kill you. Before I was saved, I was addicted to this stuff. Before I was saved, I was a pastor of a church addicted to this stuff. I'd stand there on Sunday morning. I'd be up to four or five in the morning on Saturday night, and then I would go and pretend to preach on Sunday. Whatever was happening there wasn't preaching. I stood there in the pulpit, I remember one Sunday standing there in the pulpit, and trying to get through the pastoral prayer, and I had my hands on the side of the pulpit like this, and I was holding on so tight, I think my knuckles were probably turning white. Because I was trying to get through the pastoral prayer without blurting out perversions in the middle of the prayer. You start to lose your mind. Charles Spurgeon said, there's no hell on earth like trying to maintain a testimony when you don't have one. That was my hell on earth, and I almost lost my mind over it. You can talk to my kids about it. They'll talk to you about what was dad like before he got saved. He was nuts. Not saying all this for shock effect, but what I am trying to do is get you to wake up because so many people in this culture just accept it as normal now. It's not normal. It will kill you. It will destroy your family. It will destroy everything in your life. Do not go there. So that's fornication. You get into the next term, homosexuality. There's a movie out right now called 1946. It's about—it's produced by some homosexual advocates, and what they're saying is the RSV translation from the Revised Standard Version, the printing from 1946, introduced the term homosexual into the Bible when that term had never been there before. ESV here has it as homosexual. And what they're trying to say is, well, you know, homosexuality is not really a sin. I would agree with them that the word homosexual probably shouldn't be a Bible. It should be the word sodomite. I think that would be more accurate. Because that's what it is. And what they're trying to say with this new movie is they're trying to say, well, it's not really talking about It's not talking about homosexuality. It's talking about pedophiles. It's not going to help you much. Because the connection between pedophilia and homosexuality is so evident and like verifiable and documentable that, you know, you really, I don't think you want to make that... But from the term, it's a male sodomite, includes homosexuality and pedophilia. It's a two-part noun that could be translated male bed, or one who lies with other men. The tense has to do with active homosexuality. Now, I know that there are Southern Baptist presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention. That one was just recent, J.D. Greer. He's no longer president. Now the one that's there now who plagiarized J.D. Greer in his sermon and says that God yells about some sins, but he whispers about other ones. He yells about, you know, like heterosexual sins, but he only whispers about homosexuality. Let me read a few verses to you, and you can tell me if this is yelling or whispering. Leviticus, chapter 18, verse 22. Leviticus 18, 22. I don't think that's whispering. Verse 29. For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people. He's not talking about there, about like, you know, exiling them somewhere. He's talking about execution. And we know that from the next verse, Leviticus chapter 20, verse 13. Leviticus 20, verse 13, it says, If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them. By the way, adultery was also given the death penalty. So those who defile themselves with mankind, in the King James translation, here it's translated homosexual, very clearly it's an abomination before God. Yes, God has spoken about it, and he's yelling it. He's saying you're gonna get the death penalty if you do that, if you got justice that you deserved. Again, God is merciful. He's merciful. You should take advantage of that mercy. If you find yourself being described by any of these sins, you should look at it and say, boy, thank God he's merciful, that I'm not getting what I deserve. I need to repent. Brings us to the next term in verse 10. Let me try to get back there. 1 Timothy 1, verse 10. Says, enslavers in the ESV It could be translated man-stealers. King James translates it that way. It's kidnapping. Kidnapping. This would be an eighth commandment violation. We're actually following an order at this point. Fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth commandment. Thou shalt not steal. You shall not steal human beings. Kidnapping. This would obviously apply to sex trafficking, since we're talking about pornography that's involved with this. So if you are involved in trafficking human beings, involved with kidnapping them, removing them from where they live, and taking them someplace else, the Bible doesn't have much to say about that either in the law of God. Exodus chapter 21 verse 16. Exodus 21 verse 16. Whoever steals a man and sells him, anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death. This is not a good verdict on 19th century American slavery. That whole thing was operated on this principle of kidnapping. And then selling the person that was kidnapped. And so both the person who does the kidnapping and the person who does the buying is supposed to be put to death. Again, God is merciful. Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 7, Deuteronomy 24 verse 7, if a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die. So you shall purge the evil from your midst. Death penalty for kidnapping. Now bearing in mind that in the Old Testament law, there was a right way for slavery to happen. Didn't involve kidnapping. Somebody was in debt to somebody else, they went and they worked for them for six years and were freed on the 7th, or they might even decide to stay and become part of the family. Now that wasn't happening much, maybe a little bit in the 19th century of American slavery, but not much. I had a newspaper from Georgia from the 1780s where the whole back page of the newspaper was just ads from slave owners looking for their escaped slaves. This was before the Underground Railroad, before abolitionists were really doing anything in America, and they had just a whole page from Savannah, Georgia, of all of these slaves that had run away. They weren't running away because they wanted to be part of the family. It wasn't biblical slavery in most cases. And so you've got these kidnappers. Now, I'm gonna bring some application here. I know this is going a little bit long. Try to wrap this up as I can, but this is important. Acts chapter 9, verse 1. But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. You see, Paul, Saul at that time, but Paul is not only a murderer, he was not only there present and approving of Stephen's death, he's also a kidnapper. He was trying to be. Kidnapping. And then liars. Perjurers in the next part first Timothy 1 verse 10 liars and perjurers perjurers those who perjure themselves in any way in a court of lie and liars of any kind Perjury is condemned in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 12 lying in Revelation chapter 21 verse 8 All liars will have their part in the lake of fire. I When you lie, what you're saying to God is, God, I can't trust you in this situation to tell the truth. I know what you've commanded, but I know what I need to get out of this situation, so I'm gonna tell a lie. That's why liars are in hell. And then it finishes here in the end of verse 10, anything which contradicts the truth. It says, whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine. Part of our discipling the nation's ministry of Matthew 28, 18 through 20, is instructing the legislators in biblical law. The law helps us to understand that we need Christ. But when it comes to laws in our country, we do not have the freedom to ignore the law of God and just come up with our own good ideas. Like, our good ideas aren't doing so hot. They're not such good ideas. Maybe we should go to the great lawgiver, and look at what his law says, and say to the legislators, you are going to stand before God. Romans 13 says, you bear the sword against the evildoer, and that you are a minister of God. And so if you're going to be a minister of God, therefore, you should legislate in accordance with his standards, and not whatever good idea you come up with. I don't care what you apply that to, but that's part of our role in discipling the nations, to teach them to observe all things that the Lord has commanded. The role of the government is to bear the sword against the evildoer. The role of the church is to minister the grace of God and the gospel to lawbreakers. Don't get it twisted. We shouldn't push the legislators to give grace. They need to bear the sword. We're the ones that give grace. We don't want the government giving grace. That grace can be messed up. We want true biblical grace. Now all of this, in conclusion, is a basic element of the gospel. When we're talking about the law of God, it's not contradictory to the gospel. It's an essential part of it. Look at verse 11. Paul, in conclusion to all this, right now, this is heavy stuff. It's quiet in here. Should be. But in verse 11, listen to what Paul says. He's saying, if you don't understand this, you don't understand the gospel. If you don't understand the law of God, how it so thoroughly and precisely and accurately condemns you to hell, you don't understand that, you're not going to understand how beautiful the gospel is. The glory of the gospel. It's quiet in here because we're all condemned under this law, aren't we? Every one of us is condemned under this law. But when you think, that Jesus kept this law perfectly and never once sinned in thought, word, or in deed. And then he went to that cross as a perfect substitute for us. He died for sinners. That's good news. Substitutionary atonement. He died on your behalf. He satisfied propitiation. He satisfied the wrath of God on your behalf. You don't want that. You don't want to take the wrath of God. You don't want to take the letter of the law. You want grace. You want someone else to pay the penalty. You want someone else to satisfy the wrath of God. You don't want to bear that. Now listen, if you reject the gospel, you will face it. The wrath of God, it says in the book of Romans, is being stored up to be revealed on the day of wrath. You die outside of Christ, you might not know it now, but the full brunt of the wrath of God will come against you and you'll be cast into hell for all eternity. But the good news, the glory of the gospel, of the blessed God, is that you can be forgiven. I can be forgiven. God could take a wicked porn addict and change him, make him a preacher. God could take a homosexual, and change them. I know a guy who was homosexual, now he preaches the gospel in front of abortion clinics. Praise the Lord, right? God can take us wherever we find ourselves in this list. Liars, perjurers, disobedient to parents, murderers, ungodly, sinners, lawless, disobedient, unholy and profane. And he can take us and transform us by the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's your only hope. That's my only hope. A right perspective of the law is part of a right perspective on the gospel. Paul says, I've been entrusted with this. As part of that trust that God gave him, he was not only entrusted with the gospel, he was entrusted with the truth about the law of God. And we dare not downplay it. Nothing can destroy self-righteousness like a close examination of the law of God. No one's innocent. We all need righteousness. We all need to be declared righteous. Now, on the 4th of July, we did an outreach over at the firework stand. My son Charlie went over to get a snow cone. He's standing in line there for a snow cone, and there's another worker, a worker from the firework stand standing in line right there with him, and so Charlie gives him the gospel track and just starts pressing him a little bit. You think you're a good person. You think you've kept the Ten Commandments. This young man immediately felt conviction. Just like here in the room right now, he got quiet. And his head dropped and he said, man, no, I haven't. He says, in fact, I've been pretty, pretty bad lately. And interesting how just so quickly conviction came on this young guy. It was a divine appointment. And Charlie was like, he pushed him a little more. Well, do you think you've, you know, have you broken these laws? And he's like, yeah, man. He's like, I'm getting beat up here, right? And Charlie says to me, I said, what'd you say then, Charlie? And he goes, well, I told him about the Great Exchange. I about fell over. Sometimes as a parent you wonder if your kids are getting it, right? And then your kid's talking about a Puritan term for justification by faith and imputation. I'm like, what? You told about the Great Exchange. He goes, yeah, I told them that Jesus died for sins and that his sins could be on Jesus and that if he repented that Christ's righteousness could be given to him and he could be made right with God. And then he came back, I didn't know any of this, he comes back over to the stand where we were, and he says, Dad, I need a Bible. I go, what do you need a Bible for? So I shared the gospel with this guy, he doesn't have a Bible. And Cody had brought a box of Bibles, so we gave him a Bible. Charlie went back over there, gives him the Bible, gives him the gospel tract, says, hey, this is where our church is, all that. But he pointed them to Christ. The guilt of the law of God was already pressing his conscience. It was already bothering his conscience, and he needed Christ. So let me say this in conclusion about Christ. Romans 3, verse 21. And then we'll be done, I promise. Romans 3, 21 says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe for there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Praise God. Folks, go to Christ. If you got the weight of your sin pressing you down, run to Jesus. Abandon yourself to Him. Don't bring anything else in your hand. Don't for a moment think you can be good enough to make up for what you've done. You can't. You need to go to Christ alone. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the truth of your word. I pray if there's anyone here that doesn't know you, I pray that they would repent and believe the gospel. I pray that they would see themselves as they are, that this glance in the mirror that they've had today would humble them, break them, crush them, and that they would run to Christ, abandon themselves by faith to Christ alone, and that they would be made right. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.