Turn to Galatians 3, 19 through 20, and we will be looking at these two little verses this morning as we continue making our way through this letter. Two little verses is all I'm going to preach on today. And there's so much stuff in them that I just couldn't I couldn't move past them. I needed to camp on this for a little bit this morning as we look at the origin and the purpose of the law. And this is what it says. Why, then, the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. And it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. May God bless the hearing of His Word. A hundred years before Christ died, so we're back in about 100 BC, a Greek historian named Diodorus Siculus wrote about the origin of the law as it had been passed down to him. Of course, he's a pagan, he's a Greek, but this is what he said. They say that the first person who convinced the people to use written laws was menace. a man both lofty in spirit and the most altruistic in his way of life of any lawgiver in memory. Now, this is a prehistoric figure said to have been the first human ruler in Egypt after the gods themselves. It is a curious and little-known fact. They didn't know this until looking it up, looking up a little bit about this character. That he is carved into the South Wall freeze on the United States Supreme Court building, along with eighteen other world lawgivers. Now, those of you who believe this is a Christian nation, check out who these lawgivers are Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon. The Kyrgyz of Sparta, Solon, the great the grandfather of Plato, Confucius, Caesar, Augustus, Mohammed, Charlemagne, Louis the Ninth, King of France, John Marshall and Napoleon, among others. They're all lined up in procession, and I don't know who it is that they're coming up to. It's a it's a figure that's represented as kind of a an angelic figure sitting on a throne. It's not God. It must represent truth or justice or something like this. And they're all lined up with their own little kind of icons as they come before in a procession as being these great lawgivers on the Supreme Court building. In accordance with Diodorus' chronology, Menes, this character from Egypt, is the first one in the procession. Now, after telling us about menace, Diodorus goes on to give the following account of the origin of the law that he himself finds impossible to believe. He says, quote, he claims that Hermes had given these laws to him at his menace, claimed that Hermes gave him these laws as a source of many substantial benefits. And this, they say, is just what Menos of Crete did among the Greeks and the Kurgos among the Laodemonians. The first one, asserting that he had received the revelations from Zeus and the second from Apollo. Now, of course, you know, these names, Zeus and Apollo are gods who ruled in Greek in the Greek version of the Divine Council on Mount Olympus, the mountain headquarters of the gods, the place where they dispense justice to the world. And Hermes is also one of those gods we've mentioned him in our study of Galatians already, and we'll see him later in Galatians four. But Diodorus finishes with these astounding, but I think very accurate words of those unfamiliar with this history, says, quote, And it is a tradition as well among most other nations that this kind of inspiration was the case. And then he goes on to name several more lawgivers who all claimed that they received the revelations from gods and even mentions Moses. and Jehovah. Now, it's tempting to give in as the Doris himself did to the notion that these people were mad or that they made up a supernatural origin of law in order to better render obedience to the masses. To their very own human novel ideas. But we know better on the first hand, on one hand, law doesn't does not have a human origin. I hope you understand that law has a supernatural origin at Eden, Ararat, Sinai. God gave the law to the man. God gave the law to them. And this is why law is transcultural and certain things are always wrong everywhere at all times in every culture. There's simply no good explanation for the universality of law if human beings are the originators of law. Moral relativism is just an absurd idea. And yet, given our own understanding that the Lord is the source of law, it's still tempting to dismiss this idea that its coming to man had anything whatsoever to do with what the Old Testament Hebrew calls gods and what the Greek Old Testament translates as angels. And this morning, our text is concerned with law. It answers for us two basic and important questions. How did the law get here and what is its purpose in our lives, especially as Christians? Now, this first question of how the law got here is not an end to itself. God doesn't just tell us how the law came to us so that we might be able to answer a question on jeopardy about Bible trivia. The answer helps you to see the divine heavenly nature of the law and how rebellion against it is rebellion against the very culture of heaven and especially against its king, who sits on the throne and oversees justice around the globe. This question, how we got the law, also forces you to see the vital difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. And this difference is the difference between the direct oath of God. And the indirect giving of laws through mediators. And I'll get to that in a minute. The second question, what is it? What is the law's purpose is more practical of the two. And this is what you're supposed to do when you come to a law or the law in the Bible. How are you supposed to think about the law? What is your attitude about law supposed to be? Do you think properly about law or are you confused about its purpose? Do you understand why God gave it? Do you approach it in the correct way? Have you ever thought about its origin and how significant that is to your own obedience to the law? And those kinds of questions. So the first question is, how did the law get here? That's what I want to answer first. Now, this answer is found at the end of verse 19 and through all the way through verse 20. This question obviously actually comes after the other question about the purpose of the law, in other words, he talks about the purpose of law first, and then he gives us this, but I want to treat this first because it serves or helps us understand the other question better. The law, he says, quote, was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. And this explains the origin of the law. Now, on one hand, you already know the origin of law. It comes from God, as I said earlier, God is the one who gave the law to Adam, Noah, Moses. Now, since the law comes from God, we mustn't think of the law as something that is evil or wicked or demonic. I heard an unbelievable exposition of Galatians 4, 9 through 10 from a Calvinist New Covenant theologian on YouTube where he taught that Paul said Now, get this, as we said in these verses, chapter four, Paul said that returning to Jewish Old Covenant observances, which include days like Sabbath month, season and years, is to return to, quote, paganism. And the demonic. He said this is a shocking statement and he wouldn't believe it if Paul didn't say it. And this to him was all given in order to prove that we are no longer to keep the Sabbath. Now, in a week or two, I'm going to deal with this more thoroughly. I can't just, like, leave you hanging with that, right? Because it's really unbelievable. I mean, I was just when I read it, when I heard it, watched it, I was shocked. Talk about shocked. But right now, one of the things that I found curious is that he never bothered to ask What it might mean about the God who gave these laws in the first place, if to go back to them is to return to paganism and demonism. What does that say about the God who gave it, if that's true? Now, elsewhere, Paul does not call the law demonic, does he? He calls it like in Romans 7, 12, holy, righteous and good. That's what he says about law. The law is not a reflection of evil beings. but of a perfect, morally pure being. The law is not some invention of men, much less of Satan, but of El Sadiq, the righteous God. They are His ways, Deuteronomy says. His ways. And Psalm 19 says they are perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and true. They tell you what God is like, don't they? They show you his character. They teach you what is good. They show you what is right and true. Now, is that what you think about when you think of the law? Maybe you don't. Perhaps you confuse God's law for man's laws. Unless you have a disdain for God's laws because of your confusion. So many Christians grew up with legalistic rules that are found nowhere in the Bible and yet were passed off by the church as the very words of God. God doesn't say you aren't allowed to play cards and go to a casino or kiss before marriage or have your lips ever touch the fruit of the vine or smoke a cigarette. Now, some people would hear a pastor say those kind of things. mention these and conclude that he's telling you to run out and do them all. Frankly, some of these things are not wise or responsible. Several of them have potential to lead you into real trouble. I said potential. But none of them are condemned explicitly in the Bible or even by good and necessary consequence. My point is that a lot of people grew up thinking that these things were just as evil as In God's eyes is breaking the Ten Commandments. And incredibly, some Christians even elevate them above the level of the Ten Commandments. And thus, when a person comes out of that kind of legalism, they have a tendency to think that all law is silly, arbitrary and absurd, don't they? And there might be others of you who may not think of God's laws as good. In fact, you may not think of God's laws at all. It's not a good thing because you're presently engaged in breaking them. You have no conscience about it whatsoever, you are in denial, you're not repentant, and therefore you cannot see the beauty of God's laws because your sin has blinded you to the truth. And those of you in this condition need to keep listening to this sermon. Because I'm going to come shortly to the purpose of the law. But before I come to this, I want to finish thinking about this law being put into effect by angels through a mediator. The apostle is driving us to something that's very important to consider. The glory of the law. Is of a lesser glory. Than that of the gospel because of angelic mediation. You hear that the law is not as glorious as the gospel, because the law was mediated by angels. And if there's something in this verse that I think is really very fascinating. Or at the end of verse 19 and 20, it's really both verses. There's disagreements over the exact meaning of verse 20 and the end of verse 19. Who is this intermediary? Well, a lot of people think it must be Moses. After all, Deuteronomy five, five says I stood between Jehovah and you on Mount Sinai. So case closed. The main problem with this view is that the mediary here seems to stand between God and angels. Not between God and Israel. And a lot of commentators have pointed that out. Now, second problem is that Moses as mediator, that view basically makes verse 20 not make any sense at all. Notice verse 20 affirms God's oneness. Or what we might call monotheism, God is one. The statement of monotheism will make any sense if Moses is the mediator. When it says that God is one. The idea is what you read about in the Shema in Deuteronomy, six for hero Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. Right. Why in the world would Paul interject monotheism into a statement about the mediation of Moses. Good luck coming up with an answer for that one. The best you're going to be able to do is come up with some clever, clever theological answer that destroys the actual words of the text. And the problem is so great that most commentaries will note, believe it or not, someone has reported that there are four hundred and thirty different interpretations of this verse. I suppose one for each year that Israel was in the wilderness a couple of verses earlier. In other words, scholars are baffled. But the statement of monotheism makes sense if the mediator here is not Moses, but someone who seems to violate the oneness of God. If he appears to violate God's oneness, then Paul must explain that God is, in fact, one being. And that means that the mediator must be God himself. Yes. How could God mediate between God and someone else, whether it's angels or Israel? And the answer is that there's more than one person in the Godhead. And one of these persons, the second person to be exact, is the one who wrote the law with his own finger in the form of the angel of the Lord. Notice what Moses says in Deuteronomy 9.10 about the mediation of another individual. He says, When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights. And either ate bread or drank water, and the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God. And on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you on the mountain, out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. He's not talking about the father here. He's talking about the son, the Logos Christ pre-incarnate, this, I think, is the mediator in Paul's mind, it's not Moses. Now, mediation is the function of Jesus in the New Testament and the Old Testament. He's the only mediator. And that what the scripture says. Here's the problem, God is mediating between God and someone else, then this implies that there's more than one God, you see. But God is one God, he says, and therefore, this mediator must also be God in essence, even though he's a different person from the father. And so I think when Paul says it was put into effect by angels through mediary, that this is actually a proof text of Christ being the angel of the Lord. Now, we talk about this for a long time after the sermon, if you want, and it's all pretty mind blowing, but it doesn't quite address the real point, which is that angels delivered the law. And this is also a big idea to grasp, and perhaps it's new to you that angels delivered the law. The world are you talking about? But it has an important point, so let's talk about this idea. First thing I want you to see is that the New Testament affirms in many places that the law was put into effect through angels. Stephen says in his death speech. You who received the law as delivered by angels did not keep it. Hebrews says since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution. Then he goes on to say how much more to you to listen to the new covenant. And of course, Paul says the same kind of a thing here, it was mediated by angel. Now, the idea you can't find it any place specific in the Old Testament, but there's a couple of places that seem to really to hint at it. Deuteronomy 33, verse two in the Septuagint, which is the Greek Bible, the Greek Old Testament that the disciples quoted from more than any other text says this. The Lord came from Sinai with ten thousands of holy ones. Under his right hand were angels with him. All his holy ones are under your hand and they are under you. And he received his words, the law that Moses charged us. And in Psalm 68, 17, it says the chariots of God are twice ten thousand thousands upon thousands. The Lord is among them. Sinai is now in the sanctuary. So you get these verses where angels are associated with Mount Sinai in the law. And it's all pretty strange, but what it affirms to me is that in some sense, the pagans were not that far off in what they told us about the origin of the law. They said that the law was given to men by the gods and the Septuagint often translates gods as angels. What the pagans do not affirm, however, is that the angels themselves received the law from Elion, God most high. They nor do they affirm that there is a non-created angel that mediates between God and the angels. And so while the law retains its supernatural origin for them, it loses its moral objectivity, its goodness, its transcendent quality, because difference Not to mention fallen gods or angels could deliver different laws to different cultures. And so you would have this just arbitrary cultural. Convention of the law, that's what the Bible allows for. But it does show that in some ways the pagans knew more about this than we often do today in our not nonrecognition of this angelic mediation of the law. The point of bringing up angels here is to show that the origin of the law was mediated through several steps of decreasingly powerful representatives. And so at the highest rung of the ladder, you've got the word of God is mediating between the father and angels. But then you've got angels themselves who are mediating the law to Moses and Moses is mediating the law to the people. I don't know how all of that happened. I wasn't there. So don't ask me. OK, no, I have absolutely no idea how this happened. But what it shows is that the law, which is the covenant of works, was mediated indirectly. Or it was mediated through other beings, was not mediated directly by God himself, but this is not the way it is with the covenant of grace. Think about the times that God comes in the covenant of grace. He comes directly to Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, to Moses, to the apostles through only one mediator, and that is Christ. There's no one else in between. There's no created angels that are mediating. The gospel, the covenant of grace, there's no man that's mediating it. It's just Christ himself. And the point is that in the promise of the gospel. God is swearing the oath himself to perform everything. To bring about everything that is necessary for salvation. And so with all of that kind of the background, I want to take a look at the second thing here, which is the purpose of the law. Which is that the law has a fading glory compared to the covenant of grace that comes through Christ. Now, most people have absolutely no idea why God gave the covenant of works to Adam or to Moses or to them. You ask them that question, what was the purpose of the covenant of works? And if they'll even admit that there is such a thing, they'll say, I don't really know. Their ignorance of the truth of this matter is only served to increase the function of the giving of the covenant in the first place. Think for a moment about the common idea that God will never command us to do something that we're not capable of doing in the first place. I mentioned this last week, very popular notion in a lot of churches. Do you say to somebody, you know, God requires perfection, they'll say, that's not possible. Nobody can be perfect. You see, they're assuming something here, aren't they? They're assuming that the law was given for us to keep it. And we're going to wade into some kind of treacherous and deep water here for a minute. What kind of an insane person would not believe that the law was given for us to keep? If you believe that, doesn't it somehow prove that the law is there is there for wicked? Why wouldn't God want us to keep his good, holy law? Now, there is a shift here. It's a very subtle, dangerous shift in what I've just said. I did not say that God does not want us to keep the law. So what other people impose upon it? I said the law was not given for us to keep. Let me say that again. I did not say that God does not want us to keep the law. I said the law was not given for us to keep. There's a difference there. Very different things. The first question questions God's desire for us regarding the law. The second question is God's purpose for giving us the law. You can't equate God's desire and his purpose as if it's the exact same thing, because God might have more than one desire for anything that he's purpose. The improper view of the law presupposes that human beings are intrinsically morally good. The proper view, Paul's view here admits that human beings are fallen into sin. hopelessly wicked and in need of a miraculous cure. Of course, God wants people to obey his law. He wants it in the same way that a father wants his junkie son to stop shooting heroin and taking crack. He wants it in the same way that I want my government to get its national deficit under control. It ain't going to happen, but I want it. God knows our condition. And his sending of the law was for a different purpose than fixing us or setting us straight. I don't think I'm saying here that God's desire for his son is ineffectual. Because it isn't. Election makes God's desires effectual. The covenant of grace makes it effectual. The effectual calling makes it effectual. But as it pertains to the law, the giving of the law, the point I'm making is that God did not give the law to bring this desire to fruition. He gave us the gospel for that. The law actually is the exact opposite. The apostle says now, why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made. Now, what in the world does it mean because of transgressions? Well, there's two possibilities that can either refer to a cause, the cause of giving in the law because of transgressions or because of a purpose. If it's a cause, then it means that God gave the law because there were so many transgressions that he put the law here to restrain them. Now, that's possible. It gets to the classic Protestant division of the three uses of the law. Let me tell you about those. The two main branches of the Reformation, both Lutheran and reformed, both affirmed that the law has three basic main uses. Calvin taught that the first use was a mirror. OK, like a mirror, the law shows you your impotency, your iniquity, your condemnation. When you look at the law, that's what you're supposed to see. The second use is the use here, if that's what it's talking about, the use of a restrainer. Think about chains that restrain dogs. This use curbs our outward depravity by offering us rewards and threatening punishments. Now, you use rewards with your children to get them to do the right thing. This is exactly what you are permitted to do when you're dealing with the law. Courts, jail, capital punishment, all these things are meant to detour dangerous and immoral behavior. These are also good, especially when people live together and they keep peace when they live together with one another. There's a third use, which is the use of as a guide. Now, you hire a guide to take you through some place that you've never been before. Some people hire guides to take them up difficult 14 years that they're afraid they're going to die on. Probably more people ought to do that because so many people are dying up there these days. That's what a guide is for. And this use of the law is for Christians. Now, if the verse is saying that the law was given because of our sin and in order to restrain it, then we're dealing with the second use of the law. But this is probably not what is in mind, because other places where Paul talks about the same thing seem to show pretty clearly that the law was given for the purpose, believe it or not, not of restraining sin, but of increasing sin, making there be more sin. Making it utterly plain to you, to one, to all that your evil behavior cannot make give you an excuse before God. Paul sums it up in Romans 520. He says the law came in to increase the trespass. Pretty crazy, isn't it? A lot of people are preaching that in churches these days. We need to recover this view of law today, not just in our country and not just in our churches, but in our own individual hearts. What is the impetus for removing the stigma and laws on homosexuality in our nation? Why are they doing this? Is it not mostly so that people can stop feeling guilty for what they are doing? And experimenting with like the modern evolved people that they are. What's behind the abandonment of biblical worship in the church? Is it not so we can finally feel free to worship God, however we feel like? What is sometimes behind particular theologies that tell us that we're no longer under law, but under grace? I said sometimes it's not always true, but sometimes it is true. Isn't it so that we can break all kinds of Old Testament laws without any theological concern for offending God? People hear about freedom in Christ and they use it as an excuse to sin, to break God's laws, and they justify it on theological grounds. But see, this starts on a personal level, not on a national or institutional level. How many of you hear gossip regularly about your husband to other women? Anyone? How many of you drink so much alcohol that you pass out on a regular basis? How many of you yell at your children in anger, are short with them, or would rather just not even be around them at all? How many of you work on the Sabbath and think nothing of it? How many of you take the Lord's name in vain at work or have speech that's filled with fecal matter so you can be part of the boys? How many of you are willing to admit in front of anybody that you do these things? How many of you want the law to do its work on your heart by condemning you when you're called on it by a preacher or a friend or a spouse? You wonder all the time why life seems so out of control, why church seems so boring or irrelevant, why you can't get excited for studying the Bible or gathering with saints to talk about Christ, why your marriage is filled with anger, not just one day, but all the time, constantly why work is a drudgery to be tolerated at best, why being around Christian friends is just not that exciting. Why you would rather spend all your time playing video games? Why you dread going to school? Why your own soul seems like an ugly, vacant lot? Why you refuse to look into your own heart? That's your problem. You will not look into the mirror of God's word to see what you are and what you have become. You live in constant state of denial. You wallow in your sin like a pig wallows in the mud. And meanwhile, your spouse, your children, your friends, the people in your church have to put up with it and they have absolutely no ability to do anything about it. Now, you see, this kind of preaching makes people very uncomfortable. And they. Turn it around and say, don't judge me. But this isn't about a person judging you, it's about the law judging you. A standard that not only you, but also I am held up to. Its whole purpose for being here is to show you what you're already like. You and me and everyone. The law shows us our sin. But it does more than that. It actually stimulates our sin. It's like adding water to a lawnful of weeds. Which I'm in a Trying to fix right now in my own yard. It's like lighting a match in a room full of gas. This is the laws like. When you hear not to do a thing, your heart actually desires to figure out clever ways to do the very thing you're told not to do. Sin springs up in our hearts and it explodes in our minds because of the law. In fact, the only power the law actually seems to have over us is the power to make us want to break it. One of the most ironic things that it does is actually stimulates rebellion in your heart by tempting you to try and gain righteousness through it. Anytime we hear the law and come away thinking what you know, Pastor, you just given six things there. Those are really talking about me. Well, you're on the path to self-righteous self-deception. How easy is it to sit through a sermon where a guy gives a few examples of sin and you come away thinking, well, I didn't talk about anything that I have a problem with. But you see right there, you have a really serious problem. How can you hear any example of a sin and think that it isn't you? Any example? Doesn't James say if you break one law, you've broken them all? Doesn't that mean that all sins are interconnected? I've thought about this a lot. It's very interesting. Think of something that you know that you do, OK? You say, oh, you didn't talk about anything that I do. Think of one that you know you do. I'll pick on gossip. I've already talked about it. Gossip is one of the worst sins in the church, because no one wants to talk about it, or even though it eats away at the foundation of the church and the unity of the body like a termite. But we don't talk about it. Now, take something that you don't do, like stealing. You say, I don't steal. Well, did you know that when you gossip, you steal someone's reputation? How about murder? You say, I never murdered anybody. Well, you murder someone in your heart by speaking badly about them. You say, well, I never take the Lord's name in vain, I'm very careful not to do that. Well, really, when you gossip about a Christian, you take the Lord's name in vain by speaking ill about a Christian, somebody who bears the name of Christ. We commit all kinds of sins like this. We share personal information about other people with somebody That's not them. You're committing adultery against them in a sense. You put your sin above God when you. Not willing to admit it, so you break the first commandment. See all of this works, the law manifests our depravity, but when we think that we aren't really all that guilty, then all of a sudden we're tempted to think that the laws within our grasp to obey it. And this temptation brings many people to seek to justify themselves by their own righteousness through the law. You need to really be where that's you. Lest you hear God's word today and come away thinking like the rich young man, you know, Jesus, I kept them all. So now you say, well, if you're right, this is pretty hopeless. You've convinced me of my sin through the law and shown me its purpose to condemn me. But why would God do this if he loves his people so much? That's because the law was never seen as the final solution. But actually pointed to the final solution in Christ. This is why you must distinguish between the law and the gospel, and you must understand what the law was given to do. The apostle says the law was added for this function. What have we just talked about until the offspring should come? to whom the promise had been made. In other words, the law was given to point you to your need for salvation from outside of your own righteousness. And that continues to be its function today, by the way, the verse is not saying that, well, Christ has come, so now we can just talk the law. Like now, if I say that, I guess I could preach the whole sermon again, so I should start over. One person says the law confines all in the prison house of sin from which there is no exit, but the way of faith. And another one says only in that way would the necessity of Christ's coming and work be properly understood. This part of the verse is so important because it shows you that the law was not given as an end to itself. Returning to the theme of the seed that he just talked about in verse 16 that we looked at last week, the apostle says that because God made promises to Christ that the law was given to increase transgressions, to manifest how wrought you are, to bring you to the end of yourself until such a time would come that Christ would be the end of the law. Now, he's the end of the law because he obeyed it, and he's the end of the law because through faith in him, you're saved and not through the law. Both of those are true. I was thinking about Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days because the Moses being there for 40 days on Mount Sinai. Well, Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and he was tempted by the devil. Now, think about the troubles that this mediation of angels caused almost from the beginning. God gives Adam and Eve one little tiny commandment and the devil. You say, why are you bringing up the devil? Because the devil's not a demon. The devil's an angel. He comes to Eve. He mediates the law to her, doesn't he? And he makes her question what it actually says. Did God really say? Many makes her doubt God's goodness and trustworthiness and giving the law. You will not surely die. You will become like God's knowing good from evil. That is, I think he's saying you will become like just like us. In other words, the fallen angel mediates the law to the woman who mediates the law to the man. And through all this mediation, the world is plunged into sin because fallen angels, whether they're heavenly or earthly, twist the law to their own vicious ends. Think about Satan and Jesus. Satan tempts Jesus with three forbidden things and again takes the scripture and twists them for his own evil purposes. But Jesus didn't succumb like our parents did. Jesus is the one who gave the law and who mediates even between Satan and God in heavenly places. Jesus is the one who obeyed the law and inherited the promise that were given to Abraham. Jesus is the one who mediated the covenant of grace, personally giving the promise to all whom the father has chosen through the effectual calling of the spirit, through the gospel. You see, the law has its purpose in your life, which is to drive you to your knees in repentance of your sins and then to lift up your head and appoint you to Messiah. First thing you have to do is confess your sins, acknowledge them, repent of them. And that goes for anyone here, whether you're a person who's never really believed on Christ Or a person who has and has believed and yet find yourself trapped in sins that you know you commit, but you won't admit to yourself or anyone else. And then after you do this, you have to trust in Christ. You have to understand that your sin will be punished if you do not turn to the Lord by faith alone. There will come a day of reckoning. But those who believe in Christ have had all of their punishment poured out on the son of God, and he will never hold your sin against you. Instead, he promises you the same rewards promised to the perfect one who died in your place. Trusting in Christ means that peace will be yours. There's two kinds of peace here that are important. One is the peace between you and God. If you don't feel that peace, know that that peace comes through faith in Christ. But there's also a peace with yourself. And this peace will lead to greater kindness, gentleness, patience, self-control, all through the spirit that are promised to those who love God or who have been loved by God. And so my call to you this morning is to use the law correctly. Know what it is for, know why God gave it, know its purpose. Know how God gave it. See how different it is from the covenant of grace. Use it properly and run to Jesus for the refuge that will save you from the coming wrath of God. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your word and we would ask that you would please put it into our hearts. Seal it. make it powerful in our lives. And it's in Jesus name I pray. Amen.