Deuteronomy five verses one through six. Moses command summoned all Israel and said to them here, oh, Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, you shall learn them and be careful to do them. The Lord, our God, made a covenant with us in Horeb, not with our fathers, did he make this covenant, but with us who are all of us here alive today. The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, while I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire and you did not go up into the mountain. He said, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. This is God's word and he blessed it to us. Go before our Lord and ask him to bless the preaching of his words tonight. Let's pray. Our fathers, we come to your word once again. We ask that you would be pleased to bless it to us through the power of your Holy Spirit. We ask with the psalmist that you would open our eyes, that we might see wonderful things from your law. We pray this asking in Jesus name. Amen. May we be seated. As Pastor John mentioned, we are beginning a series tonight in the Ten Commandments, and tonight is just an introduction to the Ten Commandments. We want to set the stage correctly, we want to understand what God has given us in his law, in his word. And so in the weeks to come, we will be considering the commandments one at a time. But for tonight, we we simply want to have an introduction to the law of God and try to understand God's law biblically, which sounds funny because the law of God is the Bible. But it's very easy to take the law out of context. And by way of introduction, we do want to acknowledge that Down through church history, as we've looked at the Old Testament, as the church has studied it, there's been three types of law that have been recognized in the Old Testament. And there's the moral law, which the Ten Commandments is a summary of God's moral law. And then there's the ceremonial law. And those are the laws that governed Israel's what they would eat and how they would live in their families and purity laws and those sorts of things. We see that all through Leviticus. And then there was also the civil laws, which governed how they would act as a nation. And we know from our study of scripture, and we see in Hebrews in particular, that those civil laws and those ceremonial laws were intended to be temporary. They were intended to be for only the time when Israel was God's people as a nation in the promised land and they were to lead to Christ. And so once Christ came, those laws had fulfilled their purpose. They had foreshadowed Christ. They had shown the nature of what was to come as far as a lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. As far as God's people needing to be separate from the other nations and the way that they lived and the way that they acted and the way they govern themselves. But tonight we come to the Ten Commandments, which is God's moral law. And so the rest of the time when I'm talking about the law of God, I'm speaking of God's moral law is summarizing the Ten Commandments, those things which flow from the character of God, which are right and wrong because of who God is and what he has determined from his being. So tonight, as we come to God's moral law, as we come to it summarized in the Ten Commandments, it's interesting to note that of all the things in Christianity, the Ten Commandments are pretty well known. If you go out in the public square today, if you put into Google Ten Commandments, a lot of things will come up. And it's not all positive, but the world, the non-believing world, is relatively familiar with the idea of the Ten Commandments as an ethic of a Judeo-Christian worldview. There's been a lot of debate recently about should the Ten Commandments go in public schools and courthouses and those sorts of things. But for all of the awareness of the Ten Commandments, how much do people understand of the substance? Unfortunately, we can ask that same question of the church. How well does the church understand the substance of God's law? Its place in redemptive history, its place in the Bible, how it related to the people in the Old Testament, how it relates to the people in the New Testament. I think more often than not, unfortunately, we don't have a very good understanding. And our lack of understanding about God's law and its place in the Bible can make us have sort of negative reactions or improper reactions. When we think about the Ten Commandments, we think about God's law. Sometimes our reaction, even in the church, can be sort of indifference. We think of the Ten Commandments kind of like we might think of archaeology going on in, say, Egypt. It's kind of interesting. Great. You found another clay pot. Six thousand years old. That's wonderful. But it doesn't really apply to me today. After all, people think I'm a new covenant believer. I live on this side of Jesus and on this side of the cross. And so it doesn't really make that much difference for me. Well, the other reaction that sometimes people have is sort of the opposite of that people Come to the Ten Commandments and maybe even people here tonight when they heard that we were going to do a series on the Ten Commandments kind of shudder. I think, oh boy, this isn't good because we come to the law with sort of fear and the law to us feels like it has a burden to it. Like God is a cosmic driving instructor with a checklist just watching us, waiting for us to mess up so we can check off where we failed. And we we come to the law and we come to the Old Testament. We don't really want to go there because it scares us. We think that our lives under God's loving care hang in the balance, that he might not love us as much or any more if we don't measure up. Well, tonight, I put to you that if we truly understand God's law in its proper context, As God intends it to be, we won't have either one of those reactions. Instead, when we come to God's law, as we get a better understanding of the Ten Commandments and all that is summarized within them, we won't be indifferent. We won't come with fear. Instead, we will have a better understanding of our redemption and of our salvation in Christ. We will have a better understanding of how to live in light of that redemption. To see that, we really need to understand the Ten Commandments in their context. We need to understand God's law in its context. And there are two contexts we want to look at, and that's the original context in the Old Testament, and then the context as the commandments come to us now, as those who live in the New Covenant. Tonight, those will be our two points. The context of the Old Testament, the original context, and our New Covenant context. Well, as you may know, there are two places in the Old Testament where the Ten Commandments occur. One is, of course, here in Deuteronomy 5 and the other is Exodus 20. And without a little bit closer study, we may not realize the difference between those two places. But here tonight in Deuteronomy 5, this is actually 40 years after the original giving of the Ten Commandments by God on Mount Sinai. The people had come out of Egypt, God had delivered them, and then God gave them the Ten Commandments. And then they were supposed to enter the Promised Land. They didn't. They rebelled. They disobeyed God. And they had to go into wilderness wanderings for 40 years. And so tonight, in the passage in Deuteronomy before us, we come to the second giving of the Ten Commandments. When the children of Israel are waiting to cross the Jordan River to cross into the promised land after 40 years of waiting, the previous generation had to die off and now their children are waiting to go in and to take all of that which God had promised to them. What we see tonight as Moses comes to the people once again, beginning in Deuteronomy, chapter one and leading up through chapter five, is that he's reintroducing God's people to God's law and he's setting the proper context. He's telling them who they are, where they've come from and therefore what they should do and what they should be. We see that both here in Deuteronomy five and also in Exodus 20, part of the giving of the Ten Commandments, part of the the context is a preface that God himself puts on them. Look again at verse six with me. This is God speaking, and this is Moses repeating what God had said earlier. God says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. So before we ever get to the commandments, before we ever get to you shall and you shall not, God is saying this is who you are and this is who I am. I am the Lord. I am the God of Exodus 3. The one from the burning bush, the great I am who is self-existent. I'm the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who made covenant promises to deliver you into a promised land. I am the God who delivered you out of your slavery. I am the God who loved you before you ever knew of me. I'm the God who has rescued you because I heard your cries. I am. The Lord your God. And now, therefore, live in this way. And so the Ten Commandments, God's law comes to his people in the context of their redemption, of their already being God's chosen, special loved ones, of their already having received promises from his hand. And so often in our minds, we get that reverse that God brings the law to his people and says, OK, do this and then you can be my people and then I will love you and then I will deliver you. But the truth of the matter is that God has already loved them. God has already made them his people. He's already redeemed them. And so now, as his people, these commandments, these laws are to govern them. They are the household of God and these are the rules for God's household. And so if that is the case, if they are not earning anything with God by these commandments, if they are not causing themselves to be redeemed through these commandments, what's the purpose? What is the purpose of the law? Well, if you flip over one chapter in Deuteronomy 6, Moses tells the children of Israel what to explain to their kids. Deuteronomy 6 and verse 20, Moses tells them, When your son asks you in time to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and the Lord showed signs and wonders great and grievous against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes. And He brought us out from there that He might bring us in and give us the land that He swore to give our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always, that He might preserve us alive as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God as He has commanded us. So what's the purpose of the law? It's for the good of God's people. Verse 24, it is for our good always, Moses says. This is what the people are to teach their children. God is our God. He delivered us by his grace and his love and his mercy. And now he has given us a rule to know how to live as his people and so that we will be prospered, so that we will be blessed. God in Exodus 19, right before he gives the law there for the first time, he tells Israel that you are to be a holy nation. You are going to be a holy nation before me. But he doesn't leave them scratching their head going, well, how are we going to be a holy nation? What do we do? How are we supposed to be different from Egypt? How are we supposed to be different from the Canaanites that are going to surround us? He doesn't leave them asking that question. He tells them, love the Lord your God with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. Don't steal, don't kill, don't murder. These are the things that you do. And so what we see is that God's law coming to his people in the context of the redemption is what, as one author calls it, is a rule of love. It's a rule of love to show God's people how to love him. He has loved them. He has redeemed them. How do they love him in return? They keep his commandments. This is what we know all through the scriptures. Jesus tells us the same thing. If you love me, keep my commandments. So God's law comes to the people to show them how to obey, how to be different, how to be a holy nation, ultimately how to love the Lord, their God. So that's the first thing. That's the first purpose of the law. But the law had another purpose as well. We know this from the rest of scripture as as it unfolds. We know that the law came to teach the people how to obey, but also to point them to their need for a savior, to point them to their need for the promised Messiah, to show them the one who is to come. And it's it's in it's in shadowy form. The ceremonial law and the civil law did this as well. It was in shadowy form there. But the moral law does it as well. And we know this because when God gave the law, he gave it to the people knowing very well that they could never keep it. These were sinful human beings. They could never keep his law perfectly. It's very, very important to realize when we read through the scriptures, We need to know of God's covenants and his promises and of when they came and of what substance they were, because before God ever gave the law on Mount Sinai, before he ever gave the Ten Commandments, he had already promised redemption from sin. Pastor John mentioned it earlier. We talked about it quite often that when Adam and Eve fell in Genesis 315, we get the first preaching of the gospel. Because God's standard for salvation is perfect keeping of his moral law. That was to be the standard. Once sin entered the world, no person could ever do that. It was no longer a possibility. So God promised, first in Genesis 3, and then that promise unfolds and becomes a little more clear throughout history, that someone else would come to save his people, to keep the law on their behalf, to deliver them from their sin. In the narrative of Abraham, as we're reading through it as a church, we're going to be seeing that these promises become a little bit more clear to Abraham. That God was promising to raise up a nation, a holy nation, which Israel became, and that through that nation, he was going to bring a deliverer for them. God never intended for his people to earn their own salvation. That was never, never the intent. after the fall. And so when they have the law that God gives them from Sinai. It helps point them to that reality because the Israelites like us miss that. They miss the fact that they could not earn God's righteousness, they could not earn their place with him. And so God gives them a tool, a help to show them that this was futile. God shows them in his law that you can't do this. The law will never save you. You need to look ahead by faith to the one who will save you. This is what the Apostle Paul explains extensively in his letter to the Galatians and his letter to the Romans. The Israelites did not understand often that the law was not something that could save them. They thought they could do it. That was totally missing the point. And so Paul in Romans 3, as Pastor John even read from this morning, Romans 3, verse 21 and following, Paul is explaining that 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. So Paul is saying that this law testified to the one who would ultimately keep it. But for God's people, they could not be the ones to keep it. They were sinners. And so when they came to the law again and again and again, and they failed again, again and again, they saw that they needed to look somewhere else for their salvation. So it pointed them to Christ. But for the Israelites, even though they could not earn God's salvation through the law, through this perfect law keeping, there's something that's important to realize as we read the Old Testament and we read redemptive history, that there were still consequences for them as a nation when they forsook the law, when they rebelled against it, when they started worshiping and serving other gods. Their law keeping could not ever save them, that had to be Jesus's law keeping. But their lack of law keeping could earn them punishment. It could earn them to be kicked out of the land. It could earn them God's chastisement. So eventually they are kicked out of the land because they follow after other gods and they rebel against their Lord. And so all of this, all of this was to point them to show them that you need redemption outside of yourself. They look at the law and the law shows them you're a failure. You need a Messiah. And so it was to point their eyes forward. And so in the original context for the children of Israel, the Ten Commandments were intended to show them how they could love the Lord, how they could obey him, but also for when they failed, it was to point them forward, it was to point them toward their need for a Messiah. But secondly, what about us? What about our context? We live on this side of Christ. What is different for us? What is the same for us? Well, in some ways, we're actually very similar to Israel. We think about our own circumstances. We think about how the New Testament talks about us as New Testament believers, New Covenant believers. We also were slaves. We were not slaves in Egypt. We're not slaves to a particular nation. We were slaves to sin. And God has redeemed us. The Apostle Paul in Colossians 1 tells us that God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. You hear the language there, this language of being under a domain, under a ruler. Paul is saying that you are slaves to sin, as he says elsewhere, and God brought you out of that by his grace. Like Israel, who foreshadowed our redemption, we were slaves and God saved us in his love, not because of our law keeping, but because of his grace and mercy. And so, like Israel, because of our status as God's redeemed children, the law for us is also a rule of love. We know that just as Israel was supposed to be a holy nation and a royal race, so are we as God's new covenant people. We are to be holy. Peter in first Peter two, nine and 10 tells us when he's speaking to Christians, not necessarily to Jews, to new covenant believers, Jew and Gentile alike. He says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you are not a people, But now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. The language there is echoing the language in Exodus that God tells his people through Moses that you're a holy priesthood, a royal nation. Now, God said that of us. New covenant believer, you are God's holy people. And so now the law for us is also a rule of love. It shows us how we can be that holy people. Just like Israel, God doesn't leave us scratching our head wondering, how do we obey you? How do we love you? How do we live before you? God says, I will show you. It's in my law. And so Jesus tells us, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And for those who are his, we should love him and we should want to keep his commandments. So we are similar to Israel in that manner. And that the law is a rule of love for us. But unlike Israel, the law no longer has any curse for us. There no longer has to be any burden for us when we think about God's law. Even though it's a perfect rule of righteousness, it's no longer our enemy. It no longer has to weigh us down. There are two ways the law can be our enemy. One is if we try to earn God's righteousness through it. If we try to come to God climbing up to heaven by law-keeping, we will miserably fail. And Israel, if they tried that, would miserably fail. But even for those Israelites who were not trying to ultimately earn their salvation through their law-keeping, there was still that element of the law that was a burden to them because it dictated their keeping of the law, how well they did or didn't, dictated to the nation whether or not they would stay in the Promised Land, whether or not they would have healthy families and good livestock, whether or not they would beat their enemies, or whether or not they would be exiled. So there was always this sense of weight on their shoulders that they had to perform, they had to do this, they had to make it right, so that God wouldn't exile them out of the Holy Land. After all, the land was a holy land, and God could not let imperfection be in it. But for us, even that pressure isn't there. We live on this side of Christ, and Jesus teaches us a beautiful truth about the law, in that he did not come to abolish it, but he came to fulfill it. If you look with me at Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is teaching the people as he's beginning to teach about the kingdom that he is bringing. He's teaching the people who he is and what he came to do. In Matthew 5, verses 17 and following, he tells the people, do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus has come on the scene. The new covenant community is dawning. The Messiah has come. But less people misunderstand and think that now the law no longer matters. Jesus says, no, I haven't come to abolish the law. I've come to complete it, to fulfill it. The law still matters to be saved, to have a right relationship with God and to enter his presence, to enter into his holiness for eternity. You must have kept the law. or someone must have kept it for you. So I haven't come to do away with that requirement. I have come to fulfill it. I have come to be that Messiah who keeps it for those who cannot. And with this truth, we get a beautiful picture of our salvation. Christ here tells the people that if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, your righteousness has to be greater than that of the scribes and the Pharisees. And that would have been a daunting statement because the scribes and the Pharisees were practically perfect, it seemed. It seemed that they kept the law to a T. They dotted every T and crossed every I. They did everything perfectly. And yet, Jesus says your righteousness must be greater than theirs. So you can imagine the people going, whoa, how is this possible? What kind of righteousness could that even be? How can you get more righteous than keeping the law? But then Christ goes on. through the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, and he shows the true extent of the law. He shows the true depth of God's righteousness and what it requires. You'll remember that Jesus goes on and he says that not only can you not murder someone regarding the sixth commandment, you can't even hate them. You can't be simply angry. And if you are, you've broken that commandment. You have broken God's righteous requirements. In regards to the seventh commandment, he says it's not enough just to not physically commit adultery. You can't lust. If you lust, you have broken God's righteous requirement and you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Regarding the greatest commandment to love God and the second greatest to love neighbor, Jesus says that's not enough. You must love your enemies. And all this he gives right after that statement. He's showing that the law of God is greater and deeper, that its requirements are higher than the people ever dreamed. And so what we see is that Jesus smashes to pieces any false notion that we could save ourselves. And he drives people to see that they must have someone who keeps the law on their behalf. And so the beautiful picture that we get of our salvation is we see what Christ actually did for us. So often we talk about the punishment that he took, which we need to. Jesus took the punishment for our sins on himself. But we don't always realize the positive righteousness that Jesus put out on our behalf. Brothers and sisters, to enter the kingdom of heaven, It's not enough simply to not have broken the negative commandments. We have to have positive righteousness. We have to have perfect positive righteousness. And Jesus is showing that you can't do that. And so we see in the law a beautiful picture of the full depth and breadth of what Jesus kept on our behalf. And so the better we understand the Ten Commandments, the better we understand our salvation, the better we understand the law of God, the better we understand our place before him and what Christ has actually done for us. The more we understand of the law and the more we see our failure before it, the more we see the depth of love that God has for us in Jesus. that Jesus came under the law, as the Scriptures say. He came to fulfill the law on your behalf. And so, as we look at the law, and we see this is how God would have me love Him. And if I was to save myself, this is how I would have to do it. And we see how utterly huge of failures we are. We can see how utterly great our redemption in Jesus is. Because for every place where you fail, every place where I fail on a daily basis, whether it's a lack of love for our Lord, whether it's a lack of love for our neighbor, whether it's a lack of contentment with what we have, whether it's secret lust, whether it's anger, rage towards others, all those places where we fail, Christ succeeded. And He didn't just succeed for Him, He succeeded for you. And He gives that righteousness to you. And so for us, we come to the law and we see that it is a rule of love, showing us how we can obey our God out of love. And it can be our friend, because it is no longer condemning us. It is no longer condemning us, because in Christ, God sees us as having kept the law. Our union with Christ means that our record before God is perfect. When we see God with the law as a driving instructor who's just checking off the things that you get wrong, in a sense we get it right. Because if it was up to us earning our salvation, that's how it would be. But If God was that driving instructor, there would be no marks against it, and it would be completely positive. A+++. Because He has Christ's record that He looks at for us. So friends, as we come to the law, as we learn more about it, we don't want to come with indifference on the one hand, because it is a rule of love. It shows us how we can please the God who has already loved us first. But we also don't want to come in fear because it's no longer our enemy. It is no longer that which weighs us down. And as we do see our failures in the face of the law, let it be that which turns our eyes to Jesus, that shows us that though we are failures, our Lord is not. Though I have broken every one of these commandments at one time or another in one way or another, my Savior did not. And my Lord looks at me through his righteousness. And with that knowledge, may our hearts be filled with love and gratitude. May it put our eyes back on the rule of love to see now, Lord, let me keep your law. Let me love it because I love you. And I love you because you first loved me. So friends, as we move forward, May we be able to say with the psalmist that we love God's law because it is our friend. It is no longer our enemy and is that which shows us how we may live before him in love. Let's pray again. Our great God and Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your law that it does show us how we might live before you. And we thank you for Christ, our Savior, who perfectly kept the law on our behalf, and who has given us his righteousness. And so we pray that with the psalmist we would say, we love your law, O Lord. And so we pray that you would teach us, that you would open our eyes to behold wonderful things there, and that through your Holy Spirit you would change us and mold us and shape us, that we might become more and more like our Savior. We pray this in his name. Amen.