Thankful for the McFalls being here today and hope you can connect with them. Friends, take your Bibles and open with me to Galatians chapter 3. Galatians chapter 3. We'll read together verses 19 through 24. 19 through 24. Knowing full well that my message today isn't going to do full justice to verses 23 and 24, but. Father, we ask that you would speak your word to us in the way that only your Holy Spirit can. We pray that you would make us more like your son. We pray that you would help us to have a greater dependence and trust upon Jesus, his work on the cross, his resurrection, and much less dependence upon ourselves. Father, we pray today that grace would be our teacher. We ask this in Jesus's name, amen. Galatians chapter three, verse 19. This is the passage our Lord has for us today. It goes like this. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Now a mediator is not for one party only, or as God is only one. Verse 21, is the law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law. being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith. Father, again, I ask that you would help us this morning, that you would send your Holy Spirit with power Help us understand not only the meaning of this text, but how we should specifically apply it to our personal lives. Please minister to us with your gospel. In Jesus' name, amen. The law leads us to Jesus Christ. The law leads us to Jesus Christ. The reason that Paul is taking such great lengths to write this letter to the Galatians, to pray for them, to really spend and be spent on behalf of the Galatians, is because they've managed to get themselves quite confused. He says in verse six of chapter one, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel. We need to be reminded The Galatian church was in big, big trouble. And so is every church or every believer that thinks that they play some sort of a role in their own salvation. And so Paul is right, and he's really overextending himself, if you will, to try to help them to come to grips, not only with the problem, of them thinking that the works of the law and that their keeping up with circumcision was somehow what made them God's people, but also giving them the real answer, the real one solution. He is pretty irritated, I think, when he's writing to the Galatians, and rightly so. He calls them fools in chapter three, verse one. Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. He says, I came to you, I proclaim to you Jesus Christ, the good news, the gospel, the Holy Spirit spoke to you in powerful ways that through the vivid word of God, it was as though I was painting a picture of the crucifixion of Jesus before you. And he even says, and you accepted this because the Holy Spirit came upon you. And when the Holy Spirit came upon you, he gave you faith to believe it. And it is by your spirit gift of faith that you are saved. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. That's the thing that Paul is communicating. Of course, those false teachers who had so influenced the Galatians, and no doubt some of the Galatians, I'm sure, were also parroting what they were teaching was, well, we accept Christ as our Savior, but we also contend that you must be doing things in order to make sure that you are a child of God. Now these days in our churches, we don't require circumcision to go to heaven, but if we're not careful, we can do things like require baptism to go to heaven, require church membership to go to heaven, require this or require that in order to make God more happy. It's really common for us American believers, Protestant believers, to come to faith in Christ by faith and grace, and then once we've come there, once we've gotten saved, to then fall over into the performance mode of Christianity. forgetting that every single blessing and everything that comes into my life has nothing to do with my performance, but everything to do with my blessed Savior, who purchased every blessing for you and for I, and the cross on which He died on. And so we keep going on and on, preaching the amazing grace of Jesus, preaching the five solos of Christianity, And all the while, someone is going to speak up. Okay, but why do we have the law? Why is the law even there? I can remember my first day of first grade. We had tacos for lunch. I kid you not. The name of our elementary school was McBride Elementary, St. Helens, Oregon. My teacher was Mrs. Chartier. It was 1982. I was six years old. My mother drove me to school and then I was given the instruction that I was going to be riding the bus home. We were the sort of family that rode the school bus, okay. Mom wasn't going to be doing any favors for us unless, you know, we got sick or whatever, but we rode the bus. So, I was told to get on bus 31 and the school bus would then take me home. And then that same school bus, number 31, would pick me up every morning at our house. And it would take me to McBride Elementary a couple years later, my little sister Beth as well. Now, while we were on the bus, we didn't learn to read or to do math, but riding the bus to school was very important. It was the bus that took us to the place where we actually learned those things. The bus was something that we depended on. If the bus was running late, we were late. If it was cold and rainy, the bus kept us dry and warm until we got to school. And it rained and it was very cold in St. Helens, Oregon in the 80s. So we needed the school bus, but we didn't get our education from the school bus. The school bus was just there for a greater purpose and a greater end. We got our educations in elementary school. And we could even use that as a good illustration. How many of you are still in the first grade? Well, unless you're a first grader, you're not still in the first grade. Completing the first grade isn't just a mean, you know, it isn't just the thing that we have to do in our educations. It leads to the second grade and the third grade and ultimately, hopefully, graduation from high school. In a similar way, God gave us the law. The law was never intended to save us. The law was never intended to make us right before God. The theological term here is justification. The law cannot make us righteous people. But what the law did was very important because the law brings us and all the other elect to Jesus Christ. The law showed us our sins. The law showed us our need for Jesus. The law reveals to us the awesome, holy character of our God and shows to us that no sinner can stand in the presence of a holy God and live. The law also, in a similar way, was merely a foreshadow. of what was to come in Christ Jesus and all that would come with him. Paul, in another book, puts it this way, in Romans chapter three, because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes salvation? Uh-uh. Through the law comes the knowledge of sin. He says in verse 21, the very next verse, but now apart from the law, listen to this, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God, through what? How do we attain the righteousness of God? Through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. There's no distinction. Next verse, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And then he brings the solution once again, being justified as a gift. When we see that word justified, remember, it is made righteous, it is you before God are right with him, you are at peace with him, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. This terrible lie that the Galatians had believed would result in requiring much more of them than they ever asked or thought or imagined. We learned also, not do they just miss God, but believing that their works will earn them rewards that take them to heaven puts them under a curse. So when we think in terms of the Old Testament and the law, when we think in terms of our main idea here, that the law is taking us to Jesus, it's really increasing transgressions, says the text, and it is our guardian to take us to Jesus. I'd like to quote. This is excellent. Dr. Poythress. He wrote this, the tabernacle the law and God's promises to Israel of the land are correctly described as temporary structures. And we see that in Hebrews 9, verses 8 through 10. We see that right here in our passage as well. That these promises, the law, the tabernacle, the promise of the land, serve as a guide only until Christ comes. This is the way this breaks down. The law is the basic principles of the world. The elementary teachings that Christians should have gone beyond. The land was the concrete expression of God's promise to his people. As such, it was only a pointer to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God, Hebrews 11.10. We remember that from last week, that the land promises to the children of Israel were fulfilled. Joshua 21 verse 43 says that. And so taking possession of the land didn't constitute the final Sabbath rest, but it was just a foretaste of it, a foretaste of what will come in the new heavens and in the new earth in Revelation 21 through 22. On the other hand, precisely because these point forward to Christ, the tabernacle, the law, and the land also bring about a amazing dimension of depth. These are very rich with meaning, very, very rich with meaning, gospel meaning. And once our eyes have been opened to see their true significance and the way in which they depict Christ, it's only then that we can see that and believe in and appreciate that. But even within their Old Testament contexts, the tabernacle or the temple and the law already showed the nature of redemption. So much so that Jesus Christ coming as our Savior or Redeemer really makes no sense apart from the tabernacle and the brazen altar that the sacrifices, the blood sacrifices to God were burnt on and all of the components that went with the temple were a picture, a foreshadow of what would come, the Old Testament and these things I'm describing to you, they set forth the holiness of God and the standard to which human beings are to conform. The land and its associated promise reminded Israel that God had loved them, though they didn't deserve it. Salvation, we understand, is a gift. But the gift implies an obligation on the part of all the people of God who receive salvation in Jesus Christ. You know what that obligation is? It's an obligation to thank God, to worship God. and with his help, as we just sang a few moments ago, to obey him. So the law was not somehow intended to secure the promises of God that was given to Abraham and his descendants. And we learned last week's message that all who have faith in Christ are a descendant of Abraham. Remember the Father Abraham song that we probably learned in Sunday school in the first grade or second grade? We are the sons and daughters of Abraham, not by our law-keeping, but by faith. To understand the paragraph before us, verses 19 through 25, we need to understand a little bit better the verses that came before it. The Galatians were genuine believers, and as such, they had the Holy Spirit. This is true of every genuine believer today. We've received the Holy Spirit of God, and that's what makes us the children of God. Verse 2, he says, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? By the way, what God says here, did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, doesn't that sound ridiculous? That's the point. It's supposed to sound totally ridiculous. that somehow we were good enough and obeyed God well enough that he sent his Holy Spirit to us. And if I was to interview each of you, and I've interviewed many of you in our membership process, our new membership process, and one of the beautiful things about that is I find out a little bit about your background. And this is what I find every time. You weren't really living for God. you probably weren't very interested. If you're interested in religion, you didn't quite understand the gospel. But somehow there was this powerful desire in you to know Christ that came over you. And at some point in your life, the blinders finally came off. You knew enough of the word of God to understand that you were a guilty sinner before Christ. The Holy Spirit gave you faith to believe upon Christ, but you were still living in your sin. You didn't clean yourself up and try to act like a good Christian or a good person. No, God saved you right where you were in your sinfulness. And you know, the thing about this is we're pretty good at accepting that, aren't we? It's the sin that you committed last week that caused you to fall flat on your face. that's tripping you up. The song we just sang, yet not I, but through Christ in me. Who is standing by our side? Always, Jesus Christ. When you sinned and you got up, who do you think pulled you up? Wasn't you. Maybe it was a brother or sister in Jesus, or maybe it was the Spirit of God. Christ pulled you up. So, what makes a person a genuine son or daughter of God is the fact that they have the Holy Spirit. The next idea. The Galatian believers were the sons of Abraham and had received the blessed promise given to Abraham. Yes, by the Holy Spirit, but by also faith. Verse seven, it is those who are of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And Paul takes great care here to show us that Abraham was saved by faith, period. And this isn't the only place in the scripture that he does this. He does this to quite more of an extent in Romans chapter four. And there he develops the story not only of just Abraham's life, but also David's life. And these two men are the two heroes. They were the two heroes of the Jewish faith and they're two of the heroes also of the Christian faith. And I think to every Jew who would look at Abraham would think, wow, whatever he did, I want to do. And probably. To the Jews who hadn't known Christ, we understand that their thinking was that they must keep the commandments in order to go to heaven, that they must be keeping the law. So they thought Abraham must have kept the law in every way, but we know he didn't. You don't have to read very far into Genesis to discover that Abraham is guilty of lying. He called Sarah his sister. So Galatians shows us this incredible thing, that Abraham was saved not by the law, heavens no, not by obedience, did God then reward him? God appeared to him, and it was by faith. And you know how it happened, I don't think it really came to a lot of maturity until Abraham is really beginning to doubt God, and he's doubting God's promise, he's wondering, The Father promised me a multitude. He gave me a new name that means Father of Many, Av-ra-ham, Father of Many. And here I am, still without a son. Abraham, in his self-pity and sorrow and doubt, it's nighttime, steps outside of his tent, and the Lord says to him, Abraham, I want you to look up into the sky. What do you see? See all the stars. Can you count all the stars? No. Your descendants are gonna be as the stars of the sky, as numerous as the stars of the sky. And I think right there, his faith probably grew about a foot and a half, if you could measure it. Oh, I get it, Lord. I get it. I don't need to be feeling sorry for myself. I don't need to be thinking that I need to be keeping the law. No, you're just gonna do it and you're going to do this promise by your grace. How old was Abraham when Sarah gave birth? How old were they? They were 100, 99, 100 right there. Who has kids at 99? You know, you meet someone who's 99 or 100 years old, no offense to any in our elderly community, but you meet somebody in their 60s and they don't say to you, well, we're about to start our family now. You would just sort of chuckle, maybe not in their face, but maybe after you got home, you'd think, well, that's just bizarre. Who does that? Oh, they waited another 40 years. God is sovereign even over that. And we must see this if we're going to really lay hold of the gospel for life and for living, that it isn't about our performance or our record. We're all failures. It's about Christ and what He has done in His performance in His record. The other thing I want to show you is that those who try to make themselves right before God, He says, by circumcision. This is the portion that follows Abraham here, verses 10 through 14. Those who try to do the law and thinking that they're going to be rewarded. They were into circumcision and all of the good things, the works of the law. They are cursed for doing so. We need to remember this. It isn't that they just have a different opinion. or that they really never did get saved. No, they're put under, I say, a double curse. They're doubly cursed. They're cursed in Adam as part of the fallen race and cursed by thinking that there's something that they could do to earn God's favor, His grace. If you believe that, you're an insult to God by saying that. You're insulting Him and His holiness. You who are trusting in anything or person except Jesus Christ and His death on the cross alone is your redemption. If you're trusting in anything else, you're insulting His holiness. But you, and I think this is every soul here that I know, you've put your trust in Jesus, haven't you? Of course you have. That's what the Holy Spirit has led you to do. That's what His word has led you to do. law has led you to do. You received the Holy Spirit, and that's evidenced simply by your faith in Christ, by you trusting Him alone. And you've received the wonderful promise of God given to Abraham. You are made right before God. You're justified. And he's gonna tell us at the end of chapter three that you are the sons of Abraham, you who have faith. God's covenant with Abraham is the final thing I wanna address here. It's of extreme importance in understanding our Bibles. This, again, I'm appealing to verses 10 through 14. God's grace promise to Abraham is absolutely fundamental to understanding our Bible, the storyline of the Bible. Another way of calling it that, you'll hear me say redemptive history. I know it sounds like a fancy term, I try not to say that a lot, but that's all I mean, the storyline of Scripture, And the law, we had the promise, the covenant with Abraham, and who came next? Who was the next big figure in the narrative of God? A man named Moses, or Moshe in Hebrew. The law which came through Moses did not come with a promise of life and blessing. The law was given to increase transgressions. for the sake of transgressions, according to verse 19. And it was intended to be in force only until Christ came. But, you and I say, and I believe the Galatians were saying and wondering, if the law and the promise have such different purposes, does it follow that the law is contrary to God's promises? That the law of God and God's gracious promises are butting heads and are fighting with one another, are against each other? Does it have to be that I'm just going to be a Christian who believes in the grace of Jesus and that is enough? Or do we want to be one of those other sorts of Christians that goes to the churches that we won't name, that has a list of all these things that you need to do in order to have the hope of heaven? Is it one or the other? So you might expect the Bible to answer yes, that the law is contrary to God's promises. We could add in the word grace, that the law is contrary to God's grace, but it does not. The Bible, and in this text specifically, it rejects the idea that the law is against the grace promised to Abraham and the grace that we have in Jesus. It has an entirely different function. It doesn't fight grace. It's not contrary to the promise. But we need to keep the law and the promise, or we could say the gospel, we need to remember these distinctions that the two of them have and how God has chosen for them to operate in our lives. Our text here couldn't be clearer. The law cannot produce life. To any who thinks that the law can produce life, read the rest of the passage. It says, Scripture has enclosed us all under sin. The law cannot produce life. So let me ask you, if the law can't produce life, what produces life? Or should we say, who produces life? You all know this. Who produces life? God produces life. Jesus produces life. The Holy Spirit produces life. Answer, yes. Whoever's saying, any person of the Trinity. And if we rehearse what we know, this is so true. Even with just the life of Adam. Who created Adam? Who gave Adam life? God. God. And God was the one who gave Adam a soul, and his soul was holy. And it wasn't just holy, straight up and down. He had actually a holy bent. He had an inclination to not sin, though he was deceived and sinned. God was the one who created that. And so if we want to have spiritual life, if we want to have, as we say, eternal life in heaven with God, then we must be fully reliant upon the creator of life, to give us this life. Through the power of His Holy Spirit, He regenerates us, but He does so in Jesus Christ and according to the gospel. One must hear the gospel. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ. Paul writes in Romans 10, verse 17. But why the law? But why the law? But why the law? We wonder, we wonder, we wonder. And this brings us to the first point that we have in our message. Yes, that maybe was one of the longest introductions that I've had in quite a while. The law was given, get a load of this, the law was given to increase sin. You heard me right, the law was added, the New American Standard is a little bit wooden here, if I may say that. I love the New American Standard, wonderful, wonderful version of the Bible, that's why I use it here. It says it was added because of transgressions. Now, I could rehearse all of this scholarly New Testament Greek information that I read through, but that isn't stuff for the sermon. There's a couple of different ways of looking at this. But think with me for just a moment. Paul, who also wrote Romans 5.20, says this there. The law came in so that transgression would increase. What does he mean here? What does he mean here? Let me provide a little bit of explanation, and then I've got an illustration. What the law did is the law exposed us. It exposed all of humanity for what we really were, sinners. The law was given to define sin. Ask the kids about their catechism question. I'm going to say this to the children here. Children, what is sin? Any transgression of the law of God. That's sin. And I hope you're listening, children. I've been thinking about you as I wrote all this stuff about the school bus and school and all this. Sin is any transgression of the law, of God. The idea that the law increased the reign of sin, I think, is demonstrated quite well In this illustration, just with Israel, we see the increase of sin in Israel, or the definition of sin in Israel, come into play until Jesus came. In the Old Testament, the story of the children of God, once they received the law of God, did it make them more righteous? Think real carefully. You know the Pentateuch. Moses comes down, I mean, there was this incredible theophany with the Lord and the mountain and the smoke and the thunder, and everybody's just filled with fear and awe. And Moses comes back, and what does he find? A bunch of people who just increased a lot in righteousness and holiness? Try again. They were in the throes of debauchery. They had created a golden calf and then lied about it. And they were worshiping the golden calf instead of worshiping the one true God who had delivered them out of exodus and who had just given Moses the Ten Commandments, this perfect revelation of God's holiness. The law never saved anyone, it only serves to condemn. And so the people have gone in the Old Testament Even though they received the law, they continued to disobey. The wilderness generation, their hearts were hard and they were stubborn. They were exiled, if you will, in the wilderness and not allowed into the land. They died in the wilderness. We see these things. And then we see the children of the wilderness generation whose hearts are soft toward the Lord. We see Caleb. We had a message about Caleb recently. Numbers chapter 14. Caleb had a different spirit, didn't he? It was the Holy Spirit. And Caleb was fully committed to the Lord. Then as you finish reading, You notice that after Joshua passes away, Joshua and Caleb about the same age, what happens? Faithfulness to God deteriorates. They begin to not be able to beat the enemies. They begin to have issues with the neighboring enemies, so God graciously sends in judges to help patch things up. All the while, they're all waiting for the king who would come. would finally and ultimately deliver. Can I tell you another little story from when I was a kid? My wife says, don't tell two stories too long, but you can just do like two lines. I just used them both up, Shara. Sometimes we just need to take a little breather. Now, I was into motorcycles when I was a boy. My dad, to this day, what was my dad thinking to allow me to get, I mean, it was a 400 Yamaha dirt bike. I think I was 15. I wasn't even old enough to drive. My friends had to come and pick me up so we could go riding in the mountains near Kinzu. There's a lot of fires over there right now. Now, I'd been riding for about a year, just on our ranch. I had little trails and things. And I thought I was really good. I mean, I thought I was good. And so they said, Chris, you want to try a hill climb with us? We'll climb the hill. They call it Golf Course Hill because the Kinsue Golf Course is right there. And I said, sure. I thought, oh, I've got to be way better than these guys. You know, I have trails to ride on right behind my house on our property. And so they get out there and they zip up this hill climb at Kinzu. And I mean to tell you it wasn't straight up and down, but it almost was. And I just couldn't believe that these guys were climbing this hill in their little two-stroke motorcycles. And you see, they knew what they were doing. This was the law, right? They knew what they were doing. Let's take this rookie out here. He thinks he's hot. And so I start up this hill. I just totally fail. The bike comes over backwards. And then I try again. It's got to be the bike. It's got to be the bike. Buddy John jumps on my bike, rides it all the way to the top of this steep hill. That hill tested me. So the law tests you and I. It tests us in ways far beyond our ability to ever live. All the while we come to Jesus and we're wondering this huge question that lays before us right here in the text. Why the law then? It's as though they're anticipating this question would come, and he writes it in here. And for a moment, put yourself into the Galatians' position, and this is probably how they were thinking. Okay, Paul, you've helped us to understand that our being made righteous before God, being acceptable to God, has nothing to do with the law of God. We tried it, and we failed. We fell over backwards. We understand, okay, let's say we accept your teaching that we are made right with God by the Holy Spirit through faith. We understand that even Abraham was not saved by his works, that he was not made righteous by anything that he did or he was, that he was saved by the promise of God. So, Paul, they wonder, if we're not to keep the law, so that God will somehow, someday reward us with salvation and take us to heaven, then why then the law? Why is it here? Why was it added in through Moses as the mediator and by angels? If the law cannot save, cannot give life, but only death and condemnation, If the law is, as Paul writes here, and it is subservient to that gracious promise of God to Abraham as we see in verse 20, why then is it even needed? This is a perfect question. This is the question. It's a question that I believe that no Jew would ever ask. It took Gentiles to ask this, and of course the Gentiles are going to ask it. We were doing just fine for many years without the law, or so they thought. And then the gospel preachers came to our town. But first, we heard the bad news. And to do that, we needed the law. We'll have to come back to this next week. The takeaway here, my friends, verses 23 and 24. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law. It's as though we were shut up in a prison, but we were being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. He says, therefore the law has become our tutor. But I like to use the word guardian. And the law became our guardian to lead us to Christ so that we might be justified by faith. Now that little Greek word there in 24 that's translated tutor, it refers to a slave who would be caring for the son of a free man, perhaps nobility, right? a son of a prince or something like that. And the slave was like a pedagogue, or as the NAS says, a tutor, only his job wasn't to teach. You know what his job was? His job was to look after the young man, to make sure that he got to school safely and on time, And when he would deliver him to the school, they often would have like a waiting room for all the other, quote, I'm calling them guardian, we're gonna stick with that for now, guardians that would bring the children along. Whatever the kid would need throughout the day, he would go to the guardian. It's as though the guardian is like a babysitter. The law. Heaven's no is not contrary to the promise of God in Christ Jesus first given through Abraham, well, first given in Genesis 3.15, but it cooperates with it. It doesn't save, but it cooperates with it. You may be thinking, huh, what? Let me ask you a question. How many of you are hungry? Two of the kids are honest enough to admit, and one adult, you smelled that food wafing down the hallway and the hunger pain started. If you never felt those hunger pains, would you eat? You probably wouldn't. If you never got thirsty, would you ever drink? And so friends, if you were never first told the bad news that the law brings, that even for the most slight sin, a little bitter thought that you had towards someone, that you're guilty before God and will go to hell for all eternity, you never saw your need for Jesus and His wrath-removing sacrifice. He removed the wrath of God that was toward us through His wonderful sacrifice on the cross that was actually horrible and brutal, but wonderful from our perspective. Good Friday. The law was like that nasty hill climb. It puts us in our place, and it puts us in our place every time. It reveals to us the holy character of God, who is holy, holy, holy. And it communicates, the Spirit communicates to us that we are not. There's things in our lives that we don't want anybody else to know. We're embarrassed. They're sinful. God knows them. And in Jesus Christ, You've received the promise and you're made holy. So the law is very much like a babysitter. You wonder, well, how does that work exactly? I have a hundred thoughts here and not enough time. The law is diagnostic. It shows us our problem. and reveals to us our need for the Savior. The law also warns us, doesn't it? The law condemns us. The law judges us. The law puts us to death. But the law is good. There's a brother, his name is Chad Vegas. He preaches in Bakersfield, California, good solid church there. On the front of their website it says, we preach the law and the gospel. I saw that, I said, amen, that's good. Preached in their proper positions and proper roles. It's wonderful, it's beautiful. Final thought here for kids and children, you have parents and your parents are there to correct you. And when your parents correct you, and when they ask you to obey them, you're to obey them. The Word of God says, children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. And now parents, I want you to hear something here. Don't shy away from correcting your kids. when they sin, because they're going to sin. They're going to say mean and ugly things to each other and to you sometimes. They need to be corrected. You need to use the law in your parenting. Say, honey, I know you're upset, but you just violated this scripture passage. So it requires you to know your Bibles so you can lead your children. Now, to do so not in a suppressive or mean manner, This is what you do. And I'm gonna use a kid's name that no kid has a name of in here that I'm aware of. Little Johnny. Is there any Little Johnnies here? Little Johnnies, okay. Little Johnny tells a wicked lie. And his daddy finds out. And he comes and he humbly confesses it. Daddy, I know I've told a lie. Or maybe he caught him in the lie. Say, son, lying is disobedience against the Lord. The Bible tells us that we're to be honest. It says it not only in the Ten Commandments, but in so many ways we see this in Ephesians, and you can go to various verses. And so you're guilty of this sin. But thanks be to God, Jesus, died on the cross to pay for your sin of lying. And he also will set you free from that sin so you don't have to lie anymore. Oh, the law, the law, the law. We will come back here next week. Our Father, we thank you so much for this Lord's Day morning. We thank you so much for our dear missionary friends and their presence here with us today. We pray that we would be an encouragement to them. We pray that you would do business in our hearts as we contemplate what has been put before us today. Help us to never ever trust in the law or trust in ourselves. but that our trust and our faith and our hope is in Christ, because you have condemned us through the law. Help us to see that the law is not the solution to our unrighteousness, that that is only solved in Jesus Christ. But help us, Lord, to be thankful for the law, to understand that it is our guardian. leading us to Jesus Christ. And may you give us wisdom, Father, to use the law in our church family, in our homes, among our friends, to help each other out, not only to see the holiness of God, but to see the ways in which we have offended our Savior, to live a life of repentance and faith. All to you, Lord, and all for your glory. In Jesus's name, amen.