Well, good morning, welcome. I also wanna welcome the guests who have joined us here today. Glad that you're here, excited that you're here. Will you pray with me as we turn our attention now to God's word? Lord God, we just come before you now praising you for your son, Jesus Christ, and his fulfillment of your words to us. Lord, we ask and pray that you would open up our minds and hearts to receive from you today. God, in my weakness, I ask for your strength. Lord Jesus, I pray for your spirit to be at work. God, I pray that you would give each of us a great love for your word, that we would search its riches, and God, that you'd help us to rightly apply it to our lives. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I believe that how the Old Testament law relates to the Christian is often one of the most misunderstood, oversimplified, and confusing subjects for us, especially as it relates to the Mosaic law, which is encapsulated in the Ten Commandments, but it also includes the laws for ancient Israel and the Levitical sacrificial system as a whole. So is it a sin for a Christian to eat pork? And if not, why not, since it's forbidden in the Old Testament law? Does this mean that we're making part of God's word void? And what do we do with Jesus's statement that he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, and that until heaven and earth pass away, not a dot or iota of the law will pass from the law until all is accomplished. I mean, the law stipulates sacrifices, so do we still have to offer sacrifices? And if not, why not? And if there's a valid reason for not making sacrifices, could this apply to more than just sacrifices? And what was the purpose of the sacrifices in the first place? If we don't have to offer them, does that mean that part of the law is of no value and isn't useful in training us in righteousness? I hope to help us think critically and clearly from the scriptures on these things this morning, and to help us do that, I wanna try to answer this overarching question. How does the Old Testament law relate to Christians? The answer from our text is, the whole Old Testament has enduring validity, yet it has to be understood and applied in relation to Jesus, to whom it points, and who it fulfills, who fulfills it. The question for us as Christians is not how much of the Old Testament applies to us as Christians. All of it applies, down to the least stroke of the pen. The question is, how does it apply to us? The answer is that we have to understand and apply the Old Testament in light of the person and work of Jesus. So this morning, I wanna try to look at three aspects of the Old Testament law, its goodness, its weakness, and its usefulness. And to do that, we're gonna unpack our text and then try to set it in the context of Scripture as a whole. So turning your Bibles to Luke chapter 16, continuing through our series, looking at verses 14 through 17. Follow along as I read our text. Luke 16, beginning in verse 14. The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him, that's Jesus. And he said to them, you are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is preached and everyone forces his way into it. But it's easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the law to become void. Now, the connection between these four verses isn't immediately obvious. So let's unpack them and try and see if we can see it. Jesus has been teaching on money. We saw that last week. He's gonna continue teaching on money, which we'll see in a couple of weeks. So this passage, he's been teaching on money and the Pharisees do not like what they hear. And so they ridicule him. They scoff at Jesus because of his teaching on money. Jesus doesn't address that. He goes right to the heart of things. Look at verse 15. He said to them, you're those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what's exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God. Now, based on Jesus's response, it seems that the Pharisees were trying to justify themselves with their money. Now, to be justified means to be counted righteous. So they're using their money as a way of making themselves look righteous, look good before men, most likely in their giving of alms. Like the parable that we're gonna see in Luke 18, this Pharisee stands up in public in the temple. Talk about an awkward moment. Out loud, he is bragging about how awesome he is. And he goes, thank God that I am not like that guy. Like, thank God I'm not like that tax collector over there. I, I fast twice a week. And I give 10% tithe of everything that I get. You see what he's trying to do? He's trying to prove that he's righteous by pointing to his fasting and to his giving. by his works of the law. He thought he could be saved by keeping God's rules, but you cannot justify yourself before God with works of the law. You can't be counted righteous before God by works of the law. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law. Although the Law and the Prophets pointed forward to it, they bear witness to it. I want you to hang on to that thought that the Law and the Prophets point forward to it. This righteousness of God that comes through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. That's Romans 3, 20 to 22. Righteousness comes through faith in Jesus. The attempt to justify ourselves before God goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. After Adam and Eve sinned, they realized that they were naked, so they get this brilliant idea, we're gonna make clothes for ourselves with fig leaves. I've never worn leaves, but I don't think that leaves would make very good clothing. So much for eating the fruit, making them wise, lion snake. The point is that from that time, we have always been trying to cover up our own sin by ourselves ever since. And one of the ways that we try to do this is by denying our unrighteousness. So we shift the blame when we do something wrong. We blame other people or we refuse to confess our sins or admit when we make mistakes. That's one way we try to justify ourselves. Another way is by parading our righteousness in front of other people. Letting other people know how much good we do for God and making sure they know how much it costs us to do it. That's what the Pharisees were doing to justify themselves. Neither one of these things works because Neither deal with our heart of sin. And that's where the real problem lies. Jesus says, God knows your heart. The important thing isn't what other people think about me, but what does God think about me? God knows your sinful desires and thoughts and motives. His standard of righteousness is so much higher than our own. The Pharisees, they could compare themselves to other people and look righteous on the outside by keeping strict observance of these rules, but God looks at the heart. God knew that they were greedy, hypocritical, proud, self-righteous, glory seekers. That's where the problem was. Those were all things that God detests. God wants your heart. He wants your love, your faith, your trust. He always has. True religion has always been about your heart before God. It's been a matter of the heart. We need to get right with God. The Pharisees think you get right with God by keeping his rules, giving alms and fasting and prayers and offering sacrifices, in short, by keeping the Mosaic Law. But Jesus says, no, the problem is deeper. The problem is your sinful heart. What defiles you is not outside, but inside. You need a new heart, a new love. The only way to get right with God is through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, If they really knew their Old Testament scriptures, they would know this, because it all points to Jesus. Not just the prophets, but also the law, what they foreshadow, he fulfills. That's the link between verses 14 and 15, and verses 16 and 17. Verse 16 says, the law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the kingdom of God is preached and everyone forces his way into it. The Law and the Prophets is just a shorthand way of saying the whole Old Testament scriptures. All of that. was pointing forward to Jesus. And so with the coming of Jesus, we've entered into this new era. So John the Baptist was this transition figure. That's why he's mentioned here. He's the last of the Old Testament prophets in that time of promise that was looking forward to the coming Messiah. He's the last prophet who is pointing us forward to the coming Christ, but he's also the first person to declare the good news that the Christ has actually come. So he's this transition figure, and with the coming of Christ, we enter a new era of human history. Now that good news is for all people like we just sang about. It's for the rebellious and the self-righteous. It's for the prodigal and the proud. It's for the proud, money-loving sinners like the Pharisees and for every other kind of sinner whose sin is an abomination to God. Praise God. I mean, amen, the good news is for every single one of us. But here, it's the sinners and the tax collectors who are forcing, who are seizing the opportunity to get into God's kingdom. There's forgiveness of sins and righteousness through faith in Jesus, not by works. It's not by works. But Jesus wants to make it clear that doesn't mean that the law is void or fails, verse 17. Jesus says, it's easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for a dot of the law to become void. Now, this word means the little marks that distinguish letters in Hebrew, like the difference between the bait and the cough here. They're barely distinguishable. You gotta see this little nub down here. That's the kind of thing that Jesus is talking about. In English, it would be like the difference between an O and a Q. The only thing that sets those letters apart is just this little hook at the bottom. It's just the tiniest little part of the letter. So what Jesus is saying here in verse 17 is not the least stroke of a pen will drop out or become invalid or fail. So Jesus is very strongly affirming the enduring authority and validity and relevance of the entire Old Testament. Yet the time period in which the people related to God through the terms of the Mosaic law ended with John the Baptist. With the new covenant comes a new way of relating to God, that is, through Jesus Christ in the gospel. This means, then, that the nature of the Old Testament's enduring validity can only be established with reference to Jesus Christ. In other words, you cannot apply the Old Testament in your life as a Christian without reference to Jesus's finished work on the cross or the teaching of the New Testament as a whole. Now, I wanna look at these three aspects of the law to try to explain this, and in particular, I wanna look at the usefulness of the Mosaic law and how we apply it in light of Christ. We gotta hold all three of these aspects of God's law together at the same time or we're gonna go wrong on this. The goodness, the weakness, and the usefulness of the law. So let's look at this, the goodness of the law. That's the first aspect. The law is holy and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good, Romans 7, 12. It shows us the character of God and his holy will. It is holy, pure, right, and endures forever, Psalm 19. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord, we read in Psalm 119, verse one. The Bible's like a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, Psalm 119, 105. This summer, we went camping, and... I had to go to our screen tent to put our food away before we went to bed so that the critters wouldn't get into our food. And I was super glad I had my flashlight because as I was approaching my screen tent, there was a skunk right there. And if I hadn't had the light, I would have walked right into that thing. It would have really stunk. Literally stunk. The point here is that God's, Law, God's word is like that flashlight. It lights up our path, it shows us where to go. It exposes error so that we don't walk into them. All of it is like that. So it's good, the whole law enlightens the mind, it rejoices the heart, it revives the soul, Psalm 119 tells us. It's also good because it reveals our sin. and our need for a savior. It's through the law that comes knowledge of sin, Romans 3.20. So that's the goodness of the law. The second aspect is the weakness of the law. And along with it, the need for the power of the spirit. The law is holy, righteous, and good, but it's also powerless. Romans 8.3 says what the law could not do, literally was powerless, was not able to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering. The law cannot save us or sanctify us because we don't have the ability in ourselves to keep it. It only condemns us by revealing our sin and our guilt before a holy God. It cannot sanctify us. The Bible says it cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, Hebrews 9.9. For the law made nothing perfect, and so a better hope is introduced through which we draw near to God, Hebrews 7.19. That better hope is Jesus, the guarantor of a better covenant, Hebrews 7.22. So although the law is good, it's also weak. It never had the power to change a human heart or motivate godly living. It can set up holy standards, it can expose our sin, it can reveal our need for Christ, but it cannot change our heart or enable us to obey God. For that we need the Holy Spirit to work in our heart through faith in Jesus Christ. That's why we needed a new covenant. So Ezekiel says, God says in Ezekiel, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I'll put within you. And I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I'll put my spirit within you and I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. God writes his law on our new hearts and he enables us to walk in it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Remember, we have a heart problem. That's the issue. Jesus came to deal with the heart problem, our sin. So we gotta hold these two things in tension. The law is good, but the law is weak. But just because the law is weak doesn't mean it's not good. So take cars, for example. Cars are both good and useful to us, but they're made to drive on the ground from place to place. But we don't then say that cars are bad because they can't fly. Cars are good and they're useful in doing what they were designed to do. It'd be wrong to say that a car is bad because it can't fly. Yeah, cars have limitations. If we needed to get to England, we couldn't use a car because it doesn't have the ability to take us there. In that case, the car cannot do what we really need. And so in that sense, it's weak. Now, without at all diminishing the goodness of cars, that weakness shows us our need for a plane or a boat to get us to England. Now in the same way, the law is good and useful, but it's weak in that it has limitations in what it can do. Like a car can't get us to England, the law cannot take us to heaven or make us holy. It doesn't have the power to do that. If the law could get us to heaven or make us holy, there would have been no need for God to send Jesus to fulfill the law, or pay for our sins, or free us from God's wrath and establish a new covenant. Yet the law is still good because it shows us our need for a savior, just like a car is good in that it makes it obvious we need another way to get to England. The law makes it clear that we need a power beyond ourselves to reach the kingdom of God and to grow in godliness. So despite its weakness, it's still useful. That leads us to the third part, and this is where I wanna spend the majority of our time. All of it is useful. Now the reformers, They divided the scriptures into three parts, the moral, ceremonial, and civil law. They divided the law into those three parts as a way to try to determine what is applicable to the Christian. The civil law related to Israel, the ceremonial law was fulfilled in Jesus, and then the moral law still applied to the Christian. Yet those divisions are unnecessary and they're misleading. It's misleading in applying the Old Testament to the Christian's life. We can't chop the Old Testament law into those three parts, moral, ceremonial, and civil. First of all, the Bible never does that. It never speaks of the law that way. Secondly, it's impossible to distinguish between them because there's overlap. And third, and most importantly, the Bible itself says that all scripture is God-breathed and useful to us for training in righteousness. but we have to work through how all those parts of the law come through to us as Christians in Jesus Christ. Some of the laws are fulfilled, and so they're no longer binding in that sense of the law, yet, as we'll see, even those parts of the law that aren't binding on us, like the sacrificial system, they are still useful to us as Christians for instructing us. The Old Testament is able to make us wise for salvation. It's useful in that way. It's able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. That's 2 Timothy 3.15. But even if you're a Christian, it's still useful. All scripture is God-breathed and is profitable. It's useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3.16 and 17. The whole Bible is useful in those ways, teaching us how to think right and not think wrong, how to act right and not act wrong. They equip us for every good work. And when it says all Scripture is useful in that way, what it really means is all Scripture is useful in that way. The question, again, is not how much of the Old Testament applies to me. All of it applies. The question is, how does it apply? How do we apply it? Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets in his person and work and teaching. Jesus said, don't think that I came to abolish the law of the prophets. I've not come to abolish them, but fulfill them. For truly I say to you, not an iota, not a dot will pass away from the law until all is accomplished. Matthew 5, 17 and 18. Notice here, the contrast is not between abolishing the law or keeping the law, but between abolishing the law and fulfilling the law. Jesus says the scriptures are about him. After his resurrection, he gathers his disciples and he opens up the scriptures to them and he explains how everything in the Old Testament points to him. He interprets to his disciples in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. In the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms and how it must be fulfilled, Luke 24. The law of Moses pointed to Jesus Christ just as much as the prophets and the Psalms and I think we miss that. So to apply the Mosaic Law, we've gotta understand it in reference to Jesus. The Levitical sacrificial system was how they approached God and dealt with sin. They needed sacrifices to pay for sin and priests to mediate between them and God, a temple where God could dwell in their midst in holiness, rules for who and how people could come into God's presence and approach him and how close they could come. That's what clean and unclean was about. That's why only the priest could go into the holy place and the high priest into the most holy place just once a year. Now that Levitical system is obsolete and it's not binding anymore because it's been fulfilled in Jesus. No Christian that I know of is gonna argue that we still need to sacrifice animals to atone for sin. No one argues for that. But it's not just the sacrifices, it's the temple and the priesthood and the feasts and the food laws and the regulations for ritual cleanness that was all tied in with that sacrificial system. Those laws were a shadow of the things to come and the substance belongs to Christ. As it says in Colossians 2, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in regards or in questions of food and drink and with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. Those things are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance, the reality belongs to Christ. The priests and the offerings that they were making according to the law serve as a copy, a shadow of the heavenly things, Hebrews 8, 5. That is the point of the new covenant. The old covenant is set aside and the new covenant is established in Jesus Christ. However, the entirety of the Old Testament, including the Levitical laws, is still useful to the Christian in at least three ways. It shows us God's character and holy will. Second, they point us to Christ. They not only reveal our need for Christ, but they help us understand what Jesus accomplished. We would have a very, very difficult time understanding what it means that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world if we didn't know about sacrifices and the Passover. We'd have a very hard time understanding that. And third, all the Old Testament, including the Mosaic Law, is useful for training us in righteousness. It's valid and useful, the question is how. So let me give a few examples here. First of all, the temple. The temple was the place where God's presence dwelt among his people, but it no longer exists because Jesus opened up the way to the true temple in heaven. Now the church is the temple of the living God. So the temple laws don't apply to us in a direct one-to-one way because of Christ. But understand this, they still train us in righteousness. So Paul can pick that up and he can apply it to individual Christians and say, don't you know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? And he can call us to sexual purity as individuals because we're the temple of the living God. Moreover, this idea of the temple and having access into the true temple has implications for us as Christians in how we pray, how we approach God. We have confidence to enter into the most holy places by the blood of Jesus Christ. We can come before God directly with confidence to find grace and mercy to help us in our time of need. Hebrews 4, 14 through 16 and Hebrews chapter 10. Not only those two things, but this idea of temple go, it applies to us corporately because all of us together as a church is the temple of God, right? Together we are being built up. into a dwelling place for God, so it impacts our unity as believers and our holiness as a church. That's just three ways how the temple impacts the Christian life, even though that temple law, we're not obligated to obey it anymore. Of course the sacrificial system, we don't do sacrifices anymore because Jesus is our final sacrifice. But again, that doesn't mean that that doesn't have any implications for us as Christians. So Paul can say, I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy to present your lives, your very selves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Do you see how he's taking that cult language of sacrifice and he's applying it to the life of the Christian. And that's just one example of multiple scriptures. We're supposed to offer or do good works as a sacrifice to the Lord. Again, the priesthood is done away with the priesthood is no more because Jesus Christ is our great high priest We don't need priests anymore. That law is gone But that has implications for us in the fact that he holds his office forever and therefore he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him and Somebody better say amen But not only that, we're the priesthood. We are the royal priesthood. Every single one of us is a priest. We have access to God through Jesus Christ. You see how all of the Mosaic Law, all of the Levitical sacrificial system, even though we're not obligated to obey those laws anymore, We don't set that law aside as if it doesn't have any relevance for us as New Testament Christians. It applies to us in at least three ways. It shows us the character of a holy God and His will. It points us to Jesus Christ and shows us our need for Him and explains what He did for us. And third, it trains us in righteousness in all these ways that we just saw. So we gotta have a framework as Christians for understanding how do we apply the Old Testament to our lives? Number one, we determine the original meaning and significance and purpose of the law. What was its original purpose? What did it originally mean? Then we ask the question, what's the theological truth or the principle that it teaches? First step one, then step two, then, only then, Do we determine the practical application for our lives that corresponds to it? So let me try to give you a couple examples to show you how this works. The law in Deuteronomy says don't muzzle the ox while treading out the grain, Deuteronomy 25, four. That is picked up and used in the New Testament to say that pastors should be paid, 1 Timothy chapter five, verse eight. All right, what was the purpose of that law? To care for the animals that are working for you. What was the principle of that law? That the laborer deserves his wages. What's the application of that law? Well, Paul picks that up and he says, you should pay pastors who labor in the ministry of the word of God. Okay, the goring ox. If you've got an ox, unlikely, and it's got a history of goring people or trying to gore people, stabbing it with its horns, you know, it's a problem. That's the old goring ox problem. I've heard it a thousand times if I've heard it once. The law says, look, if your ox has a history of goring people, fence it up. And if you don't fence it up and it gores someone, you're liable. What's the principle? The principle is you're liable for your animals, right? So how do we apply that today? If you've got a dog that likes to bite people, it should be on a leash. or behind a fence, right? All right. What about eating pork, like I mentioned at the beginning, and other issues of ritual uncleanness? We have to understand why we had the clean and unclean distinctions in the first place. What was the purpose? First of all, in the Old Testament, clean and unclean was not equal, it was not synonymous to sinful and not sinful. You gotta get that. You could be ritually unclean and yet not have sinned. All moral uncleanness is also ritual uncleanness, but not all ritual uncleanness is also moral uncleanness, okay? So for example, physical intimacy made a couple unclean, Leviticus 15, 18. but it wasn't because it was a sin. There was no sacrifice of atonement required to pay for it, just a washing. However, it would prevent them from being able to come into the presence of the Lord. The purpose of clean and unclean was not just to keep Israel separate from the nations, but to enable them to be in the presence of a holy God. How could a holy God dwell in the midst of sinful people? The answer was the Levitical sacrificial system. That's why those who were ritually clean had to go through washings so they could be in the camp and remain in proximity to God. This is why Leviticus 15, 31 says, thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness lest they die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst. In order to be in the presence of a holy God, they had to maintain cleanness, not just morally, but ritually. But the ritually clean and unclean distinction ended with the sacrificial system because we don't approach God that way anymore. That is not how we approach God. through the temple, and through sacrifices, and through this idea of clean and unclean, we approach God through Jesus Christ, not the sacrificial system. Which is why Hebrews 9.14 says that we've been delivered from those dead works. We can come into God's presence through Jesus Christ. Now some people think that the reason they couldn't eat pork was because God knew the animals were full of parasites and that the meat was unhealthy for people to eat. And so God wanted to protect his people. But that wasn't the reason for the prohibition. The reason was clean and unclean in coming into God's presence. This is why Jesus explained to his disciples, there is nothing outside of a person that by going into him can defile him. Don't you see that whatever goes into a person from outside can't defile him because it doesn't enter into his heart but into his stomach and is expelled? Thus he declared all foods clean. He said what comes out of a person, from within, out of the heart, come evil thoughts and sexual immorality and theft and murder and adultery and coveting and deceit and envy and slander and pride and he adds more. We're back to the real issue. The real problem is not outside, it's inside, it's in our heart. It's out of the heart that we're defiled because that's where sin comes from. That's what Jesus Christ deals with. This is why Jesus declared all foods clean. This is why Paul says food will not commend us to God. 1 Corinthians 8.8. You cannot be counted righteous through food loss. You can't earn God's favor or blessing through the food loss. You're no more or less spiritual if you eat or avoid pork. Now, if you don't wanna eat pork because you think it's unhealthy, that's perfectly fine. You are free to abstain, but you are not obligated to abstain. You gotta know that abstaining does not commend you to God. It does not demonstrate a deeper love for God, a deeper or better righteousness before God. Food does not do that for you. And thinking that it does puts one very, very close to trying to justify himself before God through works of the law. Paul says, everything is indeed clean. but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats. What is he saying here? He's saying in Romans 14, the kingdom of God is not about food. It's about love for God and for each other. So if you're in the camp where you think you shouldn't eat pork, your obligation is to not pass judgment on people who do, understanding that they're no less righteous than you, or that they have some less love for God than you. So you don't pass judgment on people who eat. And the people who do eat, your responsibility is not to look with contempt on people who abstain and say in your mind, I can't believe that you think that you can't eat pork. Haven't you been enlightened by the New Testament? We don't look with contempt. What's Paul's point? It ain't about food. It's about love. That is why love fulfills the law. All right, one more, homosexuality, murder, and lying in the Old Testament. Those things in the Old Testament are not issues of being ritually unclean. They're morally unclean. In other words, they were sins in the Old Testament, and they remain sins today. All right, so how does the Old Testament law relate to the Christians? Let me try to summarize this. The answer from our text is the whole Old Testament has enduring validity, yet it has to be understood and applied in relation to Jesus, to whom it points and who fulfills it. Jesus insisted in Luke 16, 17 and Matthew 5, 17 through 18, that he did not come to abolish the least stroke of the pen from the law, but to fulfill it. The entire sacrificial system of temple, priest and sacrifices has been superseded All food laws, all foods have been declared clean, and holy days are optional. The reason is because those things were a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Jesus Christ. Yet, that does not mean that we set aside the Mosaic Law, not in the least, as we have seen, because all scripture is God-breathed, and it's useful for training Christians in righteousness. Everything in the Old Testament reveals something about God's character, the work of Christ, and the nature of discipleship. Everything reveals something about God's character, the work of Christ, and the nature of discipleship. J.C. Ryle said, that the law is good if man uses it lawfully, 1 Timothy 1.8. It's intended to show us God's holiness and our sinfulness, to convince us of sin and lead us to Christ, and to show us how to live after we have come to Christ. He that so uses the law will find it a true friend to his soul. Let's pray. Lord God, I just ask and pray that you would give us a greater love for your word, both Old Testament and New Testament. God, that you would give us a hunger for its sweetness, that you would give us a desire to mine the depths of its riches. God, that you would enable us to rightly and wisely and faithfully apply it to our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. We ask and we pray this in Jesus' name. And all God's people said,