Grace Alone (Part 5): Rules - Do we need them?

Well, I don't know if uh you've ever read your Old Testament, gotten on like one of those Bible reading plans and tried to read your way through the Old Testament.

And when you do, you come to these stories that are, there's just no other way to put it.

They're just weird.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

Where you start reading and then you're like, what is that about?

Like, like, why is that in here?

Well, there are several stories like that.

There's one in Judges chapter three, it's about a judge named Ehud.

The book of Judges is about these judges who ruled for a period and they were trying to help the people of Israel kind of escape kind of the tyranny of some oppressing nations.

And so Ehud, the judge, went in to talk to Eglund, who was this king.

And what we know about the two characters is that Ehud was left-handed, we're told that, the judge, and that the king, Egland, was huge.

This is what the text actually says.

And so Ehud goes in and he says, Hey, I have a private message for the king.

I just want to be with him alone, and so everybody leaves.

And he takes out his sword with his left hand and he sticks it into Eglund's gut.

And we're told in the text that he was so fat that the sword totally disappeared inside his fat.

Now, you read that and you say, huh.

Now, now you might be tempted to say the point of that is don't trust a left-handed person.

I'm kidding, that's not probably the point of that.

Probably what happened was Ehud was lame in his right hand.

That's why the text says he was left-handed, and it's probably why they gave him access to the king and why he was able to deliver his people from an oppressive government by assassinating the king.

Now, whatever our views are of warfare and things like that, probably part of the point is that God sometimes uses unlikely people.

There's another story.

This one's found in 1 Samuel 24.

And in 1 Samuel 24, we have a story of David who was anointed to be the future king, but he wasn't the present king.

The present king was Saul.

So David, anointed to be the future king, is being hunted by the present king Saul because Saul doesn't want him to be the future king because he's the present king.

So he's hunting them, and David and his men go into Engedi, which is this beautiful place in Israel.

A lot of Israel is just desert.

This is a spot with trees and water and caves, and David and his men go and they hide in here.

And while they're hiding in a cave, this is all in the text, by the way.

Saul comes in to relieve himself.

And while he's there relieving himself, David sneaks up, cuts the corner of his garment off, and then sneaks back away.

Now think about that for a moment.

This is right in the text.

This is the Old Testament.

Saul's relieving himself.

David cuts his garment and then waits for him to leave the cave.

And when he had gone a safe distance, David holds up the garment as if to say, listen, I'm not going to harm you.

I could have taken your life, but I'm not going to harm you.

Now, we could be tempted to say, well, the point of that is to not relieve ourselves in caves.

Again, I don't think that's the point.

I think what was happening was God was saying, if you'll, David, show that you'll trust me and not take matters into your own hands, then I'm going to work in ways that you can't even see or understand.

There's another story, and by the way, those were just introduction to kind of get your attention about Old Testament weird stories.

This is the one that I'm going to talk about.

Genesis 15 tells about a man named Abraham.

Later he became, or he was Abraham, he was Abram in this story, later became Abraham.

And Abraham was told by God to cut some animals in half.

And the reason he was told to do this is because cutting animals in half was a way that people ratified contracts or covenants in those days.

So what they'd do is they'd take an animal, cut it in half, and they'd place the animal on each side, and then both parties would walk between the animals as a way to say, if I don't keep the covenant, if I don't keep this contract with you, then may it be to me as it's been to these animals.

And so he was told to cut these animals in half.

He cuts several of them in half, and he falls asleep.

And while he's asleep, we're told that this pot and this like smoke passed between the animals, and then a verse later, we're told that it was God who ratified the covenant with Abraham.

And again, you might be tempted to say, well, does that, you know, is the moral of the story don't fall asleep when you're doing a covenant with God or something, or cutting animals up, or I don't know exactly what.

No, the point of that is that Abraham never passed between the animals.

That the covenant that God made with Abraham in the Old Testament is a covenant that was one way.

It was God to Abraham, God to his people.

It was not something that was reciprocated.

And here's how we know this, because this is what's talked about in Galatians chapter 3.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

If you've been here over these weeks, we've been studying Galatians and talking about this idea of grace alone.

How God has worked in a way that is through grace alone, not through our adherence to the law.

And what Galatians is, is it's an argument, a sustained argument of saying that we're justified, in other words, made right with God, not by keeping the law, but by faith, by grace through faith in what Jesus Christ has done.

So there's nothing we can do.

And so here the author of Galatians, Paul, comes to verse 15 of Galatians 3, and he says, So let me give you an example.

And what he's doing is he's saying, I've been giving you all of this stuff.

Now let me give you an example.

Let me show you how this really works.

Verse 15, brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life, just so no one can set aside or add to the human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case.

So he says, Let me take and give you an example, and it's this human covenant.

And he says, just as a human covenant can't be broken, he says, What I'm doing here is I'm saying God's covenant can't be broken.

And most Greek scholars will say that the word here for covenant is the word for will, and it's like saying a will when somebody dies that can't be revoked is what God has done in giving his justification to his people.

In other words, it's one way.

And then he takes and he talks about this incident in Genesis 15.

Verse 16.

It says, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, probably the promises that were spoken to him in Genesis 12, the Abrahamic covenant that was ratified in Genesis 15.

Scripture does not say, and to his seeds, meaning many people, but, and to your seed, meaning one person who is Christ.

In other words, ultimately the seed of this promise is Jesus, he's the one who's the fulfiller.

What I mean is this the law that was introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.

For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise.

But God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

And when it says God gave, again, the Greek here is perfect tense, meaning it's something that happens now and has a continuing impact.

So God gave this promise to Abraham and it has a continuing impact for all his people who are in Christ, who are part of the seed.

Now you say, okay, what is that all saying?

Well, it's saying this.

And that is that the way that people are made right with God today is not by their performance, not by rule keeping, not by law keeping, not by saying, I'm really good, but purely by the grace of God given through Jesus Christ.

And we get the promise that's given to Abraham and to all of God's people by our relationship with Christ, not by our performance.

And he uses this analogy of a will here.

It would be like this.

It would be like somebody, a relative of yours saying, I'm going to give you my estate when I die.

And they have millions of dollars.

And they just say, It's going to be yours when I die.

And all you'd have to do to receive that inheritance is actually receive it.

You wouldn't have to do anything.

And once they died, I mean you might have to wait for them to die.

But other than that, it would come to you because they've said, this is a will, it will be executed.

But it's very different than if they said to you, listen, I am going to give you my inheritance when I die.

But in order for me to do that, I'm going to ask you to do some things.

If you will take care of me in my old age, if you'll promise me that I'll never be in a nursing home, if you'll take care of all of my needs, handle all of my affairs, then I'll give you my estate.

Do you see the difference?

One is a promise, one is a condition.

And what's being said here, and the fact that it was just God who passed between those animals that Paul alludes to here, he's saying, He's saying, What God has done is it's just one way.

It isn't two ways.

And it's interesting because even Abraham, a lot of times we think of Abraham as this great father of the faith.

But even Abraham, when he was a little beyond kind of this moment with God, was afraid and he went to another country and left kind of where God had promised to give him life.

And when he got there, he was afraid that Sarah, his wife, because she was beautiful, would would incite some people to kill him.

So he says, just tell everyone you're my sister.

And the point is, even through his disobedience, it didn't change the promise.

It didn't change what God would do.

And so this leads to a question, and this is the question that we find in verse 19 of Galatians 3.

And this is, why then was the law given at all?

In fact, if you've been here for the weeks of this Galatian series, you've probably already asked this question.

If we're justified by faith alone through grace, then basically, why would God even give the law?

Well, in order to understand this question, we actually need to understand a little bit about the law and how this word is used.

And this is maybe a little complicated, but it isn't hard to understand its implication.

And so I'm going to just say that there are two kinds of law in the Old Testament.

Now, scholars will often debate this and they'll tell you there's three kinds, that there's ceremonial, civil, and moral.

I'm just going to say there's ceremonial and moral law.

And I'm doing this for simplification.

You can lump ceremonial and civil together.

And what I want to say about this is that there are laws that are temporary, that were intended for the people of that time to mark them out as distinct people of God for the Israelites.

And then there's moral law that is not intended to be temporary.

So ceremonial law, civil law, it's temporary.

Moral law, it is not temporary, it abides into our day.

And a lot of our challenge when it comes to reading the Old Testament is centered around not understanding these two kinds of laws.

So here's a couple examples.

A ceremonial law would be a law such as the law that says every male must be circumcised in order to come to worship and be accepted.

We looked at this a couple weeks ago because Galatians deals with this.

And one of the reasons Galatians comes down on the side of saying, listen, Gentiles don't have to be circumcised is because there's a recognition that it's a ceremonial law, that it was fulfilled in Christ, and it doesn't have to abide on every male today.

Now you may say, okay, that that's one.

Here's another Old Testament law.

This is uh kind of a what feels like a random law.

Leviticus 15, 19.

It talks about a woman who's menstruating, not going to the temple, because she was ceremonially unclean.

The clean laws would say she couldn't come.

I don't know if you've ever read that and been like, what is that about?

Well, it was a ceremonial clean law for that time.

It was not intended to be something that carries forward in Christ.

The ceremonial law is no more.

That's one of the reasons that we don't have people at the back asking questions of all the women who come in, like, where are you at today?

Because it's not intended for today.

Now that has led to confusion in this sense, because now some people will say, well, since the Old Testament's full of these ceremonial laws, things like don't wear polycotton and you know, women who are menstruating shouldn't come into church, and only men who are circumcised should come, kind of a thing, then I can't believe any of the Old Testament.

Or none of it applies to me.

And that's why we need to understand this distinction of moral law.

And I'm going to just try to kind of synthesize something and make this simple, and it's much more complex and nuanced than this, but it's my job sometimes to try to take complex things and make them simple.

And that is a moral law is something that is either rooted in the character of God or in created order, or it's something that's repeated in the New Testament.

So the distinction between ceremonial law and moral law, or civil law, moral law, is that a moral law that God gives is rooted in his character or in created order, or it's repeated in the New Testament.

So if something is rooted in God's character or it's repeated in the New Testament, then we can say that law is not something that we just say, oh, that's ceremonial law.

Again, an example.

In Exodus chapter 20, verse 16, which is part of the Ten Commandments, we read that we shouldn't bear false witness against our neighbor.

Exodus 20:16

In other words, don't lie.

It's one of the Ten Commandments.

Beyond being one of the Ten Commandments, one of the ways that we know that this is part of God's moral law is in Numbers 23, verse 19, we're told that the Lord is one who won't lie.

Numbers 23:19

In other words, it's part of his character not to lie.

But then, just to make it abundantly clear, in Matthew chapter 5, verse 33, we're told that we should let our yes be yes and our no be no.

Matthew 5:33

In other words, that's something that's repeated in the New Testament.

So we can say that that moral law, because it's rooted in God's character or in created order, or is repeated in the New Testament, is something that's meant to extend.

Now you may say, okay, well, why again does this matter?

Because when we ask the question in verse 19, why then was the law given at all?

We need to know which kind of law we're talking about.

Are we talking about the ceremonial law or are we talking about the moral law?

And I would argue that in this case, we could actually be talking about both.

And I know scholars, again, will line up and talk about what this is about, but the reason I say this is because the ceremonial law talks about what the law did.

Well, the moral law could show us what the law does.

But either way, what we see here in the verses that follow are three positive impacts that the law has in our lives, that the rules have.

That there's still some benefit to understanding the law of God.

So here's the first one, and that is, I'm just simply going to say, it's through the law that we become convicted.

And what I mean when I say that is that we come to understand about our sin.

You see, in our day, in our age, what so many people say is I have an internal sense of right and wrong, and I don't want anybody else to tell me what's right and wrong, because I have an internal sense, and I'll follow my own sense of right and wrong.

Now that's not altogether wrong, because Romans 2, verses 14 and 15 tell us that there's a law written on our hearts.

Romans 2:14

But here's the challenge to that, and that is sometimes the law written on your heart may not include everything that we need to understand, and sometimes it's through God's revealed word that we begin to see where it is that we fall short, because otherwise the tendency will sometimes be to say, you know what, according to my own internal law, I'm pretty good.

I'm an okay person, I'm really very good.

But when we hold ourselves up against the standards that God gives, what happens is we start to say, I'm not as good as I'd like to think I am.

Here's how Martin Luther wrote about this in his commentary on Galatians.

He said, When the law comes, it shows me sin, death, and how.

Before the law comes, I am smug and I do not worry about sin.

In other words, if I'm not concerned about what God's law says, then I won't even be concerned about sin.

I won't be convicted about it.

But here's what Paul says in Romans, which is just a longer treatise of the same subjects of Galatians.

In Romans 3.20, he says that it's through the law that we come to a knowledge of sin.

In Romans 4.15, he says that without the law there would be no transgression.

In Romans 7.7, he says, if it had not been for the law, I should not have known that there would sin.

In other words, without understanding the law, we won't understand sin and we won't understand our need for grace.

Because it's the law that shows us our transgressions.

Here's where it says this, verse 19.

Why then was the law given at all?

It was added because of transgression.

It was added to show us our transgression.

And then it says, until the seed whom was promised, referred, uh, promise referred, to whom the promise referred had come.

The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator.

A mediator, however, implies more than one party, but God is one.

So he says, the mediator means that God is the one that does this.

You see, what happens when we get the law is it shows us and convicts us.

By the way, this is what Jesus was doing in the Sermon on the Mount.

Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 through 7, it's repeated again in Luke.

And in the Sermon on the Mount, what he often says is, You've heard it said.

And what he's doing is he's referring to Old Testament law, to moral law, and then he raises the bar a little bit.

One example of this is when he says, You've heard it said, you should not commit murder.

And what happens is many of us could say, Oh, yeah, okay, I don't kill anybody.

Good, I'm good.

Good.

But then what does Jesus do?

He says, But I say to you, if you look at somebody and you say, You raka, raca means empty head, fool.

He says, when you call somebody an empty head, an idiot, a fool, you're basically doing the same thing as murder.

What does he do?

He takes and he raises the bar and he says, says, You see, even when you think you're keeping the law, you're not keeping the law.

And so what he's doing is he's saying, I want you to come to understand that you're not a lawkeeper and that you'll never be justified by keeping the law.

Jesus had one interaction with a man in Luke 18, where this same thing is on display.

This man's called the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus.

And in verse 18, he says, This, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus responds and says, Why do you call me good?

No one's good except God.

Verse 20, he says, You know the commandments.

You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.

So what does Jesus do?

He goes back, he takes the law.

He says, You want to inherit eternal life?

Here, you've got to come to understand the law.

And what does the man do?

He says, All of these I have kept since I was a child.

Check, check, check, check.

I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.

All the way through.

Then Jesus, after he heard this, said, You still lack one thing.

He says, Sell everything that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come and follow me.

When he heard this, he became very sad because he was very wealthy.

Jesus looked at him and said, How hard is it for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God?

Indeed, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who's rich to enter the kingdom of God.

What Jesus wasn't doing here was he wasn't throwing down a principle for all time, saying, saying, everybody who follows me has to sell everything they have and give it to the poor.

What he was doing was he was showing that even this man's goodness wasn't as good as he thought it was.

You see, the man thought he was good enough.

He said, I've done it all.

And Jesus says, All right, you want to talk about the law?

Here's the law.

Go sell everything and give it away.

You can't meet it.

That's what Jesus is doing.

He's saying, even in your goodness, you're not as good as you think you are.

So what the law does is it brings conviction.

But that isn't all that the law does.

And you see, without the law, we won't have conviction.

What we'll do is we'll say, I'm pretty good, I'm okay before God.

But it's the law that shows us that we need a savior, a substitute.

But the law doesn't just convict us, but it's through the law that we become, I'm going to use the word defeated.

And this isn't a great concept in our day and age, because what most of us want is we want to say, how do I have victory?

How do I, how do I win?

How do I become the best version of me?

But notice what this says.

Verse 21, is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God?

Absolutely not.

For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.

In other words, the law doesn't bring life, or you would have gone after it that way.

But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

Then listen to this, verse 23.

Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law.

Locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.

What does he say?

Says, you're held in custody under the law.

What does that mean?

Well, what it means is that is that what we do is we is when we come to understand the law and we get convicted that we realize that even our best efforts can't totally free us.

Again, this goes counter to so much today because what you hear in so many churches is this message you're bad, God is good, so you should go home and try harder.

And what happens when you try harder is at first you feel virtuous.

At first you say, you know what, I'm gonna do it this time.

I'm really gonna beat this thing.

And you go home, and if you succeed, you become proud, self-righteous.

Why didn't everyone else do it the way I did?

And if you fail, you become even more defeated, and you say, What's even the point of trying?

I'll never, ever keep the law.

I can't keep the law.

But that's the point.

What he's saying here is in the law, we be are are under custody, we come to a point where we realize that we don't have the ability.

We don't have the means within ourselves to somehow beat the system.

Here's what Rich Mullens said.

Rich Mullins was a Christian recording artist who died uh young, and he said this, and it's quoted in Brennan Manning's book, The Regamuffin Gospel.

He said, I've attended church regularly since I was less than a week old.

I've listened to sermons about virtue, sermons against vice.

I've heard about money, time management, tithing, abstinence, and generosity.

I have listened to thousands of sermons, but I could count on one hand the number of sermons that were a simple proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

See, what we like is we like hearing law because it makes us feel like we can do better.

But what the law really does is it makes us show that even our best efforts won't get there.

In fact, sometimes people will accuse a church like Orchard Hill that that constantly talks about grace and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they'll say, You have a low view of the law and of God, and you're helping people kind of kind of live lives that are way too easy on grace.

But I actually think the opposite is true.

I think that the that the lower view on law is a law is a view that says you can do it, that says just a little more.

Let me give you three tips and you'll get over it.

The real view of law is go and sell all your possessions, everything, and then you'll have an inheritance.

See, it's always bigger, not lower, when we come to understand it.

But that isn't all, again, that the law does.

It does one more thing according to Paul here, and that is the law instructs us.

It's through the law that we become instructed.

Verses 24 and 25.

Says this.

So the law was our guardian until Christ came.

And the word guardian here is a word that means tutor, and it had the idea of somebody who was responsible for protecting a child from harm, helping them grow to maturity and adulthood, administering discipline and instilling virtue.

So what does Paul do here?

He says, here's what the law is like.

It's like somebody who's assigned to care for a child and administer discipline and get virtue into a child's life.

So if you have kids, this is easy to understand.

If you have kids, what do you do with kids?

You try to instill something in them that will give them a framework for life.

So when they're little, you give them a bedtime.

Because you want them to get enough sleep and have enough kind of energy for the next day.

And your hope is that as they mature, they'll learn to manage their own sleep.

When your kids are little, you try to give them some healthy eating patterns.

So you don't let them eat ice cream for breakfast, at least not very often.

Because that wouldn't be a good choice.

Now, what happens is they grow up, they go to college, and all the rules go away and they have their own structure for a while.

But then what happens is they have their own kids, and what do they do?

They have bedtimes, they have eating things, because what they're trying to do is instill values, and oftentimes they're similar values to what their parents gave them because they learned how to live without all the rules.

You see, at some point you don't need a bedtime because you know if I don't go to bed and get enough sleep, I won't be worth much tomorrow, and so you manage that on your own without a rule.

That's what Paul is saying here, the rules or the law of God is like, is it becomes so internalized that we don't have to return to it all the time as our guiding principle.

Now, I'll come back to this in a moment, but I don't think he's saying that that it has no bearing.

But what he's saying is it's like a tutor, like a guardian who teaches us the way and leads us.

And it does it in two ways.

One, it shows us our need for grace, and secondly, it helps us become so internalized with the with the principles and the standards of God that we say, this is where life is really found.

This is what I really want.

Rather than seeing it as some kind of hardship.

Here's how, again, Martin Luther wrote about this.

He said, the use of the law, the true use of the law is this that I know that by the law I am being brought to an acknowledgement of sin and I'm being humbled so that I may come to Christ and be justified by faith.

Then John stop, put it this way.

Not until the law has bruised and smitten us will we admit our need of the gospel to bind up our wounds.

Not until the law has arrested and imprisoned us will we pine for Christ to set us free.

Not until the law has condemned and killed us, will we call upon Christ for justification and for life.

Not until the law has driven us to despair of ourselves will we ever believe in Jesus.

Not until the law has humbled us, even to hell, will we turn to the gospel to raise us to heaven?

In other words, it's the law that shows us that we need grace.

It convicts us, it defeats us, and it instructs us.

So that still leaves a question.

This one's not an attacks, but it's a question.

And that is, so do I need to keep the law or not keep the law?

What are you saying?

And I'm not talking about the ceremonial law, I'm talking about the moral law.

Because have you heard people say, hey, we're under grace, we're not under the law, like, like leave me alone, I'm under grace.

What they're usually doing when they say that is they're saying, I don't need to follow any of the Old Testament laws.

Now, if that's applied to the ceremonial law, that's fair.

But if somebody's applying that to the moral law, it's often used as a scapegoat to say, I can do whatever I want.

But let me just just press on this for a moment.

Because if the law teaches us, instructs us, the moral law, it means that we may not have to always return to it, but at the same time, we never leave it completely behind.

Because what that law does is it becomes a part of our thinking.

So for example, when the when the Bible says you shall not murder, very few people would go, well, that's, you know, I'm under grace.

Now, I get that that's also a civil law in our society, but if that wasn't a civil law, very few people would say, Well, it's God's intention that you can just take anybody's life you want.

What we'd do instead is we'd say, No, that's not God's intention.

That's still in force.

You see, what happens a lot of times when people say we're under grace, we're not under the law, they almost always, this I've seen in years of being a pastor, almost always it's around their sexuality or around their money that they want to say that.

It's not about other stuff.

But but let me just just back off those analogies and murder and kind of those big things.

Let me take something really simple.

I alluded to it earlier, lying.

So if you're ever tempted to lie, and you lie, how does the law impact that?

Well, you can try to use the law to defeat lying.

You can say, you know what, I'm not gonna lie because I know if I'm found out it'll be worse for me.

Or I might somehow not gain God's favor in the same way.

So I'm not gonna lie.

What you're doing is you're using fear to try to scare you out of lying.

Or you'll use pride.

You'll say, you know what, I'm not gonna lie because I'm not the kind of person who lies.

I'm a good person.

I'm a good Christian.

I don't lie.

But pride and fear are poor motivations.

What happens when we understand and use the law correctly to convict us, to to, in a sense, defeat us and in a sense to instruct us as we say, not I'm gonna tell lies because I think telling lies are good, but what we'll do instead is we'll come to a point where we'll say, Why do I lie?

So let's just use a simple analogy.

Let's say that that your boss asked you for a report and you haven't started the report, and they said, Hey, how are you doing on the report?

And you have some time.

Now, in that moment, you can choose to tell your boss, oh yeah, I've started the report when you haven't started the report.

And to do so at that moment is in a sense to say, you know what, I'm I'm starting this report, but she'll never know because I'll get it done in time, it's no big deal.

But what you're doing is you're choosing what's on the other side of the lie above God.

You're basically saying, I want the comfort that comes from not having that person irritated at me.

I want the the esteem of that person of thinking I'm really doing a good job more than I want telling the truth.

And it's not until we come to see the law and grace that we'll celebrate our freedom in Christ enough to say, you know what, I haven't started the report.

And you can think of me what you want, you can create hardship in my life any way you want, because what matters to me is not what you think of me, not what repercussions you'll give me, but how I align myself with God.

See, grace doesn't give you a free pass to do whatever you want.

What it does is it lets you say that even when I don't do things well, when I don't keep the rules, that there's a savior, it convicts us, it defeats us, but it also instructs us.

This is why in Romans 6, again, parallel in some ways to this, when when Paul said, Should we continue to sin that grace might increase?

He was at the same point.

He was asking the question, should I just sin then since God's grace comes into my life?

And what does he say?

He says, May it never be, God forbid, depending on your translation.

Because you're not understanding the law.

The law, the rules, will instruct us in God's heart and in our best way.

So we're going to today just end this time of worship with communion.

And what communion is, is it's a chance to come to the table and to figuratively come and say, I share in these benefits.

And so if you're a follower of Jesus, we invite you to come.

And here in Wexford, you can come to the tables on the main floor down here in front.

There's some gluten-free stations in the balcony, there's some stations in back.

Take the bread, dunk it in the wine, and just say, God, I thank you that through the promise your one-way love was given to me, and I can receive what Jesus Christ has done, and I have received it.

If you're here and you say, you know, I don't know that I've ever trusted Christ.

Maybe today's your day just to say, God, I know that I have broken your moral law and it's convicted me, and I'm defeated by it, and I am instructed that I need a savior, I need a mediator, I need your love through Jesus Christ.

And maybe today is just your day to say that, but if you've trusted Christ, you're welcome to come and to partake in the table as a celebration to say this is the God that I worship, the God who gives without condition to me, a lawbreaker.

Father, help us to be the kind of people not who deceive ourselves into thinking that we can keep the law, but not to be the kind of people who just disregard it, but rather to be people who live in constant awareness of your grace and are so moved by that motivation that we want to do nothing more than please you.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Would you stand and respond with the team?