The Voice from the Fire

I'm going to look today at the climax of the stories of one of

the most legendary leaders in history, his foster mother,

which would become his, I guess his adoptive mother rather would

would name this character Moses, whose name literally meant to

draw out because when she found him, he was in the Nile and she

drew him out of the Nile. And that that would also be a

prophetic name because God would use him later to draw out his

people, an entire nation of 2 to 3,000,000 out of their bondage

to slavery in the single most dramatic event in human history.

There was nothing quite like the Exodus.

And the Scriptures tell us this. Deuteronomy 432 says, ask now of

the days that are past, which were before you, since the day

that God created man on the earth as from one end of heaven

to the other. Whether such an event has ever

happened or was ever heard of, there's nothing quite like this

event. A series of miracles or occur.

Moses leads and records this, the series of miraculous events

that happened 3500 years ago. A nation of people, 600,000 men,

not including the women and the children, had grown so large

where they were in Egypt that the Egyptians began to be afraid

because they said if there's ever an uprising, we can no

longer defend ourselves against this people.

And so a new king, a new pharaoh arose, and he put the people

into labor. And Deuteronomy 4 calls this

experience an iron furnace. Because the pressure on them was

so great. Exodus 113 says they ruthlessly

made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives

bitter with hard service and mortar and brick and all kinds

of work in the field. So the pressure of persecution

and oppression was on them, and they cried out to their God, and

their God heard them. And he stretched out his hand,

and he moved, and he drew through Moses this people out

into the land that God had promised to their fathers.

So Moses ascent to the Pharaoh repeatedly to tell him these

words. Let my people go, that my people

may serve me. And God sends as Pharaoh hardens

his heart, as God hardens Pharaoh's heart, he will not let

the people go. So he sends Moses to bring

plagues, and these 10 miraculous dramatic plagues come on the

Egyptian Egyptians and their magicians.

He turns the Nile to blood. It's his first act.

And all the wildlife or all the fish of that Nile River are

killed and their economy dries up.

This was not soot and silt that was red colored.

It was a miracle. And he begins to send these

plagues, frogs and gnats and flies, and he kills their

livestock, and he brings boils and then hail and locusts, and

terrifyingly, he brings deep darkness.

And then the climax of all of those events is the death of

every first born in Egypt. And so with that, Pharaoh says

there's not going to be anybody left.

There's not going to be anything left.

And he relents and he lets the people go.

He sends them out, 600,000 besides the women and children.

And he doesn't leave them by himself, but he goes before

them, showing them the way in a pillar of cloud, reaching into

the heavens by day and it by night to illuminate the

wilderness. He goes before them in a pillar

of fire. And when the Pharaoh, the king

of Egypt, is told that the people fled, some time has gone

by, he sets his mind to go and capture them the lest he loses.

He realizes he lost his labor force and the the building

projects have stopped. And so he says, I'm going to go

and get them back. And the Israelites, God leads

them to the Red Sea. He leads them to a a site that

we believe is the Gulf of Aqaba, which is several 100 feet deep

at its shallowest and 1000 feet deep at its deepest.

And the Pharaoh sends his armies with their Chariots after God's

people, saying the wilderness has trapped them in.

And so vulnerable Israel is trapped between this vast sea on

the one side and an approaching army on the other.

And the people begin to grumble and they begin to fear greatly

as any of us would. And then Moses gives this

wonderful speech and his courage and conviction.

He says, fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the

Lord, which he will work for you today, for the Egyptians whom

you see today you will never see again.

The Lord will fight for you, and you only have to be silent.

And with those words he takes his staff and his arm, and he

raises it over the sea as God commanded him.

And the two bodies of water, the, the water splits, and

there's these two massive walls of water on either side, and a

way is made where there was no way.

And God's people begin to pass harmless through the middle.

The pillar of clouds moves behind Israel, between the army

and the people of God, and Israel moves as the army comes

behind them. And when the last Israelite has

crossed the sea, Moses turns again and he waves his staff

violently, drowning the host of the Egyptians in the sea.

And the people celebrate and they sing the song of Moses, the

same song we're given to sing in heaven when we've crossed the

barrier of death and we praise God that we've been brought

safely to the other side. They sing as God continues to

lead them. This was not the end.

Deliverance was not the end. It was the means to the end.

He delivered them so that he could come and that they might

be his people and he might be their God.

He delivers them so that he might speak words of revelation

to them. He brings them to Mount Sinai.

All this is paving the way for our text in Deuteronomy 5.

God's going to reveal himself to his people, and He's going to

make a covenant with him, and He's going to speak out of the

fire, swearing Himself to them. They will swear themselves to

him. And it's at that location that

he's going to reveal to them the 10 commandments, the 10 words.

And this is a gracious gift. We don't always think of this as

as a gift, but it's a gracious gift.

We heard last week Moses in Deuteronomy 410, it says that

God let us hear his words. We get to hear the revelation of

the Lord of glory. And this is significant in our

culture because the prevailing worldview of our culture is not

expecting words from God. They're not expecting any

activity from God because in their eyes there is no God, only

a natural universe where everyone's looking at one

another in confusion, wondering what is good and beautiful and

true, because it's different upon who you asked.

It's different to everybody. They're wondering where meaning

is to be found. There's no source of objective

truth. And they're wondering, how then

shall we live? They're wondering how we ought

to live. And that worldview only makes

sense if there is no divine revelation.

Francis Schaefer gave his life to making this truth known.

He says there is divine revelation.

God has spoken and we cannot feign ignorance to his words.

The problem, as Francis Schaefer puts it, is that God is there

and he is not silent. 3500 years ago God spoke in a dramatic and

remarkable fashion, such as the whole world still knows the

story. He has spoken and He has

revealed himself, and you cannot feign ignorance to his words.

And this is the only instance in all the Old Testament where God

speaks to a congregation of people directly.

He speaks through prophets, He speaks through judges and kings,

but this is the only place He speaks to them out of the fire.

And it's the voice of God. It says that He spoke from the

smoke and he smoked from the lightning, and He spoke from the

gloom. And this is Him addressing the

generation at Sinai. And now Moses is going to

rehearse those words with a new generation as they stand

encamped at the border of the Promised Land.

And he says this revelation, he says, this was for you, this was

you, this was to you. And he speaks it to a new

generation. And that event was equally

dramatic when he speaks at Sinai.

Our text last week said you came near and stood at the foot of

the mountain while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of

heaven, wrapped in darkness and cloud and gloom.

And you heard his voice from the midst of the fire.

And whatever it was, it was a very stressful experience

because the people say we can't hear any more words or we're

going to die and they're terrified.

They said we're going to be consumed.

This great fire is going to consume us.

And we ask, what words did God reveal to Israel out of the

smoke and the fire and the gloom?

The Recorded and Deuteronomy 5I invite you to turn there and

we'll read them together. Moses rehearses them with this

next generation of Israelites. Deuteronomy 5 beginning in verse

6. God says, I am the Lord your

God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the House

of slavery, out of the House of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness

of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth

beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the

iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and 4th

generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to

thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for

the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in

vain. Observe the Sabbath day, but

holy as the Lord your God commanded you. 6 days you shall

labor and do all your work, but the 7th day is a Sabbath to the

Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work,

you or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant,

or your female servant, or your ox, or your donkey, or any of

your livestock, or the soldiers within your gates, that your

male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,

and the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand and

an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God

commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

Honor your father and mother, as the Lord your God commanded you,

that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in

the land that your Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall

not steal, you shall not bear false witness against your

neighbor, and you shall not covet your neighbour's wife.

And you shall not desire your neighbour's house, his field, or

his male servant, or his female servant, his ox or his donkey,

or anything that is your neighbour's.

These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the

mountain, out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the

thick darkness, with a loud voice.

And he added no more. And he wrote them on 2 tablets

of stone, and he gave them to me.

The 10 commandments is actually, in the Bible, never called the

10 commandments. And many of you know this.

It's the 10 words and that word debar is, is has a wide range of

meanings. And so some would say it's the

10 commandments, some would say it's the 10 words.

And there are many who would leave others to suggest it be

translated. The 10 principles of covenant

relationship. And I tend to go that way.

This is God swearing himself to his people.

This is them entering at a covenant, them swearing

themselves to God. And this is the nature of that

covenant. This is a covenant of love.

His law is his love. And so I want to work through an

overview of the 10 commandments. But you all know it's 1138, and

so we could spend weeks going through all of this, a week on

honoring your father and your mother, and a week on having no

other gods and not murdering or stealing.

But in this short time we have together, what I want to do is

to focus on this. Why did God give this law?

What does it matter for a New Testament Christian that God

gave the law to Israel at Sinai? What's the relevance for us?

And from the time of the Reformers, the church has

recognized that there are three uses of this law.

We get to see them all. There's three reasons.

It's just another way to say it. Three reasons that God gave the

law, and we see all of them in Scripture.

We're going to see him today. The the first reason is that the

law restrains evil. We call this the civil or the

political use of the law. It was meant to restrain the

evil of society, to put restraints on what people could

or could do. It's actually freedom to have

that constraint and that knowledge of God's will.

It's this ability to punish wrongdoing, to establish

consequences for evil. That's the first.

The second use is to restrain sin.

We call this theologically the pedagogical use because it

teaches us of our sin and it drives us to our need of a

Savior. That's the second use of the law

for you, and the third is that it guides Christian living.

We call this the didactic use. This is the principal use, the

premier use. It instructs Christians and

leads us to righteousness. It shows us God's heart, shows

us the pattern for godliness. It basically shows us who have

God's Holy Spirit. It helps us to do what we

already desire to do with all our heart, soul, mind and

strength. And that is to serve God.

It gives us the pattern. It shows us how to do that.

And we're going to look at these in series looking at the law.

It restrains evil, it reveals sin and it guides Christian

living. So the first thing is that it's

the political use. It's it restrains evil.

So remember, this is God establishing a nation.

What do you need? What are the ingredients of a

nation? You need people.

He's elected to people Now he's he's increased them to two to

three million. What do you need?

You need a law. Here is their law and you need a

land, and here they are looking at the promised land, waiting to

take it. He has all of the ingredients

for this and this body of laws he's using to create an ethical

community of faith as God defines it.

That's what he does in the church.

He's brought us together and he's created an an ethical

community of faith that lives by God's morals and God's ethics

and not those of the Pagan culture.

So that's what he's telling Israel.

I'm sending you in to be in the world, but not of the world.

I'm sending you in and you're not to live by the principles of

the nations that are surrounding you.

I'm telling you how to live. And the same is true of us in

the church. He puts us here and he says that

your culture is going to believe and value one thing.

You are not to value those things.

You are to insofar as they don't align with my word.

I've given you my word. Seek it and do it.

And when we look at this civil political use of the law, I hope

you understand we've built our society on this.

We're using this today. These are commandments that are

worthy of establishing a nation or a society.

And when we say that that Western law is built on the 10

commandments, sometimes people go kind of crazy with this and

they'll get online and go 1 by 1 and they'll say, see, there's

no, there's a disconnect here between, you know, I don't see

all these commandments in our law.

That's not what we're doing. We're not saying our forefathers

literally got out the 10 commandments and made our that's

not how what we're saying is the principles.

We say theologically, this is the moral law is summarily

comprehended in the 10 commandments.

This is a moral summary of the commandments.

It moves from God to society to family to life to sex, to

property. It's all in this.

This is comprehensive of saying God is declaring authority over

all of your life. Our worship extends to all of

life. The ethics come to all of our

life. It's summarily comprehended in

these commandments. And so America's built in part,

not fully, but in part on this law, and some of the laws that

we're talking about is that a society is built on the

principle of the imago day, which means we're made in the

image of God. Everybody is of equal and

infinite dignity and worth. We're all made in the image of

God. And this biblical principle

you're not going to find if you go somewhere like Afghanistan or

India, you're not going to find these principles because they're

built on the Scriptures. And we believe that punishments

must be restrained. And we see that the punishment,

the severity of the punishment, much must match the severity of

the offense. Where do we get that principle

except the Scriptures? There are places that you can go

like North Korea or Saudi Arabia, where that is not true.

And you see that there are principles like impartiality

before the law. And you can see before

courthouses that it's a Pagan God justice.

But we, we take these as as representative of things like

impartiality. You see that that blind woman

and she's blindfolded and she's got the scale and the scales are

balanced. It's saying we're impartial in

our judgments. And we get that from God

himself, who says in a few chapters, Deuteronomy 10, I'm

impartial. I'm the great, the mighty, the

awesome God. I am impartial and I take no

bribe. We are, we're built in part on

these principles. This Is Us exercising this, this

restraining of evil, this use of the law.

And so each term, I hope you see in this is in the second person

of direct address, they get really simple in the original,

it's literally no murder, no stealing.

It's kind of hard to miss the point, but this direct address

is actually for those who might commit a crime against God, that

they're written toward you, not to necessarily establish your

rights, but to keep you from infringing on the rights of

somebody else. It's not necessarily protecting

your rights, but protecting other people.

First and foremost, I want you to see these commandments

protect God's divine rights. There are certain rights

inherent to God by His nature of being God as your Creator.

He's the author, so He has authority.

He's your Redeemer, the supreme command, the first of the 10

commandments. In view of His gracious saving

action, Yahweh has the right to demand Israel's exclusive

allegiance. As He says, you shall have no

other gods before me, so God created them, and then he bought

them, and so now they are doubly his, and we can say the same of

Jesus Christ. You created me, and then you

bought me. I am doubly yours.

And so he says it's so much to ask as your Savior, as your

creator, as your Redeemer, that you worship no other gods.

Did those other gods deliver you?

No, He says, I delivered. You worship me Yahweh, the

second commandment. It says He has right to to

proper representation. He says I have given you my

name, He named them Israel. I have given you my glory and

now he has a right for them to live appropriately.

The same is true for you, Christian.

You have taken the name Christian, Christianos.

What does Christianos mean except follower of Christ?

He's given you his Holy Spirit. He's bought you.

Now He has a right to you representing Him.

Well, these are the divine rights.

And more than divine rights, even further, there's also human

rights. He gets into the the people that

are under a household. He says the people that are

within a household have a right to humane treatment and dignity,

even the animals. And he goes down and he says for

that reason, Deuteronomy 512 to 15, keep the Sabbath holy.

He's protecting those in the household and parents have a

right to respect from their children.

So he says honor your father and mother and Jesus is going to

even add, as you read through the New Testament, you'll see

the the implications that are being worked out from some of

these laws. Paul's going to say in first

Timothy that honor your father and mother is actually extends

to widows. As he says, honor widows who are

truly widows. And it extends to supporting

them financially and with care and providing and protecting and

including. And you see the the depth that

these laws actually go. There's a right for us to care

for our elderly. There's a right of parents to

have respect from their children.

Honor your father and mother. The next person has a right to

life, therefore he says you shall not murder.

The next person has a right to a secure marriage and to sexual

purity. Therefore you shall not commit

adultery. The next person has a right to

property. You shall not steal.

The next person has a right to honest and truthful testimony in

court. You shall not bear false

witness. The next person has a right to

enjoy property without fear that somebody else is going to want

it for themselves. You shall not covet.

And that is that the 10th commandment brings us back to

where we began. It actually intensifies because

the 10th commandment, you may have noticed or learned before,

takes the laws. They're no longer external

things that you do with your hands and feet.

But it's an issue of the heart. We can violate God's commandment

in our inner man. So there's these rights.

What is our Declaration of Independence say?

We hold these truths to be self-evident.

That all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator

with certain unalienable rights. These are not rights that we

invented. These are rights that were

revealed to man by God. So these 10 commandments are the

law of God summarily comprehended.

They are the summation of the laws on which a healthy society

will be based. Again, God's ethic extends from

the society to the family to the life to sex, to property.

It restrains evil and promotes a just society when we live

according to it. And I want you to remember last

week we saw that obedience to God's law was actually part of

Israel's mission. And they were.

They were to live by these things and invite the comparison

of the world where the whole world is going to look at them

and recognize their life is better.

You're you as being a Christian or inviting other people to

compare themselves to you and they're supposed to say it is to

use the language of Deuteronomy for and more just and more

righteous. They're supposed to look at your

marriage and say they have something that I don't to your

family to your society. They have something that I

don't. What's the missing ingredient

And that's our evangelistic opportunity to say it's Jesus

Christ and his righteousness. And God knew that when others

looked at Israel, they were going to see someone that was

more just and righteous. 3000 years after Moses led the

Exodus, the reformers begin to to order their society and, and

to put pressure on their society to live according to these

Christian principles. And it made such a splash that

it LED people like Max Weber to take notice.

And he said wherever the Reformation went, wherever good

theology went, there went prosperity and flourishing.

It's meant to invite comparison. People take notice.

When you live according to the principles of Scripture, it goes

well. And so the first purpose of the

law is to restrain evil. And God gives us all kinds of

ways to do that. He gives you at the individual

level, He gives you a conscience.

Your conscience helps you restrain evil.

At the family level, He gives you parents.

At the level of the church, He gives you a body that holds you

accountable and pastors. And at the level of society, He

gives you just ethical laws that you can put into practice and to

live by, praise God. Second purpose of the law is to

reveal sin. The pedagogical use, Romans 7,

Romans 7:7

verse 7. If it had not been for the law,

I would not have known sin. God teaches us sin.

So everywhere every Christian has to wrestle with the

question, how does the Old Testament law relate to my life?

So what if there's 10 commandments?

What does it matter in Oklahoma if we had a lawsuit from the

ACLU and they removed him from our capital?

What does it matter? What does it matter if it's at

your courthouse? What's the relevance today?

Paul says in the New Testament that the law is a mirror.

It functions. The metaphor you want you to

think of it as is a mirror that's reflecting the perfect

righteousness of God on the earth.

That's what the law represents. It is the perfect righteousness

of God. You keep the law perfectly, you

achieve righteousness as he defines it.

But the problem is we can't keep the law perfectly.

We can't achieve the perfect righteousness of God.

And that is why we say the law exposes our sin and draws us to

our need of a Savior. This is why we say that the law

has no power to save. The law only has power to

condemn. That's why Paul says in Romans

7, the law kills me, it slays me, it leads only to death.

The law has no power. It's just rules.

It's the same concept Jesus uses when he takes that Old Testament

law and brings it a little bit more into our New Testament

context. He gives the parable of the Good

Samaritan. I know he's talking about the

law because he asks what is written in the law and how do

you read it? And they get a little fired

about who your neighbor is. And Jesus takes that Old

Testament law and he puts it in a New Testament context.

And he says tells the story of a man who spent his time and his

money and his energy on a stranger who fell among robbers.

And he cares deeply for him and he commands him just like the 10

commandments command of you go and do likewise.

Go and live this way. And the point of Jesus to this

lawyer, the the take away was you could never live like this.

The point of the Good Samaritan is that, you know, not that we

need a, a world full of good Samaritans, it's that there is

no world full of good Samaritans.

There are no good Samaritans. No one can live like that.

That's the purpose of the law, to show our inability to keep

the law. It's to undo us.

It's to reveal our sin and to kill us, which is why if you're

trying to achieve some measure of righteousness on your own

through works, you're trying to impress God with your

righteousness. You can't.

It's futile. This is why the Pharisees and

the scribes and the lawyers were condemned.

And even in Deuteronomy 5, if you look down to verse 25, you

see these people crying out for a mediator.

Even here he says, they say, Now therefore why should we die?

For this great fire will consume us.

If we hear the voice of our Lord our God anymore, we shall die.

For who is there of all flesh that has heard the voice of the

living God speaking out of the midst of the fire as we have and

still lived? They say to Moses, Be our

mediator. In a word he says, Go near and

hear all that the Lord will say, and speak to us all that the

Lord our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.

And they tell Moses, you go, you go here, you go, stand in the

gap and tell us what he has to say.

And it's a stressful event. You remember Moses goes and

stands in the presence of God and he comes back and his face

is radiating with the resplendent glory of God.

It's stressful. And in the same way, we need a

mediator who will stand in the gap for us.

And we've been given such a mediator in the person of Jesus

who fulfilled the law on our behalf.

Write this verse down Second Corinthians 36.

The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

The law kills you because it has no power to do anything.

The power comes from God's Holy Spirit, from the righteousness

of Jesus Christ. There's power in Christ, there's

power in the Spirit. That's why Jesus says of the

law. I came not to abolish the law,

but to fulfill it. So is the law relevant for you

today? Absolutely.

The righteous requirement is there.

God's righteousness is still there.

It's that we just don't have to accomplish it on our own.

It's been accomplished for us. And Jesus doesn't use the

language of keeping the law. He uses it as fulfilling the law

even as he was baptized. Jesus didn't need to be

baptized. Why was he baptized?

He didn't need to be cleansed from his sin.

He says this was necessary to fulfill all righteousness.

He got baptized because he's living your life.

And you had to be baptized because that was a requirement

of you. And so that's what we're

celebrating even today. Jesus fulfilled the law at every

point perfectly. How do we know?

Because Resurrection Sunday, because Jesus was raised from

the dead by the glory of God the Father, we say that was

validating his work of atonement, meaning that Jesus

was the perfect and acceptable sacrifice for sin.

That's what today means. That's the power of the

resurrection. Jesus was who he said he was,

and he accomplished what he said he would.

He fulfilled the law of God perfectly so that all those who

by grace through faith, who put their faith in him, he gifts

them that life. He gives them that righteousness

so that we don't have to beat our heads against the wall

trying to fulfill the law. He's fulfilled it for us.

He no longer, He didn't even just keep the letter of the law,

but He fulfilled the heart of it.

He was the Good Samaritan, the only one.

What does the Bible say about our relationship with the Old

Testament law? There's metaphors that the New

Testament gives so that we can understand it.

Galatians 324 to 25 says that the law was our teacher, It was

our tutor until Christ came. And so Christ has come, but it

still teaches us about the righteousness of God.

And now we're no, we're no longer under the law, Scripture

says, but under grace, no longer under the law of Moses, but

under the new covenant, the covenant which says simply, all

those who believe in Christ, by grace, through faith, he will

save. Romans 7 gives the metaphor of a

spouse whose whose spouse dies. You're you're united until death

do you part. But once death does you part,

you're free to marry another. And he uses this metaphor and he

says we have died to our former spouse, which is the law, and we

are now are free to marry another, namely Christ and

grace. And so now we are married to

grace James 212 gives another one.

It says so speak and so act as those who are to be judged under

the law of liberty. We're not judged by the law

anymore. These 10 commandments, those

have been fulfilled. Now we are judged by the law

that liberates the law that liberates is the gospel.

So Christ fulfilled the law of Moses perfectly that all who

believe in him. This is the absolute beauty of

the gospel, the absolute beauty of redemption and salvation.

God gives you his Holy Spirit so that you actually have the power

to keep the law, however imperfectly.

That's the graciousness of our Savior.

Romans 82 The law of the Spirit of life has set you free from

the law of sin and death, and no gospel is complete without

making a demand of you. Jesus says if you come, if you

are are burdened, if you're weary and heavy laden, if you

come to him under this load of the law, he will give you rest

from it. That's why he says, come to me

all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.

He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I'm

gentle and lowly in heart and you will find what rest for your

souls rest from trying to achieve righteousness.

He offers you the law of liberty that you may find grace.

The final use of the law is in light of your salvation by grace

through faith. The final use of the law is the

didactic use. It means that the law guides our

Christian living. It helps the the Christian to do

what we already want to do, to please God and to serve Him.

So studying the 10 commandments gives us an opportunity to even

reflect devotionally and what these commandments are saying.

I want to introduce a guy named Daniel Block.

He wrote a book called The Gospel According to Moses, and

he gives a wonderful list of how these commands point us to

worship. I want to give you just a few of

them. He says laws are not a

precondition to be saved, but a gracious response of those who

are already saved. He says laws are not primarily a

duty imposed by one party onto another, but an expression of

covenant relationship. He says obedience to the law is

not a precondition for salvation, but a precondition to

the fulfillment of your Christian mission and of your

blessing. He says the the revelation of

the law is a a supreme and unique privilege and obedience

to the law is an external expression of an inward

disposition of faith. And the laws are perceived

holistically or viewing all of life under the authority of God.

So what do the laws do? They guide us into worship.

They guide us into faithful living so we don't throw it away

because Christ is here. My wife says it this way all the

time. And I say to you every couple

months, His law is his love. God's law is the expression of

his love because the law shows us things like that.

God is impartial. And so then he says, go and love

orphans and widows and sojourners.

And so then when you go out in the world and you fulfill this

command to love orphans and widows and sojourners and to

behave impartially, guess what you're doing?

You're manifesting his values on the earth.

You're pleasing him. You're showing his values and

his loves, his laws, his love. That's why Kevin Vanhooser, he

has a book upstairs. He prevents a a wonderful

theological framework that he calls theodrama.

It's the the the drama of doctrine is the book.

And in this theodrama he gives a metaphor.

He says God is like a playwright and the scriptures are the

script and the church is the cast and the world is the stage

and history is the unfolding drama.

And he points us to the to the Baptist baptism and he says it's

a it's a play, We're acting out a play and it's the gospel.

And he says, look at Lord's Supper.

It's another play. We're acting out to remind us of

the cross. He says, so your life, this

whole drama of redemption is a play.

We're engaged in the cosmic drama where we're the actors in

the Bible is the script that we're performing.

And with that metaphor, it reminds us that the Bible and

the the commandments are not just for intellectual knowledge

so that we can accumulate them and say, look at all I know

about God. He gives us the script so that

it can guide our living, which brings us to our response.

Look to verse 31 and you're going to see our responsibility

not only to hear the law, but to do it.

Read with me verses 31 and to the end.

But you stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole

commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach

them, that they may do them in the land that I'm giving you to

possess. You shall be careful then to do

as the Lord your God has commanded you.

You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.

You shall walk and all the way the Lord your God has commanded

you, that you may live, that it may way go, may go well for you,

and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.

Want to highlight verse 33. For you walk in all the way that

the Lord your God has commanded you.

So do them, because God promises that if you do, you'll be

blessed. And do them.

Because God has revealed himself in time.

He spoke from the fire. He is there, and He is not

silent. We don't have to grope around in

the dark trying to figure out what is good and beautiful and

true. He has told you, O man, what is

good. And we cannot feign ignorance.

And God delivered Israel, not that they could because they

kept the law, but so that they might keep the law.

And the same is true of Christianity.

Now we've been delivered in order to keep and remember and

do all that God has commanded. And we must remember that his

commandments are not burdensome for those who love Him.

And we've said it before in previous sermons that the more

you align your heart to the heart of Scripture and the more

you come to know God, the less you need rules like the 10

commandments pointing the finger at you and telling you the way

you you ought to go. It's written on your heart, and

you long to do them. And so today, remember the

resurrection and the work that Christ did.

Remember what the resurrection means, that God fulfilled this

law perfectly on your behalf. And you can live in obedience

and confidence and rest and grace and mercy with intensity

and zeal, not so that you can earn a reward, but because you

already have the reward. And we run that others may know,

and that the knowledge of the Lord might cover the earth as

the waters cover the sea. Deacons, I invite you please to

come forward as we remember the work of Christ.

We prepare our hearts for communion by praying church.

Please pray with me, Lord, we can keep this law and we

recognize now our need for a mediator.

We see that some 633 laws that we can never keep on our best

day, Lord, and we recognize that the glory of you, the only Son

of God, you came so that you might live a perfect life.

You might live in complete obedience to this so that we

don't have to. And we praise you that we're

granted your spirit so that we, we have the power to please you.

You've given us the power to keep this law, Lord.

And so we say, help us. Help us to run.

Help us not to go to the right hand or to the left, but live a

life of faithfulness so that the world will look on us, our life,

our marriage, our children. And they will say, I want what

they have. Their God is the true God.

God, we love you. Be with us now in Christ's name,

Amen. Thanks for listening.

To learn more about Heritage Church or if you'd like to

respond to this sermon, visit our website at

www.heritageshawnee. Dot org.