No Other Gods + Love the Lord

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Good morning.

My name is Brian and I am a member of the Alameda Community Group.

It's great to see you.

And today's scripture passage and lesson is from the Old Testament from the book of Exodus.

A reading from the book of Exodus.

You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.

Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.

Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.

Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God and they stood at the foot of the mountain.

Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire.

The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace and the whole mountain trembled violently.

And God spoke all these words.

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountains in smoke, they trembled with fear.

They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, speak to us yourself and we will listen, but do not have God speak to us or we will die.

When the Lord finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the covenant law, the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever.

Good morning.

I'm Jonathan, one of the other pastors here.

And we've begun a series over the past few weeks on the Ten Commandments.

Today we're going to be talking about the first of those ten.

And next to Psalm 23, next to the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments are probably the most and best known of all the portions of the Bible.

There are few parts of Scripture that have had such a large role in the life of the church and in public life as these Ten Commandments.

Because here we find a summary statement.

Here we find really the embodiment of God's will for all of human life.

But immediately we face a big question.

Immediately we face a problem.

And why is that?

Because the deepest value of Western secular culture is freedom.

It's liberty.

Give me liberty or give me death.

Right?

And we often define freedom or liberty as the absence of constraints.

And so many people look at Christianity and they begin to ask themselves, you know, if I get into this, is this going to narrow my options?

Is this going to limit my liberty and put constraints on my freedom and basically cramp my style?

Here we have Ten Commandments that are absolute truth claims.

That by definition constrain our liberty.

So this must be the enemy of our freedom.

And our goal over the next ten weeks as we go through the Ten Commandments is to actually try to convince you that these are not the enemy to freedom but actually the basis of true freedom.

That the Ten Commandments are the basis of being a truly free human being.

And you got to remember that these commands have a context.

They don't come out of nowhere.

They're what God says to his people after he rescues them out of Egypt and brings them to Mount Sinai.

And there he said in verse 1, God spoke all these words,

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

The first words of the Ten Commandments are not commands at all.

The first words of the Ten Commandments are a statement of love and a statement of loyalty and liberation.

The first words of the Ten Commandments are a statement of grace and of goodness of God to you.

And so we begin with who God is to his people.

And what it says is this family's fundamental identity is that we used to be slaves.

But now we've been liberated.

Now we're a free people and our liberator is the Lord.

And so really the Ten Commandments are a charter of freedom.

They're an ethic of freedom.

It's an ethic of people who are wanting to live free.

God says to them, if you'll listen to my voice, if you'll keep the terms of my covenant,

then I will set you apart as a holy nation.

I'll set you apart as a priestly kingdom.

And you will shine my light to all the peoples of the world.

But of course, if you want to be slaves again, if you want to slip back into bondage,

just ignore these words and do whatever you like.

So these are ten life-giving words, ten freedom-protecting words that are not given to us as a ladder

by which we climb up to secure God's love and his liberation.

God's people already have that.

It's not obey me so that I can deliver you.

It's you've been delivered.

So now here's the way to please me.

Here's the way to delight me.

Here's the way to say thank you.

Does that make sense?

Okay, I got to say that every week because we got to get it deep in our heads and our hearts.

Now, I want to dive in and I want to talk about the nature of God's law

and the substance of God's law and the purpose of God's law today

as we get into this first commandment.

And let's start with the nature of God's law.

The people have come here to the foot of Mount Sinai to meet with God.

And it says that God himself spoke these words to the people.

And it says in verse 19 that they said to Moses,

Moses, speak to us yourself and we will listen,

but do not have God speak any more to us or we will die.

These 10 commandments that God spoke from the mountain,

he didn't speak indirectly through his mediator, Moses.

He spoke them directly.

He spoke them audibly.

And this was such an awesome experience that basically they were overwhelmed.

They said, we can't take any more of this.

We can't handle any more of the power of the direct voice of God.

And you notice there in Exodus 31 verse 18,

Exodus 31:18

it says that these are the direct words from God given not only audibly at the mountain,

but they were also given legibly.

They were written, it says, by the finger of God.

That's the source of these commands.

And it also says that they're written on tablets of stone.

That's how solid they are.

That's how enduring they're going to be.

And they're so important that they're given two times in the Torah.

They're giving here first at Exodus chapter 20,

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

and they're given again in Deuteronomy chapter five to prepare the people

as they enter into the promised land.

So it must be really, really important.

And what God is saying is this is the foundational word for your life.

And here it is.

You shall have no other gods before me.

All you need to know is given to you right here.

And what do we need to know?

We need to know that humanity was made to worship the living God.

We were made to listen to God, to trust God, to love God, to obey God, and to worship God.

All the troubles, all the problems, all the trials of our world that persist,

the reason that our world is so miserable can be put quite simply.

And it's that human beings are alienated from this God.

This God who says you should have no other gods before me.

That's what's wrong with our world.

That's the cause of all of our troubles from the very, well, back to just after the beginning, I suppose.

It wasn't always that way.

But after humanity fell from a very high place,

God called out of humanity, and he chose one man, Abraham.

He chose one family, Israel.

And he said, I'm going to be your God, and you're going to be my covenant people,

and I'm going to liberate you from slavery, and you will enjoy a life of blessing.

You will enjoy a life of flourishing.

You will enjoy a life of freedom and peace on the condition that you live as I would have you to live.

And he puts before his people two possibilities, two alternatives.

You can have a life of blessing and doing it my way,

or you can have a life of cursing, doing it your way.

And that's how it's been since the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve were given a choice of how they would exercise their freedom.

And God said to them there, he said,

you can either live under me in blessing and peace and joy,

or you can live a life of miserable, wretched, cursed existence.

And here at Mount Sinai, God is reminding his people that this is just how life in his creation works.

And he puts it in such a clear and simple way that even a child can understand it.

These are the conditions upon which you will be blessed,

that you have no other gods before me.

But if you don't adhere to that law, you're not going to be blessed.

And if you just read the Old Testament for five or ten minutes,

you can see that when God's people submit to him,

when God's people submit to his law,

he blesses them and their life is noble,

their life is flourishing, their life is wonderful.

But when they rebel, when they refuse to keep his law,

when they turn after other gods,

everything invariably goes wrong.

Now, why is that?

Because the creator God has written into the very structure of his created reality,

and he's written into the very fabric of your created self,

that he must be first,

and he must be the greatest.

And what happens is when we decide we're going to live

and go against the grain of the universe,

what happens?

We get splinters.

Right?

When we decide we're going to go against the fabric of who God made me to be,

we're going to start to unravel.

When we break God's law,

we become broken.

And that's why Jesus,

when he's talking in the Gospels one afternoon,

he's asked this question about,

Jesus, what is the first commandment?

What's the greatest and most important commandment of all?

And what did Jesus answer in Matthew 22?

He said, love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul,

and with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment,

and the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

And here Jesus gives us a perfect summary of the Ten Commandments,

a perfect summary of God's moral law.

And the way he expounds them is that he says they can be divided into two sections,

which we call the two tables of the law.

The first table of the law is commands one through four.

Command one,

two,

three,

and four.

And that has to do with our attitude toward God and our relationship with God.

And then Jesus says there's the second table of the law that has to do with commands five through ten.

And that has to do with our attitude toward and our relationship with our fellow men and women.

And what Jesus is saying is if you look at God's moral law,

there's a vertical component that comes first about how we honor God.

And there's a horizontal component that comes second about how we honor our neighbor.

And if you follow Jesus' exposition of the law,

he says that you've got two divisions,

two sections,

two tables of commands.

But notice that there's an order.

Notice that one comes before the other.

The first division is the one in which we are reminded about our relationship with God.

What am I to do in order to have a happy life,

a blessed life,

a contented life?

What has the whole world got to do

that it might be delivered from all of its troubles and wars and miseries and calamities?

The answer comes that the supreme thing in life

is to be in a right relationship with God.

You should have no other gods before me.

You've got to love me.

Trust me.

Obey me.

Worship me.

I am the Lord is how the commandments begin.

The law of God,

importantly,

does not start with me.

It doesn't start with you.

I am the Lord is how it starts.

It doesn't start with our financial problems.

It doesn't start with our psychological problems.

It doesn't start with our relational problems

or our social problems

or our political problems.

No, the first thing,

the law is concerned to hold before us

is to hold us face to face with God.

God first.

Humanity and all of its issues second.

And that order is absolutely vital.

The most fatal blunder in human thinking

is the failure to remember this order.

God and our relationship with God

comes first before everything else.

That is the greatest issue in the world today.

Of course, the Ten Commandments are going to deal with all sorts of external, social, horizontal issues

like your parents and authorities and murder and adultery and stealing and all these things.

But those are always downstream

from this existential, spiritual, vertical concern about our relationship with God.

And the point of the Ten Commandments is that you can't regard humanity

and its problems rightly and correctly

unless you regard human beings in their relationship to God.

So, what that means is that we can look around the Bay Area right now

and we can think about all of our social divisions and disputes.

We can look at our class issues between rich and poor,

the haves and the have-nots.

We can look at our work issues between management and employment.

We can look at our personal clashes between men and women,

husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbor and neighbor.

And people can try to solve those problems by looking to the economists

and looking to the psychologists and looking to the sociologists

and looking to the philosophers and looking to the politicians.

But you won't understand any of that properly.

You won't understand any of that holistically

until you look at all these people in terms of who?

In terms of God.

In terms of their relationship with God.

You shall have no other gods before me.

That's the first thing he says.

Because we've been made by God

and we can't truly function as human beings

unless and until we are in a right relationship with God.

And when we forget God,

when we try to live our lives apart from God,

when we try to run our lives without God,

we always get into trouble.

And you can just look at the world around you.

You can just read the newspaper this morning

to see the evidence of that.

If I look at myself apart from God

and I look at other men and women apart from God,

I begin to set myself up as a God.

And other people do the same.

I want to be first.

And they want to be first.

I want things the way I want it.

They want things the way they want it.

I want my sovereign rights as an individual.

You want your sovereign rights as an individual.

They want their sovereign rights as a nation.

And we want our sovereign rights as a nation.

And we're all at a war of all against all.

Why is that?

Because we're not all on our knees together

worshiping the one true living God.

But when I'm doing that,

when I'm worshiping God rightly,

having no other gods before him,

I can begin to see myself as a creature made by God,

living under God, totally dependent upon God.

And then I begin to see my fellow men and women

as creatures just like me.

And the order of these commandments

is tremendously important

because the first table must come before the second table.

When we fail to observe the first things about God,

we will inevitably begin to ignore

and neglect the second things about people.

When we fail in the vertical,

we will very soon begin to see the unraveling

of the horizontal at the individual level,

the familia level, the social level,

the national level, and the international level.

And so my first question for you this morning, friends,

is do you believe that God is first?

Do you believe the order?

It's written into the very fabric of the universe,

the very fabric of yourself,

that God is supposed to be first and greatest

and most important than everything else.

Do you believe that?

And if someone were to come and audit your life

and they looked at your calendar

and how you spent your time

and they looked at your bank account

and how you spent your money

and they looked at the books and what you read

and they look at your priorities

and the decisions and choices you make,

would it be obvious to them that you believe that?

The nature of God's law.

But I want to also talk about the substance of God's law.

This is sort of a general overview,

but let me get it now down into the specifics

about the substance of this first and foundational command

by which all the other commands stand or fall.

If you get this first commandment,

everything else will just fall in line.

If you don't get this thing,

everything else is going to fall apart.

Verse three,

you shall have no other gods before me.

First of all,

it's the you there,

you shall,

the you there is first person singular.

The Lord is speaking directly

to each individual listener.

And he's saying you,

Jonathan Berry St.

Claire,

I'm looking at you.

I'm talking to you.

I brought you out of slavery

and therefore you,

Jonathan,

are to have no other gods before me.

Secondly,

he says you shall,

you shall.

These are not 10 suggestions.

They're not 10 recommendations.

They are 10 commandments.

If your employer says,

you shall come work in the office

from Monday to Friday,

if your government says,

you shall pay your taxes

on April 15th,

you recognize the,

and you honor the authority

as the one who enjoys the privileges

of being a citizen

and being an employee

and you get in line.

Well,

the one who says,

you shall here,

is the high king of heaven.

He's the ultimate authority

by which all other authority

is derived.

And as your creator,

he owns you.

And if he's redeemed you,

he doubly owns you.

And that means he can tell you

to do things.

He can command you.

He can direct you.

He can say,

you shall.

And the third thing here

is he says,

you shall have no,

or a lot of them say,

you shall not.

Most of these commandments

are negative,

but they assume the positive.

And some of them

are positive

and they assume the negative.

So for example,

when you fast forward

to the fourth commandment,

it says,

remember the Sabbath day

by keeping it holy.

Or the fifth commandment,

honor your father

and your mother.

Those positive commands

assume the negative.

The negative commands

assume the positive.

So for example,

in the Garden of Eden,

in Genesis chapter two,

God says,

you shall not eat

from the tree

of the knowledge

of good and evil.

And the great temptation

there in that moment

was to focus

on the one negative prohibition

about one tree.

But that command

implied the positive permission

about thousands

and thousands

and thousands

and thousands

of other fruit trees

in the garden

to be enjoyed.

And so what we have

to remember

is that every no,

God says,

there's many yeses.

And every restriction

God gives,

there's a thousand freedoms

and permissions.

It says,

no other God.

That's the negative side

of the command.

But the positive side

is what?

You get to have me

as your God.

You get to have

the one true living God

as your God.

The fourth thing,

you, singular,

you shall,

command, authority.

You shall not,

negative but also positive.

And then it says,

you shall have

no other gods.

Now on the one hand,

the Bible says

that there's only one God.

This is a monotheistic book.

The other gods

of the nations,

Egypt,

Babylon,

Greeks,

Romans,

those gods

don't actually exist.

They're nothings.

There are no other

deities or divinities

competing

to be beside God

or before God.

They're not there.

But on the other hand,

God gives us this command

knowing the original temptation

in Genesis 3,

which was what?

You shall be like God.

That's the original temptation

for the human heart,

especially the fallen human heart,

is to think that we

ourselves

can live as

lords

in the place of God.

that little creatures

can trade places

with the creator,

can play the part

of the creator.

Little dependent creatures

can elevate themselves

to a place of power

and authority

where only the creator God

deserves to be.

The biblical record,

the historical record,

proves that

we not only seek

to deify ourselves

and divinize

ourselves,

our creaturely selves

in many ways,

but we also do this

with all manner

of aspects

of God's creation.

And just to give you

one example,

Jesus says

in the Sermon on the Mount,

he says,

you cannot serve

both God and money.

And what Jesus

is saying there

is that there's something

in our human heart

that's inclined

to take a good part

of God's creation

like money,

like material well-being,

like any entity

that has the potential

to create wealth.

and we can give

that thing

such an elevated status,

such an ultimate status

in the thoughts

of our minds

and the affections

of our hearts

that it's no longer

a gift from God

to get work done.

Money is no longer

a gift from God

to create a flourishing

human community.

Now money

is money

with a capital M.

Right?

I serve it.

I live for it.

I need it.

I want it.

It's my precious.

And if I have

more of it,

I feel happy.

I feel great.

I feel secure.

And if I have less of it,

I feel devastated.

I feel sad.

If I lose it,

I'm feeling total despair.

Martin Luther,

who wrote that first song

we sang today,

he also wrote this

in the 16th century.

He said,

what does it mean

to have a God?

And his answer was this.

A God means that

from which

we are to expect

all good

and to which

we are to take refuge

in all distress.

A God is that

upon which

you set your heart

and put your trust.

That is properly

your God.

And what he's saying

is that we can

set our heart

and we can put our trust

and we can pledge

our loyalty

to many finite

and created things

and we can give it

ultimate value,

ultimate meaning,

and ultimate power

and we can say

to that thing

instead of saying to God,

God,

you are my life,

you are my security,

you are my hope.

The scriptures

are full of examples

of this.

Job 31 says

we can put our trust

in gold

and we can say to gold,

you are my security

and my confidence.

Psalm 146 says

that we can put our trust

in princes

and in human beings

who cannot save us.

Habakkuk 1 says

that our strength

can become our God.

Philippians 3 says

that our stomach

can become our God.

2 Timothy 3 says

that we can be lovers

of pleasure

more than lovers

of God.

When we set our heart

on and put our trust

in things

that are not worthy

of our ultimate loyalty

and allegiance,

they will eventually

take the place of God

and in that place,

because they're not God,

they will enslave us

and they will dehumanize us

and they'll do the same thing

to all the people around us,

whether it's money,

whether it's sex,

whether it's power,

whether you live

for your work

and your career

and your status

and your success,

whether you live

for romance

or for children

or for family,

if you make anything

other than God

God in your life,

when these gifts

that are meant

to be means

to the end

of glorifying God

actually become

the ends in themselves,

it will lead

to your enslavement

and your destruction.

Because these are

wonderful servants

but they're terrible masters.

They're wonderful gifts

but they're terrible gods.

And I want you to look

at the last phrase

in this command

which it says,

you shall have

no other gods

where?

Before me.

The Hebrew

literally here says,

there will not be

for you

any other gods

before my face

or in my presence.

And what that means

is that your chief end,

your highest good

as a human being

is to live

before the face

of God.

It's to live

in the presence

of God.

And remember,

verse 2 doesn't say,

I am a God

or I am the God.

What does it say?

It says,

I am the Lord,

your God.

And so when he liberated you

and he brought you

into a covenant

relationship with him

and he said,

I, the absolute,

transcendent

and holy God

am your God

and you are my people.

You belong to me.

This is language

very much

like the song of songs.

I am my beloved's

and my beloved is mine.

And that's why

the scriptures

talk about

the relationship

between God

and his people

like a marriage.

That we're bonded

to God.

We're wedded

to our covenant

God

in an exclusive

and permanent

and intimate

personal relationship.

So what does it mean

then to bring

other alternative

substitute gods

before the face

of the real God

into the presence

of the living God?

I hope we can all agree

that cheating

on your spouse

is bad.

Right?

It's wrong.

It's an injustice.

Adultery

is a terrible

betrayal of trust

and a form

of treachery

and an expression

of deep dishonor.

And while cheating

on your spouse

is bad

God is more

than our spouse.

God is our king.

And so to bring

an alternative

substitute God

before his face

and into his presence

is basically

saying to him

I would like

this thing

to sit on

your eternal throne.

I would like

this thing

to be my God

instead.

And that's not

just adultery.

That's not just

betrayal.

That's high treason.

He's the king.

God looks and says

you want to put

that little

unworthy

thing

on my eternal throne?

You want me to share

my sovereignty

and my supremacy

with that little person?

That little project?

That little thing?

It's offensive

to him.

But you see

the positive

of this

law

is

there in

Deuteronomy 6

and Jesus quotes it

when he says

what this means

is that you're

to love the Lord

your God

with all your heart

with all your soul

with all your mind

and with all your strength.

God wants

your undivided heart

and allegiance

to be given

wholly to him.

He does not

want to share you

with another

would-be

king

or lord

or master.

He wants to have you

absolutely

without any conditions

without any exceptions

under all circumstances

always

and everywhere.

He wants

every part of you.

He wants

everything you are.

He wants

everything

you have.

He wants

your total

and complete

commitment

of trust

and obedience

that is unreserved

and unwavering

in whatever

the circumstances.

What God

is saying here

is I want you

to depend

on me

for everything.

I want you

to come to me

with all of your needs.

I want you

to love me

with all of your thinking.

I want you

to love me

with all of your longing.

I want you

to love me

with all of your striving.

I want you

to make me first.

Make me central

in your life.

And I want you

to be willing

to give up

anything

that would go

against me

and against my will

in any way.

Friends,

have you put

the full weight

of your trust

on God alone?

Is your heart

clinging to him

and holding

fast to him

for dear life?

have you put

him first

above all

the other loves?

Are you reordering

and rearranging

all your other loves

under this supreme

love?

And are you

giving thanks

to him

in all things?

That's the substance

of this law.

But let me move

from the nature

of God's law

and the substance

of God's law

finally to the purpose

of God's law.

As I've been

reading about

this law

all week,

I've been thinking

about people

in the Bible

that actually

obeyed this command.

Who can you

think of

that put God

first and had

God central

in their loves?

I think about

Abraham

who was

willing to

give up

the best gift

that God

had given him.

He was willing

to give up

his own

treasured son

out of love

for God.

I think about

David

who said

who loved

God so much

he said

I thirst

for you God.

You and you

alone are my

rock

and my salvation.

You

are my refuge

and my strength.

You

are my good.

I have no other

good apart

from you.

I think about

Daniel

who loved

God so much

he would

rather be

thrown to the

lions.

He would

rather die

than to stop

getting on

his knees

three times

a day

to pray

to God,

to thank

God,

to call

on God

for help.

And I think

about these

people in the

Bible who

love God,

Abraham and

David and

Daniel,

and I look

at my life

next to them

and it

feels like

I barely

love God

at all.

And I

don't just

compare my

life with

them,

but I

begin to

look into

the mirror

of God's

law of

love and

when I

look closely

into this

mirror,

you shall have

no other

gods before

me,

I begin to

see there's

a lot of

dirt on my

face.

There's quite

a number of

flaws that

from a distance

you couldn't

really see,

but now I

can see

there's some

serious

problems.

I fall

so far

short

of the

standard

of humanity

for which

God made

me and

when I

look into

the law,

I can

see,

oh my

goodness,

I need

to be

cleansed.

Oh my

goodness,

there's

something

broken in

me that

needs to

be healed.

There's

something

deeply

wrong in

me that

needs to

be

forgiven

and

that's

the

first

purpose

of

God's

law is

to show

us

our sin

and our

need for

God.

But the

second

purpose

of God's

law is

to drive

me to

Jesus.

It's to

drive me

to Jesus

because

Jesus is

this God

of Mount

Sinai

who came

down from

the mountain

in the

flesh

and he's

the only

person in

the Bible

and in

history

who embodied

God's

commands

and obeyed

God's

commands

wholly

and consistently

every day,

all day,

his whole

life.

He succeeded

in God's

law

at every

point

where we

fail.

He

perfectly,

think about

that,

he perfectly

fulfilled

God's

law,

not only

by the

active

obedience

of his

life,

but also

in the

passive

obedience

of giving

up his

life to

death on

the cross.

When he

did that,

he took

all of our

sins on

his shoulders,

all the

ways that

we fall

short of

God's

design and

desires for

our life,

all the

ways that

we take

his commands

and we

just trespass

them and

do what

we want

anyway,

all the

ways that

we subvert

his moral

order,

Jesus absorbed

all of

those failures

in his

body on

his cross.

And we

know from

psychologists,

psychologists

tell us that

the worst

thing that

can happen

to you

is to

be forsaken

by someone

that you

love.

That's the

worst thing

that can

happen to

you is to

be forsaken

by somebody

that you

love.

And yet on

the cross,

Jesus, as he

was shedding

his blood

for us, he

cried out,

my God, my

God, why

have you

forsaken

me?

Now, why

did he say

that on the

cross?

We

forsaken

God and

therefore we

deserve to be

forsaken by

God.

Jesus never

forsook God

and yet he's

saying, my

God, my

God, why

have you

forsaken

me?

And you

see, when

Jesus says

that, he's

fulfilling

God's law

by allowing

himself to

be forsaken

in our

place.

He's taking

the penalty

for our

sins by

living the

life we

should have

lived, by

dying the

death that

we should

have died.

He's

fulfilling

God's law.

He's taking

the curse that

we deserved

and he's

giving us

the blessing

that he

deserved.

And that's

how he

loved God

with all of

his heart

and loved

his neighbor

as himself.

He's

cleansing our

guilt.

He's

covering over

our shame.

He's taking

the wages

of sin,

which is

death.

And instead

of having

us have

our blood

shed, he's

having his

blood shed

so he can

deal with the

debt of our

sin in

full.

So the

first purpose

of the

law is to

show us

our sin

and the

second purpose

of the

law is to

drive us

to Jesus.

To drive us

to the only

one who can

deal with our

sin.

But the

third purpose

of the

law is to

give us a

blueprint for

our freedom.

It's to give

us a blueprint

for how to

live a life

of gratitude

in response

to God's

salvation.

When you

become a

Christian, God

gives you a

new nature.

God unites

you to

Jesus.

God fills

you with

his Holy

Spirit.

And from

that point

on, God

expects you

by his

power to

make a

moral effort

to live

out this

law of

liberty.

Second

Corinthians

five says

the love

of Christ

compels

us.

The love

of Christ

compels

us to

live like

Christ.

When we

see what

Jesus did

for us,

when we

see what

he did

in his

life that

we could

not do,

when we

see what

he did

in his

death in

our place,

well, we

want to

please him.

We want to

delight him

because the

love of

Christ is

compelling

us.

We want to

say with the

psalmist in

Psalm 119,

I run in the

path of

your

commands

because you

have set

my heart

free.

And so we

say to

Jesus,

Lord, thank

you so

much for

setting me

free.

Now let me

run in the

path of

your commands.

I want to

have no

other God

before the

living God.

I want to

love the

Lord my

God with

all my

heart,

with all

my soul,

with all

my mind,

and with

all my

strength.

may God

enable us

to live

this way.

In the

name of

the Father,

Son,

and Holy

Spirit,

Amen.