The Intent of the Law

Thank you again, Mr. Shoemaker.

I think, if we think back enough, and some of us are older and some of us are not as old, but I'll bet everybody in this question can remember being asked and probably asking that age-old question, what do you want to be when you grow up?

Now, when I was young, the most common answers, I think, were astronaut. The Apollo program was going full swing. Policemen, sometimes rock star. Or, I grew up closer to the city out here. It might have been country music star or singing cowboy, maybe. I better watch what I say. I know.

Actually, I heard a story on NPR just last weekend that surprised me, although I knew I'd heard this. I'm getting sidetracked off my notes, but I didn't realize that country music is incredibly popular all around the world. And in Eastern Europe and in Africa and places like that. So, someone aspiring to that is not out of the norm at all.

And of course, when kids get a bit older, they start knowing more about different professions, and they might aspire to be things like mechanics or doctors, farmers, teachers, things like so on. There's almost an endless number of things. But think, those of you, especially, who are parents, what if you asked your son or daughter what he or she wanted to be, and they said, Well, I want to grow up to be a politician. Or I want to be a tax lawyer. Or maybe a divorce lawyer. I suspect those professions don't carry the best image in most of our minds. Am I right? And if you think why? Well, politicians, they have this reputation of being slimy.

And not necessarily literally covered in a viscous substance, but of being selfish, dishonest, just in it for themselves. And many tend to think of lawyers in just about the same way. And, according to this, we tend to not think highly of lawyers, and less are until we need a lawyer. And then we hope we get one of the good ones. But I think back to when I was 19 or 20, I had a friend up in Columbus who, he said it this way, and it's always stuck in my mind, he said, I would never want to be a lawyer, because it's too much like being a prostitute. I always expected more chuckles on that. Now, what he meant was that when you're a lawyer, you get hired by someone to argue their case, and you have to argue it whether you agree or not, whether it's right or wrong. Now, that sounded pretty convincing to me at the time, and in some ways it still is, but I've come to realize it's not always true. And I don't want to run down lawyers entirely. I'm going to talk about some of the attitude that could be involved. But there have been some great leaders in our history. And, matter of fact, I'm thinking in terms of that new movie that came out about Abraham Lincoln. I'm eager to see it. As a historian, I've studied his life quite a bit. And it focuses, I believe, mostly on the period of his presidency. But I can say one thing I learned about Lincoln was that the decades that he practiced law before being more involved in politics, he was a lawyer, but he had the habit of not being shy about turning down someone if they wanted to hire him. If he thought someone was wrong, he didn't want to take their case. And he would sometimes advise them to go talk to that other fellow over there. He might represent you. So I want to believe that there are some lawyers of integrity today.

Now, of course, I mentioned studying Lincoln's life and others. As a history professor, I ended up studying a lot about law, especially constitutional law. That's my period, the late 1700s, when the Founding Fathers lived and were putting together the Constitution. So, in some ways, I feel like I've been exposed to it and read a lot, so I might have a slightly better-than-average understanding. Although, that's one of those things that every time you think you know something, you've got to watch out. You find out you don't.

I enjoyed it so much, I ever thought that if by some miracle I ever had a lot of time and a lot of money, both at the same time, which I say it would take a miracle for that, but I might enjoy going to law school. It'd be kind of interesting.

But still, this, what I'll call a matured attitude toward lawyers, hasn't entirely erased all of my earlier thoughts, especially concerning the specialties that I mentioned.

Why do we think negatively about tax or divorce lawyers?

I think it's because we think of them as exerting all of their energies and being expert at getting their clients something that they don't really deserve. At not necessarily trying to follow the law, but looking to find ways around it.

Now, say, for instance, if the law in a state says, well, when a couple divorces, they just evenly split up everything.

Well, a divorce lawyer sees it as his job to try to get his client more than half.

And tax lawyers are very similar. Their job is to try to help their client pay the fewest taxes possible.

Now, if I suddenly had my income jump to a million dollars a year, I'd want one of those tax lawyers.

You know, set me up a tax shelter and maybe some dummy corporation that can lose money on paper and still provide me a multitude of fringe benefits.

And some of you are starting to look like those students at ABC. I'm getting a little worried.

I've gone a little ways down this line of thinking, and you might be wondering, what is he getting at?

Is he going to give a sermon on lawyers today? Well, what I want to do is think about how much of us, each of us may sometimes act like tax lawyers when it comes to God's law.

Now, we don't want to do that, but it's easy to slip into that. And let's think about what should be our attitude towards the law.

Now, as God's people, we are concerned greatly with law, especially God's law.

We spend some time studying that far more than a lot of other things. We remember what Jesus said. We're going to turn to Matthew 5 if you want to start heading there.

But many of you could quote this by heart when he says, I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.

That's in Matthew 5, 17.

Those of you who ordered a box of those memory scriptures last year from ABC, it's funny, I've got a box, and I haven't looked at it very much.

I'm embarrassed to say. But I'm pretty sure that's one of the cards in there. But let's move forward and see what he said after that.

He said in verse 18, Assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law, till all is fulfilled.

Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom.

And we often interject there and say, that doesn't mean that they'll be in the kingdom, but those who are there will say, those who taught to break the law will be called least.

But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Now we take this to mean what it says.

It doesn't seem to leave much room for a tax lawyer-like attitude of trying to get away with as much as possible.

But there are those who do interpret it differently, and I hope most of us understand that.

What we call mainstream Christianity teaches that when it says, till all is fulfilled, means that once Jesus lived a perfect life and fulfilled every one of the commands, then everyone else didn't have to do it anymore.

It had been fulfilled.

Now that makes it easy for them to sidestep the instructions that they don't necessarily want to follow. Especially the Seventh-Day Sabbath, keeping the annual Holy Days, tithing, anything else that seems offensive to them.

Their reasoning is that the Old Testament law was a temporary set of rules, put in place only for the children of Israel and lasting just until Christ was crucified.

Our belief, though, is that God's law is spiritual.

Spiritual, and we like to use the word immutable, which means unchanging.

If you'll turn with me to Romans 7, we'll see why. Why do I say the law is spiritual?

I say it because the Apostle Paul wrote it, Romans 7 and verse 14. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I'm carnal, sold under sin. So we are carnal, we are flesh, but the law is spiritual.

I wanted to read that first because I made that point first, but if we back up a couple of verses to Romans 7 and verse 12.

Paul also said, Therefore the law is holy, the commandment holy and just and good. That's holy with an H, not a W-H. It is holy as an entirely just and good, but it is also holy, meaning it's sanctified by God.

God's presence is in it.

That doesn't sound to me like something that's minor or impractical that God's eager to be rid of at the first opportunity.

But we can also look back in Scripture and we can easily see that the law wasn't necessarily...

There are Scriptures to tell us that the law didn't come to an end when Christ was crucified.

Let's go to Psalms 111. Psalm 111 will begin in verse 7.

And I should say, I know that this is largely a review to many of us, but I want to firmly establish in our minds the idea of the law being in place before I move on to talk about some other subjects or some other aspects of it.

Psalm 111 will begin in verse 7.

And the works of his hands are verity and justice. Verity is another word for truth.

All his precepts are sure. Now, I looked up the word precept because I thought, that sounds familiar, but what does it mean?

Precept means a command or a principle that's intended to be a general rule of action.

You could say, there have been dictators in human governments in the past where they rule by dictates. Their word becomes law.

Well, they might aspire to that, but when it comes to God, his word does become law. When he gives a general statement, it's law.

And it says here, his precepts are sure. They stand fast forever and ever. And they're done in truth and uprightness.

So, God's precepts, his laws stand forever and ever. He sent redemption to his people. He has commanded his covenant forever.

Holy and awesome is his name.

Another scripture along those lines is in Genesis 26.

Genesis 26 and verse 5. We spent some time a couple weeks ago talking about Sarah and her and Abraham's experiences. Here's a very specific statement about Abraham.

And it's interesting. Remember, this is hundreds of years before Mount Sinai when God gave the Ten Commandments to Israel and handed the tablets of stone to Moses.

Here it says of Abraham well before that. Abraham obeyed my voice, kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, my laws. That seems to cover it all.

You've got commands, statutes, laws. And this is, as I said, hundreds of years before Moses, before the nation of Israel. So these laws did not come into existence at Mount Sinai. And we know they did not cease to exist when Christ was sacrificed.

I was going to turn here, but rather, I want to go to Acts 21. And while you're turning, I'll just mention that there's one more place that demonstrates that to us in the Old Testament.

And that's the point where the children of Israel are coming up to Mount Sinai. They haven't got there yet. They haven't heard God speak the Ten Commandments.

But this is when Moses is leading the children of Israel. And you might remember his father-in-law comes out. His father-in-law comes and he says, I'm coming and I'm bringing your wife and your two sons. And Moses greets him and they have a big dinner with the elders of Israel and they rejoice and they're happy to meet him.

And the next day, Moses gets up early and he sits there and there's a line of people waiting to see him. And his father-in-law says, What are you doing? He says, well, the people need to know the law of God. They've got disagreements or things that need settled. So they come to me and I explain the law of God.

And it's funny, the father-in-law doesn't say, what do you mean law of God? What's that? I've never heard of it.

And nobody else does. They assume that there's a law of God. And Moses says, I explain it to them. And it was only a few days after that that they came to Mount Sinai and God thundered it from the mountaintop and gave him the tables of stone.

So this fits with the idea that the law existed before God gave it to Moses. It's just that he was making it known again. They had to come and ask Moses because they'd lost track of it. But it wasn't because it didn't exist.

We'll see many theologians want to use the writings of the Apostle Paul to say, well, all the law is done away. I want to look in Acts 21, starting in verse 24, to show that the Apostle Paul kept the law himself.

But we'll also see that there's room to understand why people might be confused and might dispute this.

In Acts 21, in verse 24, Paul has come to Jerusalem and he meets, he's speaking with James, who's the pastor of the Jerusalem church.

As a matter of fact, I'll begin in verse 23. James tells him, This is speaking of Paul.

And the Apostle Paul is going to go through this elaborate ceremony in the temple, the type of thing that is described in the Old Testament, and say, well, Paul does these kind of things.

But where we see a contrast in what could cause us confusion is the next verse. Verse 25, he says, And as I said, there's some room for confusion. Are those new laws that came into place? Are some Old Testament laws no longer in force while others are?

Well, to be honest, the answer to that is yes. In some sense, it is the case.

God's spiritual law is exactly what we've read. It's eternal, unchanging.

But let's read some of what people who misunderstand the Apostle Paul, what he did say.

Let's go to Galatians chapter 3 and explain this. As I said, I want to have this as a firm foundation.

And before we move on to explain what our attitude should be about the law that we know is in force, Galatians 3 and verse 19, here Paul writes, Well, what purpose does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, to whom the promise was made, and it was appointed through angels by the hand of the mediator.

So here the Apostle Paul is saying, what's this law? It was added because of sin, until the promise was made of the mediator, until Jesus Christ, basically, the seed that would come.

Well, that seems to fit with exactly what mainstream Christianity teaches.

Also in verse 24, Galatians 3 and verse 24 says, Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

But after the faith has come, we're no longer under a tutor.

Yeah, that does sure seem to fit that interpretation.

If I stop right now, you might say, well, Frank, you're wrong, and we're getting out of here. We're going to come to church on Sundays.

I think we can clarify this apparent contradiction if we go back and look at some Old Testament laws.

Let's go to Jeremiah chapter 7.

I know we've discussed this some other times.

We want to remember that when the Apostle Paul says, Law, there is more than one thing to which he could be referring.

Jeremiah 7 and verse 21.

That's one. We might have had as many as 15 in Athens, but I still didn't hear a lot of pages rustling there.

It's always reassuring. Jeremiah 27 and 21 says, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Add to your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, and eat meat.

For I did not speak to your fathers or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.

But this is what I commanded them, saying, Obey my voice, and I'll be your God, and you shall be my people.

Walk in all the ways that I've commanded you, that it may be well with you.

Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and dictates of their evil hearts and went backwards.

And although I'm not going to turn back there and read it, we could find that exactly borne out by the account in Exodus.

Scripture shows us that though God's law existed long before Israel came to Mount Sinai, God revealed it to them, and most people probably had lost knowledge of it by then.

God spoke the Ten Commandments Himself.

Then He gave a set of statutes and judgments to Moses, along with the instructions for how to build the tabernacle.

And while that was happening, I should say while God was giving those instructions to Moses, while God was speaking from the top of the mountain, people were shaking in their shoes, and who knows doing what else, but they were very much afraid.

But after that, God called Moses up, and Moses was up there for 40 days and 40 nights.

And what were the children of Israel doing?

Well, at first they were sitting around waiting, and then they were saying, Huh? Where'd he go? Maybe he's not coming back.

They said, Well, Aaron, we don't know what happened to this guy that led us out here.

Here, make us some gods that we can worship.

And, of course, Aaron did say, Well, give me the earrings.

And the way Aaron tells it, Well, I threw him in the fire and outwalked this calf.

You know, I don't know if we'll let... Well, we will eventually know the story.

From reading it, it sounds like, you know, did Aaron really carve this thing, or did Satan cause it to form into a calf?

No, but we know that they sinned. But up to that point, God hadn't given commands about sacrifices.

Up to that point, he'd only commanded one animal sacrifice, and that was the Passover, which, of course, we know perfectly reflected the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

But after that, when Moses came down, and in his anger, he broke the tables, and he ground up the calf and made him drink it because he spread it in the water.

When he went back and talked to God after that, God started giving him an elaborate set of commands, a full law that had to do with animal sacrifice, with ritual cleansing, and those types of things.

This is the law that was added, the law that was a tutor, not God's spiritual law, but the sacrificial system.

The Ten Commandments and the statutes and judgments tell people how to live.

Let's see that explained back in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 10.

Hebrews 10, we'll begin at the start of the chapter.

Hebrews 10 and verse 1, For the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not in the very image of the things, can never, with these same sacrifices. That gives us a clue that we're talking about the law that deals with sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, can never make those who approach perfect. For them, would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshippers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. He's saying, if you could offer a bull or a goat, and it stops you from sinning, and you're righteous after that, you don't have to do it again. It says in verse 3, But in those sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. For it's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. Now, they are a reminder, though, of the penalty for sin, the satyant that sin brings death. It takes blood, the life, to pay for it. Let's move ahead to verse 8. Because you could say, why set up the commands to do these sacrifices? Here, he's quoting from the Old Testament, previously saying, sacrifice and offering, burn offerings and offerings for sin, you did not desire, nor had pleasure in them, which are offered according to the law. Then he said, Behold, I've come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first that he may establish the second. By that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. When it says, By that will, it's talking about God's will. God's intent, his desire. And this is explaining that the sacrificial system was a symbol of the one and only sacrifice that actually could pay the penalty for sin. That sacrifice was the life of our very Creator. So the sacrificial law wasn't about our conduct. It wasn't about how we live our lives, about how we show love towards God and man.

That would be done by the spiritual law that could never be undone. Now, the law, as I said, did show that sin brings a steep penalty. Let's go down and begin reading in verse 11. Every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man, referring to Jesus Christ, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. From that time waiting till his enemies are made his footstool, for, four by one offering, he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

Let me summarize. For the physical nation of Israel, after they showed that they already were sinning and not obeying the law that God gave, God added a physical set of sacrificial laws. Because those people didn't have his Holy Spirit, they couldn't truly repent and accept the actual sacrifice for sin. And, of course, I should add that, of course, that actual sacrifice had not yet taken place, and God's Spirit would not be generally available until after that had happened. We've seen that after Christ's sacrifice, for those who are called by God and given his Spirit, God took away the requirement to fulfill those physical traditions. But he didn't take away the law on how to love and how to conduct ourselves.

We could say, though, that he did add something, a requirement that was not part of the instructions given to ancient Israel. And that's what I want to get at. He added or revealed what we would call the Spirit of the law.

And we're to live by the Spirit of God's law.

I had to catch myself this morning. When I reached this point, it sounded like, okay, that was the introduction to the sermon.

It wasn't necessarily meant as just an introduction, but I wanted to, like I said, review and ground it in our minds that we understand the difference of what was done away, or what was temporarily added and no longer continued, and what is eternal. That God's law is a reflection of himself, and that can never change.

We've already read, Jesus said he came not to do away with the law, but to fulfill it.

Rather than say he fulfilled it and thus removed any need for people to obey it, we believe that when he fulfilled it, it meant he filled it up. He expanded it and added to it. Well, I don't want to say added to it. I keep saying that. But what I mean is he revealed an added dimension that had always been there, but which people couldn't understand. If you will, join me in 2 Corinthians chapter 3.

2 Corinthians 3 and verse 6.

2 Corinthians 3 and verse 7.

He says, Who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. I wanted to read this early on in this section because we use these terms, Spirit of the law as opposed to letter of the law. And it's just to use it, but what does it mean? Well, I thought rather than explain it to my... or try to explain it myself, it would do well to read some of Jesus Christ's explanation. What did he have to say about it? Let's start with a demonstration of the difference between the way physical thinking lawyers... They weren't tax lawyers or divorce lawyers that I know of, but there were lawyers at his time. And let's look at the difference between the way they looked at the law and the way he wants us to. If you'll go to Matthew 23. Matthew 23 will begin in verse 16. Now, this is part of a larger discussion back and forth between them. And one thing you've got to say about Jesus is, of course, he was God in the flesh. He wasn't afraid. He didn't feel like he needed to pull punches. If someone needed corrected, he could do it. And here he's in the midst of doing that. In verse 16, he says, Woe to you blind guides who say, Whoever swears by the temple, that's nothing. But whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he's obliged to perform it. Doesn't that sound like something a tax lawyer might come up with? Jesus says, You fools and blind. Which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? But the lawyers say this in verse 18, Whoever swears by the altar, it's nothing. But whoever swears by the gift that's on it, he's obliged to perform it. You fools and blind. He doesn't have the word you there. For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore, he who swears by the altar, swears by it, and by all things on it. He who swears by the temple, swears by it, and by him who dwells in it.

And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God, and him who sits on it.

Jesus was saying that taking an oath is all-encompassing. The petty details about, did you swear on this or that? And one is binding and one's not. That doesn't outweigh the actual intention. That's one of the reasons, of course, in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, Don't swear at all. Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and then stand behind it. Let's go on in verse 23. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

You pay tithe of mint, anise, and cummin' or is it cumin? I always get that backwards. And have neglected, though, the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the other undone. Now, that last phrase is important. He didn't say, tithing doesn't matter anymore. It was eliminated with the sacrificial law. He didn't say, well, that's just a general guideline, and it doesn't have to be 10%. He said, no, the other should not be undone. We do have to be careful about thinking, doing it, and doing it properly. But there are weightier matters. Justice, mercy, and faith are weightier matters.

God sets that as a higher priority. And so He emphasizes those more. Again, not to leave the other undone, but what are you thinking about? What's your focus? Let's go to Hosea 6, if you will.

We're going to come back to Matthew, by the way. I did this this morning. I thought, oh, I should have said stick your finger in there. We're not coming back to the same chapter, but we'll be back in Matthew. But Hosea 6, Hosea is the next book after Daniel. Of course, if you have trouble finding Daniel, that won't help, but that usually works for me. Hosea 6 and verse 6. Here God is speaking, and He says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. I desire the knowledge of God more than burn offerings.

We're going to go back to Matthew in chapter 12, if you want to turn there. But we'll see, Jesus quote this very scripture to the Pharisees, because they were so focused at this point on trying to catch Him. They wanted to show that He was breaking the law. So they were nitpicking... I'm not sure if nitpicking is the right word, but they saw His disciples doing something that they didn't think was right. Now I should explain that the Pharisees and the Sadducees developed a set of rules during what's called the intertestamental period. And boy, that's a mouthful to say. The intertestamental period, that's the time... You remember that Israel was taken captive first, then 100 and some years later, the children of Judah.

Jerusalem was captured, they went to Babylon, and then 70 years later, some were allowed to return. And of course, in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and of course, Zechariah and... Zechariah is a haggai, I believe, discussed that. But they start rebuilding the temple, and during this time, they look back and said, boy, we had a bad... We got in trouble. You know, I think sometimes I spank Connor, and I want him to know, now you got in trouble, what did you do?

Do you understand? Well, they looked back and said, the main reasons we went into captivity, were we were worshipping idols and breaking the Sabbath. So a lot of their religious leaders started making an elaborate set of rules to try to protect the Sabbath.

They sometimes called it building a fence. You could say, the law is here. Well, if you get up there and break that law, you're in trouble. So let's make a bunch of rules that would... You know, you stay away from breaking the law. It's a fence. And so, whereas, you know, God says, rest on the Sabbath, they would say, well, rest on the Sabbath. Well, you can't hurry. The Old Testament also says, don't harvest. Well, we're going to say, you can't even pick a blade of grass or anything. You know, you're not supposed to carry heavy burdens.

They would set up an amount of how much you could carry. And you're not supposed to make a long journey. So they set up the things of the Sabbath day journey and a whole lot of elaborate rules that weren't the law. But they're the type of things lawyers can come up with. Now, let's look in Matthew 12. I was going to start in verse 2, but let's read the explanation. In verse 1, at that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and His disciples were hungry. They began to pluck the heads of grain into eat. If you have the Old King James, it says, corn.

But it doesn't mean ears of corn. Like, we grow here because they didn't have that yet. But it's probably wheat or barley. And it was getting ripe enough that they pulled some and probably went like this and blew off the chaff. And they had grain dried. It must have been ripe enough they could put it in their mouth and crunch it up and eat it. They were getting a snack on the way.

But the Pharisees said, they saw it, and they said, Look, your disciples are doing what's not lawful to do on the Sabbath. Well, it was not lawful according to their rules that fence around the Sabbath, not according to God's law. But He said to them, Have you not read what David did when he was hungry and those who were with him? He entered the house of God and ate the shew bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests.

Now, we should add this. Jesus doesn't explain it here. But if you read the account, they didn't take the bread off of the holy table. They took the bread that had been there that was replaced with fresh bread. So it was bread that was about to be tossed out or burned or whatever they did. And because of the emergency of the situation, they were allowed to eat that. Have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath, the priests of the temple profane the Sabbath? They don't really profane the Sabbath, but they work. And as I've said, butchering animals is hard work, and the priests had to do that on the Sabbath.

Barely I say to you that in this place, there's one greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the guiltless. If you'd have known what that means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Now, I try to simplify this because we don't go around saying, well, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. But I've heard people say this, and I've said it sometimes myself.

Have you ever had somebody do something wrong and say, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry? And the other person says, I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to stop doing what you're doing. And I think that fits with what God wants. He wants us to be sorry in the sense that we repent, but not continue to need to repent. He wants to show mercy, but it's not the sacrifice He wants. He wants the change of attitude. He wants obedience. That's what God wants. The sacrifice is just a symbol of that. It's not that God loves sacrifice so much He wants you to go out and sin every day so you can offer a new, burnt offering.

And, of course, we don't do that anyways, but He doesn't love forgiving us so much that He wants to have us keep sinning all the time. The Apostle Paul dealt with that directly. Certainly, as I said, God appreciates our repentance, but most of all, He wants us to not sin in the first place. Now, of course, that's just about impossible while we're in the flesh. We're subject to Satan's influence. Those conditions won't always be that way. And we're glad for that, and He wants us to strive to start doing that now.

What God wants in us is a heart to obey Him. He wants us to have His attitude. That's not the attitude of a lawyer trying to finagle around the law, which, as we just read, that's what the Pharisees routinely did. God wants us to recognize the spirit of the law. He wants us to perceive what's the spirit of the law. We could call it God's original intent. And I like that phrase. You hear it fairly often if you listen to conservative radio, which I tend to do if I happen to be in the car, which this week I was in the car quite a bit, driving to Cincinnati and back.

But people talk about the Founding Fathers and their original intent with the Constitution. What was the original intent? It's not that hard to determine, but it seems like a lot of politicians and even Supreme Court justices don't see it. But we should care about the original intent of our Founding Fathers. Much more, we should care about the original intent of the Father. God the Father created the universe and the laws that govern it. What was His original intent?

Well, I think we can find some explanation in the Sermon on the Mount, some of the best description of the Spirit of the Law in Matthew 5. Matthew 5, and I want to begin in verse 20. We'll take a couple passages out of here. As I said, Jesus Christ explained it better than I could ever hope to, which makes perfect sense. Matthew 5, verse 20.

And whoever says, you fool, will be in danger of hell fire. Okay, so it's not the exact words. He's saying whoever just holds his brother in complete contempt, who hates him, that's verging towards the same as murder. And the letter of the law prevents us from killing our brother. The Spirit of the law encourages us to love our brother rather than be angry with him.

Let's go to verse 27. You've heard it said, to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, whoever looks on a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And that phrase, in his heart, is key. Remember, I said God wants those who have a heart to obey him. God wants us to not just obey on the outside because we have to. He wants us to be convicted of what's right on the inside because we want to. And I think you all understand that. As I said, I think of this sermon as a review of basic teaching. So don't think that I think that you don't know that. I'm not talking down to any of you. I'm just reminding all of us.

As I said, God wants us to obey on the inside because we want to, or to want to obey. We're all human and we have our weaknesses. And he didn't just come up with this after Christ crucifixion. Let's go back to Deuteronomy chapter 5 and verse 29.

This is just after Moses recounts the giving of the Ten Commandments. Deuteronomy means basically the second giving of the law. And of course, the two places where we find the Ten Commandments, that's one of the... I think the first thing I ever memorized about the Bible was Exodus 20 Deuteronomy 5. And there in verse 29 after this, it says, Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep all my commandments. Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they'd fear me and keep all my commandments. Why? That it might be well with them and with their children forever. God doesn't want us to have a heart to obey Him just so He can feel important and be ordering us around. It's because it's what's best for us. He wants us to love Him and love His law because He loves us and He wants what's best for us. Now, no person ever has that kind of heart totally on their own. Let's go to Jeremiah 31, if you will, please. Jeremiah 31 in verse 33, We want to have that type of heart in us. How do we get that type of heart? Jeremiah 31, this is a scripture that we often read during the Feast of Tabernacles. And I'm breaking in. Some of it talks about the days are coming. But in verse 33, it says, This is the covenant that I'll make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the eternal, I'll put my law on their minds and write it on their hearts. We're talking about the spirit of the law. When that law is written on your heart, you can start thinking about the spirit. And I'll be their God and they shall be my people. This begins to show us how we can live by the spirit of the law. Now, you might wonder, well, if we need to live by the intent of the law, we need to live by its deeper meaning rather than the minimum of just what it says. How are we supposed to know what that is? There's the part of me that likes to argue. And I confess that this morning. I don't have it in my notes, but I was thinking back. And this must be a genetic trait, which I feel sorry for Sue, because she's been putting up with it in me for all these years, and now Connor's liable to have the same thing. And our household, my mother and my sister and I, like to argue. And not that we wanted to shout, but we would sometimes just take a contrary opinion just for the sake of seeing if the other person could out-argue you. And what I mean, argue that debate and prove your point. And I think I enjoyed doing it a lot more than my sister. She just... Well... Or maybe it's just that I was better at it than her. She's not here, so I'm going to say I was, because I always thought that I won a lot more of those disputes. But until I got to be bigger than her physically, she would win in the end, because she'd just give me a smack.

I know it's a good thing Tina's not here. I'd be in trouble. But what I mean is, the part of me that wants to nitpick would say, Okay, well, after all, before Christ specifically said that hating your brother is as bad as murder, and that lusting for a woman is as bad as committing adultery, well, how were people supposed to ever know that? You could say, Hey, he said, don't murder. So I didn't. You know, I just hated the guts of the guy living next to me. You know? If God wants more, how in the world am I supposed to know what it is if it's not written in the law? And I think that's a fair question to ask, but I think God does give us a fair answer. Let's go to 1 Corinthians, because I want to make the case that we can know the spirit of the law by the same power that makes it possible for us to ever hope to obey it in the first place. The same power that lets us know that there is a God who has a law. 1 Corinthians 2, and we'll begin in verse 13.

These things we also speak not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches. The Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

I wanted to read that first to make clear that God's spirit is required for discerning spiritual things like the law. Let's back up a couple of scriptures in verse 12 to show that we've received that spirit. In fact, that's what it says here in verse 12. We have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, that we might know things that have been freely given to us by God. So by the spirit that He gives us, we can know things. Let's move back down to verse 15. I'm jumping around. I'm sure Paul wrote it in the order he did for good reason. I'm just making perhaps a slightly different case. In verse 15 it says, I like the way that that reads, but I also saw the Moffat translation. It renders it this way. The Moffat translation says, The spiritual man can read the meaning of everything. I kind of like that. The spiritual man can read the meaning of everything. The point is that God's spirit in us opens our minds to perceive and understand that He exists, to understand His plan for us, and that same spirit will give us the gift of being able to discern the intent that God has underlying specific physical instructions. That'll help us to begin to understand the intent. I'm pausing here because I've got a note here to myself that I put down in red ink. I want to make the point that I'm not saying that any of us can just arbitrarily decide that the Bible doesn't mean what it says. That's not what I'm getting at.

But as God's people mature with His Holy Spirit, we should be able to understand how to relate God's law to our lives, how we can apply it to our personal circumstances. That's why, even though this is kind of a big book, if you go to a law library, you see walls full of books with tons of technical details.

God didn't give something like that. He gave us a relatively small amount of laws, but also with our spirit we can begin to understand the intent and apply those laws to limitless circumstances.

Now, I want to consider a specific example from the Old Testament. When we know that the Holy Spirit was not widely available, but we do know that King David had God's Spirit. If you'll turn back with me to Psalm 51, I said I want to look at some Old Testament law. And this is a case where, as I said, we know before Christ came and was sacrificed, most people didn't have access to the Holy Spirit. We know that King David did, because here we see him begging God not to take it away. Psalm 51 is, of course, a prayer of repentance that David recorded after his gravest sin with Bathsheba.

And in verse 11, he asked God, Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. So he must have had his Holy Spirit, and he was asking him, Please don't take it away from me. Let's skip down to verse 16. I want to touch on this while we're here. He says, For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I give it. You do not delight in burn offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise. I think this fits with what I said. God doesn't want us to be sorry, or it's not that he's worried about us saying I'm sorry, so much as he wants us to change. He wants us to change and not need to be sorry anymore.

Now, knowing the importance and the necessity of God's Spirit to discerning the spirit of the law, we shouldn't assume that that's just going to come automatically. You know, that you're baptized, a minister lays hands on you, and suddenly you go, bing! I know all kinds of things, and you start spouting out. That'd be nice, wouldn't it? But I think there are some things we might need to do. It's reasonable to expect that God would want us to put out some effort to learn and discern the spirit of the law.

Take a breath. I didn't think I had that much coffee. I'm really going fast. It wasn't my intent.

Let me take a breath here. What I want to say is I want to offer three specific steps that I think we can use to begin gaining better spiritual insight. I should say that we can continue, because I think many of you have been doing this a long time. So, as I said, think of this as a reminder or a refresher, not at all me chewing you out or thinking I'm telling you something you haven't heard before. Now, we've already been considering David's example, so let's read some other important things that he wrote. If you'll turn ahead to Psalm 119.

Psalm 119, because the first step that I want to take... Well, actually, it's two things together, but I want to emphasize that they need to be together. And that's study and meditate on God's law. And I want to emphasize to meditate, but of course, you have to know what it is in the first place before you can meditate on it. Psalm 119, in verse 99, all of Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, and it's all about God's law.

So, David has a lot of good things to say about it. Here he says, I have more understanding than all my teachers. Now, I'm glad he didn't stop there, because those of us who have worked in education, you always meet someone who that's their attitude. I know more than you. David wasn't saying that. He was saying, I have more understanding than all my teachers for or because your testimonies are my meditation. Your testimonies are my meditation, meaning a person who knows the Bible could get up and read it to David and tell him what it says, but having God's Holy Spirit, which David did and most others didn't, he could meditate on it.

He could have that deep, sustained thought, analyze it in your head, guided by God's Spirit. That's where I think you might take a particular point of God's law and start thinking about it. Think, what does obeying that piece of law accomplish? Start considering, why do you think God said to do this?

Why did he put it in those particular words? Think about what happens when this law is violated? What are the consequences? And all of those things will start giving you that understanding of the underlying intent, I believe. As I said, we read in Corinthians that the Spirit-minded will begin to perceive the spiritual intent and purpose. Now, let's consider an example. There's one that I think is fairly simple. Well, I've heard this explained before. Let's go to Deuteronomy 22. If you're in an academic mood, this one could be good. But you could do this with several points of the law. I'm choosing this one because the explanation comes relatively easy.

Some of them are a little more difficult. Now, this is an aspect of the civil law. We know, and I spent a fair bit of time discussing how, aside from the spiritual, eternal law on how to love God and man, God then expanded. He added a sacrificial law that was temporary, representing Jesus Christ. For the ancient nation of Israel, there was also what I like to call a civil law, a law for governing a physical nation.

We don't have that within the church. That civil law discussed things like how to pay your taxes, how to care for the poor, various things like that, and even some aspects of a building code, which is what we're going to look at, and also the punishments that are involved.

The punishment is the biggest thing that applies to the physical nation of Israel that does not apply to the church. If we know someone's breaking the law, we don't take them out and punish them. We might encourage them to stop doing that, but that's not our place. Anyways, I wanted to say that to show that what we're going to look at is part of that civil law. Deuteronomy 22 and verse 8 says, When you build a new house, then you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring guilt of bloodshed upon your household if anyone falls from it.

Now, you might do a little study and research to find out what this is about, and starting first with a dictionary to see what in the world does parapet mean. That's an unusual word, but basically it's talking about putting a railing around your roof. Yeah, or a scaffold. Good point. If you do a little study, now, in our modern setting, we might look and say, What in the world? I've got to put a railing or a scaffold around? What's the point of that? You mean above my storm gutters, I should put this railing so no one will fall off? Well, nobody's up there on my roof.

The only people that go up there are people doing repairs, and if I put a railing around, that's just going to slow them down. Well, that's where, as I said, we want to do a little study and analyze, and of course look back and see how things were different at different times. At the time in the culture where God gave this law, many of the buildings had flat roofs, and they would design it that way with an access so that people could use it for additional outdoor living space.

You know, go up there and barbecue and spend time, have some patio furniture, but you don't want to be guilty of someone walking off the edge and falling and hurting themselves. So he said, when you do this, put a railing around it. We don't use our sloped roofs for outdoor living space now. So putting a railing doesn't really fulfill the intent of that law. But a lot of us do build decks onto our house. Okay, now this doesn't say anything, no requirement for putting a railing around a deck.

But if your deck is as high as some of ours are, and it's interesting, I didn't write it in my notes. I was thinking about my house. I've got a deck on the back and a deck on the front. The deck on the back is basically a porch, because it's at ground level. But most of you have been to my house before I lived there. You know there's that steep slope. So while the first floor is level, if you go out on the back, you're at the ground.

If you go out in the front, you're on a deck that's pretty high up. So it's a good thing there's a deck there. Well, there's a good thing a deck. If you stepped out the door, you'd fall. What I meant to say, it's a good thing there's a railing around there to fulfill the spiritual intent of that law to protect people from getting hurt. And that's what I'm getting at. By our own meditation and study, it's not that hard to discover the spiritual intent of this particular law.

And so we can do that, and we should. Now I'll go ahead and mention, of course, I first heard this explained by other ministers, and I've heard it many times as an example in the same way I'm doing now. While we're meditating and thinking, there's nothing wrong with asking someone who is more experienced or might have knowledge in a special field to help us to understand. Along with that, of course, the second main step that I was going to add to gain insight is to ask God to help us to understand.

Another way of saying that is to pray for insight. That should seem obvious, but how many times, if you're like me, you're racking your brain over something and you think, oh, wait a minute, maybe I should just ask God.

And that can open understanding very quickly. Let's go back to Psalm 119. Psalm 119 and verse 33. Psalm 119. It's a good thing if I end early, I'm running out of being able to speak. Once again, David is praying to God and writes it down, but addressing God, he says, Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I'll keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I'll keep your law. Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. And it comes back to that. Remember, O, that there was such a heart in them. We want to obey from the heart.

David's saying, Teach me. Give me understanding. God wants us to have that heart to obey Him. We want to obey Him from the heart. So we should ask Him to give us that. And I'll add that it's good to be specific in praying. If you one time in your life say, God, help me to understand the law, and that's it. He would probably answer that prayer, but I doubt that He's going to give you that thorough understanding of everything. But if you pick out a particular thing, and you're saying, wow, I'm not sure what this is getting at, and you might talk to God, you might say, God, this is, you know, I read this law that says I'm supposed to put a parapet around my roof, and that sounds like it would accomplish this, and I'm not sure if that's what you meant.

But I think it might mean that, you know, it's meant to save people from falling off of a flat surface. In other words, talk it through. And I've done this on a number of occasions, never about a parapet. Now, I think I'm getting parapet is not something that's easy to say.

But if you're like me, you've done this, and this is one of the type of things where I like to do when I'm going for a walk and just praying because I don't get distracted very easily that way, and I might be talking to God, and I'm discussing with Him what I think, but asking Him, I'm not sure if that's right.

Can you help me to understand? And sometimes it'll become more clear to me that, yeah, I'm on the right track. Sometimes I'll discover, no, that's certainly not right. You know, I do think God answers. Now, I do want to say this. I've never walked out and said, God, help me to understand. And He says, this is what I mean, you dummy! You know, I'm never expecting to hear a booming voice setting me straight. But God, you know, remember, He came to Elijah with a still, small voice.

Now, I'm not even looking for even a still, small voice. I'm not looking for an audible voice. But I'm looking, I do believe God will guide us as we read His Word and we'll see it, perhaps, in a different way and have an increased understanding. And, of course, as I said, thinking it through, asking Him to help, and talking to those who are more experienced can help us with that. There's one more thing that we can and we should do to gain an... I should say, there's one more thing that I have listed in my sermon. There might be many other things, but as I said, I have three main points.

And a vital key, I believe, to understanding why that God gave a command is to do what it says. Obey His commands. Now, what I mean is, it's not appropriate to say, well, when I understand why He wants to do this, then I'll do it. Now, and all of us who have been teenagers, and maybe some of us who still are, you might have... I used to have that, and my mom would want me to do something, and I'd say, well, why?

You tell me why, and then maybe I'll go do it. Now, God doesn't work that way. He says, you know... It usually goes the other way around, and while we're in Psalm 119, let's read verse 60. Because here we see David's example, and remember, David was a man after God's own heart. You know, he wants to write his law on our hearts.

We need to have a heart to obey. So, David's not a bad example, and here he says, I made haste and did not delay to keep your commandments. Now, I didn't delay. I made haste and went right in there to do it. Let's go back a few pages to Psalm 111. Psalm 111 and verse 10... This is another one of those common memory scriptures, but that's because it says this so well.

Psalm 111 and verse 10 says, The fear of the eternal is the beginning of wisdom, and a good understanding have all those who do his commandments. You want to have an understanding? Do the commandments. Don't say, once I have the understanding, then I'll do it. Now, we know that when God calls us, that spirit begins to open our minds, because we have to understand at least what it's telling us to do. But sometimes, we understand the why without knowing the why. One of the best examples, it's been cited a lot of times, but I can't think of a better one, so I'll mention that of Herbert and Loma Armstrong.

Years and years ago, they were studying the Bible, and they said, there are these seven annual holy days, not the weekly Sabbath, but there are these days. From what I read, they're not part of the sacrificial system that we don't do anymore, because they represent Christ's sacrifice. But Mr. Armstrong looked at it and said, I don't know what they're for, but maybe we better keep them.

And so, they started keeping those days as holy. And my understanding is, they kept it for seven years by themselves. They were the only ones that believed that they needed to do it, and they didn't know why, but they kept those days. And during that time, of course, I believe he also asked God to give him understanding. He studied, and he meditated.

And in time, they began to see that those seven annual holy days represent God's plan for mankind. And they have great depth of meaning. And of course, we now, that's a central part of our understanding and our theology. It was a central part of Mr. Armstrong's teaching. That those holy days show the outline of the salvation of mankind, from Christ's sacrifice to calling a few people to change their life and put away sin from their lives now, all the way through to establishing a church, to Christ's return and binding Satan, and then a thousand-year reign on earth, and eventually the resurrection of all who have ever lived and being given an opportunity to live God's way.

I mean, just saying it in a few sentences, it still is enough to give you shivers and think, wow, how wonderful that is. Our understanding of that comes largely because at least two people said, well, it says to do it, and I'm going to do it. And I'll understand later. I'll understand why later. Now, that's only one example, and there are probably many others, and how many of us have personal examples?

The thought that comes to mind, first of all, for me is the Sabbath. Now, it's not...and here I want to give that example because you can say, yeah, I understand the Sabbath. God recreated the earth in seven days. He rested, told us to rest. We need to rest. It's good. But when I was a teenager, when I was 14 years old, I'd watch the clock. I'd have the TV on right until sundown, and I'd sometimes be waiting on Saturday night.

Is it sunset yet? I want to go out and play ball, or I want to do this. I didn't have a great appreciation, but of course, I did still keep it. Now, a couple of things happened. One is I grew up and started having a more mature attitude, but I think there's also that understanding. The more you obey a law like the Sabbath, the more you start to understand what it's for, and you start getting that spiritual intent, that it's not a restriction, that it's a gift to us, that we love the Sabbath. And many of you are like me, 16 or 17 years ago, when people who were among us started calling all that Sabbath, that burden, we've got to be free from that.

I looked at them and said, are you kidding? The Sabbath is the greatest thing God ever gave us, not the greatest thing He ever gave us, but boy, it's one of the great things. You know, I don't want to be free from the Sabbath, I wish we could have more Sabbath. But anyways, so obedience can bring that understanding. Now, with all this focus on the law, and obviously I've been doing that a lot today, the studying and examining it, praying about it, putting it into practice, you could say all of us are becoming lawyers as we grow up.

That was a clever twist where I tie back into my introduction. If that was so long ago that you forgot. But not lawyers who work to find ways of getting around the law, but lawyers who want to have a deep understanding of the real intent.

Our purpose is the better one. We want to have the deepest and truest understanding of God's intent, and then we want to live by it and enjoy the blessings that come from it. This way we can learn those spiritual lessons, and even that ceremonial law, the sacrifices that we don't have to perform, they're worth our study because there are valuable lessons in that that explain much.

And of course, the same goes for the civil law. Laws that we might not have a requirement to put into action, there's an intent that we should put into action. And I guess that in many ways points us to the great summary of the law. And I like to begin sermons with this, and I like to end sermons with it, which is where I'm ending up this time. But what is the deepest spiritual intent of the law? To love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our strength, to love our neighbor as ourself. If we do that, then we'll be fulfilling the intent of the law.