Law & Grace - The whole law & all the laws - Part II (can't 'slice & dice' the...
Vern Peterman · Feb 20, 2011
Law & Grace, No. 12
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/41026163164813

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We are going to be proceeding in the second half of this theme here having to do with the whole law and all the laws. Last Sunday we pointed out the Law of Moses itself contains a number of statements and frankly I gave you less than half of those even though the list was fairly lengthy. that say that all of the law of Moses, no exceptions, is intended to be followed every one, every day. We gave a listing summarized like this from several of the passages and then in the handout we included these references in their entirety so you could see the context for all the laws are to be followed. All the laws, all, the whole law, all, all, every and all, right? And so that's what we presented last Sunday and included those references right in your handout.

They appear like this, and that's actually just a beginning. The reality is I sold you short. There are more references that say all, all, all. And here we have them. They're not included in your handout, so if you'd like, you can write the references down.

Leviticus 19.37, you shall observe all my statutes and all my ordinances.

Deuteronomy 6.24 and 25, not included last week. So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes. And right there in verse 25, to observe all this commandment, the entire thing.

Deuteronomy 19.9, you will carefully observe all this commandment which I command you today.

Deuteronomy 28.58 and 59, if you are not careful, then here's the threat of curse, to observe all the works of this law.

Similarly, Deuteronomy 29.29, the secret things belong to the Lord, that is the Lord has not revealed everything. the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law." Deuteronomy 30 verse 8, and you shall again obey the Lord and observe all his commandments which I command you today. Deuteronomy 31 12, assemble the people, the men and the women, the children and the alien who is in your town, so that you may hear and learn and fear the Lord your God and be careful to observe all the words of this law.

Nehemiah, which was many centuries later than Moses in the Old Testament, tells to gather all these people together, and what are you telling them? Verse 29, Nehemiah 10, 29, And it says, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in God's law which was given through Moses, God's servant, and to keep and to observe all the commandments of God our Lord and His ordinance and His statutes. And I've still not given you all the verses.

The point being, Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, is redundant. Again and again and again laying out all of the laws every single one the whole law is intended to be followed We also pointed out in many places the law of Moses State or imply that it was intended to be lived out only only by the people of Israel in the land of Israel as first promised by by God to Abraham, only to the people of Israel in the land of Israel. Many times in the law, not exclusively in the passages we've shown, is the reference to in the land, in the land, in the land, referring to the land of Israel, dozens of times. We also said, Last Sunday, so the Law of Moses, all 613 of the laws, ordinances, statutes, and judgments was intended only for the people of Israel.

We quoted Psalm 147, 19, and 20, as I believe you also have in your handout. And not for anyone else. In order to determine blessings and curses. Let me make this clear, we're going to actually go over it in more detail. The law was not intended to save anybody. It was to determine blessings and curses. It never had the capacity to save anyone. Never did. It was only to determine earthly blessings and curses.

That's what the law was there for. The whole law of Moses was never even remotely intended for the people of Israel or anyone else to be obeyed selectively. I think I like that law. Not so much that one. No. All of it, all 613 laws are to be obeyed. Absolutely nothing selective. Nobody is given the authority to pick which of the laws they're going to follow.

However, we have and we'll be taking a look at a couple of key insights from the New Testament here. The New Testament not only supports what was written repeatedly in the Old Testament in the Law and otherwise, but it also provides some astounding perspectives, as we're soon going to see, on the nature of the Law of Moses. Not only is all the Law intended to be followed, but there's a couple of additional principles. It makes the Law of Moses an inseverable or unseverable whole. It is one piece. Here's the poetic pattern, and you also have it on page 1 in your handout, for Galatians chapter 5 verses 2 through 4.

Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, so he's talking about the believers in Galatia, and many of them, most of them were not Jewish, so the males would have circumcision proposed to them or offered to them as something that they ought to do under the law of Moses. But these were Gentiles in great part. He says, if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law. If you say, I think I'll just keep one. You can't do that. You have to keep all of them, not just one. If you're gonna put your toe in the water, you're gonna get drowned. That's the way it works, okay?

He says, you've been severed from Christ. You are seeking to be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace. That sounds serious. No. One thing is, I want to tell you, this is not a loss of salvation passage. This isn't a passage where he says you've been severed from Christ, meaning you've lost your salvation. The Bible is very clear, a believer's salvation cannot be lost. Right? Alright. Galatians 5, 2-4 only addresses the daily condition of those who are already saved. How do I know that?

Well, one reason is Paul calls his readers brethren nine times, both before and after this particular verse. He is not telling them, look, you guys have lost it and I'm sorry there's no hope for you. He is telling them, look, you guys have fallen from grace, let me help you up. To do that, you've got to let go of this law thing here.

Now, about that question of loss of salvation, you have on your handout front page a portion that looks like this. You can either all crowd around Sue and Nancy at the end of the service and ask for those handouts, or you can save them a tad bit of pressure and instead look at these links. If you were to download these links off the website and click on those, it will take you right to them the Holly Hills website and you can download them from there. Nonetheless, using circumcision here is actually just one example.

The Apostle Paul is here telling us that if anyone is intent on following one, just one of the laws of Moses, he must follow every single law, the whole law. He says if you sign here, you can't just sign up for one, you're signing up for the whole thing. So the Apostle Paul here in this book of Galatians, the earliest of the letters that we have of his, makes it clear that as a person cannot sign up to follow just one of or some select part of the law of Moses. If we choose to follow in part, we are obligated to all.

So that's principle one. You pick one, you put your toe in, You've got the whole thing. If you put your toe in, you're going to drown. That's the way the law works. There's no trial sizes. There's no mix and match. None of those. Not at all. There's no law light. You don't get law that's not as filling and half the calories. You just don't get that.

If we choose any part, we're obligated to the whole thing. And I hope it's overwhelming and ominous. You're eating the whole hamburger. You're eating the whole enchilada. That's what I'm talking about. Now, here is the book of James, chapter 2, verses 10 and 11. For whoever keeps the whole law, yet stumbles in one point, he's become guilty of all.

Now see the counter-principle here? If you want to follow the law and you put your toe in, you're going to drown. Just one law, if you decide to follow that, you can't do it, you're signing up for the whole thing. The other part is because you're signing up for the whole thing, if you break one, you've broken the entire law. And just to make sure that we don't mistake his point, Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles on one point, he has become guilty of all. Then he says in the next verse here, For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, Do not commit murder. Now if you do not commit adultery, but do commit murder, you become a transgressor of the law. You broke the whole thing, even if you broke just one.

The law of Moses offers no partial credit. James spells out here, those who want to follow, who desire to follow the law of Moses, must follow every single part of it perfectly. I'd like to say good luck, but that won't do much good. Right? So, let's say that somebody says, as they're being sworn in, do you solemnly swear to live the law, the whole law, nothing but the law, with no help from God? then you've got to be out of your mind, right? Then you've got to be out of your mind.

Breaking any single part of the Law of Moses breaks the whole Law of Moses. And by the way, one of the laws is don't eat an apple with a worm in it. Okay? So that's one of them. If you've broken it, you're in trouble. Okay. We had earlier here, and you may have seen it, but I'll show it again. This illustration.

Tempered glass is such that you tap one part of it and the whole thing comes apart. That's the way the law works. This guy is tapping the glass on one corner with a hammer. And what happens to the glass? Does the corner break off? No. The whole thing shatters. That's the way the law works. You break one part of it, you've broken the whole thing. You've ruined it all. Oh, one other thing. The reality is we don't break the law, we get broken over the law.

The law of Moses offers no partial credit. In 1982, I taught Algebra 1 and 2 at the high school where I had gone to high school. I'll never do that again. Anyway, I gave partial credit, but with the law, no partial credit is allowed at all. None. No partial credit. If you get part of it right, that doesn't count. If you've broken any part of it, you've broken all of it. No grading on the curve. That's the way the law works. Matter of fact, breaking only one law is only 1 613th of the total.

But with the law of Moses, 100% is an A. Anything less than 100% is an F. There are no oopses allowed. No oopses. All perfection all the time. The law of Moses requires absolute perfection on every point of the law all the time to the end of one's time. If you walk the tightrope between two skyscrapers and make it halfway across without falling off, you've not succeeded. You've got to make it all the way across. Good luck. Anything short of 100% is failure.

The exclusion of just one law out of the 613, it's like that tempered glass breaks the whole pane. It breaks the entire law. You break one law, you've broken it all. Whoops! So, someone who says, I live by the Ten Commandments, well, Anyone who picks which of the laws out of the 613 he will follow is deciding that he will break all of the ones that he isn't going to follow. Get that? Now let's make sure we get the significance of that.

Here's the Seventh-day Adventist doctrinal statement, and I'm sure it's not alone, the law of God, point number 18. The great principles of God's law are embodied in the Ten Commandments and exemplified in the life of Christ. They express God's love, will, and purposes concerning human conduct and relationships and are binding upon all people in every age. According to the passages we've seen, how does that work out? The law is broken.

It is the same as saying, I intend to break 603 of God's commandments, right? If I follow just the 10. Following just the 10 will guarantee I'm going to break the other 603. Yeah, absolutely. Summarize here, the Bible says to live by the law of Moses, you've got to live out all of the law without fail. If you sign up for one, you signed up for all of them. If you break one, you break the law. All 613 laws, all 613 are broken. If you've broken one, it's all shattered. It's all gone. How about if we want to tweak the law? If we want to add to or take away from the law of Moses? And it's probably already happened. If it hasn't, it will happen.

You'll have people come up to your door two by two. And they're always dressed very nicely, you know, at that particular group. And you have these guys that are about 19 years old, and they have a thing on a little plaque that says elder. OK? It's that guy. OK. So those pair of guys are going to come up, and they're going to tell you which laws to add to and take away and all that.

And then you've also seen other people come up, usually two by two. And so they go to the Kingdom Hall. You know, they go to the buildings with no windows. So that's another group that likes to add to and take away. OK? And then the 7th Adventists, we just read their little list. They all like to tweak and add to.

I used to have a fellow who was Mormon who used to work for me, really nice guy, but whenever we would sit down for a meal, he would order his Pepsi without caffeine, because that's within the rules, right? The Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses, they've got their own little rules. Up until the late 1920s, they used to celebrate Christmas.

Now no longer, and they also can't do the blood transfusions. Seventh-day Adventists, they've got especially a lot of food laws. And in spite of the fact that God says you can eat these animals and these fish, they, based on the revelations of Ellen G. White, say that no, we can't do all the meat. We've got to stick with just the vegetables. So they like to add and take away from the laws of Moses.

Well, here's what it says in Deuteronomy 4.2. You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command to you.

And as if that wasn't enough, Deuteronomy 12.32. Whatever I command to you, you shall be careful to do it. You shall not add to nor take away from it. Can we take the scissors? to the Law of Moses? No. Can we get out the glue and the paste and stick on a few more? No. It has it right there in the law. This law is not to be tweaked, is not to be snipped at, is not to be glued onto. It's not to be taken on a little bit at a time. There's no trial size. There is no, well, 613 is hard to remember. I'll just stick 10. No. We don't get that option.

That was not included in any of the passages that we've seen here. But something to make clear to us here, the law doesn't have a problem. We do. Some people will attempt to say that we're not under any of the Law of Moses by bad-mouthing the Law of Moses. That's a mistake. It's not to be spoken against itself. even though I'm sure some folks are well-intended.

The reality is the Law of Moses is good and righteous and holy and God's Word Old and New Testament says so. So the Law of Moses is not the problem. The Law of Moses is exactly what God intended. It was in fact God himself who gave the Law of Moses to Moses. So it wouldn't quite make sense for us to criticize what God gave to Moses, would it? The problem is not that the law of Moses is deficient, but rather that the human ability to follow it is insufficient.

That's the problem. So how does God answer that problem? In fact, that problem is in common. All humanity, even if we were to say it goes beyond the Jews, we just don't have the capacity to follow it. Well, here's how God answers it. For the Jews who will in the coming millennium, the coming reign of Christ, for those Jews who will enter into that time, the law of Moses requires total compliance, but mankind isn't up to it, so what does God do? Our trying to live it out will not work. God will enable those Israelites living in that coming millennium to live out the law of Moses and to know it by heart. I have heard the teaching in Christian churches that we have the law written on our heart.

Wrong answer. And here's one reason why, and it's only one. The Jews, when they have the law written on their heart, they won't even need a teacher. They will know all 613 laws without any teacher. So, if a Christian church wants to teach that you have the law written on your heart, then they'd better have everybody in their church know the all 613 laws by heart, and they'd better not have any teachers in the church.

Is that what happens? No. That's not what happens. It will be the case. The problem is the inability. God has answered the question of man's inability to live out the good and righteous law differently with the Israelites than he has with us. He will enable and empower them to know and live out the law. For us, we died with Christ on the cross so that we are dead to the law and we are enabled by his indwelling to live out, not the law, but the life of Christ. Christ has a righteousness that satisfies the law, but not under it. There will be a time when the Jews, right here, will have Christ reigning over them. They will know the law from the heart. Christ will reign as King of the Jews over Israel and as King of Kings and Lord of Lords over all the earth from here.

But for us in the body of Christ, we have died to the law when we are identified with Christ in His death. When Christ died on the cross, many people will say, oh, that's when He died for my sins. And that is very true. But that's not all that happened that day. We were with Him. identified us with Christ and one of the results of that identification with his death is that we died in relationship to the law. Does the law die? No. We died in relationship to it. Big difference.

God has designed that we would be blessed apart from the law. What will happen to those Jews who live the law and know the law in the coming millennium? They will live out the law and guess what? Because they live it out, they'll be blessed. Absolutely. For us, we have already been blessed. Absolutely. Apart from the law. The Jews will be enabled to live out the law and therefore all blessed. We have been made to be apart from the law and blessed apart from the law. God has met the need of both the church and Israel separately. We are blessed apart from any part of the law in Christ.

That is why in Ephesians, Ephesians 1.3, which we have here on the screen, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us, not in physical earthly ways as Israel will be blessed, blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. They will be blessed in the land of Israel. We are blessed right now in Christ. They will be blessed in the land that's on earth.

We are blessed right now in the heavenlies. Therefore, when it comes to dealing with moral issues, He says, therefore laying aside falsehood. He first tells them you're blessed and then deals with the moral issues. With the Jews, he deals with the moral issues first and then says that they can be blessed. See, the sequence is reversed.

It's by Christ's life and his righteousness that we are to live out the law that God desires. Not by seeking in our own sufficiency to live out any part of the law of Moses. It's all by grace. That is one reason I do not recommend that you try to be a good Christian. I do not recommend it. I don't even attempt it. Oh, you could, I suppose, but I wouldn't recommend it. I wouldn't suggest it.

God does not intend that you try to be a good Christian. God intends rather that His sufficiency in you and through you is the means by which His righteousness is lived out. It's all by grace. Now the very last slide in your handout and our last slide here is a good news, bad news pattern. Romans 5, 18 through 21. There is some more poetic pattern, but I've chosen not to try to bring that out. It gets a little complicated. But there is this rather sharp contrast that he does really consistently.

He says, so then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men. This is through Adam's transgression, right? He continues on farther on with the next negative statement, for as though, excuse me, through the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, even so, and then the next one, the law came in, so that the transgression, get this, what's the law, is the law going to make the transgression better? The law came in so that the transgression would increase.

What? Yes, increase. How does the law make the sin issue worse? at least two ways. The first is it measures sin very precisely. Every violation is now defined. It's not just vaguely, that seemed like a bad thing, but it is defined. Every violation is defined by the law. That's the one reason that law comes in and makes the transgression increase, but it's not the only one. The other one is the sin nature When the sin nature meets up with the law, guess what the character of the sin nature is?

To rebel against it, right? There's a cartoon that I really love. There's this pair of people that are standing by the side of the street and there's a sign right next to one of them that says, absolutely no machete juggling. And one person turns to the other and says, it's funny, I have this strong urge to juggle machetes, you know?

Wherever the law comes in and says, don't do something, the human tendency with the sin nature is to buck up against it and say, oh yeah? And that's why I told Hassan, I said, the difficulty with trying to gain victory in the Christian life using the law is that it makes the problem worse. And I gave him the example, it's a clear enough example that he remembered well. I said, Hassan, do not think of a pink hippopotamus. Remember, do not think of a pink hippopotamus. I am being absolutely clear here. Do not think of a pink hippopotamus. Pink hippopotamuses, don't think of them. And what are you thinking of? This is the difficulty with the law. It puts the negative thing right in front of us and that's what's got our attention.

So that's how the law comes in and increases the transgression by measurement and by natural tendency for the sin nature to resist. Has sin reigned in death? Even so. Now we're going to go to the next part, however. Here is the contrast as you have indented And we have it bolded here, through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. Through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.

Grace abounded all the more. That is, sin, as awful as it is, has limitation. Grace does not. Grace isn't limited. And finally, grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grace is the reigning principle. Do you see that? Grace is the reigning principle among us here in the body of Christ. Now what does it mean to be a reigning principle? It means that we don't get something out of mixing law and grace. We don't get something out of picking, oh these are the laws I'm going to follow. Grace is the reigning principle.

Forgive one another as God in Christ has already forgiven you. Grace is the reigning principle for us here and for us now. As we mentioned briefly in the elective class right before this, the prosecutor likes the detective to hand him these three pieces of information about the accused.

Motive. means an opportunity. The motive for the believer is grace. By the power of the Holy Spirit, you're enabled, energized, and empowered. Motive means, ah yes, the opportunity. The opportunity is every opportunity that the Lord has prepared beforehand and enabled and energized and empowered us to carry out. The opportunity that we have is to step into all those good works that he's prepared beforehand that we might walk in them. The opportunity that we have is to do finite things that he has prepared and that he's energized and enabled and empowered, motivated by grace, and then be eternally rewarded.

That's a great trade-off. How do you like to make an investment and somebody says, well, what's the rate of return? Oh, it's infinite. Oh, well, that's a phenomenal investment. Why would I pass that up? Right. The rate of return is there's no way to put a number on it. It's astronomical. It's infinite. That's great. But that's grace.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that as we looked at this passage that we finished off with here, grace is indeed the reigning principle. That our best efforts to try to live out some portion of the law is not at all what you anticipate or hope for in us. That our best efforts to live out something that's unlivable are not what you ask. But instead, you graciously bless us. And what did we do? We just believed. And you make it have an eternal value. You make it have an eternal and infinite payback. What a wonderful and marvelous thing. Thank you for that amazing grace. Thank you in Jesus name. Amen.