Christ the End of the Law pt 3

SPEAKER A You once to every time in the sight of the good or evil sky don't break on you that I choice of life forever with that darkness. And. SPEAKER B The Bible assures us in Ephesians two, verses eight to ten, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Welcome to faith to faith Here are your hosts, Ettienne McClintock and Braedan Entermann. SPEAKER C Dear listener, welcome to the program. We're delighted to have your company again. We actually are doing part three unexpectedly as we've been talking Braedan part three of the program called Christ the End of the Law. And as we've been discussing things, god has been bringing some things to our minds, personal experiences, and also just some of our understandings that's come through the Scripture. Because, I mean, if you spend time in the word of God, the more you read it, the more you start saying, I'm reading this point, but it actually links to that point and it links to that point. All of a sudden you see this web that emanates from every single text into other areas and you see a beautiful, complete, harmonious whole. And that's really exciting. But we need the Spirit of God to lead us because by nature we cannot really understand these things. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C We'll have the same issue that the Jews had, that they were ignorant of the righteousness of God. And we certainly don't want to hang on to our natural tendency to be ignorant of God's righteousness and God's love. So let's just ask God to bless us and lead us in our study. Gracious Father in Heaven, we're grateful for Your Word, which is a lamp to our feet, a light to Your path. We're grateful for the knowledge that it gives us of Jesus Christ, of Your character and Your love for each one of us, even while we were weak, even while we were ungodly, even while we were sinners, and even while we were enemies. You demonstrated Your love for us through the death of Your Son. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. He gave Him to each one of us, Lord, and we thank you for that. May you now pour out Your Holy Spirit upon us richly to lead us to a deeper understanding and an appreciation and a love for you because of what you mean for us and do for us, and because we live and move in you, and we have our being. In you is our prayer in Jesus name, amen. SPEAKER D Amen. SPEAKER C Right. So we're unpacking this text that says that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. Now, we already looked at the word end there, which is tell us. It just means it's the purpose, the aim, the goal of the Law and Christ's life is actually that goal. Now, we're going to unpack that a little bit further and just look at some other aspects of that. Now, the last program we actually finished off with Romans, chapter eight, verse one through to four, which talks about what the Law could not do in that it was weak in the flesh. So the problem is not with the Law. The problem is with the weakness of our flesh, our fallen human nature. And we already discovered that our fallen humanity is hostile towards God. Romans eight, verse seven. The carnal mind is enmity of God. It's not subject to his law of love, his law of self sacrificing love. And it actually says it's impossible for it to be subject to God's Law. However, we also spoke about the fact that the Law is a schoolmaster for us, and I wonder if we can read that text. It's Romans. Sorry. It's not Romans. It is actually Galatians, chapter three and verse 24, where it actually says the Law is being given for a specific purpose. SPEAKER D Okay, I've got it. SPEAKER A Here. SPEAKER D So this is Galatians, chapter three, verse 19. We can start with this one. SPEAKER C Yes, nice. SPEAKER D It says, what purpose then, does the Law serve? It's very much on our topic here. What purpose then does the Law serve? The answer is, it was added because of transgressions till the seed, another name for Jesus, should come to whom the promise was made. SPEAKER C Okay, so the Law was entered so the Law was written on tables of stone. The Law was given at Mount Sinai. SPEAKER D For what purpose till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. SPEAKER C Okay, so the purpose of the Law, right, it was added because of transgression. In other words, it was because of sin. It was there to show us. It's like that MRI that you had on your knee in the previous program, your knee was scanned and they wanted to see if there was really a problem. All the symptoms suggested it was broken. Now they had to confirm that by the MRI. So this is like an MRI, but in regards to sin, to show us our transgression, there'd be no need for. SPEAKER D MRIs or X ray machines if human beings never had internal problems. SPEAKER C That's right. SPEAKER D And so you would never have one or you'd never be necessary to go to one. It would never be necessary to bring one to you. And so here we have the Law being written down on tablets of stone for a specific reason, because of an internal problem that human beings have, this problem of sin. They had a sinful, fallen carnal nature, and it was added for this particular reason, as we've been looking to point out sin and to identify what is righteousness. So basically, it's a very basic thing. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D This is what is good, this is what is bad. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D And that's a big step forward for a planet where at times in the history of Israel, everyone did what was good in their own eyes. So this is a massive step forward for human beings to have it written down, made plain. Sometimes we need that. Sometimes we get a little bit confused in life and we need someone just to write it down and tell us straight what's going on, because we forget, don't we? We forget. So God writes down and shows us that's right and that's wrong, but that's not the solution. Obviously, what God is presenting there is if the world lived in harmony with these precepts, what a beautiful world it would be. But this was added to identify the problem and actually lead human beings to want a solution. And that was typified, or symbolized in the sanctuary service where the lamb would die instead of the sinner. And the sins were symbolically transferred from the sinner to the symbol of the Savior. And so this law was added as a very necessary step to show us what is wrong about us, to lead us to Christ by faith. SPEAKER C Yes, that's true. And the thing with human nature is that our ways are always right in our own eyes. I've never met a person yet who actually say, Listen, I'm deceived. If they do acknowledge they were deceived, it's never in the present, it's always in the past. They might have been deceived in the past, but they are now undeceived in the present because they've identified that deception has gone from them. But the thing is deception and a person being deceived doesn't know that they're being deceived. We may be able to look at someone else and go, well, that person is wrong, but he doesn't know it. He's arguing with me as much as he can. I'm arguing with him as much as I can because I think I'm right and he thinks he's right. But both can't be right. Both might be wrong, one might be right, but both can't be right. And we read in Proverbs, chapter 16, verse two, it says that all the ways of man are pure in his own eyes, but the Lord ways of spirit. So all our ways according to our own understanding and the way we measure things is right in our own eyes. However the law enters that the offense may abound. And we even read in Proverbs chapter 21, verse two, parallel verse, it says, every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. It always comes back to the heart because God wants to write his laws within our heart. And if it's not, there the law being absent. The Bible says that we have a heart of stone. A stone weighs something, but when the law measures it, it doesn't measure up. SPEAKER D That's interesting. SPEAKER C So we come back to the statement here that the law has a purpose. You read that in verse 19. It says, the purpose of the law was that was added because of transgression till the seed should come. That seed is who that's? SPEAKER D Jesus Christ. SPEAKER C Yeah. To whom the promise was made. Now, there's a parallel verse in Romans, chapter five, and it says, moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. Simply, what it's saying is it's going to show you your sin. And there's actually a lot of sin in the world. There's more sin in the world than people think. Typically they think the problem is elsewhere. But interesting, the fact that it abounds actually show us. Oh, hang on, I'm actually just as bad. I'm just actually just as wrong and I can't fix it myself. SPEAKER D It's kind of like there's many stories I could think of, but situations where people are in massive danger, let's just say on a battlefield or something like that, and someone has got massive internal injuries. And the quick response is just to shove something on that wound to hopefully stem the flow of blood. And you wrap it up and you wrap the person up and from the outside they look quite fine. In order to be able to do any good for that person, there's a very shocking thing that needs to happen. You need to unwrap and expose the injury in all of its gory detail. It needs to be opened up, there needs to take the shirt off, it needs to be seen where the big bullet wound or whatever it is and just the extent of the problem. And so that whole situation looks like you're making it worse. You're uncovering this big thing and whatever, but that's what is necessary before you can actually do something about it. We live with this cloak of ignorance. We try to hide the problem. The law comes that because of our internal problem that we've got so that the offense may abound, we actually get to see just the full extent of our condition. We get to be before God. We actually see that we aren't right, we're actually wrong. And it actually causes a bit of problem with us. But then God is right there with the solution, pointing us to Christ as the one who is the Lamb of God, who died to take away our sin. SPEAKER C Interesting. I remember sitting in an office one day at a workplace and we were right beside a warehouse and there was a workman working on the roller door that was sliding up and down. It was quite a tall roller door and one is rolled up. It'd be very heavy. Anyway, he was trying to fix the thing, and he had gone down, and for some reason, the one side of the roller door unhooked, swung down, and then it came out and hit him on the leg and then pinned him to the ground. And next minute, I just hear this yelling and screaming, and then it would disappear. And then we'd come back, ran down, and someone was already there who was in the warehouse, ready there, looking at this man, and he had fainted because of the pain. So when they actually pulled his trouser leg up to see what was there, there was just what seemed to be a little bit of bruising, but there was no cut. They're thinking, Why is the guy complaining so much? It didn't even cut his skin. But what had happened, it had actually severed muscle under the skin because it had gone through the trousers. It actually severed it. And we weren't aware, but as we were watching, his leg was getting bigger and bigger and swelling up more and more. And that's the reason we couldn't see on the outside, because the skin wasn't cut, but it was actually that revelation from what was going within. And I guess we can use that analogy to say if we look at the outward appearance, paul said according to the outward man, he was blameless. But when the law came, sin revived and he died. He realized that he was condemned to death. So that MRI or whatever they used to look at this man's leg, actually demonstrated what the real problem was. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C But looking on the surface, everybody was ignorant of what the real damage was to his leg and why the guy was fainting of so much pain. So we have the law. That's our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ. SPEAKER D That's verse 24. Would you like me to read it? SPEAKER C Yes, please. SPEAKER D So it says verse 24. Therefore the law was our tutor or our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that we may be justified by faith. SPEAKER C That is such a powerful statement. So the law's purpose is to teach us it's a teacher, it's a schoolmaster. Why does it bring us to Christ? Because it shows us a problem that we cannot fix. It shows us a problem that no other human being can fix and that. SPEAKER D In itself the law cannot fix. SPEAKER C And also yes, the scanner can only show you the problem. It doesn't actually fix the problem. You need a physician. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C And we're saying that physician is Jesus Christ. So the law is a tutor to bring us to the physician, Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by faith. And as we said before, faith is trust and faith is reestablishing a connection with God that was severed. So going from being an enemy to a friend of God. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C Because God has always been a friend of sinners. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C Which is a beautiful statement. God has not changed his mind towards us. We are now, through this process of seeing Jesus and his incredible love for us, demonstrating the love of the Father. We are now reconciled to God because the Bible tells us we love Him not by nature, but we love Him simply because he first loved us. SPEAKER D I love what you were saying about becoming a friend of God. Becoming a friend of God. Jesus said in John 15, he says, no longer have I called you servants, because a servant doesn't know what his master's doing. SPEAKER C That's right. SPEAKER D I've actually called you friends. You're my friends. And I find it interesting at Sinai. We keep going back to Sinai. I really love this story and what it teaches us. The children of Israel got a bit sick of waiting for Moses. There was a delay. SPEAKER C Moses is delayed. And whenever there's a delay, people sometimes get a little bit restless. SPEAKER D A little bit restless. And so what do they do? They make a golden calf to represent God for them. SPEAKER C That's right. SPEAKER D And it was something that they could touch, something that they could be close to, something they could put their arm around, interact with. They basically reduce God down to something that's right in front of their eyes, that they could touch and feel and. SPEAKER C Focus their senses on. SPEAKER D Focus their senses on. And so that's a pretty close God. Right. It's right in front of them. The fact is, it's just a bunch of gold. It's nothing. SPEAKER C Got no virtual power by another man's hands. SPEAKER D That's right. And so what God needs to do for us in order to give us that friendship with Him is number one, to lift up our eyes, to see his just mind boggling glory and majesty. That's very important, because otherwise we just worship sticks and stones. And that's like human history in a nutshell. We just worship anything that we can get our hands on. SPEAKER C That's right. SPEAKER D God needs to lift our eyes up and see how high and holy he is, and by contrast, how low and degraded we are. At that particular point, we feel super discouraged. But then God tells us, I came down to be with you. And we find that John, in his first epistle, he actually says, we got to touch and handle God. We got to put our arms around Him. But what God needs to do in order to be able to have that close friendship with us, we have to recognize that it's not about pulling God down. We need to understand how high and holy he is and then recognize that he actually willingly came down, even though he's so holy and pure. He came down to connect with us and to be our friend. And that's where some really big restoration can happen. We can actually have a friendship with God in a real way. SPEAKER C Absolutely. Now, I just want to come back now to Romans, chapter ten, where we read before that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes what Paul then does after verse four, he quotes Moses. It says there in verse five, it says, for Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law the man who does those things shall live by them. So the purpose of the Law was never to bring death. The purpose of the Law was actually to bring life. And those if we had never sinned as a human race and we stayed faithful to God, and we stayed in that love relationship with God and that trust relationship with the Lord, there would never have been death. Death would never have been ministered to us. But because we've sinned, we've fallen short of the glory of God. We know that sin ended the world and death spread to all men because of all sin, the Bible tells us. But now we see here that the purpose of the Law is that the man who does the things of the Law, so the Ten Commandments shall live by them, but we don't do them. So what the Law does, it doesn't actually minister life to us. It can't, because we have violated the principles of love, that selfish love. It only ministers death to us. So how is it then that the Law, which was supposed to bring life to us, actually ministers death to us? Now, we're in Romans chapter ten, but Paul actually takes up that same thought in Romans chapter seven and verse ten, where he says he looks at the Ten Commandments, which was to bring life. Romans chapter ten, verse seven. But did it actually bring life to him? Well, the answer is obviously, clearly no, it didn't. There was a reason for it, because the Bible tells us in Romans chapter three, verse 23, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So there's no one that's righteous? No, not one. Then we are told in Romans chapter five and verse twelve, that death actually spread to all men. Why? Because all sinned. And then we get back to Romans chapter six, verse 23. So we're getting closer to Romans ten. Now, Romans chapter six, verse 23, it tells us that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So coming back to Romans chapter seven, verse ten, we're going to read the second part of it now. It says the commandment which was to bring life. What did Paul find? I found him to bring death. SPEAKER D Interesting. SPEAKER C Why? Because we didn't measure up. If we had measured up, all the Law could minister us as life, but. SPEAKER D For some reason so the Law really exposes humanity. It exposes and shines a light. It's interesting. The Bible says your Law is a light. Yes, the commandment is a light. And so it shines into the human darkness of our experience and points out that in the deepest caverns of our heart and points out all of the evil and the error and all that kind of stuff, and it actually condemns us. And we have to recognize our reflex action is to go, oh, that's a bad thing. No, that's a very good thing for God's law to show us what the problem is and to make it very, very clear that we are in desperate need of a savior. So it actually condemns us as worthy of death. At which point then we're pointed to Christ who came to take away our sins and to die for us. And so it's very important that in order for us to put faith in Christ as the one who is dying for the sin of the world, we have to recognize that we are sinners worthy of death and come to him by faith. SPEAKER C Absolutely. I mean ignorance. Well, one thing is worse than ignorance that's willful ignorance. But ignorance actually is not bliss. When I had my little episode, when I had this chest pain and then it radiated into my jaw, I was feeling a little bit lightheaded. I had those cold sweats. I wanted to know whether I was having a heart attack or not. I wanted to know if there was a problem. So they did the scan, they had the ECG, they did the blood test, they did the X rays and they did all kinds of tests over a matter of about five and a half, six and a half hours. And it came back and said, no, that's not your problem. You know how pleased I was. SPEAKER D Oh, I'm sure you but I also. SPEAKER C Want to know if there was a problem. I don't want to put my head in the sand and go, oh well, I'll just ignore it. If there's a problem. I really want to know what the problem is so that I know if you identify the problem then you can find the solution to it. SPEAKER D This is really fascinating because we get and we rack up big bills. Thankfully that gets a bit offsetted medical insurance but we're willing to pay big money if it's available to be able to find out what's wrong with us. Got an ache or a pain here? We shoot down to the chemist, we shoot down to this, we shoot down to that. We're trying to find out what's wrong so we can solve the problem and yet the history of humanity is just shouting at us. Humanity has something wrong in its brain and in its heart. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D And yet when the preacher stands up, when the person is trying to share the gospel they're mocked and they're ridiculed and they're sent on their way, I don't need God, says someone, I don't need help. Wait a second. Why are we so passionate about getting physical help for our physical problems and yet we've just got this resistance to a solution to our heart's problem. And the reason for that is this because the problem is our selfishness. And in order to address that humility is an overwhelming prerequisite. Humility is something that is hard for us as human beings, but it's demanded of us as human beings as christ lives his life within us. SPEAKER C It's interesting, when you were saying that, I just reminded me of a Zion, the first chapter of Isaiah, which describes the same thing, which talks about our minds are corrupted and our hearts are corrupted because we are selfish. And then in Isaiah, chapter one, verse five, it said, Why should you be stricken again? So God is actually saying, why would you want to keep on revolting? It says, you will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint from the sole of the foot, even to the head. There is no Soundance in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and they have not been closed up and bound up or soothed with ointment. So what happens is you deny the fact that you're sick, therefore they have not been treated, they have not been bound up, those wounds, they have not been closed, they have not been soothed. No ointment has been placed on them to find a solution to the problem. Now, when I went for my scan, that was actually a good thing. So when Paul says that the commandments he thought would bring life actually found to bring death, it sounds like bad news to us. But the fact is, there is some good news in that, because we now see that, hang on, if I don't have a solution here, all I'm going to do is die and that's it. What a futile life. Even if you live for five years, 20 years, 50 years, 70 years, 100 years, it's such a short period to be on this planet when God offer us something so much better. Eternal life, eternal joy, internal happiness, an eternal relationship and connection with God, our Father who loves us. No one loves us more than that. No one has demonstrated their love more than God has. Why would you want to be separated from someone that loves you that much? SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C I mean, people fall in love quite often because the other person loves them back. And it's the greatest experience for people. I mean, you're just about to get married, right? SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C It's the greatest experience to have someone that cares so deeply for you like no one else. And you have this close connection. God offers us a connection even closer than that. I mean, it's such a beautiful relationship, and God wants to have that relationship for all eternity, because the Bible says that he is a high priest forever and he, because of his endless life, is able to save us to the uttermost. And that's a beautiful thing. So we come to that text and we just say, the commandments that I thought would bring life are found to bring death. If we stop here, the law has not accomplished his purpose for us. We need to go further. If we leave just there, the world remains under condemnation and remains under the death sentence. But in Christ, we can secure true righteousness, we can secure eternal life and we can be justified freely. Now, in Romans chapter three and verse 23, we just read before that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But there's good news. Verse 24, which follows, says but we are being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So that is excellent news for people who have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. The word justified just means that we can stand before God as we've never done the wrong thing. We have a clean slate in Christ by faith. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C What a beautiful gift. We've done the wrong thing. We've been God's enemies, but in spite of that, he's gracious to us, loves us in spite of that, and he still reconciles us as enemies to himself. And then verse Romans chapter five, verse one, the same takes up the same anthem of faith, that same trust relationship with God. It says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Remember we said before that the carnal mind is enmity towards God. It's animosity. The word animosity comes with the word enemy. So here we can have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. What a beautiful gift. SPEAKER D What a beautiful gift. Now, we finished our last presentation on Romans chapter eight, and I think it'd be a nice way for us to close this presentation out. SPEAKER C Definitely. SPEAKER D I love this in verse three, for what the Law Could Not do. So it starts off by saying the law couldn't do something. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER D Couldn't do something is impotent in one area for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh. Just by giving a bunch of human beings a rock with God's writing on it does not fix the problem. That's true because not because there's anything wrong with the law. It's actually amazing. It shows us how to love God and love one another. But the problem was the people that the people that received that law, they were incapable of fulfilling because they had sinned and they had a fallen sinful nature. And so what the law couldn't do, because human beings were too weak, they couldn't do anything with it, they couldn't live up to it. I love what it says. It says God did. I love that for what the law could not do, God did. SPEAKER C Yes. Amen. SPEAKER D And how did he do it? It says God did. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, god became one of us, took on our liabilities, took on our weakness, and just was filled with the spirit of God. Day by day. Lived by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God and lived a righteous life on this earth for you and me. And it goes on account of sin. He condemned sin. He condemned sin in the. Flesh. SPEAKER C Yeah. SPEAKER D So as one of us, he gave the death penalty to sin, he took it out and he revealed righteousness to us. And it says in verse four that the righteous requirement of the Law, this expectation from the Law, that we be this beautiful type of human being that loves God and loves one another. Yes, that that righteous requirement of the law might actually be filled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. SPEAKER C Wow, that is so powerful. So through faith, we can receive this. It says that there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh because the flesh is weak. So we can't rely on the flesh, but they walk according to the Spirit. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C So it's the life of Jesus in us, his righteousness being manifest in us because we receive Christ into our hearts, his law of love being written on our hearts, that enables us now to receive that righteous requirements. SPEAKER D That's right. SPEAKER C That the righteous requirements of the law may be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh. So the flesh now is no longer ruling over us, but according to the Spirit. The Spirit, as it says there in verse two, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. Well, dear listener, we thank you for joining us on the program. Again today we can see that Christ is the aim, the object, the purpose of the Law. This is what the Law demands and this is what Jesus gives and he imputes. That means he accounts his righteousness to our account. In other words, we have a million dollar debt. He goes and puts a billion dollars in the bank account and covers more than the debt is required. SPEAKER D I love it. SPEAKER C So dear listener, we look forward to catching up with you next time. May God bless you. May you continue to spend time in His Word and be led by His Spirit. Until then. SPEAKER B Thank you for joining us on Faith. To Faith. If you would like more information about today's program or if you have any questions, please contact 3ABN Australia Radio by Phoning. 02 4973 3456. Or you can send an email to [email protected] You can also contact us on our 3ABN Australia radio Facebook page. We'd love to hear from you.