The Law (2)

Read: Deuteronomy 6. 1-9

Now read about an encounter between Jesus and a man who studied the Old Testament: Mark 12.28-34

You should have immediately recognised in Jesus’ discussion with this man - who came to interrogate Jesus, but ended up agreeing with him - that Jesus quoted from the Old Testament passage, Deut 6. It is obvious is that Jesus applies it to himself and his followers.

The greatest command of the law, is to love God with your whole being. This command summarises the law. The rest of the law, in all its detail, is a recipe for loving God fully. So keeping the law is not primarily about the negative response of avoiding punishment – it is the positive response of a heart captivated by the grace and kindness of God.

Believers keep the law because it describes the behaviours that God loves and we love God and want to please him. THAT is why the greatest commandment – the one that swallows up all the rest (like a massive blue whale with a mouthful of krill) – is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

And in case we thought that this love is just a feeling or attitude, there is a remora attached to this whale of a command. (A remora is one of those sucker-fish that stick to the sides of whales and are carried along with the larger creature over long distances). The remora on that massive whale-of-a-command, to love God with your whole being, is, to love your neighbour as yourself.

Why is this secondary command put with the greatest command? Because to love God means to act like God towards the people he made. Love for God is not expressed in merely keeping a tidy life, swept clean by a broom of rules. It is expressed as God expresses his love; by doing good to your fellow-humans. Loving God with all your heart means that you want to be like God. So you attend to your behaviour so that it expresses God’s likeness in real, tangible terms; in loving actions to others.

So, when Jesus answers the question of this man, he chooses Deuteronomy chapter 6 – an Old Testament passage to show that being in right standing with God is about a response of fulsome love – not keeping a tick-sheet of performance. The most direct route to clean, wholesome, God-pleasing, good works is to love God and his righteousness with every fibre of your being. THEN, your good behaviour will be driven; driven, not by fear but love. The law is then no longer a bag of lead weights to drag through life.

When I was a boy, the thing I hated MOST about been smacked by my dad for being naughty. It was the look of disapproval on his face – the fact that this man that I most loved and respected of all the men in the world was offended by my behaviour. Love generates good works. Love produces compliance with the Law.

But as soon as you put Law first, you have loaded yourself with a burden which will lead to hurt feelings that you aren’t getting the pay off, the respect, or the attention you deserve. It will lead to SELF-centred living. You will do things for your neighbour as a witness against them – rather than as an overflow of your love for God and therefore them.

This matches what Jesus taught us about getting what we need for life. He said, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the other things you need will be added to your life. When you seek God’s rule FIRST (his kingdom and righteousness) – he will add to you all the things you need to successfully complete this life and ensure your place in the next. Likewise, when you love God with all your being, it will generate and drive forward a happy obedience to his commands. You will be gathering up good deeds like a kid finding a field full of lollies. They won’t be burdensome to you. They will be sweet!

Going back to the whale. The person who swims through life trying to gather up individual krill, that is, performing all the little rules and expectations of a godly life, will be constantly disappointed and usually guilt-ridden because the task seems overwhelming. But meet the love of God and you will discover that all the little expectations for successful daily life have been gathered up for you. Find love for God and you have found all the performance that goes with it – including that most difficult practice of all: To love your neighbour as you love yourself.

So, with that in mind, for the rest of this study, we will go back into Deuteronomy chapter 6 to see what we can learn about faith working through love. That is a quote from Galatians 5.6, where the apostle Paul is asserting that instead of being enslaved by God’s law – we have come to Christ. His gift of righteousness is not just a legal concept as if he was doling out credits to pay off our sins. When he fulfilled the law of God for us, he fulfilled the law of love - he gave himself for our sins. 1 John 3.16 By this we know what love is, that he laid down his life for us. So, Christ embodies and fulfils the law perfectly. He brings it to life.

More than that, he bears the punishment of the law deserved by us – so he not only displays the law but he accounts for its demands on me – demands that I cannot pay. He paid them in love. I love God because he has first loved me. God’s love - demonstrated and defined by Christ’s death on the cross - demands not a rule-keeping response, but a love response.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That is a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

In Christ, rule-keeping counts for nothing – what counts is faith working through love.

So, back to Deut 6:

Point #1: God reveals and teaches his will for people so that we can perform it. Learn so you can do.V1.

The law of God was never given so that it would be merely ‘aspirational’ – something you ‘have a crack at’ or ‘do your best’. Without holiness, no-one shall see the Lord.

One of the biggest blockages to you and our church witnessing chain-breaking liberty and fulfilments of God’s promises, is our unwillingness to do what he says. Jesus rebuked a crowd once. He said: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you? We don’t do what we know when we have little faith, and we have little faith because we have little love for God, and we have little love for God, because we love idols (chiefly ourselves!).

Point #2: We show our fear and respect for God by doing what he says V2.

The opposite is true, too. When we avoid doing what God has taught us, we are disrespecting him. Ignoring God’s instructions (law) means that you do not fear him.

Fearing God is not like keeping totally still and quiet in your tent because you can hear a grizzly bear outside and don’t want to attract its attention. Rather, fearing God is not wanting to do anything that will remove his grace from you. (IT is too precious to risk). To love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul and strength is the motivation for keeping your life in sync with his revealed will.

Point #3: If you love your children and your own future, you will love God.

V2,3

The person who neglects what God teaches about himself and his will for people in his Word, is slowly poisoning him or herself and their children. Love for God is to love your children.

Point #4: Loving God with every fibre of your being is the motivation for obedience V4,5

Love for God does not exist as merely an intellectual thing – just something you have theories about.

Love for God does not exist just as an emotional feeling – just dependent on your feelings of optimism or gratitude.

Love for God does not exist as just practical efforts – depending on gritting your teeth and doing your share of the duties.

Love for God cannot be maintained in compartments in your life. It must be the lifeblood of your thinking, your feelings and all your speaking and acting. That love will provide the impetus, the drive, the hunger and thirst to be true to God in everything.

Point #5: You must pay proper attention to God’s instructions – applying them to every situation in life V6-9

1^st they have to be on your own heart.

Then they have to be diligently (that is, consistently and with effort) taught to your children. You have to actually speak up about them. Discuss them in your house and when you drive in the car. At any and every time of the day. Saturate your family and home life with the Word of God.

Wear them like a wristwatch that you constantly refer to.

Have them written at the front of your thinking – like a head band.

Have them like notes pinned to your door so you don’t forget or like graffiti scrawled on your gate or garage door to see them as you head out or come home.

This is love for God … to pay attention to his will for you.

And in all the word, and in all the law – recognise Christ.

It is HE who only can fulfil those requirements in you.

Because his death pays and discharges you from your shortfall and his resurrection got for you the Holy Spirit who can work in your inner being to convert you to live a godly life.

I hope that I have shown from this passage:

That the law reveals God’s character to us – and when Christ came he utterly fulfilled and enacted that law – even down to meeting its curses and demands against sinners like us. In fact, when you look at Christ, you see the law alive and active.

God wants his law to become living and active in us and the only way that can happen is if the entire weight our lives is resting on Jesus Christ. The law condemns us but Christ redeems us from the curse of the law. The law was provided for sinners to bring us to our senses. The law bars the way to life with God, it condemns us for sin – but the law is not the final revelation of God – Christ is. The Law is not the last word for anyone who will put their faith in Christ; love is.

Yes, the law makes our situation worse – because it exposes and even incites us to rebel further and sin. But the law also drives us to Christ – it shuts us up to the gospel as the only path to safety. The law looms over us projecting a standard that we cannot keep. It bends us onto our knees to repent and seek Christ – who became the curse of the law for us!

The law is like Isaiah’s vision of the throne of God slammed down in the Temple, so that it seemed to tower above him and disappear into excruciating, blinding light. What was his response? ⁴And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. ⁵And I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!"

The law is both a prison guard that holds rebels accountable to God. And it is a tutor to bring us to Christ. Galatians 3.23-24

Here’s the final word on this for now:

When the law looms over you, don’t try to scale its sheer, icy face. You will never impress God or earn his blessings that way. Instead, go and see the cross. See Love absorbing the curse of the law.

Go and see the empty tomb. See Christ victorious over your guiltiness. Worship him as your Lord and God.

Open your heart to the Spirit of God – be filled with the Spirit as God’s love is poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit he had given us.

Go and listen and learn from God’s Word – from Genesis to Revelation.

Love what it reveals about Christ to you.

Choose that way in every detail of your life.

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

Let that love move you to love your neighbour as yourself.

It is for freedom Christ has set you free.

The Law (1)

THE LAW (1)

What does a Christian do with God’s law – especially when it seems to set a standard that is far higher than we are able to keep?

The response below is about making sure you haven't turned God's Law into rules that are detached from the power of God to make them happen.

The Bible presents God’s Law as God’s statement of righteous behaviour for humans. The Law represents God’s personal standards translated into a human setting. God’s law defines how a godly person should behave; in other words, like God!

The Old Testament makes God’s law explicit. In Deuteronomy Moses reminds Israel how they received the Law but then failed to follow it, resulting in failure to enter the Promised Land.

At first, they were too mindful of their own inability to defeat the enemies that held the land, and later too sure that by their own efforts they could make it happen. Both these failures were a failure of faith  in the God revealed in the law. It was not just rules they broke – they broke faith. They did not trust the God revealed to them in the law.

So, God rebuffed Israel at the edge of the Promised Land and sent them to wander for a generation (40 years) in the wilderness outside that land. During that period virtually an entire generation died out, so that their children and grandchildren were the ones (at the time of Deuteronomy) who stood at the edge of the Promised Land. They were about to go in under the leadership of Joshua because even Moses he had stumbled when driven to frustration by his people’s complaining.

In Deuteronomy, Moses is summing up their present situation and putting in front of them once again the Law of God – the keeping of which would determine whether they were blessed--living and prospering in the new land--or whether they were cursed and perished.

Read Deuteronomy chapters 1-6

The Israelites received the Law in written form (as statutes and rules) – but when Jesus Christ came it was embodied and demonstrated.

Jesus represented and fulfilled every aspect of the Law perfectly. And whereas, in the past, there was a great burden of animal sacrifice in the Temple, to teach the people that sinning against God costs life – when Christ came, he was the Lamb, given by God. He was without sin, a perfect sacrifice, to pay for the litany of broken laws that we all have piled up against ourselves.

Colossians 2.13 You, who were spiritually dead because of your sins and your uncircumcision (i.e. the fact that you were outside the Law), God has now made to share in the very life of Christ! He has forgiven you all your sins: Christ has utterly wiped out the damning evidence of broken laws and commandments which always hung over our heads, and has completely annulled it by nailing it over his own head on the cross. And then having drawn the sting of all the powers ranged against us, he exposed them, shattered, empty and defeated, in his final glorious triumphant act!

What then does a Christian do with God’s Law as given in the Old Testament? 
Answer: The same as Moses, Joshua, Caleb and other faithful Israelites; receive it as a revelation of God’s character and his will for his people and put faith in the God it reveals.

There are two ways of using the Law – one right, the other wrong.

1. You may use the Law as list of demands and expectations to live up to – so that you can be sure of God’s favours as he rewards you for obedience. (That is the wrong way).

2. Receive the Law as an insight into the character of God and his will for you. You trust this revelation of God, having faith in him to reshape you in his image. (That’s the right way)

Take a specific example of these two ways a person might use the Law:
God’s Law says, “You shall not steal.” This rule reveals specific things about God. For example,

• It shows that God is just and fair and that the doesn’t want people to live in the fear of having what belongs to them ripped away by someone else. He is a defender of the righteous.
• It shows that if we need things we may not take the law into our own hands and rip them away from others, but that we should approach God for our needs. He is the provider for his people.
• It also reveals that God himself is the owner of everything, including people, and he will not stand by and allow people to use, abuse and destroy his things without consequence. He is a Judge who holds everyone accountable for what they do with his property.

So, a believer in the God of the Bible, could take that one law (‘don’t steal’) and use it in two ways:

1. She could use that ‘don’t steal’ law as a rule that she will keep so as to avoid being punished and earn rewards from God for keeping it; OR,

2. She could accept what this teaches her about God and God’s will for people, and put her faith in God to help her keep on the right side of this law, because she wants to please him, she wants be like him and she wants her life to display his glory.

The difference is that in the first way of taking the law, ‘don’t steal’, she is looking to God as the author of the law, ‘don’t steal’ but looking to herself to keep it. In the second way of responding to the law she is looking to God for everything – both for the instruction on how to live properly, and for the ability to do so.

There is another major difference between these two ways of taking the law. In the second case, she is expecting an intervention by God in her thinking, attitude and behaviour. But in the first, she wants God to remain at arms’ length - in the sense that she is going to offer something to him (her honest, non-stealing behaviour). This is rather like the way a pagan leaves an offering at an idol, then moves away again, hoping the idol will stay put and not cause her any trouble.

We can take this right back to the first couple in the garden. God gave them a law, ‘don’t steal fruit from this particular tree’. (In fact if you do, you will die). Eve did not respond in the way we have been talking about. She did not take a stance of faith in God to help keep her on the right side of this law because she wanted to please God and be like God. She chose the ‘arms-length' option which led her to sin. She separated the law (‘don’t eat from that tree’) from God himself, so that it became a rule she was making a decision about – rather than a rule that revealed something about God and gave her an opportunity to lean on God to keep it.

As soon as she put herself in what she thought was a 'neutral' position of deciding what to do with the rule – her sinning was guaranteed to happen. She put God at arm’s length. She put a gap between the rule and God and this allowed room for the Tempter to exploit that gap and for her own wrong desires to come into play. She broke the law and ate.

So what you do with the Law (any and every rule or guideline from God) is no small matter. If you are an unbeliever, you are always on the wrong side of the Law. Because even when you agree with it (e.g. ‘don’t kill’) you are failing to keep it, because you have snapped it off from God. You are failing to consider what God is saying to YOU about that Law. For example: Jesus said (Matt 5.21-22) that when you use abusive language against someone who has made you angry, you have picked up the same piece of string that has murder at the other end of it. Hateful language is on the continuum to murder. So an unbeliever is always on the wrong side of the law.

This teaching is for believers. I want to warn you about unplugging God’s law (rules) from God himself. Yes even a Christian might do this. In fact this is one of the major causes of stress in a Christian’s life: Trying to ‘do the law’ in a way that will attract God’s blessing and avoid his disapproval. To treat God’s Law in that way is to fail to notice that the law is an expression of God himself and he alone can express in you the behaviour that matches that law. It can’t happen without him. This is why Jesus not only died to take the penalty the Law demands for your transgressions – but he also gives the Holy Spirit so that you can have behaviour that matches the Law.

Consider this: Galatians 3
O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"?

For a Christian, the Law gives us insight into God’s righteous character and translates that into behaviour expectations for our lives.
We must not ‘snap off’ those laws and try to use them as rules to apply in our own wisdom or effort. Rather, they are an invitation to faith. We agree with God's law and put our faith in God to write it on our minds and hearts and move us to love it and perform it. This is why we begin with the Spirit and must continue with him as we live out our lives in Christ. Gal 3.3