Greg Ford - What is the Purpose of the Law
I do want to pick up where we left off last week. We were talking about the Exodus, and we talked about how the nation of Israel spent 430 years in Egypt. Much of that time was in bondage and slavery. They built the supply centers of Pitham and Ramses, and they did it under the heavy thumb of Pharaoh. At some point, God leads them out into the wilderness, but they’re heading to the promised land. We talked last week about how the Exodus is really about God’s ability to deliver and deliverance. You would think that when the children of Israel got out of Egypt and were no longer physically there, they would have been delivered. However, what you see is 40 years where they are under a psychological bondage. They’re out of Egypt, but Egypt has made its mark on them. Now they have very specific attitudes and behaviors that have caused them, no matter where they physically are, to still be in bondage emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. So we took some time to look at that and what it ultimately means for us to be fully delivered. You can be out of a bad relationship; you can be out of a toxic work environment; you could be in a whole other state and still be in a state of bondage if we don’t work through total and complete deliverance. That’s what we see, and we looked at that theme.
Where we left off was now starting to look, using this pattern that we have here, where we look at an event in the Bible and we reach back to Genesis 1 -3. We reach back to Eden because that helps us understand God’s will. What is God’s will? God’s will is that human beings, who He loves, would live in a state of Shalom. Not Utopia; it’s not a pipe dream; it’s real. You can have conflict and still end up with peace. You can make fleshly, fallen decisions and still work your way through to redemption and restoration and not have the fall or the failure be the last chapter of the book. God expects us as human beings to have flesh and to make mistakes. So much of what we learn in the Bible is about God’s way of working us through that process of fall, redemption, and new opportunity, new beginnings.
When you take from the story of the Old Testament and then go into the New Testament, you reach back to Eden and forward to Jesus. We see that in the Gospel of Matthew, which we spent the better part of last year in. Matthew, the Gospel writer, has an agenda; his target audience is Jewish people. He doesn’t explain his insider Jewish language, and he references symbols that, until you learn the stuff we’ve been looking at over the last six weeks, might have gone completely over your head. But we’re starting to look at those symbols.
We see in Matthew 2-4 that Matthew is showing Jesus as the fulfillment of the purpose: why did God create the nation? «I want to bless the world through you; I want to create a community where Shalom exists, even in humanity, even in flesh and imperfection. I want to show you how this works, so I’m going to set you apart as a nation so that you don’t live according to the flesh, that you don’t just follow the culture of the world, that you don’t live for the love of power or the power of fear, but you ultimately operate the way that I want you to.»
Israel, although the nation didn’t ultimately fulfill that, we see Jesus fulfilling it. Matthew uses these Old Testament symbols to point all our eyes to Jesus and how He fulfills what humans were unable to do. Jesus is the new Israel; the Son of God is the new child of Israel. We see a reference to Pharaoh and Herod. Remember, Pharaoh is jealous of the growth of the nation, so he orders the massacre of the little Jewish boys. The same thing happens with Herod when he hears there’s a new king of the Jews being born, and he orders the death of the Jewish boys. Both Moses and Jesus escape. This isn’t an accident; Matthew is showing us this. He’s drawing these parallels: the Red Sea and then baptism. The nation goes through the Red Sea; Jesus crosses through the waters of baptism.
Think about the very good declaration from the creation story: when God creates every day, He says, «It is good. It is good,» and then He makes mankind in His image, saying, «It is very good.» That’s a divine affirmation. When Jesus comes out of the water of baptism, the voice from heaven says, «This is my dearly loved Son; His identity brings me great joy,» which is also a divine affirmation. So, again, it’s a parallel. When the nation comes through the Red Sea, they go into the wilderness for 40 years, and they get lost in their bad decisions; they give in to temptation. Jesus, when He comes through His water of baptism, goes 40 days into the wilderness, but He is faithful in temptation. The types of temptation are similar, but what is Matthew doing? When they hear «wilderness,» «40,» boom, their brain goes right back to significant moments in their nation’s history. He’s connecting it, saying, «Look, you need to latch on to Jesus.» You’ve held on to your history, you’ve held on to the law and the prophets, and now Jesus is doing something fulfilling, and you need to be a part of it. This is Matthew’s convincing argument that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, and he’s showing these parallels in the Old Testament.
It starts to make a lot of sense now. They were so focused on the nation, but in Matthew 4, Jesus says, «Hey, I bring you good news of the Kingdom of God,» which is going to be beyond anything national; it’s going to be beyond even anything cultural, ultimately the purpose of why God created the nation to begin with: to reach everybody, to bless the whole world through this. That’s what we have. Today, we’re going to focus on Matthew 5-7. We see that after they go through the wilderness for a couple of months, they get to Mount Sinai. They’re there for about a year, and Moses goes up on Mount Sinai and receives the law.
That’s what we’re going to talk about today. That’s the event we’re going to reach back to Eden, forward to Jesus, and then up to us. So Moses goes to Mount Sinai, goes up on the mountain, and receives the law. It starts with the Ten Commandments, but throughout what we would call the Torah-which is the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy-some of you may have heard it called the Pentateuch. It’s the first five books, and you have what accumulates from the Ten Commandments to 613 laws.
Following the pattern, once Jesus comes through His 40 days in the wilderness, He goes to the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 5:17, He says, «Hey, I came not to abolish the law, but I came to fulfill the law.» In other words, He’s saying some of the things I’m going to say are going to seem kind of new, and it might be different than you think about the law, but understand you’re thinking about something old. I’m going to tell you about something original; I’m going to tell you what was in God’s mind and heart the whole time-the spirit of the law that God created.
Let’s go back to Mount Sinai for a minute, and let’s look at these 613 laws. We’re not going to look at all of them, but what we’re going to do is look at the spirit of the law and the «why» behind the law. If you took the 613 laws and put them into three categories, they would fall into three buckets. The first one is the ceremonial law. The ceremonial law essentially defined different acts or activities or things that people would do as acts of worship to God. If we think about Shalom, we think about Eden, we reach back to what was God’s will: that we would be in right relationship with Him, right relationship with ourselves, and right relationship with each other.
When you think about ceremonial law, it starts with really getting our relationship with God in order. When you look in the Book of Leviticus, in the first seven chapters, you’re going to see they lay out five different sacrifices that are made. A few of the sacrifices are related to saying, «I’m sorry» or repentance, and some of the sacrifices are to say «thank you.» So think about this: we are humans with flesh; we’re going to fall sometimes. It’s like, «Man, I knew better, and I did it anyway; I just wasn’t strong enough; I didn’t have enough fortitude to make the right decision, and I feel bad; I need to go make this right; I’ve got to go say I’m sorry.» Other times we make a mistake we didn’t mean to make; we were accidental mess -makers. We thought we were doing the right thing and said something hurtful that wounded somebody and created distance in our relationship. I was thoughtless or careless in some way; my flesh led me into some kind of mess. To be able to go and apologize-let’s clear the air; let’s get this right.
The thank-you sacrifices and part of the ceremonial law were designed to put our hearts and minds in the best state they can be in, which is in a state of gratitude. Being in a state of gratitude, being grateful in life, is the best place you can possibly be. It’s one of the reasons why in the Ten Commandments, the 10th commandment is, «Don’t covet your neighbor’s house, spouse, stuff, or anything.» Don’t covet, because if you do, what happens? It takes your focus from what you have to what they have that you don’t have. While I’m thinking about what they have that I don’t have, and how much I wish I had what they had, I now don’t appreciate what I do have, and it puts me in a bad frame of mind.
I really don’t think God, personally, is all that harmed Himself that you’re coveting. God is really setting up a law for you so you can have the best quality of life possible, which is to be grateful for what you have. If I’m sitting around coveting and wishing I had your relationship, your job, your house, your neighborhood, a better car, or better stuff, and I’m coveting all the things you have that I don’t, that is the worst possible headspace. It really wouldn’t matter how nice your stuff was if you’re coveting other people’s stuff. If somehow you could get to a place where you are overwhelmed with gratitude for the relationships you do have, for the stuff that you do have, for the things that have been provided, that frame of mind is really your best possible state.
What we’re seeing here is that in the ceremonial law, it is an opportunity to clear the air with God, to deal with my guilt, to have some regrets without carrying shame and guilt with me, to be able to move on in wisdom, and to have habits and disciplines that bring gratitude into my life so that I have a better life. This is what it’s designed to do. Also, when I think about God’s holiness, or the idea that He is set apart, that God is unique, there are many places in the Old Testament, in the Torah, that say, «Be ye holy, for I am holy.» What is it talking about? Remember, why did God set them apart? Why are they consecrated or set apart? Because He wants to do something special in you-not so that you think you’re better than everyone else, but so He can bless the world through you. He wants to do something that’s rare and unique, and it doesn’t just happen every day, and it definitely doesn’t happen because of the flesh and impulses and doing what feels right. It’s going to be you trusting Him to live the way that He' s shown you to live, and it’s a better way.
So He wants you to not just fall into peer pressure. He doesn’t want you to just conform to the world. «Be ye holy as I am holy.» The ceremonial law is designed to get this relationship right, to remind me of God’s image, which then puts me at peace here because I’m made in His image. This is good stuff; this is the whole point. Let’s get this right.
The next one is the judicial law. The judicial law is designed to reflect the character of God’s justice. Think about it like this: you’re going to live in a community. You’re going to live in a world where you don’t know everybody by name, and you don’t know everyone’s backstory. Frankly, there’s no time — you can’t do it. You can’t know everybody and what’s going on; you can’t care about everything all the time. But in general, we know that the person you don’t know by name, whose backstory you don’t know, and frankly, you don’t have time to know, we still show them respect because, number one, they’re made in the image of God, and that matters.
How are we going to treat each other with mutual respect? When we do have bad decisions that are made or mistakes that are made in the world, how do we create justice? How do we get the right punishment that goes with the right crime? How do we have this in a way that we can legislate and make some rules that we all agree to live by? Because if we don’t define it, what’s going to happen is you fall into me, and now, in my moment, probably while I’m feeling it, I’m going to take justice into my own hands. I’m going to do what I think is just based on what you did, based on my judgment, and we’ve all done that. Then you woke up the next day, got a good night of sleep, and ate a good meal, and you’re like, «Oh man, I think I might have gone overboard; I think I might have said too much; I think I might have done too much.» At the time, it felt justified, but now, with a clear head and when the dust settles, I look back, and you know what? I tipped the scales of justice the wrong way.
What God does is He orders the civic or judicial law that says this is how you live in your community. The spirit of the law is justice, but obviously, judicial and civic laws are going to change with context. There’s nothing in the Torah about speed limits or gun laws or anything around those things because those things did not exist. So what you do is you look at what is the best way to bring justice into the world, and that’s again a huge part of God’s character.
The last is the moral law, and the moral law essentially defines how to display God’s character of love in the world. How do we love each other? How do we treat the people who you live with in the community, who you don’t even know their name? We’re going to mutually respect each other, and we’re going to bring justice. But what about the people who are really close to you-the people in your family, the people that you know well? There are clear and open and shut things like: don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t kill; that’s a good way to prolong a marriage.
My grandmother — one of my cousins asked her one time, «So did you and Grandpa ever think about divorce?» She goes, «Divorce? No. Murder? Often.» That’s what she said; she’s a legend. I think she was kidding, but you don’t necessarily know with her. All that to say, the idea is that in the moral law, it lays out how we treat each other. The spirit of that is: how do we earn trust? How do we keep trust? As Jesus would later say in Matthew 7:12, «Do to others what you would have them do to you.» He said this, by the way, sums up all the law! The whole law… he goes the spirit of the law could really be summed up: do to others what you would have them do to you.
So it falls into these three categories. By the time Jesus showed up, you have a few dynamics between Moses and Jesus. When Jesus goes to the Sermon on the Mount, which by the way, if you want to learn all about that, I preached on it for like four months last year, and you can go back and watch those; we just went through it verse by verse. What you have with Jesus is that with the dynamics between Moses and Jesus, it has gone beyond 613 laws, which would be hard enough to keep, but now it’s become thousands of oral tradition laws and cultural laws. A lot of times, people didn’t know where God’s law ended and their grandpa’s law began. There was a lot of conflict or loss of Shalom, brother to brother, or even peace with oneself in being able to keep the letter of the law.
Did I break the rule or not? When Jesus says, «I came not to abolish the law; I’m not throwing this away; I came to fulfill it,» He drives them deep into a conversation about the spirit of the law. In Matthew 5, He brings up what we call the Torah sampler. He takes four case studies of the 613 laws. He’s not pulling them out to say these are the four most important; he’s like, «Here are four that sort of fall into these categories, and I want you to think about these four in a unique way, and I want you to think about the other 609 with this type of thinking
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One of the ones He uses is about oaths. Oaths in that day were basically like contracts. You’d make an oath; you would make a contract with somebody and say, «Look, I swear by this that I’ll do that for you.» Now it’s a contract; you put your word on it, you set an expectation, and you made a note that you were going to do it. What’s the spirit of the law? The spirit of the law is justice. Do what you say you’re going to do; be a person of your word; don’t lie; don’t steal; don’t cheat. We get it.
Within the law, at that time, you could find a loophole to get out of your oath if there was a different oath that you wanted to have. So I made an oath to you, I swore by this, but if you swear by something bigger or something better-so I swore by something you thought was good. My word was my bond, but actually, I had something bigger over here in case something better came along. Now I have a loophole in the law to actually cancel out this oath because now I swear by this thing which cancels out this thing, and now you’re left holding the bag, but I’m cool legally; you can’t sue me. My contract is fine; technically I haven' t broken the law. Jesus brings this up, and He’s like, «You know, let your yes be yes; let your no be no.»
You go swear by this thing until it’s not to your advantage anymore, and then you go find your loophole and swear by this thing and leave that person holding the bag, and you think you’re good. You think you’re good because you kept the law. He’s like, «Man, listen, you’ve just proven it’s possible to keep the law and completely desecrate the spirit of the law simultaneously, and yet you’re patting yourself on the back because you’re within the law.» Have you forgotten the spirit of the law? This is why God gave the law to begin with; it wasn’t even about the specifics of the judicial law; it was to bring justice, to be moral, and to not harm Shalom, and to do what you say you’re going to do, so people can trust you.
If you break their trust, they’re probably not going to trust anybody for a while. Is that the world you want to live in? He’s driving them deeper into not just the letter of the law, but the spirit of the law-the heart of the law. What’s the point of this stuff, right? Jesus has all kinds of law conversations. He has another one later in Matthew 22.
In Matthew 22:35, it says an expert in the law tested Him with this question: «Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?» Jesus replied, «Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.» To us, we hear that. To the Jewish audience, they would have heard what’s called the Shema. That is essentially a remz; it’s a reach back into Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5 which says, «Hear, O Israel.» By the way, when you’re reading that from a literary sense, the word «hear» doesn’t simply mean listen; it means obey. So listen and respond!
When you hear «Hear, O Israel,» you hear «Obey, O Israel, for the Lord our God, the Lord is one.» Love- not just emotion or affection, but devotion. It’s talking about making a decision, a commitment. So it’s saying, «Be devoted to the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.» Then Jesus back in Matthew 22 says this is the first and greatest commandment.
Verse 39 says the second is like it: «Love your neighbor as yourself.» Now look at this next line, verse 40: «All the law and the prophets hang on these two commands.» So let’s think about this now, based on our last six weeks of conversation. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Be devoted, be in right relationship with Him, and love your neighbor as yourself. Shalom with God, fullness, security, connection, peace with God, with yourself: love your neighbor as yourself and the world around you. He’s like all the law and the prophets hang on this. In other words, the spirit of the law and the prophets really are designed to produce these things.
If you’re treating the law in a way that doesn’t produce those things, you have misunderstood or have not applied or thought through or stayed focused on the spirit of the law. Therefore, the letter of the law may be a false positive for you. Here’s another one: Genesis, I’m sorry, Matthew 23:23. Jesus says, «Woe to you, teachers of the law.» That’s kind of interesting because he’s cautioning. When he says, «Woe to you,» it’s a provocative thing to say. It’s a little shock to the system. He’s saying, «Be very, very careful.»
He’s saying to the teachers of the law, these would have been the people who had the best technical grasp of the law. These are the people that knew it so well they were teaching others. He says, «Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you actors, you hypocrites!» You give a tenth of your spices: mint, dill, and cumin, and you have neglected the more important matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Some of you, if you have the English Standard Version or you have the King James Version, it says you’ve neglected the weightier matters of the law.
Think about the scales of justice: he’s essentially saying, «Yeah, all the law matters.» He’s saying, «But there are some elements of the law you’ve kept. Some of these elements, and maybe you’ve kept more quantitatively than everybody else.» He’s like, «But there are certain weightier matters of the law that if you set them both down, this one’s heavier.» He says, «Yeah, you’ve gone out and kept the letter of the law,» and by the way, this would have been a shock to the system because what he’s talking about-justice, mercy- are things you would extend to another person.
When he’s talking about ceremonial law, they’re essentially saying, «No, I gave God the ceremony that He wants,» and he’s like, «You know what? God actually doesn’t care about all that. In fact, you’re going to see in the prophets, and now I’m tempted to get ahead of myself a little bit; we’re going to get to the prophets, priests, and kings in a few weeks, but the prophets-there’s some of the most provocative stuff.» He’s like, «Your ceremonies smell awful.»
He means it; it’s all this prophetic language around, «I can’t stand it! I literally am gagging on your ceremonies. They are disgusting to me. I don’t want to hear another one of them!» But they think this false positive, «Oh, but we’re keeping the law.» He says, «No, you’ve neglected the weightier matters of the law. You came in and you put all this incense in the air, and you think that it’s a great aroma in my nostrils, but you’ve neglected the spirit of the law, and you don’t give anybody mercy. You look right over top of justice because it doesn’t suit you well.»
He goes, «The weightier matters of the law.» He’s actually saying that the interpersonal is heavy; it really matters to God. Let me give you one more thing. When we get into the epistles in a few weeks after we talk about the prophets, priests, and kings, we’re going to look at the Apostle Paul. He’s essentially writing to these churches, and every one of the epistles has some similarities but there are a lot of differences because each of those cities and bodies and groups of people is unique.
Paul is writing to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians, he writes to this group of people, and to be honest, they’re a little bit of a pretentious group of people. They live in a very cosmopolitan area; it’s heavy commerce; it’s heavy culture. There are like 26 temples in Corinth. When you think of temples, you think religious, but it was really even more cultural than just purely religious. These people really had a high need to elevate themselves in the social strata. They cared about their image; they cared about how elevated they were above others.
There’s this portion in 1 Corinthians where he says, «Look, you guys are really caught up in a false positive because you have this craving for knowledge and wisdom.» On the surface, it sounds so noble. You read the Proverbs, and it’s like, «Be hungry for knowledge; chase after wisdom. Without knowledge, people perish.» The idea of going for knowledge and wisdom on the surface sounds like yes, that’s what you’re supposed to do. He’s like, «The problem is why you want knowledge and wisdom.» The right reason to have knowledge and wisdom is that if I know more and I’m wiser, I can create more maturity, Shalom, and peace in the world. It’s a benefit to the world around me.
I can bring more harmony. A wise person knows what to do in a situation. He’s like, «The reason you want knowledge and wisdom is that you want to be the smartest person in the room. The reason you’re craving all this knowledge and wisdom is because it elevates you. You’re able to shut it down in a conversation; you’re able to come with the hottest zinger; you’re able to dominate people. Once it’s a back-and-forth, you’re able to have the best sound bite in the best moment and ultimately be the big dog in the room.» You want the right thing for the wrong reason. He’s like, «I’m going to show it to you, and it’s ugly.»
He rebukes them in 1 Corinthians. This is where in 1 Corinthians is where he says, «I wish I could give you solid food, but I have to keep feeding you like a baby.» This would have been hard to hear for these pretentious people, but it’s like whatever, dude. I’m going to do what I have to do. Paul’s talking to them, and he says, «Look, you want wisdom and knowledge, but not because the wisdom and knowledge is going to make the world a better place or even do God’s will; it’s just to make yourself more important.»
He says, «Let me show you. I’ll prove it to you because it keeps showing up like crazy.» In chapter 11, he goes, «You know what’s happening? Watch this. You’re going into the Lord’s Supper.» The way they did the Lord’s Supper wasn’t like you pass out these communion things; it was like you go into homes, and they would have a meal. The point is, in the world, there is a social strata. Some people get a corner office, and some people have to clean the office. The world doesn’t necessarily put us all on a level playing field. He’s like, «At the Lord’s table, it doesn’t matter what you do for a living, how much you have in the bank, or how broke you are; we all sit at this table in community. Even at this table, we are equal. We all get the same mercy, the same grace, whether you work for me or I work for you. It doesn’t matter; at this table, we are all the same.»
He’s like, «But when you guys are doing the Lord’s Supper, you’re now seeing it as another opportunity to show up with better food and better wine.» Read 1 Corinthians 11; he goes, «Some of y’all are getting drunk in the party while people are sitting over there hungry because they don’t have money for food, and you don’t even care!» You don’t even care. So now they showed up at the Lord’s table to maybe be the one place on earth that they feel they deserve to sit with other people. The whole world has been signaling to them that they don’t belong, and now they showed up to the Lord’s Supper, and you drive that message further down.
It actually makes me think of when Shayla and I moved to town. We got here; we put all our money into starting the church. We were fighting and clawing. I worked three jobs, and she worked two. At one point, I saved up a little money. It was our anniversary; the church hadn’t even started yet. I was working the front desk at what was Urban Active Fitness. I don’t know what it’s called now; it’s changed names like 17 times and has been bought out so many times I don’t know. But I was there at the front desk, and the guy comes in, and I was like, «Hey, it’s my anniversary this week; I’m going to take my wife out.» He goes, «Take her to Hyde Park.» I was like, «Alright, sure, Hyde Park.»
I didn’t know anything about Hyde Park, and I put it in a GPS. I get to Hyde Park, and I’m like, «Okay, valet? Can’t afford that.» We parked three miles away; my wife is walking in her stilettos down the sidewalk. I got her hiking in stilettos. We get to Hyde Park, and we sit down, open the menu, and I’m like, «Yo, does that steak come with a car? Like, what? I mean, I had never seen prices like that.» My wife opens it up; she’s like, «What are you doing?» I was like, «I thought it was like Applebee’s!» She’s like, «No, bro, this ain’t no Charlie’s. This is a whole…» I was like, «Oh my gosh!»
I remember, my heart dropped in my stomach. I have the money; I just couldn’t afford it. So literally, I don’t know if you’ve ever had to do this. I cringe right now remembering it: close the menu. I was like, «I don’t think anybody’s looking. Let’s get the heck out of here.» She gets up and walks out, and I’m walking out trying to avoid eye contact with the waiter like, «Hey, we left something in our car, call the valet.» We walk out, and honestly, all jokes aside, it was humiliating. I remember feeling embarrassed as a husband. I felt embarrassed for my wife. I’m like, «Man, I’m an idiot; I put her in this position. I’m not a very good provider; I can’t even afford this meal,» and now we’ve got to go take the walk of shame and go find something we can’t afford.
I just remember feeling like the low man on the totem pole in the whole city. Sometimes life gives you that, dude. Sometimes they treat you like that at work. Sometimes you’re in a season where you just don’t have much. There’s that reality. When you come into the body of Christ, and you come to the Lord’s table, this is the one place, dude, that we find our value. This is the one place you might find your Shalom.
The Apostle Paul is saying to these guys, «Are you serious? These people are having to deal with this? You came in, you got drunk at the Lord’s table, you overate at the Lord’s table to flaunt and show off how elevated you are. This guy’s dying over here in the corner; you didn’t even notice, and if you did notice, you didn’t care! You violated the spirit of the law. Now in your head you’re like, 'I just want knowledge and wisdom, and we just had the Lord’s Supper. Wasn’t it great? Look how extravagant it was! '» And you looked right over the head.
This drives us into the spirit of the law. On the surface, everything the Corinthians wanted looked like it was within the law. You get to 1 Corinthians 12, and all they want to talk about are the gifts of the Spirit: gifts of knowledge, words of knowledge, words of wisdom, speaking in the tongues of angels, all these miracles. They want all the lofty gifts, and Paul explains, «Okay, you want to talk about that?» Fine. He gets to 1 Corinthians 12, then he gets to 1 Corinthians 13 and says, «Just so you know, make sure this thing’s on: if you can speak in the tongues of men, all the tongues on Earth and the tongues of angels, and you knew every mystery of the universe; you were the smartest guy in the room and had the most wisdom and the most answers, and you have not love, you’re not only nothing, you’re annoying. That’s what he says. You’re like a clanging cymbal! Let me go bang on that cymbal in your ear for about 30 seconds and see how you feel about it.»
He says, «That’s how your wisdom and knowledge sound when you don’t know the spirit of the law.» You have built this whole thing on this letter of the law, and it could be a false positive. This isn’t to make us perpetually paranoid; it’s to make us perpetually humble. It forces us to come to the feet of Jesus and go, «Lord, search me. Trust His grace. Know when to say I’m sorry. Maybe see something I haven’t wanted to see because I’ve been hiding behind wisdom, knowledge, gifts of the Spirit, I’ve been hiding behind the Lord’s Supper, I’ve been hiding behind the letter of the law, and in the middle of that, there may be something I need rebuked for.»
I need to repent of that. If I look at the meta-narrative, my flesh and my fall are not the end of the story. The whole thing of the law is to drive me to redemption and restoration. Church, we are now in a context where, yeah, civic laws are going to change with context. Ceremonial laws, we can never lose the spirit of the ceremonial law, but you’re going to different ceremonies and sacrifices and worship sets and ways of worshiping and instruments. All these things are going to change. You see Paul talk a lot about what they would, you know, circumcision, the Sabbath, some of these things that they had seen as sacred ceremonial laws. He’s like, «Those things aren’t sacred; the why is sacred.» A lot of those things are going to change, but he continues to affirm the moral law.
Again, a lot of these things about how we treat one another — those things don’t change. So it forces us to look beyond just what’s on the surface to what’s underneath. We not only find peace with ourselves and peace with God, but we find peace with each other. I invite you to not just look at the letter, to not just look at the surface, but to have enough faith to look underneath and to ask the Lord to maybe show you something you haven' t seen.
Let’s pray. Lord, we come to You in Jesus' name. We thank You, Lord, that the law was not given to us simply to slam a gavel of guilt. It was ultimately designed, Lord, to bring Your character to light-holiness, justice, love — to help us actually work through mistakes, to get to a place of redemption and restoration, to reconcile relationships-our relationship with You, our relationship with ourselves, and our relationship with each other. So, Lord, help us in the middle of being human beings and doing life. When these concepts become real stories and life situations, help us, God, to keep the spirit of the law in focus.
I pray, Lord, in this moment for maybe someone who’s here today who showed up with a sincere heart, simply wanting to see the truth, or maybe show them something they’ve not been able to see, just like the Corinthians who were locked into some mindsets and behaviors. Because on the surface, they looked good, yet underneath, Lord, there was something pretty unhealthy that was not only doing damage to them but was doing damage to the world around them. Help us, Lord, ourselves, to be that perceptive to You.
Lord, if there’s anything in me-anything in me that violates Your character, anything in me that’s harming Shalom between You and I, or myself and the people around me-bring it to light. Bring it to light. Help me walk it out. In Jesus' name, everybody said, «Amen.»