Why Follow the Law Chapel
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“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2: 1-3).
Why do we follow the Law?
In 10th grade Bible, we’ve just gone through a bunch of Paul’s letters, including Galatians. In Galatians, Paul hits over and over and over on the topic of there being only one Gospel by which we are saved. You were unrighteous and deserving of God’s wrath but then God gave you the righteousness of Christ and Jesus bore God’s wrath for us. You were passive in the whole thing. We don’t work to earn our salvation. Nothing you do can justify you before God. It’s not Jesus, the cross, plus something else. That’s not the gospel. We don’t earn salvation by follow the Law. We don’t earn points with God. You’re dead to the law; you’re justified by faith in Christ
Then he swings in the other direction, he says this isn’t just fire insurance. “Live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Gal 5:16). Paul later says people who continue to live lives of blatant sin won’t inherit the Kingdom of God. You can’t just live your lives however you want, thinking the cross means God has to forgive you. That’s not the Gospel.
This begs the question: What’s our relationship to the law? Why do we do good things? They don’t save us but they obviously matter to God; otherwise, Paul wouldn’t call into question our salvation for continuing to do them.
So, let me pose the question again, why do we follow the Law?
Let’s take a different approach. Do you clean your room when your parents ask you? Why? Because if you don’t clean your room there are negative consequences to those actions; you’re afraid of punishment. That’s like many of the reasons we tell people to follow the laws of the Old Testament; if you don’t follow them, God is going to beat you with a stick. Granted, God disciplines his kids just like parents do but Christ has also removed the curse from us.
What if we change the scenario just a little bit: say you’ve just gone shopping and you’re parents buy you a new cell phone? It’s not your birthday. You don’t deserve it. They simply decide, out of the goodness of their hearts, to get you a new phone. Now, when you get home, they ask you to clean your room. What’s your response? Is it different than before? Why are you doing what your parents ask? – Gratitude. Are there still consequences for not doing what they ask? – Absolutely. However, that’s not your primary motivation anymore. Your actions are an outgrowth of thankfulness.
Let’s bring this back to following the commandments. Why do we follow the commandments? – Gratitude. We respond to God’s salvation by living our lives differently. Our actions don’t earn us salvation but they are the evidence of it.
Let’s revisit Peter: “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.”
By the way, when God says to rid yourselves of sin, it’s not a suggestion. He’s not asking you to clean up your life when you get older. He’s not winking at you when you flirt with sin. God doesn’t shrug his shoulders and say ‘teenagers will be teenagers.’ God doesn’t think sin is cute. He hates it. More than that, Scripture really doesn’t make a distinction between the sin and the sinner. Jesus says that your actions are just the fruit of who you are. Your actions tell us about your heart. If your making dirty jokes it is because your heart is twisted and perverted around sex. If you lie, it’s because you’re a liar. If you gossip and speak evil of people, it’s because your heart is full of malice and slander.
This isn’t my idea: listen to Psalm 5:6 “You destroy those who tell lies. The bloodthirsty and deceitful you, Lord, detest.” Did God say he detests bloodthirstiness and lying? No. He says he detests those who lie and the bloodthirsty. We want to separate people from their actions; hate the sin love the sinner. The problem is—God doesn’t do that. God says he detests the person who commits the sin because sin shows the rebellion of their heart.
Let me read a couple more just so you can be sure this isn’t a one-time deal.
Psalm 11:5 “The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.”
Proverbs 3:31-32 “Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways, for the devious person is an abomination to the Lord, but the upright are in his confidence.”
You may object and say you don’t believe in a god who doesn’t love everybody. That’s dangerous ground; making God how you want him to be. The Bible calls that idolatry. We come to God on God’s terms.
“The grace and mercy of God is profound, spectacular and beautiful, but it does not make sin safe” (Matt Chandler, Putting it all together 10-30-2011). God takes sin very seriously, so I’d be wary of continuing to call yourself a Christian and thinking you can clean up your act later. If you claim to be one of God’s kids, then expect him to discipline you.
I have a 3 year old and a 1.5 year old in my house. I do a lot of discipline. That doesn’t mean I spank my kids a lot, it means I do a lot of redirecting and time outs. “Come here buddy, let’s try that again.” “Sweetie, let’s share our toys with our friends” “No, we don’t put the kitty in the bathtub, kitty doesn’t like water”. However, there are times when small corrections don’t work.
‘Every now and then, one of my children will say, “Father, will you show me that there are boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed for my own safety?” And what I do in that moment is plead with them. “Please don’t make me show you those boundaries. Will you please just do what I’m asking you to do? Will you just do what you know is right and good, and let’s not go down this route?” Sometimes that works, and then sometimes they will go, “Um, but father, I really need to feel safe, I really need to feel valued and I need to feel loved. So will you show me that, more than your own comfort, more than your own desire, you love me enough to show me that there are certain boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed?” And when your child refuses the path of peace for the path of war, you lovingly oblige them. You lovingly do it because you love them, not because you’re angry, not because you had a bad week and not because you’re tired” (Matt Chandler, Putting it all together 10-30-2011)
If you continue running down the path of disobedience, expect God to love you enough to trip you.
So how do we put away all of our sins: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander? “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2: 1-3). What you can’t do is simply decide, 'okay I’m going to be holy.' That doesn’t work. It’s exhausting. Peter says it involves two things: 1) Taste and see the Lord is good—meaning you know and love Jesus—and 2) craving spiritual milk.
How many of you have had an infant in your house in recent memory? It’s cute for all of 1 day. Nobody gets any sleep. Everyone walks around like zombies. Why, because day in and day out this cute little baby demands milk every two or three hours. They need it to survive. And it’s not like you can reason with the child, ‘Come on sweet potato, just sleep another couple of hours.’
Peter writes, if you have tasted that God is good, you will crave spiritual milk so that you can rid yourselves of sin. Notice the order: salvation, craving the things of God, getting rid of sin. Our following of the law gives evidence of an inner reality. We don’t follow the Law to get in good with God, we follow the Law because our lives have been changed. Your actions are evidence of an inner reality. But here’s the difficulty. You can’t just decide your going to change your actions.
Have you ever decided that you weren’t going to sin in a certain way any more? How did that work out for you? We go right back to it like a dog to its vomit. This, of course, is a problem—if God requires us to be holy and we can’t be holy then we’re up a creek without a paddle. How do we pursue holiness? Not by gritting your teeth and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. If your physical actions represent an inner reality, then you can’t stop sinning because your heart is not different. You can’t tell a fly to stop hovering around poop or eating garbage; that’s what flies do. If you want to change your actions you have to change your heart.
When you sin, it becomes a realization that you don’t love Jesus like you should. He has not yet gained such a grip on your heart that you love him more than you love the sin. We get better by loving Jesus more. As you pursue Christ, everything else falls away. As we treasure Jesus, sin loses its appeal. In 2nd Corinthians, Paul talks about this as becoming what you behold.
That’s not to say we just give up and use it as an excuse. We need to wage war against the sin in our lives. We resist the Devil. We fight back against temptation. But the war will only be won when our hearts are overcome with a revelation of Christ. Sin loses its grip when we fall in love with Jesus.
Some of you have not taken the life of holiness seriously. “I want to plead with you as someone who cares for you, to repent before God, to seek help and community to walk through the lusts of your hearts into holiness before God” (Matt Chandler). You can’t do it on your own. If you’re not sure how to do that or if you don’t have people to do that with, please come talk to me afterwards. This is my passion; it’s why I give up my study halls and teach prayer class. Talk to your youth leaders. Find friends to journey with.
Prayer:
-Repent of taking sin lightly.
-Repent of distorting the gospel
-Repent of trying to make God in our own image
-Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to our hearts
Based on the sermon “Putting It All Together” by Matt Chandler on October 30, 2011
Why do we follow the Law?
In 10th grade Bible, we’ve just gone through a bunch of Paul’s letters, including Galatians. In Galatians, Paul hits over and over and over on the topic of there being only one Gospel by which we are saved. You were unrighteous and deserving of God’s wrath but then God gave you the righteousness of Christ and Jesus bore God’s wrath for us. You were passive in the whole thing. We don’t work to earn our salvation. Nothing you do can justify you before God. It’s not Jesus, the cross, plus something else. That’s not the gospel. We don’t earn salvation by follow the Law. We don’t earn points with God. You’re dead to the law; you’re justified by faith in Christ
Then he swings in the other direction, he says this isn’t just fire insurance. “Live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Gal 5:16). Paul later says people who continue to live lives of blatant sin won’t inherit the Kingdom of God. You can’t just live your lives however you want, thinking the cross means God has to forgive you. That’s not the Gospel.
This begs the question: What’s our relationship to the law? Why do we do good things? They don’t save us but they obviously matter to God; otherwise, Paul wouldn’t call into question our salvation for continuing to do them.
So, let me pose the question again, why do we follow the Law?
Let’s take a different approach. Do you clean your room when your parents ask you? Why? Because if you don’t clean your room there are negative consequences to those actions; you’re afraid of punishment. That’s like many of the reasons we tell people to follow the laws of the Old Testament; if you don’t follow them, God is going to beat you with a stick. Granted, God disciplines his kids just like parents do but Christ has also removed the curse from us.
What if we change the scenario just a little bit: say you’ve just gone shopping and you’re parents buy you a new cell phone? It’s not your birthday. You don’t deserve it. They simply decide, out of the goodness of their hearts, to get you a new phone. Now, when you get home, they ask you to clean your room. What’s your response? Is it different than before? Why are you doing what your parents ask? – Gratitude. Are there still consequences for not doing what they ask? – Absolutely. However, that’s not your primary motivation anymore. Your actions are an outgrowth of thankfulness.
Let’s bring this back to following the commandments. Why do we follow the commandments? – Gratitude. We respond to God’s salvation by living our lives differently. Our actions don’t earn us salvation but they are the evidence of it.
Let’s revisit Peter: “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.”
By the way, when God says to rid yourselves of sin, it’s not a suggestion. He’s not asking you to clean up your life when you get older. He’s not winking at you when you flirt with sin. God doesn’t shrug his shoulders and say ‘teenagers will be teenagers.’ God doesn’t think sin is cute. He hates it. More than that, Scripture really doesn’t make a distinction between the sin and the sinner. Jesus says that your actions are just the fruit of who you are. Your actions tell us about your heart. If your making dirty jokes it is because your heart is twisted and perverted around sex. If you lie, it’s because you’re a liar. If you gossip and speak evil of people, it’s because your heart is full of malice and slander.
This isn’t my idea: listen to Psalm 5:6 “You destroy those who tell lies. The bloodthirsty and deceitful you, Lord, detest.” Did God say he detests bloodthirstiness and lying? No. He says he detests those who lie and the bloodthirsty. We want to separate people from their actions; hate the sin love the sinner. The problem is—God doesn’t do that. God says he detests the person who commits the sin because sin shows the rebellion of their heart.
Let me read a couple more just so you can be sure this isn’t a one-time deal.
Psalm 11:5 “The Lord tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.”
Proverbs 3:31-32 “Do not envy a man of violence and do not choose any of his ways, for the devious person is an abomination to the Lord, but the upright are in his confidence.”
You may object and say you don’t believe in a god who doesn’t love everybody. That’s dangerous ground; making God how you want him to be. The Bible calls that idolatry. We come to God on God’s terms.
“The grace and mercy of God is profound, spectacular and beautiful, but it does not make sin safe” (Matt Chandler, Putting it all together 10-30-2011). God takes sin very seriously, so I’d be wary of continuing to call yourself a Christian and thinking you can clean up your act later. If you claim to be one of God’s kids, then expect him to discipline you.
I have a 3 year old and a 1.5 year old in my house. I do a lot of discipline. That doesn’t mean I spank my kids a lot, it means I do a lot of redirecting and time outs. “Come here buddy, let’s try that again.” “Sweetie, let’s share our toys with our friends” “No, we don’t put the kitty in the bathtub, kitty doesn’t like water”. However, there are times when small corrections don’t work.
‘Every now and then, one of my children will say, “Father, will you show me that there are boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed for my own safety?” And what I do in that moment is plead with them. “Please don’t make me show you those boundaries. Will you please just do what I’m asking you to do? Will you just do what you know is right and good, and let’s not go down this route?” Sometimes that works, and then sometimes they will go, “Um, but father, I really need to feel safe, I really need to feel valued and I need to feel loved. So will you show me that, more than your own comfort, more than your own desire, you love me enough to show me that there are certain boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed?” And when your child refuses the path of peace for the path of war, you lovingly oblige them. You lovingly do it because you love them, not because you’re angry, not because you had a bad week and not because you’re tired” (Matt Chandler, Putting it all together 10-30-2011)
If you continue running down the path of disobedience, expect God to love you enough to trip you.
So how do we put away all of our sins: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander? “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2: 1-3). What you can’t do is simply decide, 'okay I’m going to be holy.' That doesn’t work. It’s exhausting. Peter says it involves two things: 1) Taste and see the Lord is good—meaning you know and love Jesus—and 2) craving spiritual milk.
How many of you have had an infant in your house in recent memory? It’s cute for all of 1 day. Nobody gets any sleep. Everyone walks around like zombies. Why, because day in and day out this cute little baby demands milk every two or three hours. They need it to survive. And it’s not like you can reason with the child, ‘Come on sweet potato, just sleep another couple of hours.’
Peter writes, if you have tasted that God is good, you will crave spiritual milk so that you can rid yourselves of sin. Notice the order: salvation, craving the things of God, getting rid of sin. Our following of the law gives evidence of an inner reality. We don’t follow the Law to get in good with God, we follow the Law because our lives have been changed. Your actions are evidence of an inner reality. But here’s the difficulty. You can’t just decide your going to change your actions.
Have you ever decided that you weren’t going to sin in a certain way any more? How did that work out for you? We go right back to it like a dog to its vomit. This, of course, is a problem—if God requires us to be holy and we can’t be holy then we’re up a creek without a paddle. How do we pursue holiness? Not by gritting your teeth and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. If your physical actions represent an inner reality, then you can’t stop sinning because your heart is not different. You can’t tell a fly to stop hovering around poop or eating garbage; that’s what flies do. If you want to change your actions you have to change your heart.
When you sin, it becomes a realization that you don’t love Jesus like you should. He has not yet gained such a grip on your heart that you love him more than you love the sin. We get better by loving Jesus more. As you pursue Christ, everything else falls away. As we treasure Jesus, sin loses its appeal. In 2nd Corinthians, Paul talks about this as becoming what you behold.
That’s not to say we just give up and use it as an excuse. We need to wage war against the sin in our lives. We resist the Devil. We fight back against temptation. But the war will only be won when our hearts are overcome with a revelation of Christ. Sin loses its grip when we fall in love with Jesus.
Some of you have not taken the life of holiness seriously. “I want to plead with you as someone who cares for you, to repent before God, to seek help and community to walk through the lusts of your hearts into holiness before God” (Matt Chandler). You can’t do it on your own. If you’re not sure how to do that or if you don’t have people to do that with, please come talk to me afterwards. This is my passion; it’s why I give up my study halls and teach prayer class. Talk to your youth leaders. Find friends to journey with.
Prayer:
-Repent of taking sin lightly.
-Repent of distorting the gospel
-Repent of trying to make God in our own image
-Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to our hearts
Based on the sermon “Putting It All Together” by Matt Chandler on October 30, 2011
