Lesson 12 The Law of God

[0:00] So, as we talk about the law of God, like I said, we're not covering commandment number 11 or 12, but let me give you an illustration that may help you understand what we're about to do.

[0:14] I want you to imagine you're building a house, and you're going to take care of building the house in sort of three stages, possibly.

[0:25] The first stage is sort of a fundamental foundational stage. And there's a lot of things that are in a basic foundational stage of building a house, right?

[0:36] There's things like... Site work. Right, site work. What else is there besides site work? You decide when you go to pour concrete or make it pure and deep.

[0:47] Okay, so you've got to figure out your foundation. Once you figure out your foundation, you've got to do the digging that's required, the leveling required. You've got to get some of your rough ends, right?

[0:58] Your electric, your plumbing, rough end. Once you get your foundation, the next fundamental is the structure, right? It's your framing. You've got to figure out what you're going to frame with, and then you've got to start framing, and then you've got to get your exterior wrapped.

[1:13] You've got to get your roof on, get your windows in, get it in the dry, right? That's what we call that. And then you're still not done with fundamentals because you've got to get your electric, and you've got to get your plumbing stuff, and your insulation done before you get to the second stage, where at second stage, now you begin to really get a lot of questions from the builder about what you want, right?

[1:41] You begin to personalize it because now it's what kind of floor covering, what color floor covering, what texture floor covering, which rooms, what kind of wall covering, what color for the walls, what about wallpaper, what about light fixtures, light switches, appliances, your faucets, your toilets, your cabinetry, your appliances in the kitchen.

[2:14] I mean, you're making all kinds of decisions based upon what you want. It's your money, so you're deciding, do you want an electric stove or do you want a gas stove? And everyone said, gas.

[2:26] Yes. And so you have all of these decisions you're making where you're personalizing this, but the personalizing stage doesn't end there because personalization of a house includes your furniture and your pictures and your things.

[2:44] So you've got this fundamental stage. You've got this personalizing stage. But imagine as you get to the third stage, once it's all done, it's all the fundamentals are done, all the personalizing is done, you lock the house and you walk away.

[3:00] You never live in it. You never let anybody else live in it. You don't sell it. You don't rent it. It just sits there. And what would you think about somebody who did that?

[3:13] Lost their mind. Lost their ever living mind. Right. So in the Christian life, the fundamental stage is when we learn things from the Bible.

[3:28] It's the truths and the doctrines that we learn from Scripture. As we learn those things, we personalize them. Right. Right. When we looked at some of these laws, we saw what it meant.

[3:42] We saw what it forbid. And many of us at those moments went kind of, oh, I've broken that law. And then we said, it's a good thing Jesus died.

[3:54] And we went back to the cross and we remembered that we were covered in the righteousness of Christ. What we did is we took those truths and we personalized them. We experienced them in a real way because we understood where we were.

[4:09] We're supposed to do that with every doctrine. We're supposed to take and learn something about the person of Jesus. We're supposed to learn something about the Trinity. We're supposed to learn something about the church and then personalize it.

[4:21] We're supposed to believe it. We're supposed to let it impact us and change us. But we also must use it.

[4:34] And when I say use it, I mean use it for somebody else's good. When we don't take what we've learned and we turn and then if we don't use it for the world out there outside of us, it's as foolish as building a house and never living in it.

[4:53] It's just as wrong. You are not supposed to just come and get the fundamentals and get the academic knowledge of what is and apply it to your life and then walk away and don't do anything with it.

[5:06] You're supposed to do something with it. And that's what I want to talk about in the next two lessons that we have. Is that first of all, how do we use the law of God? That's what we're going to look at today.

[5:17] And then the next time we meet in two weeks, it's going to be how do we use the grace of God? How do we use the gospel in relationship to the law in the lives of other people?

[5:28] So, with that being said, I want to cover today in three big points. Because if we're going to use the law, the first thing we need to do is we need to understand what we're talking about when we say the law.

[5:42] Just big pictures. This won't take us very long to get through. But we want to understand the moral law. Right? We want to understand the moral law. Now, when I say moral law, what I'm talking about is I'm talking about the Ten Commandments.

[5:58] What we've been studying is the most exhaustive summary anywhere in the Bible of the moral law of God. The moral law of God exists because God exists.

[6:13] Right? These are laws that come directly from his character. Directly who he is. And as we talk about, hey, you need to use the law of God in somebody else's life, what we don't want to say is that it's okay to use some of these other laws.

[6:29] And let me give you an example. The moral law is only one type. Right? It's only one of the types of law that's in the Bible. There's civil law and there's ceremonial law. Right? The civil law are things that have to do with judiciary and justice.

[6:45] So, if somebody was caught, if you had a bull and that bull had gored somebody to death and you didn't kill that bull and then it gored somebody else to death, then you suffered capital punishment.

[7:02] Okay? That's one of the laws of the civil judicial laws out of the Bible. Right? So, that's not a law that you want to use in somebody else's life right now because you don't know how.

[7:14] And I'm not sure I could even help you know how. Right? There's ceremonial laws like the sacrifices and the tabernacle and the feast days. They're applicable to us, but we don't want to use those either.

[7:27] We want to use the moral law. We want to use the Ten Commandments because it's crystal clear what we're doing. So, the Ten Commandments is the moral law.

[7:38] The moral law is the Ten Commandments. The moral law has always been around. And I just want to show you this just so you'll understand that this is the reason we're using the moral law is not just because we can't understand the other two, but it's because it transcends time and space.

[7:56] Right? So, this is from Romans. This is Paul speaking right into the Romans. He says, For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given. Okay, so think about that.

[8:07] Sin is a breaking of law. So, sin was in the world before the law was given. Before that written law was given, there was already sin in the world. So, sin can't exist though, but sin is not counted when there is no law.

[8:23] So, if there was sin, then there had to be a law. Right? Right? Yet, death reigned from Adam to Moses.

[8:35] Okay? This is before the law was given. Death reigned from Adam to Moses. Even over those who sinned was not like the transgression of Adam, who was the type of one who was to come. The idea that death reigned means death is a punishment for sin.

[8:53] Right? It's the curse. So, if people died from Adam to Moses, it's because they sinned. And if they sinned, there was a law. Even though it wasn't written down.

[9:06] Does that make sense? Yes. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. But how did they get to go to heaven? Okay. So, I'm trying to figure out how to answer your question.

[9:22] That's off topic, but... No, no, that's okay. Because... What was the question? I'm sorry. Do they get to go to heaven? Oh, oh. These people between Adam and Moses. So, the gospel was first preached in seed form to Adam and Eve in the curse upon the serpent.

[9:43] Even though that was not written down, that story was known. And so, I believe that all of these people had the gospel preached to them in some seed form.

[9:54] And had the opportunity to believe or not to believe. For example, Abraham is between Adam and Moses, right? And in Genesis chapter 15, it tells us that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

[10:11] So, they had an opportunity to hear the gospel preached. Okay? So, okay. That was going a different direction.

[10:22] I had to get my brain with me here. The reason that we're talking about this, though, is because as you think about using the law of God in somebody's life, it's easy to kind of get bum-fuzzled when somebody says, What are you talking about the Bible?

[10:40] What is the Bible? And we might think to ourselves, Well, if somebody doesn't have a Bible, or somebody doesn't know the Bible, and therefore they don't know the Ten Commandments, how can they be accountable to the law?

[10:51] And it's because it's always been in existence, and it doesn't have to be written down for people to be accountable to it. Right? The other thing we need to say is that the law cannot save.

[11:05] This moral law cannot save people. Right? We've inherited from Adam both guilt and corruption. Right? So we're guilty of sin, and we're corrupted by sin.

[11:17] And obeying the law, then, can't save us from that. That's what Paul says in Galatians. He says that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

[11:30] So we also have believed in Jesus Christ in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. There's an old Puritan who wrote a poem, and the next time we get together, I'll read you the second half, but the first half is this.

[11:49] Run, John, run, the law commands, but gives us neither feet nor hands. Run, John, run, the law commands, but gives us neither feet nor hands.

[12:05] The law can tell you that you're a sinner. The law cannot save you. It has no power to do that. All it has the power to do is to show you your sin.

[12:17] And it helps to convict of sin because we come to know sin, right? Paul says that the law, what then shall we say? That the law is sin?

[12:27] By no means. In other words, he's saying the law is not a bad thing. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin, for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet.

[12:42] We have to have the law to understand that we're sinners. We are sinners even if we don't see it, but we've got to have the law to know that we are.

[12:53] And now I'm telling you these things about the moral law just so that we have some basic theology because as we get into the next two points, it's going to start to make a play in what we're going to be talking about.

[13:05] So let me pause there before I jump into the second point. See, do you understand what I'm saying about the moral law? Kind of the big points. Do you have any questions about them?

[13:16] Okay. So again, moral law, Ten Commandments, pretty much the same thing.

[13:28] It's always been around. That's why Cain sinned when he killed his brother, right? Because you're not supposed to take life. But you can't be saved by the moral law, but you need the moral law.

[13:41] That's sort of where we are, okay? So let's talk then about applying the law, the moral law to lost people. People who are not Christians. People in your life, they may think they're Christians.

[13:55] They may profess to be Christians, but they may not be Christians. They may consider themselves to be atheists. They may consider themselves to be Hindu.

[14:06] They may consider themselves to be Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, but they're lost. That's their state. How would we use the law of God as we deal with them?

[14:19] And so I want to cover a couple things. Number one, lost people already know the condemnation of the law. They already know the condemnation of the law.

[14:31] Paul says in Romans, for when Gentiles, who do not have the law and think of that as the written law, by nature do what the law requires, their law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

[14:47] So they don't have the written law, but they do what's there. So that becomes for them their conscience. That becomes the thing that they know they ought to do is the point there.

[14:58] He says, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. So the work of the law is condemnation. Right?

[15:08] That's what the law does. It says, you shall not murder. And when I see that, I know I've murdered, and therefore I feel condemned. Right? So the work of the law is condemnation.

[15:19] That is already written on their hearts. While their conscience bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them.

[15:33] So when someone has a guilty conscience about something that they have done, that's what he's talking about here. And you can go, you can absolutely go into any culture around the world, any Western culture, any third world country, any lost tribe that's never seen the light of modern man, and they will have moments where they feel guilty for breaking some law.

[16:09] They may try to hide it, and it may even be a law that we wouldn't consider to be a law of God. They may think to themselves that it's wrong and bad and terrible to not use somebody's preferred pronouns, and they feel guilty like they're doing violence to someone.

[16:30] Now they're wrong, but the guilty conscience is evidence that the work of the law is written on their heart. And when they look at other people and they say, oh, that's wrong, now they're accusing someone else that work of the law is written on the heart.

[16:47] It's evidence by them judging someone else, by them saying, oh, that's wrong, that's morally wrong, oh, that's a sin. Oh, when you act that way, when you Christians, you know, you hate people who are like this, and therefore you're all bad.

[17:03] Why would you even do that? Because the work of the law is written on the heart. That's why they do that. So in other words, when you go up and you go to talk to one of your lost friends or family, and you want to bring to them the law of God, and you find them saying things like, I don't feel guilty about that, not true.

[17:23] They may, in their minds, not feel guilty, but it's there. And that is going to be your ally as you work with them. Okay? Second thing is that the lost need the law to see specifically how they have sinned.

[17:41] They need the law to see specifically how they have sinned. Paul says, for my works of the law know a human being will be justified in the sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. The law helps you see that you've got a problem.

[17:55] I want to see if I can illustrate this for a second. I want all of you to put your hand up like this. You don't have to raise it real high, but just put your hand up like this. And we are applying for a job.

[18:05] Okay? You're applying for a job. I know you don't want a job, but just apply for it anyway. I'm going to read you the qualifications for the job. Okay? And once I hit a qualification that you don't have, just put your hand down.

[18:20] Okay? So here are the qualifications. Number one, you must be able to use a sitting and standing desk so that you can change positions. So you're not always sitting, you're not always standing.

[18:31] You've got to be able to use one of those. Okay? Number two, you've got to be able to use a telephone. You've got to know how to put people on hold and transfer them to other extensions.

[18:44] Three, you've got to speak pretty decent English grammar. Okay? And Spanish. Oh. And French.

[18:58] Ooh. And Russian. And Mandarin. And Swahili.

[19:09] You're good. You got me there. I'm Swahili. So none of you were qualified for the job. You just didn't know it until I read the qualifications.

[19:25] A sinner does not know that they're not qualified to be with God forever in heaven until they see from the law you were never qualified to begin with.

[19:38] They're not qualified. And just because they don't know it very viscerally and consciously doesn't mean that they are just let off scot-free.

[19:51] But we want to use the law so that they become aware of their lack of qualification to be able to be with God forever. And so the lost can be confronted with the law.

[20:06] That's what we want to do. We want to confront them with the law of God. Now let me give you an example of someone doing this in the Bible. As a matter of fact Jesus himself does this.

[20:18] Here we go. This is the woman at the well and as he visits with the woman at the well Jesus says this go call your husband and come here. The woman answered I have no husband and Jesus said to her you are right saying I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one you now have is not your husband.

[20:41] What you have said is true. Which commandment is Jesus leaning on? Don't commit adultery.

[20:52] He's leaning in upon her pressing in upon her conscience with the seventh commandment. and by laying that out for her it's helping her to see she's got a problem and what does she immediately do?

[21:08] Do you know what happens in verse 19? She changes the subject because she feels the guilt. Right. This guy knows me and she doesn't want to talk about it.

[21:20] She doesn't want to deal with it and she goes off and starts talking about well where are we supposed to worship and Messiah is coming one day and then he reveals himself to her.

[21:33] Right. He gives the grace to her in that. So Jesus even uses the commandments to help people see their sin. So as we have people in our lives that are lost we want to use the law of God with them to help them understand their sin.

[21:53] So the two big principles are in other words how do you do this? One use questions to help them compare their lives to the law of God.

[22:07] Use questions to help them compare their lives to the law of God. You know you get lots of times where people bring up some sort of way of confronting people without just going by the way you've committed a sin against the seventh commandment you're dying and going to hell.

[22:27] like that's what we normally think of when we think of somebody confronting somebody but that's not how it's done in the Bible. Right? What did God do for Adam and Eve? He comes into the garden and he says where are you?

[22:43] They said well we were naked and afraid so we hid. What's the next thing God says? How did you know you were naked? Who told you? Do you see what he's doing?

[22:54] It's not because God doesn't know it's because God is trying to help them see themselves. There's another story in the Bible it doesn't use questions but I think the spirit of using questions and helping people see themselves is in this story.

[23:10] David has sinned with Bathsheba had her husband killed and Nathan the prophet comes to confront him and what does Nathan do? He tells him a story and once was a man a very rich man and had lots of land land and lots of lambs and he took the lamb of a poor man instead of one of his own to offer as a food for his visiting friend and David became incensed and Nathan says you're that man.

[23:39] David could see that the actions were wrong then he was told but you're that guy. You see the spirit of that is how do we help them see themselves?

[23:51] We don't need to just come right out and say this is the commandment you have broken this is what's going to happen to you but we need to do something to help them be able to say that themselves and so we just want to use the ten commandments and you'll remember even from my sermon this past Sunday that's what I do a lot even in my sermons have you ever told a lie or what does that make you?

[24:19] Have you ever stolen something even something small that makes you a thief have you ever taken God's name in vain? That's called blasphemy what does that make you?

[24:33] Makes you a blasphemer not so if God were to judge you on judgment day by the ten commandments would you be innocent or guilty? If you've asked for forgiveness but if you stand before a judge and you've been found guilty of a crime and you say judge would you forgive me are you still guilty though?

[24:58] Sure Yeah So if God judges you on the day of judgment would you be innocent or guilty? Guilty Does that concern you? What is it that God has done to pay the price for sinners?

[25:15] Right So we don't want to jump to forgiveness in the gospel until we've gotten all the way through because it's not just the law but it's the work of the law they need to see and understand that they're under condemnation from God in order for them to say well then I want to be rescued Now all of this is dependent upon the Holy Spirit Right I can be really smooth with the way I say things but just my smoothness is not what convinces the heart of somebody to believe It is the Holy Spirit and only the Holy Spirit that convinces the heart of a person to believe and so we do we need to be skilled in what we're doing as best we can be we need to use it as best we can and then we just depend upon the Holy Spirit to save because it's not our business to save it's just our business to tell the truth so let me pause there for a second this is this is this is basically everything that we studied last summer on our

[26:21] Wednesday nights as we talked about the living waters the way of the master and how to do evangelism that's a crash course on how many weeks nine ten weeks of material you remember that Jill you were here yeah it's really good stuff because because it's it's just by asking those simple questions have you ever told a lie you know you can even start and the material tells us to do this to start with do you consider yourself a good person well then let's put that to the test have you ever told a lie and the guy who sort of trained in how to do this his name Ray his name is Ray Comfort and he has a YouTube channel and you can go watch some of his interactions he records them on video with people and it's interesting that sometimes you'll see people who will be like oh yeah I'm a good person and then after they go through it they'll look at him and say well I guess

[27:23] I'm not as good as I thought now some people get mad and walk away and some people say I want to punch you in the face and I mean there's all kinds of things what I'm suggesting to you though is that you don't have to have this pattern of the way he does it to do the same as you deal with lost people I'll she was lost right they don't come out they don't come out of the womb saved right they're lost they're lost and they need Jesus and they need to get saved okay and so this this daughter of mine as she's living with us and dealing with her sisters she's getting angry and she strikes out and she hits him and so I'm having to confront this a lot had I confronted that with that is bad and that is wrong and you're not going to do that because I say so because this is my house if you do that again

[28:25] I'm going to whoop your butt I mean like whatever I might say if that's the approach that I take then I have missed biblical parenting instead I said so what happened I hit my sister well what made you hit your sister well I was just angry what made you angry well she did such and such she made me angry and I said and what does Jesus say about anger well that it's like murder because we had this discussion because I talk about it all the time she says well it's like murder I said so what does that make you a murderer I said and what if God judges you by that she starts and we went through this for months now she wasn't hitting every night but there were a lot of times I'm in the room with her and I'm going back over and she would just begin to weep and I would get to the place when she would start weeping

[29:27] I said that's why Jesus came like in that moment that's when I came to offer the grace that's when I came and talked about God's love and God's sacrifice of his son on the cross she'd be like just refusing and eventually though that is the thing that one evening I said and what did Jesus do for sinners like you and me and she said he died on the cross and I believed that and I said what do you mean she said I trust Jesus to pay for my sin I mean it was one of the clearest examples of just a confession that I had ever heard and I think that often times when we think about using the law of God we think about strangers out there but really this is the heart of parenting biblically this is the heart of marriage in marriage if you end up you know some people they're married to somebody who's a lost person

[30:31] I remember Jana her husband he's completely lost and she would attempt to try to get there through some of these things but even as we still need to use the law with Christians but the way we deal with one another needs to be both law and grace we need to confront with law and then we need to offer grace and we're going to come to grace next week but any questions about this point using the law with the lost people okay let's go on to the!

[31:10] !!! using the law with Christians here I want to show you an example from Paul the apostle I'm going to read this passage to you and he uses three different laws in this passage that I'm going to read to you you pick out which laws he uses okay therefore having put away falsehood let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another be angry and do not sin and do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil and let the thief no longer steal but rather let him labor doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need all right what laws do you see Paul using there do not bear false witness that's right that's one not steal!

[32:07] He uses those three laws as he's just talking to Christians right this was written to Christians as a matter of fact it's one of the most universal letters of the apostle Paul and it's in this whole section where he's telling them how they ought to live as Christians chapter four of Ephesians starts off with walk worthy of the calling with which you've been called and how does he tell them to do so we definitely can use the law as we deal with Christians so let's take a look at some principles of how we would use the law with Christians the first principle is this you have to have spiritual conversations with one another you have to build relationships with one another and have spiritual conversations too often the conversations that happen among Christians involve the weather politics finances and somebody down the road and we don't ever get to spiritual matters we don't talk about things like what are you learning in the

[33:20] Bible right now from God what's one thing what's one sin you're struggling with right now that I could help hold you accountable and be here for you to encourage you what's something that I could be praying for you about today services over on a Sunday it's 12 noon everybody kind of scatters to their own directions I'm saying to you stop pause have some spiritual conversations before you leave the building or invite someone to your home and when they get home have some spiritual conversations talk about the content of the sermon whether it was good or bad it doesn't matter it gives you something to talk about in terms of spiritual conversations without having spiritual conversations we will never use the law of God in one another's lives we've got to be able to get past the point of being afraid to get involved in people's lives there's this whole idea that says live and let live and I think that's the way vast majority of Americans live and that is an unbiblical way of living we need to get into each other's lives second thing you got to be willing to confront

[34:30] Christians you got to be willing to confront other Christians this is what Paul's talking about in Galatians Paul says brothers if anyone is caught in a transgression you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness keep watch on yourselves lest you too be tempted bear one another's burdens!

[34:58] and so fulfill the law of Christ the way you're bearing somebody's burdens is by confronting them about their sin and it's fulfilling the law of Christ and it's you who are spiritual so it's not about those who are leaders but if you are in a moment where you're living the way you ought to you're not having a sin struggle but you see a brother or sister having a sin struggle then you should confront them you should do so in order to restore them so a couple things here one is that you gotta look for them being caught in any sin in other words that's that's gonna be something where it seems to be something a little bit more than normal like we all sin and we all have moments that we sin you know I have moments that I get mad okay and I'll get mad about something but like I don't explode I don't implode I just have this moment that I go oh and then I'm like okay that's wrong

[35:59] I just gotta you know I need to not be mad and so there's a little moment of self correcting that happens we all have those moments and I'm not talking about that kind of a thing but I'm talking about the moment where you might see me come in and I start slamming things and I'm yelling at people and I'm slamming the door as I walk out and you're kind of going like oh like it's pretty obvious that's a problem right well that's a time that somebody needs to be reached out to and restored this confrontation is about restoring them something's captured them and we're going on a rescue mission to set them free that's what we're after and we have to do that with the law first we can't just go offer grace but they've got to be convicted of that sin first before we offer grace so we want to show them the law and it needs to be done with a spirit of gentleness because as you're confronting someone in this moment just remember next week might be them confronting you and with the attitude that you do towards them you need they will do towards you then you also must be willing to convince sinning Christians you've got to convince them of their sin in the famous church discipline passage in chapter 18 of Matthew it says if your brother sins against you go tell him his fault between you and him alone if he listens to you you have gained a brother let me just pause right there for a second and say you're supposed to tell him his fault okay well if he sins against you back up even to that word how do you know it's a sin you've got to use the law the word of God to define it if you're looking at somebody's behavior and you're thinking they need to be confronted and you're looking at this behavior and you're going like

[37:58] I'm not sure what sin this is then keep your mouth closed we don't confront on things that we aren't sure is clearly a sin I keep thinking about passing judgment on others like people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones I'm a sinner so what right do I have to confront a sinner of adversity you have Galatians 6 1 is your right you see what I'm saying I mean brothers if anyone is talking to sin you who are spiritual should restore him I mean like that can't be understood to mean oh except actually all of you don't do this because you're all sinners and you're actually going to fall too right I mean because because this is keep watching yourselves lest you too be tempted he understands that we're sinners and that each of us even these spiritual people we're we're bound to sin ourselves but it doesn't mean that we don't confront and I know that we have the verse in

[39:04] Matthew 7 that says judge not lest you be judged but the rest of that passage talks about the illustration is how can you take a speck out of your brother's eye when you have a log in your own eye and then he says take the log out of your own eye first then take the speck out of your brother's eye in other words you are going to have to judge but the point is don't be don't with the measure that you judge that's what's going to be measured back to you so we are supposed to judge but we're supposed to judge equitably gently carefully humbly watching over ourselves lest we be tempted it's let me give you a good example what would happen if you if we had that sort of mindset in our parenting we would never tell them anything wrong that they did that would be that would be a condemnation upon them can you imagine a kid never told that what you're doing is wrong and you need to quit so so I

[40:16] I get the feel because nobody wants to be judgmental in a negative sort of harsh coming down upon you kind of way nobody wants to act holier than thou nobody wants to be somebody like that and all of those things are not a part of this right because Galatians I mean it's it's restoring it's with gentleness it's with humility it's watching out for yourself that you're not tempted well yeah so so those people have to be Christians and they have to be in a local church that holds them accountable and if you're at a meeting and another believer that's a member of the church sins in that meeting and when that meeting's over after a couple of days and they've had time to cool down or whatever then you should go to them and you should confront them not to try to show them up but like you gotta visualize if they're sinning particularly anger right we've already talked about anger is like this idol of the heart right because there's something I desire so much that I'm willing to kill to get it right which killing is gonna be calling names or you know yelling at somebody or whatever that person their heart is captured by an idol it's addiction it's it's it's like drunkenness they are they are captured by this thing and if we don't go confront them and restore them then we're condemning them to stay in that condition back in

[42:03] Matthew when he says what is a sin you know if they've sinned that's not something we get to define that's something that scripture defines and when it says to tell him the word tell him means to expose to him to show him in other words if Jack is sinning and we've been at the water board meeting and after the water board meeting I think to myself Jack needs to be confronted because he was so vile in this meeting then I don't just come up to Jack and say hey Jack you know you were pretty vile in that meeting instead I come up to Jack and we have a relationship and we've been talking about spiritual things we meet together and I say you know what did you think about the meeting the other day yeah yeah yeah well it looked like you got a little upset at that meeting did you get upset at that meeting yeah yeah yeah yeah you know what I'm saying we just begin to ask the questions to and I go well what commandment does that break what do you think

[43:04] God would have to say about your behavior he says well he probably wouldn't he probably wouldn't like very much what do you think needs to happen because of that and Jack do you know do you know what Jesus did for people like you and me who we get we get angry at the drop of a hat he sent his son to die on the cross you know what I'm saying that's that's sort of I I think we've and when I when I come to you and start saying these things I also have to open up the Bible and I gotta show you that it is a sin in the Bible I can't just say it I need to show it because the authority is not mine the authority belongs to the Lord what if Jack says mind your own business and all your kindness and stuff and Jack is very calm about it and he goes listen I get where you're coming from I know where you're going with this but you need to mind if he's a member of my church then I go to verse 16 if he does not listen take one or two along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses and if he doesn't listen to the two or three if he refuses to listen to them then you tell it to the church and if he refuses to listen even to the church then let him be to you as a

[44:22] Gentile and tax collector so if he refuses to repent then he will be put out of the church as a member and then he will be considered to be a lost person so he will not have benefits of membership but he will have the benefits of people wanting to share the gospel with him calling on him to become a Christian because if a person if a Christian gets confronted about their sin and refuses to repent then it's most likely that person is not a Christian well and if they're not part of your church and you gently confront somebody and they say if they're not a part of my church I'm not going to confront them if my brother my brother who's a Christian who goes to a different church if he comes to my house and at my house he sins I might confront my brother but I have no I have no spiritual authority over him as a fellow member of the same body it's all within the confines of the local church so I have no business confronting

[45:33] Christians about their sin that don't belong to this church body now there are some exceptions and caveats to that but we don't have time to get into it but the general rule of thumb is this needs to be about people who have committed themselves together we've said we're family so there we go okay anybody else so that that's all sort of the more negative side of things things go awry there's sin and we've got to be confronted with that this last couple things goes to more positive and it's that we need to use the law to help Christians grow what I'm saying to you is that the law is a part of our growth and sanctification we have the spirit of God living in us you remember when we did the Lord's supper I talk about the new covenant the new covenant in verse 33 of Jeremiah 31 says I will make a for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord

[46:37] I will put my law within them I will write it on their hearts now what does he mean by that well he gives us an explanation over in Ezekiel where he says I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I'll put within you and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules what Jesus purchased on the cross is the promises of the new covenant and one of the promises of the new covenant is that you would have the Holy Spirit living in you and the laws that were once written on stone tablet are now written on your heart in such a way that because of the presence of the Holy Spirit you can obey them and so the Holy Spirit's helping you to obey them so the basis of our growth as a Christian is letting the Holy Spirit help us obey the law let me give you an example from 1st

[47:45] Thessalonians Paul writes that it says finally then brothers we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God just as you are doing that you do so more and more for you know what our instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus for this is the will of God your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality he's bringing up to them the seventh commandment he's telling them we've given you these instructions about this through the Lord Jesus Christ it is God's will for your sanctification and we know that you are doing and walking to please God but we want you to do more in other words he's giving!

[48:32] the law of God saying you've been obedient to it now we want you to be obedient to it even more and more and this is what God's will is for your life is your sanctification your sanctification comes by the work of the Holy Spirit in you and by you obeying God's law it is for your growth in other words if you're not trying to obey God's law in your and what I want to do for other Christians is as we teach as we talk help them to obey God's law not because it saves them but because it grows them it's the way we grow by obeying God's law so then how how do we do this how do we use God's law to help people grow the great commission gives us a couple of thoughts here right it gives us that we're to go make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the

[49:44] Father Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you now that's a great statement so if we we're going to use the law of God to help!

[49:58] ! in other words you cannot help someone become a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ to grow in that discipleship if you look at the law and you say and throw it away because you're to teach them to observe that that word observe that's a terrible word and I wish that they used a different one but that word is to keep to obey you're teaching them to obey all that I commanded you and that's not just Jesus while he was here on earth that's all the commands as matter of fact it's in the very same book in Matthew back in chapter five that he says I have not come to abolish the law the law is still applicable for us so in other words we don't grow as a Christian unless we're obeying and that's what we have to do as we take the law to

[51:00] Christians we're seeking to help them to obey the law of God and my final thing I'm going to say and then we'll just wrap this up is that this starts with concentric circles right think of concentric circles start with yourself and the dead center make sure you are using the law of God in your own life next circle your immediate family anybody who's in your household your 45 year old son and daughter grandchild that's living with you they're your responsibility and you should be using the law of God in their life maybe they're lost maybe they're saved I don't know but you need to use the law of God in their life that's that's how you get in to talking about grace and what they need then it's your extended family or friends some people are more close to their friends and they are extended family so whichever you've got closer and more influence with then outside of that anybody else that

[52:05] God has put into your life well it's both right it's both lost people and Christians so as you've got people in your life you want to try to use the law of God in their life and the goal the goal is to speak!

[52:25] into the church body that's the goal alright let me see if I need to clarify anything any questions speak the truth the last sentence oh we're supposed to speak the truth of them so that we can so as God works in their life we bring and fold them within the church we want them to become a part of the body of believers what we don't want to do is just create some isolated believer out there that's not connected to the body of Christ they need to be connected to the body of Christ now I would suppose that this is a little bit of a hard lesson and for two reasons number one there's a lot in this that we can do badly we really can we can do some of this badly and that's a little scary and it goes back to your comment like there's a lot of people who've done these things and they've done them very badly we're not we're not wanting to do that but the other thing is is that for so long the church has been taught that the law of

[53:43] God is not something that is applicable to us or at least not in these ways but I mean you can see and I could marshal out example after example from the New Testament of how the apostles!

[53:59] used the law of God as they talked to all the different believers and as they preached to unbelievers they were used in the law of God because it brings the knowledge of sin so that we run to Christ and remember this is part one part two is grace that's where we normally live but like if your doctor calls you today and says by the way I need you to go to the hospital tomorrow and you are going to be started on a round of chemo and you go like what are you talking about I don't have any cancer but if he tells you listen it's we have found the cancer we want you to start chemo then you're more likely to do so right you're likely to take the medicine for the cure right all things being equal knowing that you have the sickness rather than just someone giving you a cure for something you don't think you got and so that's why we have to use the law of

[55:02] God all right let me pray for us father thank you for your grace for your mercy thank you for your law and the clearness of your word and I pray that you would grow us as we seek to follow you that you would help us to be obedient to you to follow you and I pray father for your experience and to go look into the word and see if these things are true and we pray this in Christ's name amen