©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
|
11/21/99
|
The 3 Part Pilgrimage
|
...
|
11/21/99 THE 3 PART PILGRIMAGE
John 8:32 and you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.
Those words were spoken by Jesus Christ
to His people.
For the past couple of months now
we have been studying
how He accomplishes that freeing process in
our lives.
If you have been involved in this study since the start
then you know the radically different definition
Christ brings to the concept of freedom
compared to that offered by our society.
Our society pretends
that having the right to live out our inner
bondage is freedom.
Our Lord tells us that having the ability
to break free from that bondage
is the only source of true freedom.
And then last week
we spent the morning
talking about the first of two major areas of
freedom
our Lord seeks to bring into our lives.
Those two areas of freedom are:
1. Freedom from the Law,
and 2. Freedom from sin.
Last week we took the first,
freedom from the Law,
and through the help of the Apostle Paul
and his comments in the book of
Romans,
we made some progress
in understanding what that means.
We heard Paul explaining to us that:
Rom. 5:20 ... the Law came in that the
transgression might increase...
He told us that even though,
to our naturally religious minds,
it seemed as though God was giving us His
law
in order to provide us with a moral road
map back to Him,
in reality exactly the opposite was happening.
God did not give His law to us, His rebellious
creation,
in order to show us how to sin less,
He gave it in order to force us to sin more.
We also heard Paul explaining to us
how the law accomplished this within us.
He said,
Rom. 7:5 For while we were in the flesh,
the sinful passions, which were aroused
by the Law, were at work in the members
of our body to bear fruit for death.
Sinful passions + Law = death
The law simply drew to the surface
our inner heart of rebellion against God.
Without the law
we would have continued on in our delusion,
believing it was perfectly natural,
and normal,
and right for a created being
to reject the authority of his Creator in his life
and seek to live a life independent
of the One who created him.
But once the law came in
it turned a blazing spot light
onto the real problem in our lives -
we enter this world
with spirits in full-blown rebellion
against God.
Have you ever wondered
about the way in which God
phrased His original presentation of His
Moral Law?
Those of you who have been around my teaching
for any length of time
have heard me talk about
the protective moral framework
our God offers us through His moral
law.
We have talked often about the way in which
that moral framework protects us
from the self-destructive nature of
immorality,
freeing us to be fully ourselves
without being destroyed by sin.
Why, when God first offered His Moral Law
in the form of the 10 Commandments,
why didn't He word them in such a way
that we could hear His love in what He
was saying?
Why didn't He say something like,
"My beloved creation,
I love you,
and I care about you far too much
to allow you to self-destruct through
immorality.
I want you to know the truth.
I want you to know that
there are some things that will always hurt
you,
some things that will always bring you
pain,
some things that will destroy your
relationships with the people around you.
Listen to Me, my people, and trust what I say."
Why did He choose, rather,
to present His moral law
in the form of rigid,
inflexible,
nonnegotiable, divine demands.
THOU SHALT NOT commit adultery.
THOU SHALT NOT kill.
THOU SHALT NOT bear false witness.
THOU SHALT NOT steal.
THOU SHALT NOT take the name of the Lord your
God in vain.
Why? Because the first great purpose of the Moral
Law of God
was not to show us how life does work,
it was to show us the root problem
why life doesn't work.
It was given in order to confront us
with our inner spirit of rebellion against our
God,
because until that issue is resolved
no amount of changed behavior
will deliver us from the death within
us.
It's like a person in his mid thirties
who has been a heavy smoker since his teens.
He goes to the doctor for a check up
and is told that he has lung cancer.
He responds to that news by saying,
"OK then, as of today I quit smoking!"
Quitting smoking is all well and good
but it will not meet the need of the moment,
and it will not solve the problem.
The cancer still exists.
And in the same way
making some changes to our moral conduct
will not restore us to God
or remove the death within us.
So, the first great purpose of the Moral Law of God
is to provide our rebellious spirits
with a confrontation with the Divine
authority of God
that drives us to rebellion.
Rom. 5:20 The Law came in so that the
transgression would increase...
But why would God want us to sin more?
Because He loves us
and He knows that what we long for
and what we need more than anything else
is a restored union with Him.
But most of us will not forsake our rebellion
and reach out to Him
until we are forced to recognize
that running our own lives
independent from our God
is not working.
And nothing creates a sense of desperation
like the natural consequences of sin in our lives.
We may not use those words
to communicate it to ourselves,
but with most of us
it is our recognition
of our desperate need for answers outside of
ourselves
that ultimately draws us to our God.
But recognizing our need
is only the first phase
of the three-phase pilgrimage
in our relationship to the Law
that God seeks to bring each of us
through.
After driving us to sin
in a way that makes us desperate for answers
that only our God can supply,
there is a second major role
the Moral Law of God serves in our lives.
After driving us to sin,
it then is used by God to condemn us
on the basis of that sin.
Phase #1 - it demands obedience from us.
Phase #2 - it condemns us when we fall short.
Do you remember that illustration we borrowed from
the Apostle Paul last week,
that husband who demanded perfect performance
from his wife?
Phase #1 in that illustration
was pictured by the husband
handing his wife the written list of duties she
WOULD fulfill that day.
Phase #2 was pictured by him returning home
and then taking the list
and inspecting each duty
to see if it had been performed
up to his specifications.
And for those of us who come to God
there will be a part of that process
in which God will place His moral law along
side of our lives
and force us to recognize
how far short we have fallen.
We hear Paul talking to us
about that process in his own life
a little later in Romans 7 where he says,
Rom. 7:13 ¶ Therefore did that which is
good become a cause of death for me? May
it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that
it might be shown to be sin by effecting my
death through that which is good, so that
through the commandment sin would
become utterly sinful.
Rom. 7:14 ¶ For we know that the Law is
spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into
bondage to sin.
"...so that through the commandment sin would
become utterly sinful..."
"...I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin..."
Phase #1 - the law drives us to sin.
Phase #2 - the law then condemns us and finds us
guilty before God.
And for obvious reasons
this second phase in our relationship to the law
is by far the most terrifying and painful.
It is at this point
that we find ourselves
standing guilty
and justifiably condemned before a
righteous God.
And this is the work of the God of Love?
YES!
Because it is that desperation,
that sense of helplessness before the law
that prepares us for the Person of Jesus
Christ.
We see this same pattern being modeled
in the life of Christ Himself
when He was here.
For hundreds of years
the Nation of Israel had reworked and reworked
and reworked again
the moral law of God
until they had formed it into
a little religious system
with which they could be
comfortable.
They told themselves
they could stand perfect before God
if they kept this little rule
and that little rule,
if they avoided this unclean thing,
and that unclean thing.
And at that crucial point in history,
preparing the world for His own crucifixion,
He blasted through all their religious games
and said in effect,
"You can never be comfortable with the law.
You cannot hide from it.
You cannot run from it.
And there is no way you can ever fulfill
its demands."
Matt. 5:27 ¶ "You have heard that it was
said, ' You shall not commit adultery';
Matt. 5:28 but I say to you that everyone
who looks at a woman with lust for her has
already committed adultery with her in his
heart.
Matt. 5:29 "If your right eye makes you
stumble, tear it out and throw it from you;
for it is better for you to lose one of the
parts of your body, than for your whole
body to be thrown into hell.
Matt. 5:30 "If your right hand makes you
stumble, cut it off and throw it from you;
for it is better for you to lose one of the
parts of your body, than for your whole
body to go into hell.
And those who were there
were drawn to the person of Christ,
but they were terrorized by the teachings of
Christ.
And why did He do that?
For the same reason
the Spirit of God reaches into our lives
and plants His law next to us
and says, "LOOK! YOU FALL
SHORT!!!"
Christ did it when He was here,
and His Spirit does it in our lives now,
so that we will cry out, "GOD! Please help
me! There must be another way."
And only when the Moral Law of God
has first been able to create within us
that sense of helplessness and desperation
are we ready to hear our God saying,
Rom. 3:21-22 ¶ But now apart from the
Law the righteousness of God has been
manifested, ... even the righteousness of
God through faith in Jesus Christ for all
those who believe..."
Rom. 3:28 For we maintain that a man is
justified by faith apart from works of the
Law.
Rom. 5:1 Therefore, having been justified
by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ,
Rom. 5:2 through whom also we have
obtained our introduction by faith into this
grace in which we stand..."
The law drives us to sin,
it then condemns us and makes us desperate for
some other way back to God.
And then, having fulfilled that role,
it is removed from ever again serving
as the basis upon which we relate to our
Creator.
Rom. 7:4 ¶ Therefore, my brethren, you
also were made to die to the Law through
the body of Christ, so that you might be
joined to another, to Him who was raised
from the dead, in order that we might bear
fruit for God.
We in the Christian community
are world famous for blurring the line between
Christ and the Law.
We subtly suggest
or blatantly profess that as Christians
our continued union with Christ
depends upon our obedience to the
moral law of God.
God, however, does not blur those lines.
He simply offers us a choice.
We can choose to relate to Him
on the basis of the Moral Law,
or we can choose to relate to Him
through faith in the sacrifice of Christ for our
sins.
If we choose the moral law of God
our security must rest
in our ability to keep that law perfectly
from the cradle to the grave.
If we choose the Person of Christ
then our security rests in knowing
that this day we stand accepted by God,
bathed in the radiance of His love for us,
for the same reason we were able to stand
accepted by Him
the first day we came to Him in faith,
because today,
just as then,
our faith in the death of Christ
cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
I love the way Paul says it in II Cor. 3:4-6:
2 Cor. 3:4 ¶ Such confidence we have
through Christ toward God.
2 Cor. 3:5 Not that we are adequate in
ourselves to consider anything as coming
from ourselves, but our adequacy is from
God,
2 Cor. 3:6 who also made us adequate as
servants of a new covenant, not of the letter
but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the
Spirit gives life.
The letter kills.
It kills our ability to respond to the love of God
now
just as it killed prior to our union with Him.
If you see your God
standing on the other side of that fence,
arms folded,
fists clenched,
turning His back on you until you get
it right,
it will paralyze your ability
to grow in your walk with the King.
But there is one more phase
we need to look at
in our relationship to the moral law of God
before we can complete the picture.
In phase #1 the Law of God demands obedience,
arousing our sinful passions,
and drives us to sin.
In phase #2 the moral law of God stands next to us,
condemning us as sinful,
and driving us to Christ.
But then, once we enter into Christ,
and the Moral law of God
forever ceases to be our judge and jury,
once we can rest in our peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
for the first time in our lives,
we can look at the Moral Law of God
honestly,
objectively,
and see in it what we could never have seen
when we were fighting against it.
And if we allow God
to lead us through all three phases
in our relationship with His moral law,
in this third phase we will discover
the Moral Law becoming
not our road map back to God,
but rather our road map into true freedom of
spirit.
We will see
the way in which through the moral law
our God builds for us
an absolutely safe and secure
framework in which we can live our lives
without ever getting caught again
in the bondage,
and addiction,
and self-destructive patterns that immorality
always brings into our lives.
And in this third phase,
not only will we not resent the Moral law of
God,
but we will discover within ourselves
a hunger and a thirst for righteousness
that becomes a driving force in our
lives.
And that brings us to the second great area of
freedom
given to us by our Lord,
the freedom from Sin.
And this is where we'll pick up our study next
week.