06-08-14 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:

first, freedom from the Law,

and second, 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 created beings

to reject the authority of their Creator in their life

and seek to live a life independent

of the One who created them.

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 the 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

that God seeks to bring us through

in our relationship to the Law.

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 the moral conscience He has placed within each of us,

and if we will allow Him to do so, the Spirit of God Himself,

continues that condemning process in each of our lives now,

not because He wants us to live our lives under a crushing weight of guilt or shame,

but because He wants us to know

that left to our own efforts as measured by the moral law of God

we can never stand secure before our Creator,

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, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand...”

I know, of course,

that in our “enlightened” world today

we have worked very, very hard to create the illusion

that there are no moral absolutes,

that everyone is free to write their own script,

and live their own life any way the chose to live it.

But I also know that no individual

and certainly no society ever has or ever will

have the ability to rewrite the rules of life established by our Creator.

He loves us far too much

to allow that to happen.

And I have seen, over and over again,

what happens in the lives of those

who claim their social freedom

to live lives of immorality, believing it will bring them

the fulfillment and satisfaction and purpose and joy in life they long for.

And I’ve seen the pain,

and the shame,

and the shattered relationships that result,

and the agonizing inner guilt within.

The law drives us to sin,

it then condemns us and makes us desperate for some other way

back to peace with ourselves and with our God.

And then, having fulfilled that role,

if we will hear the voice of our God

offering us His Son and His death in our place for our sins,

from that point on 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.