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learn from God's Word together. If you would like more
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Raise the mount. I am fixed up on it, Mount of
God's redeeming love. It speaks of Mount Calvary for
Jesus Christ, boy, the wrath of God in the place of wretched
sinners such as I as we open our Bibles today.
I don't turn your eyes to Mount Calvary just yet, but I invite
you to turn to Exodus 20 as we turn our eyes to another mount,
Mount Sinai, as we continue to look at our series that we began
last week entitled The Bad or the Gut.
There is one gospel. We look at the message today,
the bad news first. We learned last week what the
gospel is, not what it isn't. It isn't earned by our.
Works. It's by grace alone, through
faith alone in Christ alone. The gospel isn't ecumenical
tolerance where we just all get along for the sake of getting
along. The gospel isn't evolving in
nature at all. It is the same gospel that the
Lord Jesus Christ preached, that was passed through his apostles,
that was passed down through the ages, that if you're in Christ,
you believe nothing has changed and nothing will ever change.
It is the eternal message of hope found in the clear gospel
according to Scripture. Then we close with the fact that
the gospel isn't easily accepted.
In fact, many people have spent lots of time and lots of effort.
I'm trying to repackage and reorchestrate the gospel so that
it's more accepted. It's easier to swallow, it's
more palatable to the taste of sinful man.
We briefly spoke last week about the gospel being good news.
I spoke of a term in the Greek, the UN galleon, which means good
tidings or good message. But as with every ounce of good
news that we receive in life, there must be some bad news that
makes the good news good. Because without the bad news,
there would be no need for good news.
And so before we continue looking at the good news of the
gospel and how glorious a message this is as revealed in
Christ, and through Christ and through what he's done for us at
the cross of Calvary, we go back to Mount Sinai some 1500 years
before Christ. We turn our attention to the bad
news. We turn our attention to God's
law He is going to give to Moses, to the people of Israel.
Well, journey back to the second book of the Bible.
We'll discover the bad news so that we can truly appreciate the
good news. Am I saying that the law of God
is bad? Absolutely not.
We know that the law of God is not bad because the psalmist
says in Psalm 19 verse 7, the law of the Lord is perfect,
refreshing the soul. Paul declares in Romans Chapter
7 verse 12. So then the law is holy and the
commandment is holy, righteous and good.
He's saying that God's law, His commands are holy, righteous and
good. So I'm not telling you that the
law is bad. Law is good and perfect and holy
because it came from the very mouth of God, inscribed on the
tablets by the very finger of God.
What I am saying to you is this man in his sinful condition.
Upon hearing the law, we'll see that.
Know the law be good and perfect and right.
The law brings bad news to sinful man.
Paul says this in Romans 7. Did that which is good then
become death to me? He says by no means in verse 13,
but in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced
death in me through what was good, so that through the
commandments sin might be utterly sinful.
Paul still on holding, adhering to the idea that the law is
good, but the good law bought. Brought bad news, and that bad
news is that Paul was a Sinner. As we look at the law today as
given on Mount Sinai, we're going to see that the law is the
bad news, the center. It's bad news again, not because
in and of itself it's bad, because I have already
established the fact that is good.
It's bad because of what it reveals to us.
So in our lesson today, we're going to explore the law, namely
the moral law, what we know as the 10 commandments, the
Decalogue. And this is the bad news first.
It is the bad news that makes the good news good.
Exodus chapter 20, verse one, in a passage that I hope you are
all familiar with, it says and God spoke all these words.
Who spoke them? I want to establish that right
off the bat. These are not.
Kirk Hall's words, I would never put this type of standard on me
because I know I can't meet this.
He says. I am the Lord your God who
brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
He's reminding you, remember who I am.
I'm the one who's delivered you. You shall have no other gods
before me. You should not make for yourself
an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on on the
earth beneath or in the waters below.
You should not bow down to them or worship them.
For I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing the
children for the sin of their fathers to the third and 4th
generation of those who hate Me, but showing love to 1000
generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Verse 7 says You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your
God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his
name. He says in verse 8, remember the
Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do
all your work. But the 7th day is a Sabbath to
the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work,
neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or
maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.
Verse 11 says, For in six days the Lord made the heavens and
the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the
7th day. Therefore the Lord blessed the
Sabbath day and made it holy. What a gracious God to allow us
rest from our work. He says in verse 12, Honor your
father and your mother so that you may live long in the land
the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder, you shall
not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give
false testimony against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor's house.
You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his
manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that
belongs to your neighbor. Verse 18 says When the people
saw the Thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw
the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear.
They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, speak to us
yourself, and we will listen, but do not have God speak to us
or we will die. Let's pray together.
Father, in the name of Jesus, we thank you for your word.
Lord, as we have read through Your Word already and these few
verses, we have seen that we fall way short of what Your
expectations in Your perfect standards say that we are to be.
And Lord, we know that is bad news.
God, I pray today that You would use this bad news to show all of
the sinners here today the error of our ways and our need for
dependency upon Jesus Christ, the only One who can rescue us
from the penalty of sin in the wrath of God, which we deserve.
And I pray for the soul who does not know Christ today, who might
be trying to somehow approach you by their own efforts.
Show them, Lord, that they cannot, that they cannot keep
your law and its entirety. It is impossible for sin sinful
man to do anything other than to sin.
God, I pray today that in Christ they would be restored and
reconciled and cleansed of all of their sin and made right with
you through Christ. Use this time to teach us.
Use this time to fashion us and to mold us into who you desire
for us to be. We pray all these things in the
mighty name of Jesus, Amen. As we come to Mount Sinai this
morning, we come to some very, very bad news.
And that is what the law really does.
I want to make this clear. You do not to take the 10
commandments and say I have to live by these 10 commandments so
that I can gain eternal life. You're in a, in a heap of
trouble because just a moment ago, as you were going through
those commands, what did you realize?
I've broken that one, and I've broken that one.
And you were checking off the boxes in your minds, confirming
in your own mind, in your own heart, that you are a Sinner, A
transgressor. So we begin with the bad news of
the law. The bad news of the law reveals
some things to us, and we're going to talk about three of
those things today. And very important things, the
first thing that I want you to see in those first 17 verses
where we get the 10 commandments or what I have already referred
to as the Decalogue in those first 17 commandments.
We see God reveal His holy and His moral standard, that which
He requires of all men and all women.
We see He breaks it down for us in two parts, the first part
being our relationship to God. We see that in the 1st 4
commands that He gives to His people and then the second part
is our relationship to man. We see that in the last 6
commands. God is not lenient in any way on
any of these instructions. That he's giving these commands.
These are not suggestions. They're not words of wisdom.
They are the very word of God to sinful man.
He is in these 10 commandments summarizing the 613 commandments
that will make up the entirety of the law.
And in this summary we see bad news.
We see bad news because God has not changed His mind regarding
His holy standard, as we briefly mentioned last week.
And I told you that we would come back and we would examine
this. God's standard is perfection and
nothing less than that. Jesus Himself commands it.
Matthew chapter 5, verse 48. Be perfect therefore, as your
heavenly Father is perfect. It is here in the Decalogue that
the Father reveals His perfection and His expected
perfection of mankind. He requires it.
And so we see the bad news of the law reveals this first, the
standard of a holy God. This is God's holy standard.
God in these 10 commands. Shows that he requires some
things. Please pay close attention to
this. First, He requires perfection in
our devotion toward God. I told you that the first part
of the 10 commandments was about our relationship to God.
And he does not accept anything less than perfection in our
relationship to God, that is perfection in our worship.
What would perfection look like as defined by God?
As he's obviously, clearly proclaimed to us?
You shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make any idols for yourselves out of anything.
Because he's a jealous God, he says, Don't use my name in vain
and remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
What? What would this look like if we
were perfect? And, and I do this because we're
not perfect. I do this so that you can see
just how imperfect we really are.
But what if it looked perfect? What?
Would it portray well your life would portray that you place
nothing or no one above God in any circumstance or any
situation? That's a very scary thing to
think of, I know, because immediately we say what I have
done that, or I am doing that, or I am very prone to that.
That's what it would look like, placing nothing or no one before
God, just as He said not to do. How about this?
It would be the fact that none of us have anything in our lives
that has ever become an idol, an idol that receives our worship.
Now, I know in our day, many of you, you're not going to go out,
you're not going to take a piece of wood and you're not going to
carve some inanimate object to bow down to.
This is the digital age. You're simply going to carry it
around in your hand constantly and you're going to be
constantly controlled by it and you're going to give your time
constantly to it and it's going to consume you.
So let's just make idolatry very simple today so that we can
understand it. Idolatry is the worship of
whatever it is that consumes you.
It has consumed you. Some of you, that's your job.
Some of you, that's your family, some of you that's your success.
God says in his law that he will have no other gods before
himself, but if. We were to keep it perfectly.
That's what we look like. It would also look like never
mishandling or misusing the Lord's name.
I know what many of you do. You immediately jump to curse
words in your mind, right? Where we take a curse word and
we combine it with the name of God.
And let me just tell you this that is using God's name in
vain. But can I also tell you this?
That's not the extent of it. It's oh so much more than that.
It is you making a vow unto the Lord that you have no intention
of keeping. Did you hear me, Church?
A vow that you make unto the Lord that you have no intention
of keeping or any capability of keeping.
Right, Lord, I'm going to serve you all of my day.
Hey, why don't you just try today before you make a vow so
big that you're unable to keep it?
If we were to keep the law perfectly, everything that we
said in regard to God would come to pass, and we would live and
die. By that our word would mean
something. Why?
Because we bear the very name of God.
We carry him around with us. All of the.
Time. What about this within the
modern charismatic movement, these so-called prophets, I'll
go ahead and call them false prophets who say God told them
to say this, which God never told them to say that at all.
It's the creation of their own sinful imagination.
They're using God's name in vain.
And so if we were to keep his law perfectly, we would never do
this. We'd also never forsake a day of
rest so that we can worship, so that we can rest.
We can get into all kind of semantics.
About the Sabbath, I make a distinction between the Old
Testament Sabbath and New Testament Lord's Day.
Does that mean that I don't believe that man ought to have a
day of rest? No, you Saturday to rest.
Rest and you can worship on that same day.
And then Sunday we joined together after a day of rest and
worship. Oh, how it would be if we took a
day of rest and worship. And then we joined together.
And on the Lord's Day we celebrated the King of Kings and
Lord of Lords who died for our sins, making it possible that we
can even fellowship with Almighty God.
You wouldn't be so tired in church, would you?
So God in the Decalogue. Requires perfection in our
devotion to God. That's what it would look like.
Now, I know what you're saying. My life looks nothing like that.
From time to time I find myself looking opposite of that, and
rightfully so. You do and I do.
But not only is there perfection in our devotion toward God that
we see revealed by God's standard in law, He also expects
perfection in our duties toward a man.
I told you that the last 6 commands had to do with our
relationship to man what He tells us to honor our Father and
our mother. Now let me just ask you this.
Question Has anyone kept that command perfectly?
Has anyone here never disobeyed your parents, never dishonored
your parents? Well, we know that the consensus
is yeah, we all have. At some point in time, we did
something that our parents told us not to do.
Revealing what? That you're imperfect.
But if we were perfect, then we could meet the standard on our
own. We would honor our mother and
father in every situation, every request that they ever had of
us. Perfection in our duties also
our duties toward man also includes this.
Never taking the life of another, he says.
Thou shalt not. Murder.
Very quickly, most of us say, you know what?
I have never taken an innocent life.
Let me just give you some clarity here.
When we talk about murder, we're not talking about defending
yourself. We're not talking about.
War, where we're defending our country.
We're talking about the taking of innocent lives in any way,
shape or form, not valuing the fact that those people were
created in the image of God. Whether that be the actual act
of murder, as we see in Genesis where Cain takes the life of
Abel, we see all around us in today's time.
If you, if you haven't, just read an article about Chicago,
you'll see it very quickly. You don't even have to go to
Chicago. Just read the news about
Houston. You'll find that people take
innocent lives. You say, yeah, they're
murderers. Yeah, so are those who abort
babies. We approve the abortion of
babies, and we want to argue whether a baby is an innocent
life. Of course a baby is an innocent
life, but yet we have people who think that it's OK to do that.
And if we were perfect in our duties toward men, we would
never take an innocent life. And then some of you say, well,
I've never murdered anyone and I've never had an abortion.
So I'm pretty clear and I'm pretty clean, except Jesus
taught on this issue. You know what he taught.
But if you harbor anger and unforgiveness in your heart
towards someone, you've already murdered them in your heart.
He gets to the root of the problem, right?
Cain and Abel and their problems didn't start when When Cain
decided to take Abel's life, it started in his.
Heart. That's why God approached Cain
and he said Cain sins crouching at the door, seeking to devour
you. You have a sin problem, Cain,
and if you don't keep that in check, you're going to do
something foolish. And he did.
It's that same heart that we have when we think that we have
a right after being given so much mercy and so much
forgiveness from God to actually withhold mercy and forgiveness
from others. And if we were perfect in our
duty toward men, we'd never do. That he goes on and he talks
about not committing adultery. And some of you would wrongly in
yourself, righteous pride, poke your chest out and say, I've
been faithful to my wife. I've been faithful to my
husband. Before you do that so quickly,
let me explain it to you like this.
That screen that you're hiding from everyone that you're
watching pornographic images on, That is adultery every time you
lust after someone else. And for you to sit back and to
think that we don't have a problem with that in our world
when it is a multi billion dollar industry, you have
another thing coming. He said, well, Kurt, do you
really think that pornography is adultery?
Yes, because Jesus defines it as so when he says if we look after
a woman and we lust after her, we have committed adultery in
our hearts. Again, we get to the heart of
the issue. We're imperfect.
We can't meet God's standard. Not his standard toward God
himself, not His standard towards other men.
How about this? Thou shalt not steal anything.
That includes that pack of hubba Bubba that I lifted off a stop
and go back when I was seven years old.
It includes the taxes. That you steal from the federal
government? Not as funny as Hubba Bubba, I
know, but still thievery the same.
How about the gifts that you steal from God?
Oh really? Now the hush breaks over the
crowd. Is that not what Malachi said?
How do you rob God? Because you withhold your tithes
and your offerings, your gifts unto the Lord.
You're not being a cheerful giver, as the New Testament
commands us to do. Therefore you're stealing, and
you're stealing from God. How about bearing false witness?
This includes all kinds of lies, right?
False witnessing against someone else so that they would be
incriminated, but also false testimony from your lips.
That's a lie. However you want to define it,
this includes all embellishments and all exaggerations.
I know it's deer season, even for the deer hunters and the
fishermen or the golfers, when no one's looking and you doctor
that scorecard or you kick the ball out of the rough and you
don't count it as another stroke.
Lying is lying, isn't it? He goes on.
He says don't covet, don't look at somebody else's possessions.
And not be content with what God has blessed you with and and
then in your greed long for what they have instead of what God
has given you. You know, ladies, what I'm
talking about when you walk through someone's house and
they've had a bigger Hobby Lobby budget than you do.
Or they have that couch that you have lusted after for years and
you desire to have. Or that home and for whatever
reason God and His sovereignty has not blessed you with.
Instead of rejoicing that He's blessed them, what you do is you
covet what they have and you're unsatisfied with what God has
provided for you. Yes, men, that includes your
buddy's boat and his firearms. God makes it clear.
His wife, his manservant, his maidservant, his company, his
success. So if we were to be perfect in
our duties toward man, that's what he would look like.
We would honor our mother and father.
We would never take life of another, never withhold
forgiveness, stay in our anger toward them.
We would never commit adultery by lusting after someone.
Never steal, never lie, never come it.
But the bad news is this, The bad news is this, the fact that
we don't measure up to that standard, do we?
We break His laws and there therefore we confirm that we are
by nature transgressors and objects of God's wrath.
And this is revealed to us through God's law.
This is the purpose of His commands, to show you, Here's
what you really are. Here's what God desires of you,
perfection and your devotion toward Him and your duties
toward other men. But here's what you are.
You fail miserably in both. You say, well, Kirk, that's
harsh. I told you this is bad news.
This is bad news. This is horrible news, but it
does confirm some things for us. It confirms for us what
Ecclesiastes 720 says. It says there is not a righteous
man on earth who does what is right and never sins.
Not even this pastor who stands before you.
We are all sinfully depraved to the very fiber of our being.
Romans 512 says this. Therefore, just a sin entered
the world through one man, to death through sin.
And in this way death came to all men.
Because what? All sinned?
Not some of us. Not a large majority of us.
All of us. When we go to Mount Sinai and we
see the law in the 1st 17 verses there in Exodus 20, it confirms
some things to us. I am not perfect in my devotion
toward God. I am not perfect in my duties
toward man. I am a transgressor.
I am sinfully depraved. I miss the mark of God's.
Standard. I already told you what his
standard was. Romans 323 says, for all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
What is the glory of God, the perfection of God, His standard.
And we missed that mark because we.
All. Are sinners.
Psalm 14 verse 2 says this. The Lord looks down from heaven
on the sons of men to see Is there any who understand, any
who seek God. Three says all have turned
aside. They have together become
corrupt. There is no one who does good,
not even 1. So we're any of you who are
sitting here this morning thinking, well, I'm pretty good.
No, you're not. That's the bad news of Mount
Sinai. That's the bad news of the wall.
None of us are good. I know what we say in modern
church culture these days, right?
I came to church so that I could feel good.
Isn't that what people want to do?
I can tell you this, every time I come to church I feel good.
And you know why I feel good? Because I've seen the truth of
the bad news and I knew that I am in desperate trouble.
I've seen that truth and it has caused me to cry out for a
perfection that is beyond me. To trust in Jesus Christ, the
perfect 1 and in trusting in Him, then I feel good.
I feel good about him. I still feel the same about me.
I can tell you this me in and of myself.
You write this down, put it on your notes right now.
Kirk Hall is a scoundrel. If you want to quote me in
saying that, you feel free to do that.
How do I know I'm a scoundrel? Because the perfect law of God,
out of his perfect mouth, written by his perfect finger,
says Kirk Hall is a transgressor.
He's incapable of keeping God's perfect standard.
James tells us this in James chapter 2, verse 10.
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one
point is guilty of breaking all of it.
What does that mean for me? Well, if I've only broken one of
the 10 commandments, guess what? I've broken every single one of
them. I'm not just a transgressor.
I'm not just a Sinner. I am the worst of transgressors
and I am the worst of sinners because I have violated the
entirety of God's standard of perfection as revealed in His
law. I know it's foreign to the
American church where we're preaching to standing in the
pulpit and lying to you and telling you that you're good
enough and you're smart enough and people like you.
We're not. We're sinners in need of God's
grace because we have violated Him by our lives and the very
nature of our being. It is His law that makes us
aware of this and places us under a curse.
This is the bad news. Galatians 310.
It says all. Who rely on observing the law
are under a curse, for it is written.
Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything
written in the book of the Law. What is he saying?
If you can't keep it all, then you're not keeping any of it
confirming that you were under a curse.
That describes me, and that describes each of you.
The bad news of the law reveals the standard of a holy God.
That's bad news for the unredeemed Sinner, isn't it?
That's bad news for the imperfect man like myself, for
the man like you or the woman like you.
The law is bad news because we have no righteousness of our own
to claim. God hasn't changed his mind.
He still requires perfect righteousness.
So we see the first element of bad news that the law reveals
the standard of a holy God. Secondly, the bad news of the
law reveals the shameful guilt of man.
Verse 18 See their response. See what actually transpires
here. It says during the first part of
18 when the people saw the Thunder and lightning and heard
the. Trumpet, and saw the mountain
and smoke. They trembled with fear.
What? Is going on here well upon
hearing. The law of God, sinful man
trembled in fear because the law revealed their shameful guilt.
Just as a moment ago as we read the 10 commandments and you had
to admit in your mind, I'm guilty of breaking this one, I'm
guilty of breaking that one. And then when you heard that God
said, if you've broken one, you've broken them all, you had
to say I am a guilty. Sinner.
And with the guilt of sin comes the weight of shame, doesn't it?
God in His law projected to the Israelites, He's projecting to
us from that same law today His sinless glory and the shameful
guilt of mankind. Their guilt brought them to a
place of trembling and fear before an Almighty and holy God.
Don't miss that in the text. They saw the power and the
authority of God, and they trembled with fear.
Their guilt brought them to this place.
Much like Isaiah and Isaiah chapter 6 verse 5, Isaiah
ushered into the presence of God.
It says that he fell as a dead man before God's throne.
And here's what he says. Woe to me, I cried.
I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips,
and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have
seen the king, the Lord Almighty Isaiah, coming into the presence
of God in a vision, God allowing him to.
See, this falls as a dead man in his shameful guilt.
What did he turn to immediately? The fact that he is shamefully
guilty. I'm a man of unclean lips.
Among the people of unclean lips.
We are all sinners, shamefully guilty before a holy God, the
law. Brings us to that place where we
really see how shamefully guilty we are, causing us to fear even
coming into the presence of God. Because it confirms some things
to us, doesn't it? Two things that we'll speak of
today 1 is this. It confirms to us that by nature
man dismisses God's authority. When they saw the Thunder and
the lightning and, and they witnessed the heard the sound of
the trumpet and they witnessed the smoke coming from the
mountain, they knew that they were dealing with Almighty God
and His sovereign authority. And upon hearing the law, they
were fearful of this God because they knew that they had spent
their life rebelling against His sovereign position.
Isn't that true of us? Prior to Christ, we spent our
entire lives rebelling against the authority of a sovereign God
in His Word. Here we see the Israelites
confirming the same that they had spent their life rebelling
against God's position, just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden,
when they ignored His word and did whatever they wanted to do
in spite of what God had already commanded they.
Refused to take his word. Seriously.
Don't we live in a culture who refuses to take the word of God
seriously? We confirm that we're just like
Adam and Eve, who's there in Genesis chapter 2 receives this
from the Lord in verse 15. The Lord God took the man, put
him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it, and
the Lord God commanded the man. You are free to eat from any
tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it, you will
surely die. God said you can eat of anything
that you want in this garden that I've given you, except for
the tree right here, the tree of now of the knowledge of good and
evil. Do not eat fruit from there or
you will die. And what did they do?
They rebelled against His authority.
They dismissed it. We have an account of it in
Scripture. I'll read it for you there in
Genesis chapter 3 verse one, it says now the serpent was more
crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
And he said to the woman, Did God really say you must not eat
from any tree in the garden? Did God really say, yeah, that's
how He approached her, It isn't really His word.
Why don't you just go ahead and dismiss that?
Because He didn't really say that, though she knew He did
because she confirms that. The woman said to the servant,
we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say
you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of
the garden and you must not touch it or you will die.
She knew exactly what God had told them to do.
What does Satan say verse 4? You will not, surely.
Die. Isn't that what he's still doing
today? Telling people no, God didn't
mean that in his word. Don't listen to that.
That's outdated. That's foolish.
That's ancient knowledge, he said.
You will not. Surely die, the serpent said to
the woman, For God knows that when you.
Eat of it your. Eyes will be open and you will
be like God, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for
food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining
wisdom, she took some of it and ate.
The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.
We're going to see it unfold right here.
She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he
ate it. And then the eyes of both of
them were opened, and they realized that they were naked.
So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for
themselves. Shame and guilt.
Watch what transpires next. Excuse me, it says.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God.
As he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they
hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
It sounds a lot like the Israelites.
Upon hearing the law of God, they trembled with fear because
they knew that they had dismissed God's authority.
Not only had they dismissed God's authority by disobeying
His word, they also disobey His commands.
They knew it. All he had to do was tell them,
here's my standard of perfection.
Here's what you are to do. And as we read it a moment ago,
we realized quickly that's not what we do in and of ourselves.
Many people want to argue all of the time, but the Bible is not
the word of God, but only the word of man.
There is no way that man would put these 10 commands upon
himself. He's come from a perfect God,
and he means every single one of them.
But what we do by our nature, apart from Jesus Christ, is we
disobey God's command. Why?
Because we're bound by sin. Sinful man naturally disobeys
God's. Commands We're not sinners
because we sin. We sin because we are sinners,
inheriting that very nature from our first parents, Adam and Eve.
And so this disobedience of sinful man reveals the extent of
our shameful guilt, doesn't it? We can go back to the first born
of Adam and Eve, Cain. He proved that sin came through
Adam and it came upon all men, because it is Cain who murdered
his brother the next generation. After Adam we can go just three
chapters after this in Genesis chapter 6, just prior to the
flood. This is the Lord's analysis of
the earth. He says in Genesis 65, the Lord
saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the
earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of
the human heart. What did he say?
Not the human mind, the thoughts of the human heart, the depths
and the core of your being. Your soul was perverted by sin.
He said the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all of
the time. We stand before God as confirmed
by His law and our shameful guilt.
Those who dismiss God's authority, Those who blatantly
disobey God's command, sinful man because He is sinful in his
being, continues to disobey God and His Word even today.
The apostle Paul said this in Romans chapter 3 verse 10.
There is none righteous, no, not 1-11 says there is no one who
understands, no one who seeks God. 12 says all have turned
away, they have together become worthless.
There is no one who does good, not even 1.
Why do I say this? Why do I bring such bad news?
Because until we see the bad news, the good news of the
gospel will never be as good as it should be to us.
The bad news of the law reveals the shameful guilt of man.
The law reveals our utter sinfulness and our utter
disobedience, Romans 320 says. Therefore no one will be
declared righteous in his sight by observing the law.
Rather, through the law we become conscious of sin, and
when we become conscious of sin, the right reaction is shame and
guilt, because we have dismissed and dishonored God's authority
and we have disobeyed His commands.
Takes my mind back to the pilgrims progress where we see
Christian, the main character of that storyline.
As he's travelling on the narrow way to the Celestial City, just
like Evangelist told him to do, he comes in contact with a man
by the name of Mr. Worldly Wise Man.
And what does Mr. Worldly Wise Man do?
Mr. Worley, wise man, quickly diverts Christian off of the
narrow path of grace that points to the cross of Calvary, and he
sends him down another path where he's told that he'll find
someone there. And the city of morality named
Mr. Legality, he sends him down the path of the law.
He sends him to Mount Sinai. And what happens there?
As he approaches Mount Sinai, he's already carrying the weight
and the burden of his sin on his back.
But as he approaches Mount Sinai, you know what?
That weight becomes ever increasingly more.
Why? Because when we look at the law,
what it shows us is that we are completely weighted down by sin,
and we are in need of someone to take that sin off of our back
and to relieve us. And when we look at the law,
what does it do? It brings forth shame and guilt
as it is designed to do. Because all of us in this room
today stand before a holy God, guilty as charged.
The law brings us to that place. It's sad that the modern church
movement says don't preach the law because people will feel
guilty or ashamed of what they have done.
And they should, because it is in my guilt and my shame as the
law was preached, that I realized that I am a Sinner and
I am in need of a Savior. And I saw how sweet that savior
truly is, because I saw how shameful and guilty I truly AM.
So the law brings us to a place of shame and guilt.
That's the bad news. We don't like it, It's
uncomfortable, but we can't deny it.
And just because we don't like something and just because we we
we don't like the fact that it makes us uncomfortable, doesn't
mean we have the right to deny it.
It's here. It's in the word of God, Exodus.
Chapter 20, you just read it with me.
It's got standard and we are shamefully guilty, falling short
of his standard by dismissing his authority and disobeying his
commands. So the bad news of the law
reveals the shameful guilt of man.
It reveals the standard of a holy God.
And thirdly, the bad news of the law reveals the standing of man
before God. Look at the second part of 18
and 19 here. It says this upon hearing the
law, after Thunder and lightning rang out and a trumpet sounded,
says they stayed at a distance. Well, that's the bad news of the
law, isn't it? It keeps us at a distance from
God because we know we can't approach Him.
They stayed at a distance. Watched their reaction and said
to Moses, speak to us yourself, and we will listen, but do not
have God, do not have Yahweh speak to us or we will die.
They understood some things that we don't understand in the
American church anymore. That sin brings death.
The law revealed to them. They're clear standing and
they're clear position as sinful men before a holy and Almighty
God. And upon hearing the law, they
knew that they were separated from God and that they deserved
judgment in the form of death and death eternally.
The law is what revealed. This to them, the same Decalogue
that we read a moment ago, those 10 commandments that people are
trying to take out of the school rooms and out of the
courthouses, because when we read them, it makes us feel
shameful and guilty. It should and it shouldn't make
you understand that you stand before a holy God.
Not in good news, but in bad news.
You can't approach them. Why?
Because our standing according to the law is this write it down
alienation from God. They distanced themselves
because they knew they were alienated from God, that he was
holy and he was set apart, and they were nothing of the sort.
They were the exact opposite of that.
They understood alienation from God, that unredeemed filthy
sinners cannot approach God because they are unclean to Him.
Exodus 3320. It says what he said, You cannot
see my face, for no one may see my face and live.
Even Moses himself was shielded from seeing the face of God.
Why? Because we can't see his face
and live, sin separates us from communion with God.
We are alienated from him. Isaiah. 59 Two Watch this.
But your iniquities have separated you from God.
Your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not
hear. The Israelites understanding
this, they stayed at a distance and said, Moses, please, we'll
listen to you, but don't let God speak to us again or we'll die.
Why? Because God spoke the law to
them, revealing to them they're standing before holy God that
they are truly alienated and separated from God and His
Holiness, that they are truly enemies of God in their sin.
Just as Colossians chapter 1 tells us in verse 21, once you
were alienated from God and we're enemies in your minds.
Because of your evil behavior, I know that's not what people are
selling you today. They are selling you garbage
like God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
They're selling you garbage like we're all just children of God
on a journey to find Him in our own way.
No, we're not. The law says that we are all
condemned to sinners and we stand before a holy God and we
cannot commune with them because we are enemies of God because of
our sin. Stop believing the lies that the
world is throwing at you that do not come from the word of God.
There's bad news in this. The bad news is that we're
alienated from God. And look at their instinctive
reasoning. We got to have a mediator,
Moses. We'll talk to you, you talk to
God, you relate message. But don't let us hear God again,
or we'll die. And here we have Moses as a go
between a mediator serving as the mediator of the old covenant
of the law, giving us a picture and a type of Jesus Christ
himself, John 1 and John's gospel verse 17, he gives us
clarity on this. He says for the law was given
through Moses. He's the mediator of the law.
We see it here at Mount Sinai and grace and truth came through
Jesus Christ. We, we are looking for a greater
mediator here. He's a mediator of the law.
Moses, he delivered the bad news.
And there's a bad news that makes the good news is so good.
There is a greater mediator, the great high priest, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And here are the Israelites
instinctively looking for a mediator.
We have to find one. And we must find one when I am
thankful that when we weren't even looking.
The Lord Jesus Christ comes and He finds us and He mediates on
our behalf grace and truth because we are condemned and
alienated from God according to the law.
We see mediators all throughout Scripture, don't we?
We see Moses serving as a mediator.
How about the entire priesthood of Israel, mediators between God
and the sins of mankind? How about the prophets who
served as mediators, receiving a message from the Lord and then
projecting that message out so that the people could hear the
word of the Lord? Then again, of course, Jesus who
serves as a mediator of the new covenant of grace for those who
believe and trust in Him, just as Hebrews 9 verse 15 tells us.
It says for this reason Christ is the mediator of a new
covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised
eternal inheritance now that he has died as a ransom to set them
free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
Paul says to Timothy in first Timothy chapter 2 verse 5.
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men.
The man Jesus Christ or the Mediator.
Moses did not point us to God in the sense that Jesus pointed us
to the Father. He pointed us to the fact that
we have violated God's command and we are alienated from Him
and His Holiness. Moses brought the bad news of
the law. It's Jesus, Jesus alone, who
brings the good news of the Gospel.
If we're not for that good news, all of us would be forbidden to
commune, to communicate, to approach the glory and the
majesty of a holy and perfect God.
The bad news of the law reveals the standing of man before God,
that there is alienation from God.
But we also see this not only a sinful man standing, alienation
from God, it's awareness of deserved judgment.
That's why they're afraid. And what was the judgment that
they knew of? We will die.
Is that not the same judgment that came upon Adam and fell
upon all mankind? Is that not what Scripture says
when in Romans 623 it says for the wages of sin is what death?
It's death. They knew we are transgressors,
therefore we deserve to die, and to die twice, not just in this
life, but to die a second, an eternal death in the lake of
fire. Scripture proclaims Ezekiel 18,
verse 4. It says this, For every living
soul belongs to me, the Father, as well as the Son.
Both the light belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who
will die. You've ever sinned?
Have you ever transgressed against the Lord's commands?
Guess what? Death is certain unto you, and
death eternal. And so transgressors become
aware of their deserved judgment.
Do not have God speak to us, or we will die.
Why? Because filth and
unrighteousness collide with God's holiness and there must be
justice. And man understands and he is
aware of the fact by looking at the law that he is deserving of
the judgment and the wrath of God.
Trans transgressors stand before God as condemned sinners.
John 3 verse 18 makes that very clear.
I know you usually just read 16 as a standalone verse.
Read it all. Read all the way to 18.
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not
believe stands condemned already because he is not believed in
the name of God's one and only Son.
He says if you don't trust in Christ, you have no other hope
then the judgment that comes because you are a law breaker,
you are a Sinner, you are a transgressor.
And transgressors who are aware of their deserved judgment, they
need to fear God's wrath. They need to fear God's wrath.
I know in in a society where we don't paint God any longer as a
God of wrath, let me just tell you it's still a God of wrath.
There are many heretics who preach a heresy.
That says the God of the Old Testament was a more wrathful
and a more vengeful, a more angry God than the God of the
New Testament. Somehow we got a new God
somewhere along the way. That is blatant heresy.
The God who gave. Us his perfect law through
Moses. He is the same God who gives us
his perfect grace through the Lord Jesus Christ.
We must talk about His wrath and discussing the bad news.
Why? Because we as human beings apart
from Jesus Christ have nothing to look forward to the fearful
expectation and fiery judgment and wrath of God.
Romans 25 says this. But because of your stubbornness
and your unrepentant heart, you were storing up wrath against
yourself for the day of God's wrath when His righteous
judgment will be revealed. All of you who are not in Christ
today, let me just tell you this.
Every time you break His perfect law, you're storing up more
wrath for yourself on the day of judgment, because it is on that
day where He will take His law, and that book will be opened up
and your life will be judged alongside of that.
And you will be found standing before a holy God, guilty as
charged, still alienated from God, and deserving of judgment
and wrath and judgment and wrath in hell.
Hebrews 10/13 says this is a dreadful thing to fall into the
hands of the living God, the law proclaims.
That we are guilty sinners, alienated from God because of
His perfect standard, His perfect law, and we are
deserving of judgment, and we ought to be afraid of that.
We ought to be dreadfully afraid of falling into the hands of the
living God. Many people don't understand
this. The bad news for sinful man is
not hell. No, hell is a reality.
The bad news for sinful man is God himself.
Did you catch that? He's not the teddy bear in the
sky that you've created him into being.
He's a God of wrath and he is a God of justice and he is a God
of judgement and he is a God of indignation towards sin, and he
cannot just turn a blind eye to it and ignore it as if it's not
happening. He will judge.
Sinful, unrepentant mankind, He will eternally exercise his
wrath upon them, fear him, tremble before him.
It is a dreadful thing to fall into his hands.
That's what's happening here with the Israelites.
They've heard the law. They stayed at a distance.
Moses, you can speak to us for yourself, and we'll listen to
you. But don't let God speak to us
again, and we'll die. Why?
Because when He speaks, He speaks truth, and when He speaks
truth to the Sinner, they stand condemned by His truth.
So the bad news of the Law reveals our standing before God
as sinners. Isn't this bad news makes us
aware that we're alienated from our Creator and we're deserving
of His holy wrath and judgment. I told you this was bad news.
The bad news of the law reveals the standard of a holy God, the
shameful guilt of man, the standing of man before this holy
God who gave the law. What's the diagnosis here,
Pastor? We're just going to dismiss and
we have to go home and know that we're condemned.
No, I told you the bad news makes the good news.
Oh, so sweet. Here's your diagnosis.
Watch this. We can't meet God's perfect
standard on our own. We're sinfully depraved and
we're all condemned, guilty by the law.
And God spoke the law and it is good and it is perfect and
everything that he says is right.
And when God says I'm a transgressor, that is exactly
what this man is for. Alienated from God, observing of
his wrath and his punishment and justice, He will exercise in the
lake of fire for all unrepentant, unbelieving center.
So we have the. Diagnosis.
What's the prognosis? The law gives us the diagnosis.
That's what we've been looking at this morning.
That's why it's bad news. But if you were to receive a
call today from your doctor, he says you have bad news.
And that bad news is that you have cancer.
What do you want next? You know, the diagnosis, you
want the prognosis. What does this mean?
Well, it's not that big a deal. It can be treated and you'll
live a long and healthy. Life woohoo or stage 4 and
you've only got two months to live so you better prepare.
And so we look at the prognosis. And here's the thing.
I'm. Going to give you 2 scenarios.
I'm going to give you prognosis #1 Are you ready?
Continuing your sin and your rebellion toward God, And you
will face the just judgement and wrath of God that will come upon
all unbelieving, unrepentant sinners.
Hebrews 927 says it's appointed unto man wants to die.
And after this the judgement you will face God.
And if you face God on your own merit, you will fall extremely
short of His standard, and you will face God, and you will face
God and His wrath, and in His indignation and in His justice
prognosis #2 is this. And perhaps today God would
graciously open your eyes to see the truth, to see the bad news
for what it really is. It's reality.
Most of the time people don't want the bad news and they don't
want the bad news because they don't want reality.
Here's the reality. The law is bad news.
But but perhaps today God would graciously open your eyes to the
truth that you are a Sinner. How would he do that?
By exposing you to the law, to the fact that you have violated
and transgressed against God, that you are a Sinner,
condemned, and it's confirmed by the Word of God, and that you
need a Savior and that Savior's Jesus Christ.
The great high Priest and mediator of a new covenant,
covenant of grace and truth. He's the only one who can save
you from the bad news that you deserve judgment and hell.
He's the only one who can save you from the bad news and to
make you righteous before a holy God.
I told you at the beginning, the bad news is that here's God's
standard. We don't meet God's standard.
How can we ever meet that standard?
That's prognosis too. Pay attention to this.
It's a theological term, and I know what people are saying
today. Don't teach your people
theological terms, just teach them practical terms.
Practical terms keep you stupid in your understanding of God.
I must be theological here because this is a supernatural
exchange that I must talk about how high and how mighty God is
in this exchange. It's a theological term called
double imputation, indicating that there are two imputations
that occur in this transaction #1 our sin is fully imputed to
Christ. This is the first part of this
transaction. That means this Jesus, though
sinless in every aspect of his life and thoughts, He receives
upon himself every transgression that I ever committed, every
time I coveted, every time I stole, every time I had a
lustful thought, every time I did a sinful deed.
The penalty of that was placed upon the back of Jesus Christ at
a heel called Calvary 2000 years ago, where He bore the weight
and the wrath of the sin of all those who will trust in Him.
Isaiah says it like this in Isaiah 53 verse 5, But he was
pierced for our transgressions. Watch this he Christ.
Was pierced for Kirk's transgressions, but he was
crushed for Kirk's iniquity. The punishment meant that
brought peace upon Kirk, was upon Christ and by his wounds.
Kirk is healed. We all, like sheep, have gone
astray. Each of us has turned to his own
way, and the Lord has laid on him Christ, the iniquity of us
all, all who will believe and trust in him.
That's the first part of double amputation.
God placed our sins on Jesus, and Jesus suffered and bore the
wrath of God in our place as a substitutionary atonement.
The second part of double double imputation is this.
And this doesn't seem right, and this doesn't seem fair.
I love when people say, well, that doesn't seem fair.
Neither does this. Christ's righteousness has been
imputed to us who believe and trust in Him.
What are you saying? Clearly, Pastor, I am saying
that my wickedness was charged to the account of Christ and His
righteousness, The fact that He met the perfect standard of the
law to the T. Was then imputed to me, and He
imputed that righteousness to me, and now I stand before God,
meeting His. Holy standard as described and
proclaimed in the law. How does second Corinthians
describe this? Just like this Second
Corinthians chapter 5 verse 21. God made him who had no sin to
be sinned for us. My sin was imputed to Christ.
The second part of that verse says this.
So that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
His righteousness then imputed to me church, that is grace,
that is the gospel. That is the good news, that
double imputation. It allows us to be counted as
righteous before God. It pays the required penalty of
sin, which is death. It's all paid for by the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.
He died the death that we owed, and He gives to us the
perfection that we need, that we may stand before a holy God, not
in fear, but in fellowship and perfect communion, that we may
boldly come before His throne of grace.
Paul says it like this in Romans chapter 3, and I'm done, verse
20. He says, therefore no one will
be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law.
Rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.
I pray today that you have become conscious of sin, but now
a righteousness from God apart from the law has been made to
made known, to which the Law and the prophets testify.
This righteousness comes from God through faith in Jesus
Christ. To all who believe, there is no
difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption
that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice
of atonement through faith in His blood.
He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His
forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.
26 says He did it to demonstrate His justice at this present time
so as to be just. And the one who justifies those
who have faith in Christ. He is just and He is a
justifier. What do I mean by that?
Those. Who remain in the bad news of
the law, thinking that they are somehow going to please God by
doing things that they are uncapable of doing.
They will receive the just wrath and judgment of God that they
deserve. But it also says that He's the
justifier of those who have faith in Jesus, those who have
trusted in Jesus. You will not face the wrath and
the indignation of God because he has poured out his grace and
his mercy and his forgiveness into your life through the Lord
Jesus Christ. And you by faith have accessed
that forgiveness, that eternal life, that double amputation
that I spoke of a minute ago. So please know this
righteousness is credited, not earned, and it's by faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ and not by any works or efforts and trying to
keep the law, because the bad news of the law declares we
can't keep his law. But the good news of the gospel
is this. Jesus died to pay the penalty
that we owed, and He has given unto those who believe and trust
in Him the righteousness that the Father requires.
The bad news is we're all sinners deserving of God's wrath
and judgment. We're deserving of eternal
death. We missed the mark.
And the good news is that Jesus is that sinless Savior who
offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice on behalf of all those
who will trust in Him. My prayer is this for you, that
you trust in Him. Let's pray together.
Father, in the name of Jesus, we thank you so much that in Christ
we don't get what we deserve, but in Christ He bore what we
deserve, and we receive His goodness and His perfection and
His righteousness imputed to our account so that we can stand
before holy God. Not condemned by the law.
That's the bad news. But as recipients of grace, sons
and daughters of the Most High, purchased by the precious blood
of the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God, I pray for those who have not yet surrendered their life
to Christ. Lord, I pray that it be today
that they have heard the bad news of the law, that you have
opened their eyes to see that they are sinners and they are in
need of a Savior, and you have provided that Savior for them,
that today by your grace, they would surrender to Christ and be
saved. We'll give you all the glory for
it in Jesus name, Amen. Would you stand to your feet
now? His heads are bowed and his eyes
are closed. You're here this morning, you
say, Kirk? I am a transdresser, and the bad
news of the law has placed me in a position to know that I am
condemned and I deserve death and judgment.
But I also heard the part about how God will give me mercy and
grace if I trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as my Lord and
Savior. You're here today.
Oh, you were given 2 prognosis. 1.
Keep doing what you're doing and stay in your state of
condemnation. Face the eternal wrath of God.
Two run to Jesus Christ in desperation today, calling on
His name, knowing that for whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord, they shall be saved.
You're here today and you say, pastor, that's me.
I need Jesus to save me from my sin and the wrath that is to
come upon me. Who would be honest by the
raising of your hand and say that's me?
I want to know how I can surrender my life to Jesus
Christ today. Raise it high where I can see
you, where I can pray for you. Anyone here like this?
Thank you ma'am. You keep that up so I can see
you. Anyone else says that's me, I
need Jesus to save me. Ma'am, I'm going to ask you to
do something brave right now as these other folks are praying
for you. If one of you ladies wouldn't
meet her, right down there you come right now, you come down
that aisle, they're going to take the word of God.
They're going to show you what it means to truly know Jesus as
your Lord and Savior. Have the burden of sin lifted
off of your back. Rest of you, I make a dangerous
assumption that you were all Christians.
I pray that you would search your heart, you would work out
your own salvation with fear and trembling to see if that's a
trustworthy assumption. I pray today that you see the
Word of God clearly. What you have truly been rescued
from, what you truly deserve, yet what Jesus has saved you
from, that you would praise Him for that.
If you need prayer, there's folks to my left and to my right
to pray with you, to pray for you as we prepare to approach
the Lord's Table and observance of the Lord's Supper this
morning. I also pray during this time
that you would begin to examine yourselves so that when we take
the Lord's Supper in just a moment, that you partake in a
manner that is worthy according to the commands that God gave to
the apostle Paul in first Corinthians Chapter 11.
You need prayer. There's folks to my right and my
left to pray for you. Pray with you.
May we yield to the Holy Spirit now.
You've been listening to Key Life Fellowships Pulpit Ministry
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teaching from God's Word.