The Great Commandment (Part 2 of 2)

Since the penalty for our sin was paid for completely when Jesus died on the cross, what motivates us as believers to obey God's commandments? Are we trying to avoid some additional punishment?

Are there rewards to be gained? We'll find out today on Truth for Life. We're studying Matthew chapter 22. Alistair Begg is teaching from verses 34 to 40. If you take the earlier catechisms, the vast majority—at least a third—of the catechism were directly questions and answers relating to the law of God, asking, What does God require? What is it that God expects to be for our rule of life?

And if you'll pardon me, just another quote from John Murray in relationship to this. He says that when we affirm the fact that the rule of our life is in the law of God, the statement of such a position is exceedingly distasteful to many phases of modern thought, both within and without the evangelical family. It is agreed that the conception of an externally revealed and imposed code of duty, norm of right feeling, thought, and conduct is entirely out of accord with the liberty and spontaneity of the Christian life. We are told that conformity to the will of God must come from within, and therefore any stipulation or prescription from without in the form of well-defined precepts is wholly alien to the spirit of the gospel. It is inconsistent, they say, with the spirit or principle of love. Don't speak of law, nor of moral precepts, nor of a code of morals. Speak of the law of love.

If we use our tummy as the deciding factor on what adventures are good for us and what adventures are allowable and what adventures are not allowable, how in the world is love to be constrained? How, then, is our own response to God's compassionate grace towards us? How does it find its framework?

How does it work? Well, you see, this is what happens. We look for a God that we can use rather than a God we obey, a God who will fulfill our needs, meet our longings, than a God before whom we need to surrender all the rights to ourselves. Why is the evangelical church so flabby? Flabby.

You say, Well, that's not a nice thing to say. But we are. We're flabby.

I'll tell you why. Because we have neglected God's law. We neglected his law. John Newton, writing in his day to a correspondent, suggested that a misunderstanding of the law of God lies at the root of most mistakes in the Christian life. That a misunderstanding of the place of the law of God lies at the root of most of the mistakes in the Christian life. Because that external constraint which is there given to us to frame our lives when set aside—and people say, Well, it's set aside because it was from a different time. It was set aside because it's from a different age. Depending on your background, whether you read every study Bible or wherever it might be, you've already decided, No, no, that's got nothing to do with this time. That was for that time.

It's not for this. Listen, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be world without end that the law sends us to the gospel that we might be justified. Because it is the law of God when it is preached. Because people say, Well, I'm a nice guy. I do my taxes and everything else, and I try to look after my wife and my children and so on, and I just came here to get a little spirituality and to have a nice time, and it was going very well until you started that law stuff.

Where do you come up with that law thing? That makes me feel not good. And I know that Christianity is supposed to make me feel good.

And as soon as I no longer feel good, then I gotta go find another place where I feel good. I don't need anybody, including God, telling me that I can't have idols. You shall have no other gods before me, says God. And let me tell you what it will look like when you get number one wrong.

It's a cavalcade that goes right through the remaining nine. Now you see, that is why I say to you, if we're going to consider this great commandment, which we are about to, it is important that we give thought to these things. So, to the verses that we quoted in Matthew chapter 22, in case you have already forgotten. When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees—and incidentally, if you look back to verse 15 of 22, the context is that the Pharisees were plotting how to entangle Jesus in his words.

And so they came to him, first of all, and, you know, we're supposed to worship God, we're supposed to… What about Caesar? He answers that one. Then they came to him, the Sadducees, about, What if this guy had seven wives and they got married and remarried and what will happen? Then he deals with that one. And now the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, which, of course, the Pharisees would be well pleased with. They got together, and presumably they said, You know, you're the best at this.

You're the nomikos. You're the lawyer. You're the expert in the law.

Why don't you pause the question to test Jesus? Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law. Now, you see, they were very particular about it being the rules. It is estimated that they had 613 rules—various bits and pieces that they had added to the law.

Incidentally, parenthetically, when you find a church that has set aside the Ten Commandments but still wants to be, quote, holy, you will find yourself in a church that has come up with more rules and regulations than you could ever imagine. You can't do this. You can't do that. You can't sing there.

You can't stand there. You can't. You don't. You can't. You can't.

You can't. Whoa, we don't believe in the Ten Commandments, so we came up with our own 613 of them. They had 248 that were positive and 365 that were negative, which should add up to 613. Now, it is very, very important that their problem is as revealed if your Bible is open at 22 and 23. If you look at verse 28, Jesus says to them, You know, you guys, your problem is that you outwardly appear righteous to others but within you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. So they were really big on rules, really big on looking holy, really big on looking righteous. And Jesus says, Yeah, you're doing a really good job on the externals. It's very easy to pretend to be holy. You just meet the required status of whatever your group is.

You wear the right clothes, you say the right words, you do the right things, you attend the right times, and so on. And Jesus says the trouble with that is that although you appear righteous to others, within you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. They made an external show, but without love, their appearance of religion was actually just an empty form. And so it is that the beginnings of loving God in the way that he says God is to be loved is with an internal cleansing, not an external cleansing. I'm still now in chapter 23, prior to what we just read, but in verse 25, Jesus says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee.

First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. You see, loving God starts with inward cleansing. Loving God starts with inward cleansing. The question posed on behalf of his colleagues was out of a community that had rules and ritual, if you like, we might say that they had made an idol of their religion.

An idol of their religion. Because, as I pointed out, this quote from Deuteronomy 6 is, if you like, the positive side of the very first commandment of the Ten Commandments. You shall have no other gods before me. That's the negative. What's the positive? The positive is, you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. In other words, God is looking for complete commitment. And Jesus, when he confronts people, is also looking for complete commitment. Great crowds accompanied him, and he turned to them, and he said to them, Big crowds!

It's going great! If anyone comes to me and doesn't hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life. He cannot be my disciple. You talk about lessening the demands of following Jesus? Sinclair Ferguson has an amazing statement on this. He says, The higher the position something occupies, the higher the position something occupies in the scale of divine blessing, the more subtle is the temptation to worship it.

Did you get that? The higher something lies in the scale of divine blessing. I love my wife. I'm devoted to her. I love my children.

So do you. I love my grandchildren. See what Jesus is saying?

You can't love them more than me. You can't turn your wife or your husband into an idol. You can't turn your children and their well-being into an idol. He says, You mustn't do that, because God says, Don't do it. You better not turn your preaching into an idol.

You better not turn the blessings of the church into an idol. That's what he's saying. And that's what these guys were missing.

Complete commitment. Deuteronomy 6, which is what we're quoting, God had promised to his people a new covenant. Remember, Jeremiah is prophesying. Jeremiah 31, and God says through the prophet Jeremiah, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.

I'm going to put it in them and write it on their hearts. They were good at the externals. They were good at the law externally.

They were so good at it, they had even added a bunch of their own. But they missed exactly what the word of the prophet had been. The word of the prophet was that I am going to wash you, I'm going to cleanse you, I'm going to forgive you, and I'm going to make your heart the shape of my law.

I'm going to write my law on your heart so that to do my law will be a delight. Because, you see, the Ten Commandments are just the original plan of God for the well-being of humanity. This is what was written into the DNA of Adam and Eve, if you like. This is why they had a sense of right and a sense of wrong. That is why, you know, when Paul is writing to the church in Rome, and he says, you know, when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature… Right. They don't have the law. The Gentiles did not grow up with the law of God. He says they do not have the law by nature. But when they do what the law requires, they're a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.

What does he mean? Well, he goes on, they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. On that day, when according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus. So in other words, he's saying this, that the natural law is written into the DNA of humanity, the sense of oughtness, the sense of right and wrong, so that even those who reject the law of God, who reject the Word of God, know inside of themselves that something is out of line, that something is wrong. And so the great transformation that has to take place is internal, to get changed from the inside. I will write the law on their hearts.

And the basis upon which all of this was to take place was the divine dealing with sin. You see why, in coming to this, when you talk with your friends, and you say, Well, you know, I think I do pretty well. I try my best. I don't do anybody any harm. So they've reduced everything to, I don't do anybody any harm. And actually, I'm quite a charitable person as well.

Really? Well, do you love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength? No, I wouldn't say I do that, but I don't think that's really important, is it?

Oh, yeah, it's important. It's the first commandment. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And the basis on which that is all taking place is the cleansing of their sins.

I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. How the Lord proposes to do that, Jeremiah doesn't actually go on to say. But he says, This is what God is going to do. He's going to cleanse people from the inside out, and he's going to write his law on their hearts.

Well, of course, maybe he thought that Isaiah had covered it perfectly. Because Isaiah tells us that there is one who is coming who was wounded for our transgressions, who was bruised for our iniquities, that the justicement of our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. And he is the only one who kept the law of God in its perfection. He is the only one who can savor the psalmist. I delight to do your will, O LORD. And when we read on in the Bible, we realize that the Jesus who is answering this question is the Jesus who is going to go to the cross and who, by the sacrifice of his blood, all the blessedness of forgiveness and atonement will be made, consummated, completed.

And that is exactly what has happened. The prophet says there's coming a day when this will be internalized, when it won't simply be, Oh, I have to do this, and I have to do that. But I delight to do your will.

Why? Because my heart has been changed. There is a fountain filled with blood and drawn from Immanuel's veins.

The fountain from which our love for God flows is the fountain of God's love for us. There's a movie, a golf movie, and a conversation takes place between Bobby Jones, who spent his entire life as an amateur, and he's talking with one of the other guys who's a professional. And the guy who's a professional says to him, Bobby, why do you play golf? He says, because I love it. Because I love it. Why do you play? He says, for money.

Lots of money. That's why when I play you, I'm gonna beat you. The true golfer who loves golf keeps the rules, not simply because of the potential of reward, not solely on account of the penalties that accrue to being out of balance, but he keeps it, because he loves it.

She loves it. I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you. And because I love you, a love that has grown from your love for me, because this is love, not that I love God but that he loved me and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for my sins, so that when I stand up against the template of the Ten Commandments and I realize I am foul before all of these, the answer is not that I am justified by the keeping of them, but it is that I am justified by the one who has kept them perfectly and who has borne the penalty for all who have violated those laws. So that it brings us to the wonder of God's goodness. Sinclair, when we read a book together at our eldership the last time around, has got a masterful quote on this, and I think we should stop here.

I can see some of you are drifting back into consciousness. This is how he puts it. The lawmaker became lawkeeper but then took our place and condemnation as though he were the lawbreaker. He wasn't the lawbreaker. We're the lawbreakers. He took our place as though he were the lawbreaker. In him, requirements have been met, fulfilled in him.

Its prescriptions fully obeyed, its penalties finally paid. All that then remains is for this to be imputed to us in justification and imparted to us in sanctification through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. That's why Paul says, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, Romans 5 5, that sheds God's love abroad in our hearts. It is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that is the true spring of love to God. We obey God not to earn our salvation but because we love him. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg.

Alistair returns shortly to close today's program. Here at Truth for Life, we love the Lord. We want to tell everyone about him. That's why our mission is to teach the Bible every day in a way that shows it is understandable and relevant to our lives in the 21st century. Our prayer is that as this program is heard, unbelievers will become committed followers of Christ, believers will become more deeply established in their faith, and local churches will be strengthened as a result.

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And if it's easier, you can call us at 888-588-7884. Now here is Alistair to close with prayer. Father, we pray you'll help us with this individually and as a church congregation, so that we don't fall down on the one hand into some slavish legalism or slip off the other side of this narrow ridge of the law of liberty into just complete chaotic lawlessness. We want to be students of your Word. We want to acknowledge freely that if we spend our entire life trying to fix things, trying to say no, trying to say yes, then we would never, ever be in a position to stand before you. Only the Lord Jesus has met all the prescriptions of the law. Only in Jesus have the penalties of the law been meted out, so that we who so readily break your law may find refuge in Him. For Jesus' sake, Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Do you have questions you would like to ask God? Well, would it surprise you to know that God has some questions for you as well? We'll hear one of them tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.