Grace Community Trenton
Pastor Hutch Garmany and Cody Kennamer at Grace Community Trenton in Trenton, Ga.
Grace Community Trenton
Leaving Egypt: Revealing Precious
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Exodus 20: 15 - 17. Romans 7: 7 - 12, 21 - 8: 4
Would you now stand for the reading of God's Word? Two readings that we'll be looking at this morning. One is Exodus chapter 20, verses 15 through 17. And then we're going to jump over to Romans 7. So it's page 67 in your Red Pew Bible. And the Romans passage is page 1002 in your Red Pew Bible. If you didn't bring a Bible of your own, it should be a Bible laying around nearby that looks like this if you want to hunt one of those up. Again, Exodus chapter 20, and then jumping over to Romans chapter 7, beginning at verse 7, page 1002.
SPEAKER_00Exodus 20, verses 15 to 17. 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 male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Romans 7, 7 to 12, and 7, 21 to 8.4. What shall we say then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not. Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, You shall not covet. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. 721 to 8.4. So I find this law at work. Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me, for in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who did not live according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03Thanks be to God. May be seated. Thank you, Elise, so much. As we come now to God's word, would you join me in prayer that he would come and help us? Let's pray. Father, this morning we here in your presence have sung praises to you. We have brought our offerings to you in worship. Lord, we have heard your word read. Lord, we have offered prayers to you. And Lord, now we ask that you would come and you would speak through the preaching of your word that has its power not in any ability in the preacher, but in the presence and the work of your Holy Spirit. Lord, we need that more than anything. We need your spirit to take your word, to use it upon our hearts, to set us free, to set us free from all of the things that capture our hearts, the things that we get fixated on, the things that divide us. Lord, we need your gospel. We need to see Jesus. Would you come and be our teacher this morning? In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So a question to get us started. Um you ever get fixated on something that you really, really badly want? Something that I see some hands. Yeah. Do you have one in particular, or you're just like, yeah, I got that's me? Yeah. Whoa. Yeah, I get it. I mean, detachable, whatever that is. I mean, you're not alone in that, buddy. I I imagine there's others in here that are like, yeah, I kind of want that too. We all know what that's like, right? You get fixated on something. There's something that you're just like, man, I gotta have this. And have you ever noticed that so often it is those fixated desires on things that create most of the conflict in our life with other people. It divides us. It leads to this competition and wrestling and division, and I see it happen in my house all the time. The problem is not just that I want something, but I want something that someone else wants too. And it creates all kinds of strife in our relationships. Have you ever seen The Lord of the Rings? You know, you know the The Lord of the Rings. We got some fans in here. I'm seeing some fist pumping in the sound booth in there. You know, The Lord of the Rings, uh just an incredible uh book and and uh and movie just about um yeah, about the the Christian hope and the Christian story. But there's one there's one character in particular that I've always thought is the most powerful, especially in understanding my own heart, and it's the character Schmeagel. You know Schmeagel, the little, you know, monstrous-looking little creature that that is like the helper of Frodo and goes with him as he's carrying the ring to Motor, and he he goes with him and he's supposed to be helping him. But one of the things that you see in Schmeagel is that he is so deeply torn. There's a part of him that wants uh to be a good servant to Frodo and to help him and to be loyal to him, and he he calls him master, and I want to be submissive to him, and I want to help you. And yet there's a whole nother part of him that is just captivated by the ring. And you'll see, I mean, it's a very powerful scene how he'll just get taken over by this desire, and he'll just be fixated on the ring. And do you remember what he calls it? Precious. My precious. And you see him just fixated and longing and desiring, and it and it actually changes his whole demeanor. He goes from someone who's seeking to be to be humble and a servant to one who is demanding and grasping and evil. You see both of these two natures in Schmeagel and the war between them. But it's that picture of the precious. I feel like when I look at Schmeagel, I'm looking into a mirror. Don't we all know that experience of something in our life that becomes the precious? I mean, sometimes it's really good things, like our children, or a spouse, or something that we've got to have in life, or success, or some image that we're chasing. There's so many things that can become precious for us, and our hearts get locked onto these things, and and really that's what directs our life, especially in those moments when our hearts are captivated by this overwhelming desire for something. We we live not out of our carefully crafted theology or after our willpower determination to live in a particular way. It's in those places that we live out of the deep desire of our heart. We see that portrayed very powerfully in Scripture. So here's what we're gonna see as we come today to our scriptures and our passages. Experiencing the grace of God for us in Jesus, the gospel. Experiencing the grace of God for us in Jesus. It frees us from our covetous desires. It frees us from precious, and it moves us out in love towards our neighbors. So let's jump into our passage together. And so today we are finishing our look at the Ten Commandments as we're working through the book of Exodus. And one of the things that we've been noticing, today we're going to look at the last three commandments, but one of the things we've been making a point of to understand as we come to the Ten Commandments is that it's it's very common, it's very easy to think of the Ten Commandments simply as these rules that are given to us to follow, and that they primarily have to do with our own personal life. In other words, these are matters of personal piety. These are things that I must do to be okay and to be right and to please God. And we think of them in a very individualistic kind of way, but as we've talked about, we must understand the commandments and the law through the teaching of Jesus. And that Jesus taught about the law, that the law was far more about our heart than even the externals. We can think that scripture, that the Ten Commandments are primarily about just things that we do, so we've got to avoid those things. But Jesus taught, no, it is a matter of the heart. We saw that last week as we looked at the Sermon on the Mount, that murder is not just the outward act of taking someone's life unlawfully, that murder is what happens in your heart when you're angry at a brother. It's a stunning description of the real meaning of the commandment. He said adultery is not just to have sex outside of the covenant of marriage. No, it's it's the lust in the heart. Anyone that lusts after someone else in their heart has already committed adultery in their heart. Jesus, this radical teaching that the commandments are not merely about the outward action, but they're about the heart. And that the commandments are not merely arbitrary rules that we are to keep in our life, but rather they are about loving our neighbor. That the goal of every commandment, the the deepest meaning of every commandment is about loving my neighbor. So if our religion, if our obedience, if our Christian lifestyle is not bearing the fruit of love for our neighbor, then we are not keeping the law. That's what Jesus is teaching. And we see this most vividly in the life of the Pharisees, who were meticulous in their obedience. But yet in their hearts there was hatred towards their neighbor. That so often happens for us in the church. In our fierce devotion to obedience to God's law, we become the meanest, nastiest people on the face of the planet. Because we do not understand what Jesus so wants us to understand, the intention and the meaning and the goal of every commandment is the love of my neighbor. So let's keep that in mind as we look at these last three commandments and how it changes our perspective on them. So first we're looking, verse 15, at you shall not steal, the eighth commandment, you shall not steal, which seems straightforward enough, but so often we think of it as, okay, this is the rule that says I'm not to steal something, I'm not to take something that's not mine, and it certainly does mean that. But the thrust of it is that I would not take something that belongs to my neighbor. You see, that's the heart of it. That's the essence of it. That when I steal, I'm taking something from my neighbor, not just something that doesn't belong to me. I'm taking from him, I'm taking from something that God has entrusted to him, a gift that God has put in his life, and yet when I steal, I'm taking that from my neighbor. That is the thrust of that. Now, the application of this particular commandment is very short. Do not steal. And we're like, oh, I got it, you know. I'm not going to steal anything. But one of the things that we see in the Old Testament and in the New is that the applications of that commandment are vast. It doesn't just refer to not shoplifting or taking something whenever my neighbor's not looking. The applications go far beyond that, even into the active participation and protection of what belongs to my neighbor. Throughout the law, it's fleshed out as meaning not only that I wouldn't take something that belongs to my neighbor, but that I would be active in my life in justice. Justice, the Hebrew word meshpat, most often in Scripture refers not just to, as we think of when we hear the word justice, we think of uh, you know, the declaration of right and wrong in a court system. And that's certainly an application in Scripture. But most of the time, Mishpat refers to this aspect of justice in which we stand up for the rights of the weak. It's throughout Scripture. And that is an application of the eighth commandment that I would do right by my neighbor, that I would seek when I see someone as being oppressed, even someone who is in need, that I would become active in meeting that need. You remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus is fleshing out what does it mean to love your neighbor? And it's not just that you wouldn't harm your neighbor, but that you would actively get involved in their troubles. That's what justice means. That we would look out in the world and we would see people who are in need, who are being exploited, who are who are doing without, who are walking in brokenness, and that we would get involved in their lives, that we would spend ourselves on their behalf. That's an application of the Eighth Commandment. That I would seek to raise up and protect the rights of my neighbor. Eighth commandment. It's also applied to our tithing. The failure of Israel to tithe is described as robbing from God, stealing from God. So an aspect of the eighth commandment is to live a life of generosity, is to not see what I have and my stuff and my money and hold tightly to it. The eighth commandment calls us to be generous with our lives, to share our goods with the poor, to be generous with those in our life. It would call another application is to treat our employees fairly. I mean, would you ever think the eighth commandment would have all of these applications? It's not merely that I would not take from someone else, but that I would actively seek to meet the needs of my neighbor. My Old Testament professor in seminary, I think he knew Moses. He learned this directly from Moses, but he wrote one of the most definitive works on the book of Proverbs. This guy was just so rooted in Old Testament scripture. But what one of the things that he would always remind us of is this definition of righteousness and wickedness. And this, the more that I thought of it, the more that I've thought, well, that totally captures the Old Testament law and the teaching of Jesus. But he says that wickedness is disadvantaging the community for your own advantage. A wicked person is willing to hurt the community, to exploit the community, to take from others in order that they might benefit. That's wickedness according to Old Testament law. And righteousness is just the opposite. A righteous man is someone who is willing to hurt himself, to disadvantage himself, in order that the community might flourish. That's exactly what the law is all about. It's all about loving my neighbor. How would I spend myself in order that he may flourish or she may flourish or the community may flourish? When we come to God's law, we must understand what the intent and the goal of the commands are. So let's look at the ninth commandment. Verse 16 says this you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Now again, it's very common to think of this commandment and even too shorthanded and say, oh, yeah, that's the commandment about not lying. Well, that is certainly an application of the commandment. But notice it does not just merely say, do not lie. It says, do not give false testimony against your neighbor. That is beyond just not lying, which is how we most often think of it. You know, it's the breaking of that rule that, okay, I can't lie. But it's that I would not lie against my neighbor. Do you see that here? It has the horizontal direction of how do I protect the name and the reputation of my neighbor? And specifically, it's in court. Now, why would it say that? Well, that's where it matters the most. John can attest to that. It matters the most there. If I would lie against my neighbor in a court of law, it is the most costly way that I can bend the truth against my neighbor. It will cost him the most. This is like the heart and the root of Israel's judicial system and in fact our own in our own nation. This commitment that I will not lie against my neighbor in a court of law because I know that it will cost him dearly. But of course, the applications are far beyond that. It means that I would not speak or mischaracterize my neighbor. It means that I would not ruin their reputation through gossip. That is an application of the Ninth Commandment. And what is gossip? Well, in the South, you always, it's always prefaced by bless their heart. When you hear that, somebody's about to get ripped in half, right? In Jesus' name. To gossip is to talk about someone behind their back. Another word for this is triangulation. And we do this all the time. You know, this happens in our relationships. We hurt each other. We wrong each other. We annoy each other. Now, what scripture calls us to do when I've been wronged by someone or I've got a problem with someone is to go to them and tell the truth. But what do we do? We go to somebody else and tell the truth. It's called triangulation. And what that does is it begins to build a coalition against my neighbor. It begins to turn people's opinion against my neighbor. It's incredibly destructive in our relationships in the church. You see, that's what the Ninth Commandment is all about. That I would not speak in a way that harms my neighbor, that I would seek to be truthful with and about my neighbor in every way. That I would go to them and I would speak honestly to them. It's a call to honest speech, to the willingness to speak the truth in love. When we got a problem with each other, you go to the person, right? If somebody calls you and says, Hey, I need to talk to you about my relationship. Relationship with such and such. What you need to reply according to the Ninth Commandment in that moment is you dialed the wrong number. Right? You got to go to them. Stop. Pause. I can't hear this. Right? That's what the Ninth Commandment is about. You got to go to them. Can I pray for you? Can I pray for that conversation? And those are hard. Those are hard conversations. Truthful, direct conversations, but they are actually loving. What is unloving is when we go to other people, when we need to be going to them. So that's the ninth commandment. Its applications are vast, but now the tenth commandment. Verse 17. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. You shall not covet. What does it mean to covet? To covet means to desire something deeply. To long for something. An inordinate desire. A passion for something, a precious. That's what coveting is. It's to want what belongs to my neighbor. He gives a couple examples here. For instance, your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's house, your neighbor's servant, right? His donkey, you know, for us, it might be his car or his house, right? Or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. You know, it includes everything, right? Now get this about the Tenth Commandment. In this way, it is like the first commandment. You remember two weeks ago, whenever we looked at the first four commandments, we said about the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. That it is really a foundational and root commandment for all the others. We don't break any of the other ten commandments without first breaking the first one. Because if God is first in my heart, I would live this out. If God was at the center of my life, if my heart was purely set on God and pleasing him, I wouldn't break any of the commandments. So it's foundational. It's underneath the breaking of all the others. It's underneath every sin, is that something other than God becomes the priority of my heart. Well, the tenth commandment is like a mirror image of the first one. You don't break any of the other commandments without breaking the tenth commandment. And just as the teaching of Jesus says, the commandments are really about the heart. It is the longing for something that is not mine that leads me to murder my neighbor in my heart, at least. It is the coveting that leads someone to adultery. It is coveting that leads us to speak what is not true about our neighbor. It's at the heart of all the others. It's the root. It's in our hearts. In Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5, Paul equates coveting with idolatry, that they're simply the same thing. It's the inordinate, deep desire for something that has become ultimate in our life and saying, I gotta have it. That's what idolatry is, is what coveting is. They're mirror images of each other. Coveting is greed. Now, greed is one of those things, it's tricky, right? Greed in our culture is like a virtue. Right? To want more? That's what it means to be a consumer. You know, if everyone quit coveting right now, our entire economy would collapse on the moment. It is driven by coveting. I mean, think about how often we are shown and enticed with things through it. Marketing and advertisers and our phones that now have constant access to us. What is the job of an advertiser? To show you something and get you to covet it and desire it so that you buy it. And then you buy it. Like every good consumer, I've consumed that, I've taken it in, I've got it. Now what's next? Right? It's driven by coveting. It's shot through throughout our entire society. Coveting is deep in the heart. You know, it's interesting in James chapter four. James says this what causes fights and quarrels among you? It's your desires that battle within you. You covet. You long for something. Something you must have. This inordinate longing for things. What causes fights and quarrels among you, it's your desires that battle within you. You covet, you desire, you do not have. It's at the root of all of our conflict and fights and division throughout our culture at the heart of it all is coveting. Coveting is a lack of contentment in God. Just think of the freedom of contentment. Man, maybe you've known contentment just for a minute, right? It's so free. Just to be able to look at what God has given you in your life at any particular moment and say, it's enough. I'm good. No, but this, I'm good. Contentment is an amazing freedom. But so often in this life, it is momentary and fleeting. Coveting. So that's the last three commandments. So what do we do with this? You know, we could end right here and say, all right, that's the Ten Commandments. Go get them, Tiger, right? You can do it. Like, go give it your best effort. Go try harder. Go do better. Go get better at this thing. And so often that's what we're tempted to do with the commandments. But here's the reality: you won't get out of the parking lot before you covet, or before you lust, or before you're angry, or before you have put something before God in your heart. See, the purpose of the law is not merely to give us some instruction of how we're live, how we're to live in order to enjoy God's blessing in our life. That is not the ultimate meaning of the law. The ultimate meaning of the law is to show us we can't. It's to show us ourselves. It's to show us the brokenness of our heart and our deep need of the rescue of a Savior. That is the meaning of the law. Let's look at, I want you to just look at Paul's argumentation in Romans chapter 7. We read this, Elise read it for us. I just want you to follow Paul's argumentation. Now, an amazing thing about this passage is that Paul is actually sharing his own experience. This is the Apostle Paul, you know, religious powerhouse, you know, Pharisee that was all about the law. I mean, greatest missionary the world has ever known. I mean, this is the best of the best. We ain't gonna do any better than the Apostle Paul with the Ten Commandments, okay? Let's just start there. But look at his description of what the law has done in his life. What Paul says in verse 7 is that the law for him has opened his eyes to his heart. Paul says, I wouldn't even know what the law was. I wouldn't know what sin was, really, if it were not for the law. But when the law comes into our life and we let it examine our hearts, we begin to see the true reality of our hearts. Look what he says. Verse 7, what should we say then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not. Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had said, you shall not covet. Right? You go around in life and be like, I'm a pretty good person. Yeah, I got some stuff in my life I really gotta have, and I'm passionate about. I'm trying to figure out how to afford it, how to make it happen in my life. My life's all about that. But I got the Lord in my life, you know, I'm going to church, all that stuff. But what I'm really passionate about is these things in my life I gotta have. But I'm a good person. I'm I'm born again, I'm a Christian, I love Jesus, right? But you look at their life and you're like, wait a minute, that's what I think you're living for in your life. Paul says, I was good, and then I saw do not covet. And what did Paul realize? Oh no. That's all my heart does. That's all my heart does. And not only does it reveal it to him, he actually says in verse 8 that it incites sin in him. That the law not only reveals our sin, but it actually awakens and entices sin. It aggravates sin in our life, which is why religious people can be so very mean. Look at what he says in verse 8. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. So Paul's here saying, you know, I was good, man. I thought I was righteous, you know, I'm comparing myself to other people, good person, doing all the right things in my life. But then I encounter the law, and I encounter, do not covet. And not only do I see that my heart is shot through with coveting, it actually got worse. I coveted everything I saw. Now we we know how this works, right? Especially if you're a parent. You ever seen a child, you know, you tell a child not to do something? What is the natural instinct of the child? Thank you, Father, for showing me the correct way. Thank you for demonstrating your love for me and calling me to trust you because I know you always have in mind what is best for me. So thank you for saving me from this error that would have endangered my life, and thank you for loving me. I've never had a child or seen a child say that. Instead, what do they do? Don't stick that in that light socket. Right? You're you're fixated upon it. And it's not just children, is it? It's us. It's us. The more that we encounter the word, the more that we ins we that we encounter the inciting of sin in our heart, the more that we see I am deeply broken. C.S. Lewis says, you know, you don't really know how bad you are until you try to be good. Right? If you're not making much effort to obey God, you probably think you're in good shape. But when you go about seeking to obey God in all of your life, you know what you're quickly gonna see? I am deeply broken and sinful. And that is the point, says the Apostle Paul. Verse 9. Once I was alive apart from the law. In other words, once I was good, right? And then the law came, and sin sprang to life, and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. When he says, through the law, sin put me to death, what does it mean? It condemns me. It condemns me to death. It passes a sentence on me. It shows me that I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, that my heart is broken, and that I cannot be good enough to make myself right with God. Then Paul goes on to describe as a believer the ongoing battle in our hearts with sin, because the flesh remains in our life. And this is his description about his battle with sin in his heart. Again, awakened and exposed by God's law. Look what he says in verse 17, 15. I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. You ever experienced that in your life? Why do I do that? I mean, I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do this. I wanted to obey God. I wanted to treat this person in this way. I didn't want to look at that again. But why did I? Because I hate it. You feel like a schizophrenic with sin in our hearts, right? And you don't even, you're not even know this until your heart is exposed to the truth of God's word and to the truth of his law. It exposes, it shows you what he says in verse 21. So I find this law at work. Although I want to do good, evil is right. They're with me in my inner being. I delight in God's law. But there's another law at work within me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. Verse 24, what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? You see, the point of the law is to bring you to that place over and over and over. The point of the law is to bring you to a place of brokenness. A place where you cry out in your heart, Lord, I'm broken. Who will rescue me? What a wretched man I am. You know, relax, you're worse than you know. Now we giggle at that, probably because we don't really think it's true. But the more that we look at the law, the more that we begin to say, oh my gosh, it's so much worse than I thought. I thought if I just did these few things in my life, I thought if I just cleaned up this area, I thought if I could just get over this struggle, this sin pattern in my life, I thought if I could get over that, then I'm good. I wouldn't need Jesus anymore. I thought I'd be okay, right? But the closer you get to God, the more you see his holiness in the law, and your heart, your sin is exposed, you begin to truly see, oh, I'm far worse than I even realize. The people around you might know, but you get introduced to that, right? I'm worse than I know. And it is at that point that the grace of the gospel will electrify your heart. Look at what Paul says right after that. Verse 25. Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. That is the gospel. It's the law that leads us to the gospel. And that's where Paul goes here. Thanks be to God. He's moved to worship. Romans 8:1. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For those who are in union with him, there is no longer any condemnation for you. The law cannot condemn us. It can expose us, it can show the reality of our heart, but it cannot bring condemnation on us. Why? Because he was condemned in my place. That's what the cross is all about. It was about condemnation. Not of me, but of him in my place. Jesus was condemned for my sins. So therefore, in union with him, I can no longer fall under condemnation. The law can point me to Jesus. The law can convict me. The law can no longer condemn me. And even beyond that, through union with Christ, the demands of the law are fully met in me because of the righteousness of Jesus. Look at verse 3. For what the law was powerless to do and that it was weakened by the flesh, God did. When Elise was reading that, and it just jumped out. For what we could not do, that's what the law shows us, right? I can't do it. God did it. That's the gospel. The gospel's not get your act together, try harder, you can get there if you really try. The gospel is God did it. He accomplished it. He won it. He achieved it in our place. For what the law was powerless to do, God did in Christ. God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering, that description of the cross, and so he condemned sin in the flesh. The condemnation has already happened on the cross. Verse 4, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us. You see what he's saying? Through union with Christ. All the demands of the law are fully met in us.
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SPEAKER_03I haven't fully kept the law. Like I said, I won't get out of the parking lot today. How can the requirements of the law be fully met in me? The righteousness of Christ. He did it. He perfectly kept the law in our place. See, that's the gospel. And if that is ordinary to you, if you're like, yeah, I got it. Can we get to something else? Then you don't understand the gospel. What creates the wonder and the power of the gospel is when we see our need and we're driven into the arms of Jesus? Driven to the cross of Jesus. So just a couple questions for application. Are you experiencing the grace of the gospel? Are you experiencing it? Not just that you get it here and can you get it right on a test? That doesn't really do you much good. Are you experiencing the grace of Jesus personally for you? Is it filling you with joy? Does it get you excited? Does it make you does it make you want to say like Paul, like, thanks be to God? Is that happening for you? Is the gospel bringing you peace? Is it is it bringing a deep peace that like goes below the circumstances in our life? Is the gospel softening you? That's a good one, right? Is it softening you to other people? Is it making you more merciful, more patient? You look at people, maybe it's people you totally disagree with, maybe it's unbelievers, maybe it's an enemy. Is the gospel softening you to them? Because that's what it does. When you experience grace, you're like, oh, you know, this, this, I get it. I that was me. That was me. It softens you. It makes you merciful towards other people. Is it is it relieving pressure in your life? This this incessant need to perform. Because when the gospel, when you're experiencing the gospel in your heart, it just relieves the pressure. I don't have to build my righteousness. I don't have to achieve it. I don't have to prove myself. I've been proven in Christ. And is it making precious less precious? That's what the gospel does. You know, is my heart falls in love with Jesus through his grace. My grip on precious, it just loosens. It loosens. It breaks the power of it. For many of us, the gospel is just stale. It's just stale. It's just doctrine. It's just in our head. We're not experiencing it in the heart. And therefore, it's no match for our fears in our life. It's no match for them because it's not penetrating our hearts. So, how does it penetrate our hearts? See your sin and see Jesus. That's how that's how the gospel comes home in your heart. See your sin and let it drive you to see the finished, accomplished work of Jesus on the cross. How do you see your sin? Look at the law. I mean, look at it. Doesn't it expose us? Like I said, we're not getting out of the building if we really look at the law. And what that does is it drives us to look to Christ. If we just look to the law, this is not just go navel gaze and Stare at your sin all day, that'll kill you. Right? The point of seeing our sin is to see Christ. That our hearts would be captured with an affection for Him. That we would fall in love with Him. That His grace would be our joy. Let me just stop there, and I've just about run out of time for any comments, but uh maybe there is a few. Got a little lathered up there.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So back to when we're talking about gossiping and how you're like, okay, you gotta like don't go to another person and you have like beef with someone else. Yeah. Um I'm wondering like where do we fit in like asking for advice with a situation in here?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And think, yeah, flicking back.
SPEAKER_03So it's you know, it's it's not the answer that we most want, but it's like it's a matter of the heart, you know, and it takes wisdom. And and and sometimes you have an urge to go tell somebody else, and we need to stop ourselves and say, wait a minute, what what am I seeking to do here? You know, it am I in a place where I really don't know what to do and I need wise counsel? Okay, so I'm gonna go to that person and I'm gonna seek wise counsel, and it should be a wise person. But as we go in, we just want to be careful to protect the person, right? Because that's the meaning of the law. It's just that I'm gonna care for my neighbor in the way that I speak. That's what it is. So as long as you get what it is, then go, we we gotta go figure it out, right? And uh sometimes we're gonna we're gonna realize I didn't need to say that to those other people. You know, some of us don't know how to talk about anything but somebody else. And so that's a problem. We need the confrontation of that. But uh, yeah, so in that case, that's different. That's if we need it's it's all about the heart, I guess is the best way to put it. And we go, we gotta search our hearts on that. But do it in a way that is protecting the my neighbor that that I gotta beef against or I need to seek advice for.
SPEAKER_02And it's it says the heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. Uh-huh. And although you didn't use the word envy exactly, um, I think in my life, and what I think what I see is sin operating. It's like if I don't call envy what it is soon enough, then it forms into covetousness. That's right. And um, I think that I find I think that's where delusion is in a lot of human hearts. I'm not calling everybody out or whatever, but there's a lot to be said about envy and covetousness throughout the scriptures. Yeah. And um, that peace is only found in Jesus, you know. The heart of peace gives you know life to the body, but envy rots the bones. And I was thinking about that, you know, people myself included, I'm much more likely to own a monkey on my back than the big green monster. Yeah. And that comes like with being truthful, like in evaluating myself before God and with other people who I'm accountable to. So I think that, you know, I think that we would see a lot more uh grace in the community and like walking and living in the peace of the gospel if we're honest with ourselves about envy in our lives and our hearts.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, uh absolutely, uh Cliff. It envy is a synonym of coveting, to envy, to, to, to, to long for what my neighbor has. Or to be bitter about what I don't have and my neighbor does. I mean, that's all coveting. And it it you're right. It's a root, it's a bitter root that's going to bear fruit in our life, and it it leads to other things.
SPEAKER_04I'm just struck uh by my own uh just how performance-based I am, I think, as I listen to the sermon. Um just uh I think you talk about stealing and you talk about you know how deep the law goes in my mind, you know, I I just I do see that stillness to the gospel, unfortunately. I see, I think about how like I think immediately think of times, oh shoot, I forgot to tithe a few, like a few months ago we didn't tithe because we were saving up for down payment on the house. I gotta I gotta I gotta fix that, I gotta make it right, gotta make sure to the guy gets his 10%, you know. And uh and I like I think of all these ways I'm uh you know that I've not fulfilled the law and how I can fix them. That's like my immediate like how do I make this right? And I can't. Yes. And uh and then you bring home at the end, like you always do, to the gospel. Yeah, and uh and I think oh that's right, okay, so I'm good, but now I gotta fix it going forward. Like, yeah, it's just uh humbling how deeply ingrained um that performance is and uh have to meditate on uh what that resting in the gospel really looks like. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I'm sure we can all relate if you heard Alex uh how we do that with the law. You know, we hear that and we hear something like coveting expounded or or or bearing false testimony, and we you hear all that it applies to, and there's this part of you who goes, oh no, did I do that the other day? Or what, you know, what if I need to do this? And we want to get into the technicality because we so deeply believe that we're right with God by getting all of our boxes checked. And what Paul is saying here is like, the law doesn't work that way. You know, sometimes we come to the Ten Commandments and be like, you know, I think I'm doing good on eight, but two, I'm struggling a little bit. I need to tighten those up a little bit. And Paul says, no, no, the law doesn't work that way. The law is one. If you break it in one place, you broke the whole thing. And so we need that full force of the law to break us out of our sense of performance so that we'll see all I got's Jesus. Like it's all I got. I got no performance, I got no righteousness, I got no boasting. He is all I have. That's all I got to offer you. And you see, that is the place of life and power and joy and peace and freedom. All those things we're trying to get in the world. It's only found in Jesus. And that doesn't mean Jesus in your hip pocket. That means Jesus at the very center of your life. And you don't get there apart from the law killing you. That's what Paul says. The law killed me. I used to be alive, I used to have a life, right? And I used to have plans, and I used to have a righteousness and performance and a reputation, and I used to have a resume. And then the law came and it killed me in order that I might find life in Jesus. So that that's the gospel. Is that the law's gotta kill you in order to find life in Jesus? Because you can't carry that and tackle Lord Jesus on. He's just too big. He doesn't tack on to anything. He's at the center, he's not there. Let me close this in prayer. Lord Jesus, how glorious is the gospel. I pray that you would kill us with the law, that it would put us to death in order that we might rise to new life in you. Lord, would you expose just more and more the depths of our need that we may find the joy and life of the cross? Do that in us every day. Do that in us this week, that we might be set free from ourselves and that we might actually be empowered by your spirit to deeply love our neighbor. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.