WHAT THE CROSS MEANS TO THE LAW: SATISFACTION ---

Galatians 3:10-14

Several years ago Ted Turner, creator of Cable News Network, told members of the National Newspaper Association that the Ten Commandments do not relate to current global problems, such as overpopulation and the arms race.

"We're living with outmoded rules," Turner said. "The rules we're living under is the Ten Commandments, and I bet nobody here even pays much attention to 'em, because they are too old. When Moses went up on the mountain, there were no nuclear weapons, there was no poverty. Today, the commandments wouldn't go over. Nobody around likes to be commanded. Commandments are out."

Ted Turner is both right and wrong. He’s wrong in believing that the Ten Commandments are outmoded, out-of-date and out-of-place. But Turner is right in saying “nobody likes to be commanded.” Even the average church-goer wants discussions that only appeal to his sense of well-being. Modern preachers are expected to always console, maybe occasionally coax, but never command. This is where angels fear to tread! People want to be put to ease when they come to church, not put on edge. We all know, if you don’t treat people the way they want to be treated they can go somewhere else where no one makes any demands of them!

1. The Creator and the Commandments.

Sin is not just an inability to achieve the high standards of God. Every sin is an act of open, aggressive hostility against God. It is our defiant refusal to acknowledge Him as our Creator and Lord. “Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law,” 1 John 3:14. “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,” Romans 8:7. We are determined to set God aside and set ourselves on high. We do not want God’s ways, we want our own ways, Isaiah 53:6. We don’t want God to define what is right and wrong, we want to declare every is right and nothing is wrong when it suits us.

Sin is not only but it is always against God. King David came to understand this. While he had committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband, Uriah, killed in battle and had caused shame to the throne of Israel, he said, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou mightiest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest,” Psalm 51:4. It was God’s laws that had been broken. It was God was had been displeased, 2 Samuel 11:27. It was God before whom David was give account in judgment.

Can you make the connection to where we are in our nation? For years we have dismissed God from almost every aspects of our lives. God has been asked to stay outside our schools, all of our governmental functions, our workplaces. We are not allowed to speak of a divine Creator, or even intelligent design, only evolution. We are not allowed to declare human life is the gift of a loving God, but abortion is protected by the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

And the result? Get this. Our “godless” and/or “no God” decisions have had a profound effect on our understanding of what sin is. Even the word itself, “sin,” has disappeared from general conversation.

Think about it. Things that were formally sins have become crimes against society. So the responsibility for dealing with them has passed from churches to government, from preachers to policemen. Other sins are now seen as sicknesses for which people seek “treatment.” And we have created a whole generation of “victims” who point to the lack of education, housing, and opportunity as the reason for their behavior. Now, no one is responsible for anything.

“Moreover the law entered, that the offense might abound,” Romans 5:20. The law does not create the sin in our lives; it merely reveals the sin that

Our conscience testifies to us that we are sinners, but it is the written law of God that intensified the “knowledge of sin.” Now, sin takes on the form of transgression. “I had not known sin, but by the law,” Romans 7:7.

Illustration: Clear water in a glass...took a handful of dirt….rejected...let it settle overnight...the causal observer looks at the glass and sees clear, clean water...his thirst moves him to drink...but before he does so...someone take a spoon...begins to stir that water in the glass...that dirt is again mingled with the water...the spoon did not put the dirt there, it simply revealed the dirt that already existed in the glass.

The law of God was not given to make you a sinner, but to show you are already a sinner! The law of God is God’s spoon that exposes sin that is in our lives.

So many churches have modernized their message and method for numbers and nickels, for members and money, that they are ever so careful never to offend people or tell them the truth of their condition or make they feel guilty.

The following ad was in one of our local papers. To say the least, it got my attention, but not my appreciation. The ad read, “Will you come back to church if we promise not to throw the book at you?” This was an ad for a new Lutheran church in the area. It is the guilt-free preachers, like Dr. Robert Schuller and Joel Ossteen, who are some of the biggest celebrities of our day. Why is that? Because they have little understanding of the holiness and justice and righteousness of God as revealed to us by the commandments.

When people have that attitude then they think they know more about what man needs than God. God says, “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and that all the world may become guilty before God,” Romans 3:19. The purpose of the law is to bring the guilty sinner to a realization of his true condition.

Galatians 3:23 tells us the law served as a “jailer.” “But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.” The whole Old Testament is a convincing record that since Adam all men have only and always been sinners, hopeless sinners. The law stripped the whole race of any hope of self sufficiency.

Galatians 3:24 tells us ‘the law is our schoolmaster” that lead us straight to Christ This word “schoolmaster” is “paidagogos.” In a Roman household, from which this figure was borrowed, the paidagogos was usually a trusted slave to whom the moral supervision of a child in the household was committed. He trained and guided his ward with a view to the future, the time of his maturity and responsibility. That’s what the law does. It prepares those under it for the reception of Christ. The law does this by revealing God’s holiness and man’s sinfulness, and through its offerings, priesthood, and the tabernacle, pointing people to the coming Christ as the only way of salvation.

“One of the primary things the law did was impose upon man such a sense of guilt, such a burden, such despair about ever being able to rectify his situation before God, that when the Savior came, they would welcome Him,” D. L. Lowrie, First Baptist Church, Texarkana, TX, sermon of the week.

2. The Curse and the Cross.

“The law cannot be broken with impunity. Sinners therefore incur the penalty of their law breaking. They cannot simply be let off. The law must be upheld, its dignity defended and its just penalties paid.”

“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all,” James 2:10.

“Sin by the commandments might become exceeding sinful,” Romans 7:13.

Gal. 3:10 “Cursed..continueth not...in all things… written...to do them.”

How many have obeyed some of the law, some of the time? All of us. How many have obeyed all of the law, all of the time? None of us.

The only One who has obeyed all of the law, all of the time is Jesus Christ! Jesus obedience was both comprehensive and continuous.

This is the reason “no man,” not a single person, is “justified by the law in the sight of God,” Galatians 3:11. Why? Because no one has kept the law. We cannot obtain or earn salvation by keeping the law because no one keeps the law. In fact, instead of being saved by the law, we are condemned by the law. We are under its “curse.”

Christ has redeemed us from the “curse of the law, being made a curse for us,” and in this sense “Christ is the end of the law,” Romans 10:4, and we are no longer “under” the law, Galatians 5:18. This does not mean that all law is removed and that only “love” is our rule.

The power of the law is its curse. In Christ we have been set free from the law’s power. We are no longer prisoners of its condemnation. Our case has been settled out of court!

Christ was “made to be sin for us,” the One who personally ‘knew no sin,” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Galatians 3:13 is one of the clearest statements of substitution in the Bible. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us…” The curse the law laid on us was laid of Jesus. And look at Deuteronomy 21:22 & 23. “And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hand is accused of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.” Evidently, whenever a man was stoned to death for a capital crime in ancient Israel, his dead body was publicly hung on a tree. This was a sobering witness to those passing by that the penalty of sin, the curse, had been imposed. The evidence that Christ born our curse was that “he hung on a tree.”

1 Peter 2:24 says, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree…”

Colossians 2:13-14. In Christ God have forgiven us “all trespasses.” What trespasses? Our breaking God’s law. “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us…” In the ancient world “the handwriting of ordinances” referred to an itemized list of the crimes nailed to the prisoner’s cell. When the prisoner’s sentence was served or restitution was paid, the authorities removed the list and wrote on it, “Paid in full.” The prisoner used this as proof that he could never be tried again for those crimes. The person who trusts Christ’s payment for sin can never be tried again. This cancelation happened when the record of our deeds against God’s law was “nailed to the cross.” A document was not nailed to the cross. Christ was. He became sin for us. He became our curse. He became our damning record and endured our damnation on the cross.

Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill,” Matthew 5:17.

For the Jews there were three aspect of the law of God in the Old Testament.

· Moral law—summed up in the Ten Commandments.

· Judicial law—relating to agriculture, settlement of disputes, diet, cleanliness, dress and many other things.

· Ceremonial law—shadowed in the sacrifices, feast days, etc.

Jesus was the only perfect One who kept all the law of God, all of the time.

· Moral law...Jesus was the Perfect Servant, waling in perfect obedient to the Heavenly Father..

· Judicial law...Jesus was the perfect standard. Jesus is our ultimate model. When Jesus taught others to “love their enemies” He was the One who had lived His earthly life loving people, including His enemies.

· Ceremonial law...Jesus was the perfect, final sacrifice.

3. The Consequence and the Confusion.

“That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,” Galatians 3:13.

Now, in Christ Gentiles who have the blessing given to Abraham. It is not by the keeping of the law, but “through Jesus Christ...through faith.”

The curse has been removed, the blessing has been extended. What blessing?

- Justification by faith, Galatians 3:6-9

- Gift of the person and indwelling Holy Spirit, Galatians 3:14.

There are two great dangers which must be avoided when it comes to God’s Law in our personal lives and in our preaching.

In our personal lives we must avoid the two extremes relating to the law: legalism and license.

Legalism. This is the idea that obedience to God’s commandments are the source of our justification and sanctification. This is when people make too much of the Law and rob themselves of the freedom we are to enjoy in Christ. But God does not love us more if we obey the Commandments and less if we do not. His love for us, our justification, our sanctification and our final glorification were settled once and for all by the perfect faithfulness of Christ on the cross, not day by day through our grossly deficient faithfulness. Legalism is not God’s way.

License (antinomianism “anti” against “nomos” law). This is when people ignore God’s commandments, believing that God has set aside all law. This position takes God’s law too lightly. “Didn’t Jesus command us to love God and our neighbor? Isn’t that enough?” Not hardly! Our sinful nature will twist into any shape that which will be convenient for the moment. We all need a moral compass, and God gives us that compass in the Ten Commandments. We are too foolish, too selfish, too sinful to negotiate matters that have already been settled in the Bible, God’s Word. I love what one man said: “Only by obedience to the Law is the believer freed from it.”

The real option is at neither extreme. As law abiding followers of Christ we reject both legalism and license. We are neither law-breakers or law-keepers. It is like a narrow trail at the top of a vast mountain. As long as we stay on that path we can enjoy the freedom and beauty of the moment.

Romans 8 teaches us that those who are “in Christ” face “no condemnation,” v.1, because God has already condemned our sins in Jesus Christ, v. 3, so that all “righteousness of the law might be fulfilled is us,” v. 4. “So the same cross of Christ, which frees us from the law’s condemnation, commits us to the law’s obedience,” John Stott, The Cross of Christ, p.237.

And then there is a danger in our preaching.

The commandments and the cross are not an either/or situation. The law and the cross are not mutually exclusive.

Believers need to know the law in order to find their joy in Christ their Savior who was the only One to ever keep the whole law.

Sinners also need to hear the law in order that it might take them by the hand and “bring” them to Christ, their only hope.

Listen to what Evangelist Charles Finney said. “Evermore the law must prepare the way for the gospel. To overlook this in instructing souls is always certain to result in false hope, the introduction of a false standard of Christian experience, and to fill the church with false converts. Time will prove this to be true,” November 2, 1871. Has it ever!

Let me illustrate it this way. Suppose you went home tonight and fell asleep and in the middle of the night you were awakened by the sound of your smoke alarm, your eyes were filled with tears because of the smoke, you began to cough as your lungs breathed the smoke, and your body began feeling the heat of a fire that was starting to rage in your house. You ran into the room where your little boy or little girl lay sleeping and you awaken them. What would you say? “I’m going to give you ten characteristics of fire.” Or, “Son, I’m going to tell you how to be successful in the midst of a burning house.”

No, you would grab him by the arm and you would pull him out of that bed and say as loud as you could, “Son, the house is on fire! Get out! Get out now! Get out!”

In our naivety, in our arrogance we think we know more than God, so instead of warning the doomed and damned sinner that he is under the judgment of God, we offer him self-esteem, we encourage self-love and we promote self-forgiveness, and he heads to hell blinded to the truth that he has never received the grace of God through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

“The law sends us to the Gospel, that we may be justified, and the Gospel sends us to the law again to enquire what is our duty in being justified.” -- Samuel Bolton. The True Bounds of Christian Freedom.

The law breaks the hard heart and Christ heals the broken-hearted!