The Use Of The Law
1 Timothy • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.
There is a common proverb among the preachers of the 17th and 18th century that says this,
“The needle of the law must puncture the hard leathery heart before the thread of the gospel can pass through”.
It is uncommon for preaching to be about the use of the law in our modern world because the law is itself offensive. However, understanding the law is absolutely crucial and truly necessary to the sound doctrine of salvation.
This morning we will look at the law and see the reality that the law cannot save us, but only empty us and point us to Christ.
Now, verse 8 says, we know that the law of God is good, if used lawfully. The implication is that there is a right way and wrong way to use the law. You see the problem is not with the law… The law is 613 commands of the Lord to Israel about how they were to live and go about thier lives. It can be wrapped up into 10. And really Jesus wraps them up even furhter when he says that all of the law depnds on only two commands, Love the lord your God with all of your heart soul and mind, and your love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.
The problem is not with and has never been with the law. But rather with those who are using it and how they are using it. Remember the character of the men using the law was sub par. They did not know the law but desired to use it for gain and influence. They had no idea what it meant.
They had no understanding whatsoever of the law. But Paul reminds Timothy that Timothy does. Paul says, “We know”, you and I Timothy, the Apostles, all who are born again Christians, we know that the law is good, only if used lawfully. Therefore, my goal this morning is to help you…
I. Understand the proper role of the law.
Understanding or knowing, some of your bibles may translate it. There is doctrine here. Pay attention, he says. So many times the bible gives this command, pay attention. Are you paying attention? We know that the law is good because we know this about it… We know, the spirit has shown us that there is a way to use the law and a way one should never use the law. One way leads to life, the other to death.
A. The Unlawful uses of the law.
i. As salvation - it is foolish to think that any one can keep the law. Yet, this is exactly a part of pharisee doctrine. Doctrine the Apostle Paul was all too familiar with. The pharisees believed themselves to be saved through the law. Because they prayed. Because they made their dressings beautiful and reverent. Because they were teachers. But Jesus told them
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 24 You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!
They weren’t saved, they only seemed like they were following God, but they were fooling everyone as they pretended to love God by keeping tradition. They could not say with Daivd that they law was sweeter than honey or to be more desired than gold. They saw it as a means to put on a show, to lead people away from God and into a reliance on self.
The second unlawful use of the law is...
ii. To promote legalism - As I mentioned last week, there were some who used the law as their spring board to make up their own rules. The pharisees used this method as the religious rulers of the day to put more regulations on people than the law itself. Those rules and regulations deceive so many into thinking, hey, I’m a good person. I must be right with God, right? See what Paul says in Romans 7:9-10
I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
Paul was a good pharisee. He as the other pharisees saw themselves as a better class. High above the rest. Jesus told a parable about them…
“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
Their salvation and their hope was in their works. I’m not an extorsioner am I? I am not an adulterer am I? Thank God I’m not even one of those dispicable tax collectors.
Paul was right there with them. Until God peeled back the veil that darkened his understadning and brought illumination, light, true understanding of His law to the eyes of Paul on that Damascus road. Finally he understood that God is holy, and Paul is a worm…
Which is exactly who the law is laid down for Paul’s says. The law, is not laid down for the righteous, but the unrighteous. For the lawless, and the disobedient. Which leads me to the proper use of the law. Turn with me to Romans chapter 7…
B. The Lawful use of the law.
I want to give you 5 things the law is designed to do. 5 reasons why the law is good for those who are lost in their sin and the found to look back on and reflect.
i. The law of God aggravates our sinful desires. (Romans 7:5)
For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
The natural born man and woman are defiant. Don’t believe me, have a couple of children. They are simply rebellious. And as we grow up it becomes more obvious that every human longs to be his or her own king or queen.
The law stokes that up in a person. You see, if one of you still being lost in your sin and are in love with your sin of loving money, which is greed... and I preach the words of the law in Exodus 21:2,
When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.
You, being in love with your sin, will naturally respond,
“don’t you tell me what to do with my money and my possesiions… what do you know. If that person still owes me money I am going to keep them as a slave. I am not letting them go until they have paid off every penny…
See how the law pricks you, and it prods your rebellion, and churns your hearts anger and bitterness. You can’t see anything else than your desire for those words to be wiped off the face of the earth so that you can go back to loving yourself without guilt.
ii. The law of God proves us slaves to sin. (Romans 7:6)
But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
Without Jesus, you can do nothing but sin. Ephesians 2, Paul works out the whole progression of the Old Testament narrative. Without the salvific work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, man just continues dead in sin, following the ways of the world, marching to the beat of his rebellious, self righteous, self serving, and seeking drum. And as long as he is stirred up, he will aquire for himself more and more guilt, and drink more and more, or buy more and more, or whatever to ignore the shame. They will seek out a pacifier to shut up the voice of God calling them to repent. But they will never get rid of it not matter how hard they try because they are slaves to it, they cannot escape no matter who hard they try.
iii. The law of God exposes the sin that is hidden in our hearts. (Romans 7:7)
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”
The law little by little either empties us or hardens us completely. You will either see it and be stirred up or you will reject it and turn a blind eye to it pretending that you don’t see it.
It empties us by showing us how far we are from glorifying God. It adds more weight to the one who is stirred up and paying attention. We see that there is sin after sin after sin that we deal with.
Jesus brings this out in the sermon on the mount. One may say, I have never committed adultry in my life! Yeah, but have you ever delighted in another man or woman that wasn’t your wife of husband? Have you ever been angry with someone and said in your anger, oh you are so stupid? Have you ever taken anything, anything without asking? Have you ever told a lie? Just one?
Then under the right use of the law it is revealed to you today that by your own admission you are an adultrous, murdering, theiving, liar…..... And what do you deserve for your crime against our Holy God? Heaven or hell? The wages of sin, is death. You deserve hell… My friends, the law show us, just how far we are from God. Which leads me to,
iv. The law of God reveals the holiness of God. (Romans 7:12)
12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
From where does the the law come? It is the law of God. It is His standard of holiness and purity. The Love of God, and His righteous loving character are revealed there. And the message of Jesus, and the apostles is that the law of God, met only with the Spirit of Christ, will as Romans 6:22 says, bear the fruit that leads to sancitifcation and its end, eternal life…
v. The law of God condemns all sin (Romans 7:13).
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
All sin. The wages of sin, any sin. The smallest sin of a judgmental thought, to the largest sin of murdering another human. It is all condemned by the law of God. So we go back to the list of Paul’s in 1 timothy. The law was written to show that the natural man stands condemned… You today, or at one time, have fallen into one of these categories which is contrary to sound docrtine…
Which begs me to ask, why in the world has the church given up ground and began to preach, “Jesus loves you… Do you like to use foul langauge? Ahh thats ok, God loves you. Do you identify with the LGBT Rainbow birgade? Oh, just keep doing you, Jesus loves you… Are you watching pornography every night? Ahh thats ok, Jesus loves you.”
Why has the church been preaching this instead of, listen, God does love you, but God does not accept you...
Actually you have rejected the love of God because you love your sin. And He loves you so much that he is actually going to give you what you want. He is going to take all of his grace from you, because you don’t want it anyway, and let you feel the full weight of longing to be filled and never being filled. You will desire and never have. You will need and never get. You will never feel one jolt of joy ever again becaus ejoy is a grace of God… and for all eternity you will be left in despair and groaning and anger…
The beauty in the law is this, it empties you. It humbles you. It brings you low. It pushes the needle of the law, that hard, painful, nessesarry… I say again nessesary, heart pieceing intstrument into your hard and leathery heart in order to knit you together with the thread of the gospel.
Which brings me to my plea to you today…
II. Be freed from the law through Christ
A. Christ has saved us from our sin by keeping the whole of the law.
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
He who knew no sin, Christ, who kept every law of God perfectly and never sinned even once. Was made sin. So that you might become the righteousness of God. Not so that you could just be saved, but so that you could be free in life and death. Christ took on your sin and paid the debt that you should have paid. You deserved to be thrown in prison, to be hung on a tree and left to cry out in misery for all eternity. He purchased the true power of the holy spirit of God for you to obey the laws of God and no longer rebell but find love for Him while you do it. But the bottom line this morning is this…
We do not have room for the good news of the gospel in our lives so long as we are filled with false hopes.
There are some of you here today who have been pretending to know God and trusting that you are saved because you trust in false hopes. In part because you have been subjected to unlawful uses of the law. But its not excuse, you have been holding and clinging to false hopes that you are a good enough person. That you haven’t done anything that wrong. That you are good enough.
My friends, if you can not freely say I was lost, I thought I knew the way, I was trusting in my sin to bring me joy and pleausre, you stand condemned, deserving the severest penalty of God namely what Christ calls the weeping and nashing of teeth and the worm that is never satisfied and never dies. This is not hell fire and brimstone. This is truth. In this state you are a lawless and rebellious enemy of God. Empty yourself of yourself. You are dead. Admit it! You are broken! Admit it! And look upon the cross of Christ and beg him for mercy. Look upon the son of God, the gracious King, bow and kiss him, and be saved immediatly.
Dear Christian’s, I want to ask you two things… First: Do you mourn for people that are lost? Do you have at least a flicker of sorrow in your hearts for these people who are so wrapped up in self righteousness they cannot profess that they are dying? That in itself is a sad state.. And we know it because we were once there. Consider this. What will you do about it? It is our calling in life, as born again believers in Jesus to manifest the love of Christ through our lives and pray for lost souls to be saved.
Secondly: Do you abound in joy? Look at what God has saved you from. You too were once a lawless, rebellious, murdering, thief, sexually immoral, impure enemy of God. But thanks be to God that He has cleansed you by the blood of Jesus Christ. That is not who you are if you are in christ! Do you have a joy because He has placed His never departing Spirit inside of you as a wellspring of joy. Do you look to the law and see the beauty and majesty of the holiness of God? Do you look to the law and thank God for His holiness, and His mercy, and His steadfast love?
My Friends, I pray that in your hearts today you find joy and rejoice for the work Christ has done to save you, to fulfill the law in you, and cause you to carry out the obedience of Christ's command. And I pray that you will take heed. Do you conform to sound doctrine?