Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 22, verses 37 to 39. Let's ask God once more to bless his word to us. Father, again, we ask that you'd open our eyes to see wondrous things in your word, to understand your law, to love you, to obey you, and serve you. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Matthew 22, and in fact, I'm going to back up to verse 34. I'm going to read all the way down to verse 40. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, that is, Jesus had done so, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him and saying, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. This was a reading of God's Holy Word, and may He have His blessing to it. Our message is titled, our sermon is titled, God's Law is for Christians. By that I don't mean it's only for Christians, but that it is truly for us as well. That's something that I try to emphasize for us, that we would not be misled, as many churches today, evangelical and sadly even reformed churches, either subtly say that or express that by their posture or even almost straightforwardly teach that, that in some way God's law is lightened or removed or diminished in the life of a Christian since we've been saved from the curse of the law through Jesus. Well, of course, we're delivered from the law as a covenant of works, from its curse, but we are actually saved in order to love God and love one another. And children, what summarizes the law of God? Say again? Okay, the Ten Commandments. What is the sum of the meaning of the Ten Commandments? Yep? Yeah, love God, love others, love God, and love your neighbors. So, are Christians called to love one another and love God? Yeah. So then, wait for it. We're called to keep God's commandments, which also tells us, very importantly, that to truly love God and love others is not a mere feeling or emotion or tone of voice or sentiment. But it is rooted in God's word and God's law, and God's law is a reflection of God's glory, God's character. And so we're not permitted to imagine what love is any way that we want. God's law is love, and true love is keeping God's law, keeping God's commandments from the heart. And so, we're going to spend some time, I think I mentioned this last time we were together for the Heidelberg Second Sermon, going through the Ten Commandments in some great detail. Now, I'm also going to mix in, even today, some from the Westminster Larger Catechism, and if you've ever actually read through that and looked at it on the Ten Commandments, it is incredibly extensive. In fact, my understanding is there's very few resources on the larger catechism throughout its history since it's been written. I think it's rather underutilized, but it's also daunting to try to go through that almost line by line. If you know who Reverend Joe Moorcraft is, I think he has like the most extensive resource on that, on the larger catechism, and it's like eight volumes. It's like 3,000 or 4,000 pages long. We're not going to do that, don't worry, but we do need to take some time considering the commandments of God. It is at the heart of Christianity. It is not something that you forget about once you're saved. It's what you save them to. And it is at the heart of how to truly love God and love one another. Which, if you're a Christian, that's what you want to do. And so, with all that in mind, again, our sermon theme is that we must obey God's law to be faithful Christians. And we have three points from that for today. The first point, the Ten Commandments summarize God's moral law for us. At the first point, the Ten Commandments summarize God's moral goal for us. The second point, the essence of the Ten Commandments is to love God and make room. And then thirdly, the first four commands reveal our duties to God. The last six, our duties to man. And so, you'll notice there my first point, the Ten Commandments summarize God's moral law for us. Now there's lots of, I guess you could say, technical distinctions when we use moral law and divine law, and a lot of that kind of gets mixed up and confused and for now at least this isn't going to be a sermon where we're going to go into that in great detail. But we do need to define the moral law. And we're going to use a larger catechism to help us do that. It asks what is the moral law in Question 93, the larger catechism, and it says, The moral law is the declaration of the will of God to mankind, directing and binding everyone to personal, perfect, and perpetual conformity and obedience thereunto, in the frame and disposition of the whole man, soul, and body. So we're bound by God to keep his will as it's revealed in the moral law, personally, ourselves, perfectly, and perpetually, always. And we do that from the heart, body, and soul of the whole person. And it goes on, it says, and in performance of all those duties of holiness and righteousness which he owes to God and man, promising life upon the fulfilling and threatening death upon the breach of it. So that's question 93, and that's the law of God given originally and still upon us. Now we know that we are all now lawbreakers, and so we have the threat of death over us, but now in redeeming Christ we're redeemed from that. The curse of breaking the covenant of works is what we're saved from. But of course, we're not somehow delivered from loving God or keeping His commandments, right? Which is one and the same. To love God. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, as Jesus had said. So, we need to think carefully about how it is that we can obey God, do His holy will, by knowing it through the law of God, through the moral law revealed to us, especially summarized in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments is that summary of God's moral law, His will for us to follow Him, to love Him and love one another. Now along those lines, something that we need to also consider is every command that God gives fits under one or more of the Ten Commandments. So what do we mean by that? Well, we know the scriptures say, pray without ceasing, for example. It's just one example of many, right? We know there's many more commandments than the Ten Commandments that are in the Old and New Testaments alike that we should follow. But the command, pray, or pray without ceasing, or pray diligently, or pray according to the will of God, whatever, take that as an example. that would fit under one or more of the Ten Commandments. And so we could think about that for a minute and say, well, which commandment would it fit under? Now, prayer is interesting. I think you can argue that in some ways it fits under all of the commandments because it's our duty to God and our duty to one another. We pray to God to our adoration, our worship of Him, our service to Him. We pray for others. out of love for them as well. And so in some ways, you could probably point out how that command would fit under every one of the Ten Commandments in some way, shape, or form. And frankly, I think we could do that with any of the commandments, certainly any one of the Ten Commandments, right? To love God and worship Him alone is also a loving thing to do for your neighbor if you really want to be broad with it and broad about it. But certainly, if we're praying to God, we're not praying to idols, and so we're keeping the commandment to have no other gods before me, in part, by prayer, by praying to the true God, not praying to a false god. We're keeping the Sabbath day holy, the fourth commandment, when we pray together in corporate worship. And we're praying for one another. We're loving our neighbor well. We are, this would really fall under not murdering. Because another rule that we should recognize, and our confessions point this out as well, is whatever God commands in the Ten Commandments, the opposite is forbidden. And whatever God forbids in the Ten Commandments, like do not murder, the opposite is commanded. Which is what? Well, to promote life and the well-being of your neighbor. So do not murder also means you should seek the welfare, the well-being of your neighbor. So hopefully that helps us begin to kind of get our minds around the Ten Commandments as a summary of all the moral law. Whenever you're seeing God's Word and God's commands in Scripture to you, it's probably helpful to think about which of the Ten Commandments is this command under, you know, a subspecies of, I guess you could say, a subdivision of. Whether it's prayer, whether it's Pick any particular example, reading the scriptures, working with your own hands, working diligently, thinking about what commandment of the Ten Commandments does this fall under. And then further, of course, as we see the sum of the Ten Commandments, It's either going to be expressing love for God in worship and service, the first four commandments, or love for neighbor, the last six commandments. And so you can also classify it in that way in your mind. And this is helpful, to take everything back to the sum of God's law, the Ten Commandments, and to remember that those Ten Commandments themselves are summarized by loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. So, a few years back, actually it's been a little while now, but I was asked to help some other ministers, to actually bring formal charges against somebody in another denomination, a woman in fact, who had written some books that were promoting feminism and other things. Most of you know who I'm talking about, I won't use her name. But we were approached to do that, and my understanding is the way that the OPC's Book of Church Order, whatever the name is for their book, is if you're going to bring a charge against somebody of sin in a clear, justical court, you have to demonstrate how their sin falls under one of the Ten Commandments. At least one of the Ten Commandments. In other words, you can't just say they're mean. or I don't like them, or they give me weird vibes, right? That's not a sin, okay? You may not like them, you may not like it, but if you can't name the sin, then it's not a sin, the charge doesn't stand. And then of course the charge has to be substantiated and proven, your innocence will prove you guilty and all that. Well anyways, as we were, a group of us were collectively trying to hash through all of that, we basically, as I recall, The wording was something like this. We charge that this lady violated the propriety of the ninth commandment to not commit adultery, sexual immorality, and that she bore false witness, violated the seventh commandment, by her twisting of what is appropriate between men and women who are not married to each other, but they're married to others. This is the lady, I think I've told many of you before, who wrote books, and she's done worse than this too, but she said, you know, you can be married, And I can take, you know, one of your wives out for a date, basically, you know, coffee date, and one-on-one, and that's good friendship among the body of Christ, and that's what we should do. And, you know, the seventh commandment, you know, do not commit adultery, do not be sexually immoral, has nothing to do with that. And in fact, anybody who says that, she would claim, is probably twisted in their minds, or perverse, or, you know, stifling, you know, fellowship among the body, basically, right? And so, she was teaching things like that, she was blasting, if you've heard, like, the Billy Graham rule, you know, like, he doesn't, he's not alone with another woman, not his wife, and things like that. And of course, she went on to, you know, emphasize women, like, teaching and preaching, essentially, as well. And other things. It got worse from there. But we were working on bringing these charges to show how this woman was really slandering the Word of God, violating the commandments to not commit adultery, not because she was directly advocating commit adultery, but because this itself, the propriety of this, the position of taking another man's wife, Especially also yourself being married, one-on-one, to get coffee, and to treat it as some kind of intimate friendship, as if that's what the Bible or the Gospel frees us up to do, or something like that, is itself a sinful thing to command and to do. It would be inappropriate. It would be a violation, like we said, of the Seventh Commandment, and bearing false witness about what the Seventh Commandment, do not commit adultery, would call us to do and call us not to do. So that was one piece of it, one piece of it that I was kind of working on, and there's some other things as well. Now, think about this. Somebody may say, the argument may be, well, that's legalism, right? It's not committing adultery just to go and, you know, take another man's wife and go out and go to Starbucks or something. Like, well, what's the harm in that, right? You could argue that way. It's kind of crazy, but you could argue like that. Or somebody could say, well, what about an exceptional circumstance where you have to take this person because they're in danger? Well, obviously there's exceptional circumstances. We understand that. Not everything's so black and white or whatever the case may be. Maybe, you know, her husband's beating her and you have to take her away real fast and, you know, whatever. But the point is, under normal circumstances, to just do this as a course of practice would be a violation of the 7th Commandment. Some may argue that this is simply putting a fence around the law of God, right? Like, well, the Bible says don't be drunk. It doesn't say you can't drink. So what you're saying is, you know, the Bible says don't commit adultery. It doesn't say don't take other men's wives out on a date. You see how people would argue that way. Well, no, it's not a sin to drink. It is a sin to get drunk, but there's no impropriety simply by drinking, but there is impropriety in taking another man's spouse one-on-one in basically a dating format and calling it, renaming it, dubbing it friendship or something like that. For example, Proverbs 5, when Solomon there, writing to his son, says to stay far from her, far from the immoral woman, the seductress, do not go near the door of her house, and he goes on to explain that you should give your honor to others, your ears to the cruel one, your flesh and body are consumed, your wealth taken, etc., etc., etc. Will Solomon be legalistic? Come on, Solomon, I'm a strong man. I can walk by the door of that woman's house and I can walk down Bikini Avenue or whatever the case may be and resist this. No. That's not legalism. That's an application of the seventh commandment to not commit adultery. And it's kind of common sense, if we're honest. So I'm trying to point out how we should think about God's commands and God's law here by giving these maybe somewhat humorous examples or absurd examples to make the point. Solomon here would essentially just be applying the commandment, perhaps others have we thought about it longer, to be faithful to non-human adultery by avoiding the immoral woman, the seductress, and so on. And I think we can pretty easily say that to have too intimate communion one-on-one with those that are not our spouse of the opposite sex is the same sort of thing. Stay away, stay far from that kind of Intimacy with somebody who is not your spouse in intimate ways that violates the realms of consanguinity. Whatever that word is, the intimate relationship that is there that should not be there. So, remember, the larger catechism of question 93, the moral law, is God's will declared and revealed to us. It binds us to it personally, perfectly, and perpetually to obey it body and soul. So in other words, this touches not only on the outward act, When the Bible says, do not commit adultery, you know what Jesus said. He says, even a hint of lust in the heart is adultery. Unjust anger against your brother is murder in the heart. God is not merely forbidding the physical actions of these things. He's not merely forbidding a little statue and idol on your desk that you're kneeling and praying to, but any spirit that would lend itself to idolatry. It goes to the core of who we are. So it's commanding us inwardly, outwardly, thoughts, desires, affections, dispositions, all of that. And anything that goes astray in that is sinful. That's been another battle in our churches today. Some of you know the Presbyterian Church in America had to deal with those who were essentially saying, I'm gay, but celibate. I've got all these gay desires, but I'm not going to act on them, and so they're OK. In fact, homosexuals have a gift for friendship and hospitality, so maybe we can learn from them. I'm not kidding you. That's the kind of stuff they were saying. And so they're artsy, and they're hospitable. Let's learn from them. No. Even if they happen to, I don't know, make art or something like that, there's nothing good in these sinful fallen desires. And so we have to repent even of those affections and dispositions, not only the outward actions of them or giving in to them. So we understand that, if this is true, that it is from God's law that we are all sinners. No matter what our sexual struggles may be, whatever our idolatry, our greed, our covetousness, our anger, our bitterness, we all know that we stand condemned to the bar of God's holy law. And as we've heard earlier today, the only way of salvation is through Christ Jesus and the forgiveness of sins through Him. And then the good news is that he also renews us and restores us into his image, and sanctifies us by the Spirit, so that we have new holy affections. The sinful flesh continues, but by the Spirit we are at war between the flesh and the Spirit. To live by the Spirit who involves us, like we have our own spirit, The Holy Spirit is in us convicting us, but our sinful flesh is pulling us, and we are to pursue what is good and right and holy according to God's Word, and we're enabled to do that again by the renewal of Christ's Spirit in us and His Holy Word to guide us. Okay, so, as salvation in Christ renews the law in our heart, as we are saved into good works to do them in Christ by His Word and Spirit, we see then that we are still bound as Christians to fulfill the moral law, not as a means of earning salvation or justification or anything like that, but as a means of serving God and doing so out of gratitude and thankfulness to Him. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, as Christ said. Now the larger catechism, question 99, also asks, what rules are to be observed for the right understanding of the Ten Commandments? Now that larger catechism is large, it has like eight different parts to it, but to summarize that, what are we to observe to have the right understanding of the Ten Commandments? It says it requires the most perfection of every duty, forbidding the least degree of sin. We've talked about that. But the law is spiritual. It reaches into the understanding, will, and affections, as well as our words, works, and gestures. There's a lot, you know, effeminacy and effeminate behavior and other things like that, or just being, you know, chilling by your disposition, you know, harshness or cruelty, all of that. I mean, that's a violation as well. Where a duty is commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden, and where a sin forbidden, the contrary duty commanded. Likewise, when a promise is annexed to the command, such as children obeying their parents, the fifth commandment, leading to long life, the contrary threat is also implied and included, a judgment of a short life. If you disobey God, if you disobey your parents, if you rebel against that, you're on your way to the path of judgment and destruction in a short life, even in this life. So what God forbids must never be done. Yeah, what God forbids, what He says you cannot do, that must never be done at any time. And what God commands, that is always our duty for all time. But, and this again is kind of obvious, Not every particular duty is to be done at all times. Why? Because it's impossible. You can't possibly do everything that you ought to do all the time, right away, every day. Right now we're at the worship, we're at church. earning your living at your job, at your occupation right now. We have many duties, but we can't do them all at once. This is also why it is so important to understand that we should have the right priorities of our duties in mind, our loyalties, our affections, our loves. Ordering our loves is ordering rightly our responsibilities before God and man. And that's going to in some ways vary depending on your particular circumstances as your family and your pressing needs and so on. We can certainly look at the abstract and say yes we must get our duties to God and before God right first and foremost and only then can we actually adequately love and help our fellow man. But the complexities of that, in our particular circumstances, in our lives, in our families, are great. And that requires wisdom and discernment. And so we can't merely, I don't know, go to the Bible like a paint-by-numbers instruction manual. We have to actually have wisdom and discernment to apply God's Word and discern what we need in our life at this time to help us as an individual, as a family, for our church, whatever the case may be. That's where prayer and counsel and wisdom and all that has to come in. So, we must know God's laws well and apply it with wisdom. Yes, we believe in Christ, our conscience can help guide us, but we must also remember the heart is deceitful. Even as Christians, we can still be deceived, or even sometimes our conscience can be misguided, right? A sincere Christian sincerely believes that a sip of alcohol is a sin in itself, and they really believe that, and they have a conscience that is burdening them. And Paul says, do not violate your conscience in that situation. Do not drink alcohol. For you, it would be a sin, because for you to do that, you believe you're sinning against God. Now we should try to correct the conscience, the misunderstandings of various issues and matters, alcohol or otherwise, but the worst thing you can do is violate your own conscience, which is to sin against God doubly in that regard, because you think you're doing something that offends him and you're doing it anyway. So let's go on to our second point then. The essence of the Ten Commandments is to love God and neighbor. So we're kind of doing a big broad look at the commandments here, how the Ten Commandments are a summary of the moral law. We've had a few particular applications of that and how it fits under one or more of the Ten Commandments and now looking at the essence of some of the Ten Commandments themselves as we said is to love God and to love neighbor. Well why? That's the illustration of prayer. Why are we commanded to pray? Maybe we know it fits under this commandment or that commandment or maybe in some ways all of the commandments. Why? What is the essence? What is the reason that we are to pray? At core, well, it is to love God, right? That's all the commandments are. We should be obeying out of a love for God, a love for neighbor. If you love God, you will pray to God. You will draw near to Him in prayer. You'll have communion with God. out of love, through prayer, through expressing your adoration, you know, what's the acronym, acts, you know, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication, whatever way in which you think of it in your mind, and you're going to God in prayer, the Lord's Prayer. We're hallowing His name, we're also asking Him for the things that we need, even as a husband and wife, delight to talk to one another and spend time together, as a child, delight in their parents and ask for requests from them. and adores their parents, so we should come to the Lord as His children, adoring Him and asking for our daily bread, our provision from Him, and Godliness is our ability. As well, as out of love, the motive of keeping the commandments is from a heart of love, a heart that can only be given to us by saving grace in Christ and the Spirit working in us. So if you love God and you trust in Him, you will pray to Him. If you love others as you love yourself, you will pray for them. And your motivate root should be out of love. If you're praying to keep the commandments, but you don't love God, and the action of that is still sinful. If you pray for somebody else, but you do it merely out of a duty, and you really are bitter toward that person, then that's still a defective prayer. There's still sin in that, because you're not doing it out of love for them. So the commands of God, the Ten Commandments, are teaching us to love God well, and to love one another well, and in their proper proportions. Love God with all of your being. and your neighbor as yourself, right? We don't love our fellow man as a god, we love them as ourself, and we should have a self-love, a proper sense of that, which is again a twisted thing today, but self-preservation, to seek God, to do good, we should seek the same things for our neighbor, that they would love God, that they would serve God, that they would not be murdered, that they would not have adultery committed against them, that they would not have their possessions coveted against, that we would seek their well-being, That's an expression of love. It ought to be. We can think of other tricky examples in the scriptures as well. If our motive is love, acting out of love, loving God and loving neighbor, that's the sum of the Ten Commandments. Then what about these, again, hard, exceptional, ethical sort of questions, such as lying or righteous deceptions. The ninth commandment, bearing false witness, do not bear false witness. We always hear this come up in different ways. When Rahab hid the spies, and everybody agrees that that was right, she should have done that, the Bible convinced her for doing that. But the question comes in, was she also commended not only for hiding the spies, but then telling those who were coming looking for them, oh they went that way, when in fact she had hidden them on her roof and covered them up in a well, or I can't remember exactly now, but she had protected them, harbored them. in her house, but told something that was not true, told an untruth, a lie, a racist deception, that they went another way. Is that righteous? Is that justified? And Christians will discuss That question that, is that not trusting in God? Shouldn't the truth always be told? Others will say, well, this is a war-like situation. It was a war, essentially, and they were war spies. And this is a righteous deception. It is acting out of love for your neighbor. by hiding them and protecting them and even defending their lives by sending them away, even by saying something that is not true. It is not a technical bearing false witness. So people will go through that and discuss the layers of that. Again, we can kind of not completely cut the knot on the issue of that, but we can say that if somebody is acting out of love, For the sake of the righteous, in that situation, as Rahab was doing, what we can certainly say from the scriptures is that nowhere, directly, does God say, she did well in hiding the spies, but not so well in this. If it was wrong of her to do that, God doesn't mention it. Fair enough, I don't think anywhere in the scriptures God says that, to my knowledge. That she did wrong in this, but right in that. And it doesn't mean that it justifies white lies or little sin. Sin is still sin. The least sin is not justified. But we should also recognize gradations of sin and how people's motives and understandings can get mixed up. Somebody is truly trying to protect the people of God. She said, I know God is with you. And God spared her life, and her whole household, and her father's household from that, and she's committed in the scriptures. And so we should have proportions of, even if somebody violates the law, technically, but is striving to do what is right, we shouldn't, we shouldn't rebuke them in the same way that we would somebody who is hunting down the righteous people, and trying to kill them and murder them and destroy them, for example. So, again, hopefully that helps us understand more about how we should work through the law of God, how we should apply it for our lives, how we should apply it to various others who may, in different ways, violate the law of God. We should be gracious to those who are trying to work through these more thorny, peripheral, challenging issues of what is and is not a violation of the law of God. Again, provided everybody is seeking to do this out of love for God and for others. It doesn't justify the sin if there is sin there, but it does help us understand the motive is not out of sin, but out of righteousness. So we never have the right to sin, we never have the right in the least way to violate the law of God and we should always keep God's commandments out of a love for Him and a love for one another. Any sin, any want of conformity unto the transgression of the law of God. We should also remember the context into which the Ten Commandments were given in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. In both cases, the preface to the Ten Commandments, as we've mentioned before, God says to the people essentially, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. So there's already deliverance, a redemption, a salvation. This is how we live as God's people. That is how you should see God's law for you today. Please, do not go to the Bible and say, well, those are commands for those unbelievers, but not for me. No, it's still for us, too. The laws aren't bad. It is perfect. It is wonderful. It is the highest that it should be. And really, for any Christian, it should be the highest desire. Because the desire to keep God's commandments is to desire God Himself. To love God as a loved neighbor. Is there any higher desire or purpose than we can have but to love God? Right? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Well, how can you do that apart from God's law? revealing God's will to you, and how to be like Him as His image bearer in keeping His commandments. So plainly, clearly, law and love go together. And in some ways, they're almost synonymous, understood rightly. There's no true love without God's law. If somebody's saying, this is love and it's not God's law, it's not love. They might think it's love, but it's not. And if we try to follow God's law without love in our heart, it's like 1 Corinthians 13, right? If I give all my possessions to the poor but have not love, I am nothing, right? If I work all miracles and do X, Y, Z, if I do everything, but I have not love, it doesn't avail. So we cannot fulfill God's law by the bare outward conformity to his commandments, but love for God and man must motivate our law keeping, else it is not truly obedience. So pour yourself into God's law and commandments. Only by them do we truly come to know God, because if we know His will, we know Him, and we know how to serve Him and follow Him. Remember that because we are sinners, the power to serve God is only by His work in us, His Spirit in our hearts, His Word guiding us, raising up our own spirit so that we would follow and obey Him. As I said, we're going to go through this in great detail in the upcoming months, because if this is the essence of the faith, then why would we skirt over this? Well, our third and final point, which is really a corollary to what we've already been saying, The first four commands reveal our duties to God, the last six are duties to man. And here too I guess we can say or make the point that duty and delight or love and obligation are not contradictory either. If we can say the first four commandments show us how we are to love God, it's also a duty to love God. If the last six is our duties to man, well it's also a duty to love our fellow man. So we should serve out of a sense of duty, and yes, out of a sense of obligation, but also out of a sense of desire, of affection. Not everything that is commanded, simply because it's commanded doesn't mean it can't be done with affection. If that were so, then we would have to say our children could never show true affection towards us because they're obeying our commandments. So God is the highest being, the source of all goodness, glory, truth, and holiness. So, as such, as we said, our chief and highest end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. But true enjoyment of God is doing as He commands, as the highest object of goodness, holiness, and affection, the source of all of that. So, we often get this backward, again, as Christians. We destroy the faith by saying, well, God goes light on you now that you're saved, and holiness, that's something that is not a diligent pursuit. It doesn't have to be because God, the New Testament God, the redemption of Christ makes him go light on that. No, that's not the case at all. It's not a matter of lightness or hardness, it's a matter of you're forgiven. It's a matter of you're redeemed. Now redeemed, with that yoke removed from you, with the complete forgiveness, the burden on the back of Pilgrim that was removed was the weight of the sin that would damn him. It wasn't the weight of having to keep God's commandments, if you see the distinction there. He's freed from the curse of the law, now to go walk the straight and narrow path that leads to the celestial city of the heavenly kingdom. He was joyous to do that. Christ says my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Because now he's forgiven and now he's renewed inwardly to keep God's commandments from a heart that wants to do that. Now we have to acknowledge our sin. We have to acknowledge the flesh that part of us still does not want to do that. We have to slay our sin and live by the Spirit. And that's hard. It's hard to do it to ourselves, to be frank with your own sinful nature and your sinful passions and to own your sin, your slothfulness, your negligence. I have to do that. We all have to do that. We all have to take an examination of ourselves and confess our sins to God and to one another when we have sinned. against them, it's easy to justify ourselves. It's much easier to point the finger at other sins without seeing our own. We should look within, not just our outward sinful actions, but inward motivations and affections and repent of those and rebuke ourselves. And then we can help others do the same. Larger Catechism also talks about how we are to help others love God and keep His commandments. We're in this together. So that requires tough love, right? The expression, tough love, you have to tell them the truth straight up. Well, that is loving. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel pleasant. But it's true. When you have to tell somebody, look, the path you're going on is going to lead you to hell, you know, saying that to a friend, a family, a child, it's not an easy thing to say, but it's the true thing and the loving thing to say. And the decadal sin in yourself or in others is not love. It is hatred. It is cowardice. It is fear. It's a lack of confidence in God, saying, well, if I tell them the truth, they're going to get angry, they're going to get upset, they're not going to talk to me anymore. Well, listen, the Lord will work through the truth, and we should say it in a loving way, in a palatable way, meaning we should not just be harsh when we tell them hard truths, but we have to tell the truth in the appropriate way at the appropriate time. That takes wisdom on its own. And we pray that they repent of that. Scripture says, those who spare the rod spoil their child. Again, how to sin yourself or others. You dishonor God, you dishonor your fellow man. You break the Ten Commandments. You're not loving God and your fellow man well. You should want yourself to be corrected in order to do good and love God. If we're Christians, at root, when we're not living in the flesh, we want to be corrected. Preferably in a way that is coming from somebody who actually loves us, but we want to be corrected so that we can live a more godly and holy life. So, do unto others as you have done unto yourself. If I would like to be corrected for my sin, then I should do that with others in a kind and caring way, but straightforward. as we think about the Ten Commandments and how God calls us to keep it, as it reveals something of God's nature to us. In some ways, not sure the best way to word this, but we have to even go back a little bit from the Ten Commandments and remember also How did God first reveal himself to his people, Israel? By his nature, what did he say? Do you know what I'm talking about, children, by chance? How did God reveal himself, his being? What is God's being like, his essence? This is probably too cryptic. Do you know, children? Anybody? Adults? He said, Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Right? There's one God. He's one in essence. So all of our affection goes to Him. All of our love goes to Him. Our love is not divided or spread abroad over many gods. And so our focus is on the one God who is triune in himself, has communion, community in himself. That teaches us much about his nature and how it is that we're going to worship him. We're not going to worship other idols and other gods. All of our affection is going to be to him and he is perfect and complete in himself. And that's going to derivatively affect how we love one another. Pointing them to the one God, the one Christ to love and serve and worship Him alone. So the very nature of God also frames His commandments to us and how we are to obey them. So, God has one will, not three. It's amazing how often that gets confused. Because he has one essence or one nature, not three, expressed in each person of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is not lacking. He had communion in his divine self. His being, so He did not make us out of a lack of fellowship or something like that, but He did make us to be brought into communion with Himself in His glory, of course seen throughout redemption as Christ comes in and calls for our sin and so on. As God is all-sufficient, when we keep His commandments, we're coming to the One who is all-sufficient to help us, to strengthen us, He therefore is worthy of all our praise and adoration, and those made in His image after God are also next in line, so to speak, that the gulf between God and man is infinitely vast, yet those made in His image are also, as image bearers, worthy of being treated as such, and loved as such. So love your neighbor as yourself. And so again, on these two commandments, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, love your neighbor as yourself, hang all the law and the prophets. Man is a complete image bearer, male or female, in God's image and yet even there God has designed many of us to come together and marry, have children, and form families. Our sufficiency is not found in ourselves, not even in the family, it is found only in God. And God has revealed His will and His sufficiency for us in His Word and is summarized especially in the Ten Commandments. We separate ourselves from sin and wickedness and evildoers. We cling to God. We keep His commandments. We love and follow Him. We're not unequally yoked with unbelievers, because we can, again, I hope, start to see why and how this would violate one or more of the Ten Commandments. We pursue His righteousness, and He deeply provides for us as we do so. And so we'll continue. looking at that, but I know we're out of time here, and I'm not going to take up any more from the notes here. So we will continue this message and this sermon and looking at the Ten Commandments together in our next message. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you again for your word to us and your law, how it enlightens us, how it guides us, and how each commandment reveals your nature and your will for us. And indeed, Lord, not only is our law keeping to be an expression of our love to you and our devotion and loyalty to you and our care for one another, but the very revelation of yourself and your law shows your love and your compassion and your kindness to us, to give us your law, to show us how to be faithful in affairs, and then to give your Son to redeem us from the curse of the law and fill us with your Spirit to keep your law and loving obedience again, so that we can glorify you and enjoy you forever. Lord, let that be in the floor of our minds as we study your law, that it is the key to glorifying you and enjoying you, to delighting in you, and to best serving and loving our neighbor and helping them to know you and serve you and follow you as well. Let us do this in the weeks ahead. Let us love your law and love your commandments and be guided by them according to your spirit. And we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.