In the past several months, we've studied God's decrees as he plans, as he executes, and as he secures redemption for his elect children. That's been the topic of our study since March one year ago. And in that study, we have seen that the overarching theme of God's decrees is to gather a people to himself and to call them his own. That's really the purpose of everything God does, to gather a people to himself, to have a people to call by his own name, a people who are his bride and he, her husband. God is a very personal and relational and affectionate God. But in our study, we found that in order to gather, God would first have to lay the groundwork, right? He would build a foundation and he would record his plan starting in Genesis 1. First he would create a world and fill it with plants and animals. And then he would create a special race of people to gather for himself. A race that is different from the animals and different from the angels. A special race that is both physical and spiritual. uniquely designed for this world and uniquely designed in the image of God himself to fellowship with him in the spiritual realm. This is the human race and that's creation. And then he would provide for the human race by placing them into the physical world that he created for them and giving them the entire physical world to manage and use and enjoy. But as I mentioned, in God's purpose, The human race is also a spiritual race. And so to provide for the spiritual aspect of mankind, he provided them with a covenant or an agreement, which would maintain that spiritual relationship with him forever. And it would be that agreement that would govern the circumstances surrounding a spiritual relationship between God and Adam in the garden. And we call this the covenant of works. In the covenant of works, Adam was placed under the law and the condition that was put on his relationship with God would be that he would be required forever to live according to that law, according to God's revealed will for him. That was God's only condition for life in the garden, to obey his revealed will. And this would set the stage for the rest of mankind's fellowship with the Lord forever. And what was God's revealed will at that time in the garden? What had Adam been taught about the will of God? And what was it that he was required to obey? That'll be the topic of our message this morning. Because it is the same will of God that has been published and republished over and over again, which is to obey and live, disobey and die. But, you might say, God's revealed will for Adam was different than his will for us, right? And that would be a good observation. Wasn't his revealed will for Adam to simply refrain from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? That was, after all, from a simple reading of Genesis, God's revealed will for Adam. He literally said, don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right? That's the only command we see for Adam with a penalty for disobedience. Eat of the tree and you shall surely die, we read. But if he did obey, the opposite might have been his fate, right? We can infer that from Galatians 3 in verse 12, which says, the man who does the law shall live by it. And that life would be a life of perfect peace in the presence of God forever. And so once again, What we immediately see in this covenant relationship is that the relationship between man and God is conditional. God says, if you obey me, I will bless you forever, but if you don't obey me, and in Adam's case, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, I will curse you, and dying you will surely die. What I want to consider this morning is that obedience to that first commandment was much deeper than just eating or not eating fruit from a special tree. It was a test. A test to see the heart of man toward God. A test to see if the law written in Adam's heart, which told him to love God and serve God faithfully, was enough to preserve Adam and give him the righteousness and the life that he was tasked with earning. And of course, we see that it wasn't enough. I'd like to try to demonstrate today that the law that Adam was really obeying in the garden was the moral law, the Ten Commandments. What his obedience would have demonstrated was an unwavering and pure love for God. And love fulfills the law. It would have demonstrated a love that was given with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength. And so contrary to that, we see that it was a problem of love that caused Adam to sin in the garden. Some theologians and pastors would tell us that the Garden of Eden was just kind of God's first try at a relationship with man. And they would say the first try failed, and that's why he tried again with Abraham and Moses and eventually with Christ. And God would keep trying new ways to commune with his people until something finally worked. We've all heard this kind of thing probably. But I don't believe that's what's happening here at all. What we're seeing isn't God doing some kind of trial and error experimentation throughout the Bible. Not at all. This was all part of God's decree. And this was nothing short of God setting the stage for the grand finale when his own son would demonstrate the love of God and the love for God that was required to commune with God. And then what we see is that he would gift that to all who would come to him in faith. God knew that Adam would fail. And he knew that his people could never live under a conditional covenant. And he knew that the perfect love and obedience that he required was more than any person could ever love naturally. And he would give from the overflowing of his own heart that love to us. That's the gospel. Let's think for a moment about all the good that was accomplished by God's decrees to allow the human race to fall. Think about what we are able to experience simply because of that first conditional covenant. The first and most obvious is sin. We experience our unholiness because of the fall. And in redemption, it's so important to experience sin because it's what sheds a light on the perfect holiness of God and the great chasm between us and him. We also experience suffering. And suffering is incredibly important in helping us to understand and appreciate the perfect rest and peace that we have waiting for us in eternal life. And even greater than these things, what that first covenant did was it created the circumstances, or it laid the groundwork, which reveals something about God that we could never have witnessed or experienced apart from the fall. Because of that first covenant, we see God's mercy, We see his grace and we see his justice. And what that first covenant and the fall from the first covenant reveals is his providence and his love as he overcomes the fall and perfectly secures his people into a new covenant through the death of his own beloved son. So God was not experimenting throughout the course of history, trying to figure out how best to have eternal relationships with his people. No, from the very beginning, we see perfect continuity and perfect planning with God. He is revealing over and over again that he requires his people to be holy, just as he is holy, and he requires his people to be righteous and obedient to the natural law. Nothing has changed from the beginning of time. But from the beginning of time, there is one thing that we see very clearly. cannot obtain the glory of God by himself. Why? Because man's love for God is imperfect and impure and unable to sustain perfect and perpetual fellowship with God. God requires us to love him with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength. And none of us can do that, no matter how hard we try and no matter how sincere we are. And I think the daily struggles of all of us, all of us even here today, can testify to that truth, right? We struggle to live according to what we know is good. We struggle to obey God's will and to obey his law and to love him with all our hearts. So God was not experimenting. God was revealing the weakness of the creature. That's you and me. And he was demonstrating his own perfection. his mercy, his justice, his glory, and his holiness, as he demonstrated the only way to join himself to mankind, which would be his own obedience given to his people. And he reveals all of that simply by placing Adam under a conditional covenant relationship in the beginning. Do this and live forever in my presence. He said, obey my word and you will live in perfect peace, a peace which has no end. And so when Adam fell, as part of God's perfect decree, we saw sin, we saw suffering, we saw blood and death, and we saw justice and injustice, and we saw the world spiral into disorder and unrest. Sin provided the conditions needed for God to come repair it all and bring it into eternal rest and reveal his perfect glory in the process. Think about how many people are seeing therapists today in our culture. This is the result of the first covenant broken. The result of sin is unrest and suffering. And because of it, we need to be redeemed. And that's exactly what God has set out to do. And it's through redemption from sin that we see the most wonderful aspects and attributes of the Lord. If there is one purpose in the Garden of Eden, and in that first covenant, and in the fall, and in the law, and in the gospel, it is to reveal to us the work of God and redemption, that he might be exalted in our hearts and minds, in our love for him, and that he might demonstrate his purpose to gather us to himself by the work of his own obedience and righteousness. It's really quite profound. And in it all, we see his glory on display. And so we see that God is holy and just and loving and merciful. And yet, as we're going to see as our study continues in the catechism this morning, he still requires obedience to his revealed will from all of mankind. So even though we are under the new covenant, even though we're under grace and not law, and even though we are covered in the blood of Jesus, and even though we're justified by his blood and righteousness, God still requires obedience from all of us. We just aren't judged by it if we're in Christ. That's what we're going to talk about this morning. But before we do, let us pray as we begin. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for the time that we have in your Word this morning. We thank you for the catechism that gives us so much theology in such a compact form and how it allows us to research these things in our Bibles and find out if they're true or not. I thank you, dear Lord, for the time that you've set aside for us this morning and every Sunday morning. Oh Lord, we just thank you that we are gathered together as a local community and that we can fellowship with one another and with you in our worship service. Oh Lord, you have provided for our every need, spiritual and physical, and for that we thank you. And Lord, we just ask that you would be exalted in our hearts and in our minds, and that we might come to know where the love for God comes from this morning, and how the law points us to it. And I pray, dear Lord, that your revealed will, which is truly revealed within our hearts, would be stirred up by your Holy Spirit, that we might be prompted to obey you, and that we might find the greatest of all blessings in that obedience. And we just pray all these things in Christ's name. Amen. Okay, so in God's decrees, we see that the law was not an accident or an experiment. Instead, it was part of his perfect and comprehensive plan to reveal his glory to us. Turn with me to question 44 in our catechisms. You can find that in the outline this morning. Question 44 says, what is the duty which God requireth of man? What is the duty which God requireth of man? Now, before we get into this answer, I just want to say that this duty here isn't limited to any dispensation or people group. This is the duty that we've been talking about in our introduction. It is obedience to the law, which is written on the human heart, and it applies to every single person who has ever lived. So, this is an obedience that applies to everyone and finds its basis in creation. All the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve must obey God. So the question isn't asking about Old Covenant people or New Covenant people, it's talking about man. All men, all women, all children, everyone. Now listen to the answer here. The duty which God requireth of all men is obedience to his revealed will. Okay, so all men are required to obey God according to his revealed will. God wants obedience and he is going to tell us what he wants us to do and so therefore we are only responsible for what he has specifically showed us and what he has revealed to us. The question is, what has he revealed to the human race? Because this could excuse certain people depending on how we interpret this revealed will. Micah 6 and verse 8 is our first proof text. This is referring back to the story that we'd find in the book of Numbers of Balak, king of Moab, when he was trying to convince Balaam, the prophet, to get the Lord, Jehovah, to curse Israel. And King Balak finally asks him outright, what shall I do for the Lord to hear my request? Now listen to the prophet's response. Balaam says, He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? So the king of Moab is asking for counsel as to what he should do to find favor with Jehovah. And his motive here is to get the Lord to do what he's asking for, which is to curse Israel. And what the prophet says to the king is simple. He says, God has already shown you what he wants. He's already revealed his will to you. And now let's just be reminded that this is a Gentile king. This is not a person who has been taught the scriptures of God. And yet the prophet says, the Lord has shown you. The Lord has already revealed his will to you. Think about what that means. The Lord has shown you. He has revealed his will to you. A person without the Bible and without a teacher. And this is the case for all of us, by the way. This is referring to the natural law, which the Bible says is written on the human heart. Something revealed even to the Gentiles. So there is no excuse not to obey the Lord. The revealed will of God is actually revealed to the human heart as part of nature. That's why right and wrong is generally a common thing in all cultures that's universally accepted. The moral law, that's what we call the natural law, is written on the human heart. And that's why every culture all over the world has such similar views on murder and theft and fornication and adultery and the rest. Because the moral law isn't a human construct, as people like to say. Instead, it's built into our souls. It is revealed to us as part of creation. We know what is good and we know what is evil, and that's what Balaam was telling King Balak. He says, the Lord has shown you do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. That's kind of a summary of the moral law, right? And those things are published on the human heart. Just like the Ten Commandments, are written with the finger of God on tablets of stone. The moral law is written with the finger of God on the human heart, which we might also say is made of stone. That's the hard, stony heart of Belek, and that's the hard, stony heart of fallen man. It is like stone. So what we're seeing here is that Balak has no excuse for his disobedience because the will of God is actually revealed and written on his heart. Balaam says, the Lord has already shown you. And again, that's why there will be no excuse heard in the judgment day. No excuse for rejecting God and no excuse for murder and no excuse for adultery or theft or any other sins. God has revealed his will to all of us, and he has written that on our hearts. So, the moral of the story, obey him. That's what he wants from us. That's what he requires from us. And that's what he has revealed to us, to obey the law that he has written on our hearts. In 1 Samuel 15, verse 22, we see another example. Similar to this one, Samuel says to King Saul, after Saul violates the will of God, the revealed will of God in the battle with Amalek, he fails to kill everyone in that battle and he fails to take no plunder. And then Saul's excuse for disobedience is to claim that the people took the livestock and disobeyed God, not for their own good, but to offer burnt offerings to God. You see how he kind of turns that And so Samuel says when he hears this, has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to heed than the fat of rams. And now the problem with Saul's sacrifice, first of all, is that God had specifically told Saul not to save any life. And yet we see that Saul didn't kill the king and he didn't slaughter the animals. And so Saul violated the revealed will of God here. Saul was supposed to kill everything and everyone in the battle with Amalek, and yet he preserved the livestock and he also spared the king. Two things the Lord had specifically told him not to do. Two things the Lord had revealed to him as part of his will. And so what Samuel is teaching here, is that the Lord wants us to obey him and that between obedience and sacrifice, obedience to his revealed will is actually the greater form of worship. Greater than sacrifices and greater than anything else. Obey his word and to take that a step further, we might say that a sacrifice is not even acceptable when it is done in the midst of disobedience. I think this is something really important for all of us to think about and remember. Think of all the little sacrifices we make for the Lord or all the things we think we do for the church or for the poor or for the widows or whatever, but nothing we do, no matter how good, is acceptable to God unless we are first obedient to his revealed will. If we are living in sin and we are not repenting of it and we're just enjoying our sin, God will not be pleased with our offerings, no matter what those might look like. It's really that simple. We must repent before we make our offerings. God wants our hearts before he wants our money or our gifts. And that is true. And remember, if he has our hearts, he will also have our money and our gifts, right? That's kind of how it works. When he has our hearts, we're willing to give him everything. God wants our hearts. Same goes with our time and our service. If he has our hearts, he will also have our time and our service. God wants the heart and he wants obedience that comes from the heart. That's what Samuel was really talking about. Offerings without repentance and offerings without obedience and without a heart for God are unacceptable to God. So God requires obedience to his revealed will, and he has revealed his will ultimately in the heart, calling on people to love him. Now let's read question 45. Question 45 says, what did God at first reveal to man for the rule of his obedience? The answer is, the rule which God at first revealed to man for his obedience was the moral law. Okay, this is what I was talking about earlier. The moral law is written on the heart and the moral law was first revealed to man. First meaning in the garden, I think. Adam had the moral law revealed to his heart and so did Cain and Abel and Noah and Abraham and all the way down to you and me. The moral law is the natural law written on the heart. Romans 2. Verses 14 and 15 is our first proof text for question 45, and it says, for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a lot of themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them. Interesting, right? When Gentiles who have never heard of the moral law of God do what is right, they're revealing that the law is actually written in their hearts. Then Paul says their conscience also bearing witness. What does that mean? It means the part of their soul that knows what is good and bad actually holds them accountable according to that same law. That's why using the moral law to try to evangelize or show a person their sin is actually really effective. Because most people, at least in their heart, if they're honest, know that the moral law is binding on them. It's only a hardness of their heart that convinces them that sin is acceptable. But the conscience knows, and the conscience will gnaw at their soul over that sin. That's why Paul says their thoughts accuse or excuse them. And that's why guys like Ray Comfort and others famously use the Ten Commandments in street preaching to convince unbelievers their need for the gospel. He doesn't have to prove the Bible is true. He just uses their own conscience and speaks directly to the conscience, and it is the conscience that responds to that kind of reasoning. The law is written upon the heart. That's what the conscience does. It says, yes, that was right, what I just did, or no, that was bad, what I just did. But our own thoughts, our own hearts, our own consciences know what's right and wrong. And it's the conscience that holds us accountable to the moral law of God internally. This is the law that has been revealed from the beginning. In Romans 10 in verse five, Paul writes, for Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, The man who does those things shall live by them. And the opposite of that is also true. He who disobeys shall die by his disobedience. Again, this brings us face to face with the judgment. We are responsible to obey the revealed will of God and we will be accountable for our actions and we will either live or die according to our obedience to the revealed will of God, which is the moral law. There will be no innocent souls in the judgment day, and there will be no one who will be able to say that God withheld his will from them. Everyone knows the will of God. It is literally written on their heart, and it has been since the beginning. So to obey the moral law is the will of God for our lives. Next we see question 46. Question 46 asks, where is the moral law summarily comprehended? In other words, where can we find a summary of this law that is written on the human heart? And the answer is, the moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are where we find God's summary of the moral law. Like I said earlier, ultimately when Adam ate the forbidden fruit, This was the law that he failed to uphold. It was the moral law that Adam broke even before he ate. That's why theologians will argue that it is the moral law that Christ came to obey. To obey the Ten Commandments is to be sinless. Every other law that God has ever given, including the law not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, goes back to the Ten Commandments, goes back to the moral law written on the heart. That's because for Adam to eat the forbidden fruit was to believe that God was a liar, right? God said, eating you will surely die. Satan says, you will not surely die. And Adam chose to believe Satan, and that made God to be a liar. See how Adam's sin was more than just eating fruit? And so he violated the first table of the law, right? It broke the bond of love and fellowship and trust between Adam and God. Adam broke the positive law, eating the forbidden fruit, which only showed that the trust and love that Adam had for God was weak and impure. Scary, right? In a real sense, Adam broke the first table of the Ten Commandments, and it was that kind of a broken hard heart that allowed him to eat of the forbidden fruit. Think about that. His sin was first. He made God to be a liar first, and it was that sin that led to his eating. A heart that loves God doesn't hurt God. It doesn't disobey God. It doesn't call God a liar along with Satan. So once again, I want us to see the obedience that God requires is something that begins in the heart. It begins with a desire to please God and serve God. For God's sake, not our own. That's what God really wants. He wants people who obey him out of love and respect and adoration for him. He doesn't want people like Saul who make sacrifices to him without fearing him and obeying him first. He doesn't want people like Balak who obey him just to get something from him. He wants people who simply want to serve him because they believe him to be praiseworthy and lovely and glorious. The Ten Commandments are the basis of all obedience, and the Ten Commandments are the basis of true worship. Jesus shows the moral nature of the Ten Commandments in Matthew 19, in verse 17, when he responds to the rich young ruler, The young ruler had just called him good teacher and he says, why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. Makes sense, right? How do we access eternal life? Obedience to the moral law. So keeping the commandments is a summary of the moral law and a summary of righteousness. And what is he saying here? Who is good? No one but God. That means that every single person, without exception, has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Every single person has done evil and every single person has broken the Ten Commandments, and therefore every single person needs a Savior. That's what he was teaching the rich young ruler. You want life? Obey. But you can't. Now let's think about the Ten Commandments and the moral law. Let's think about the real obedience that God is looking for in us. Question 47 boils the moral law down even further for us. It asks, what is the sum of the Ten Commandments? What is the sum of them? When you add them all up, what do you get? The answer is, the sum of the Ten Commandments is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind and our neighbor as ourselves. This is what it's all about. Let's go back to a couple of our earlier Bible verses. First, let's go back to Balak asking Balaam to get the Lord to curse Israel on his behalf. That's what he was doing there. He wanted the Lord to curse his own people Israel. And he said, what must I do? What must I do to get the Lord to hear me and do what I want? And remember what the prophet said. He said, God has already shown you what is good to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly before the Lord. Those are the things written on the heart, right? That is the moral law. Do justly and love mercy. Those are the second table of the law, right? That's how we're supposed to treat our neighbors. Love our neighbor as ourselves. And walk humbly before your God. That's the first table of the law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It's true, right? In Matthew 22, verses 37 through 40, Jesus says, 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." What did Balaam say? Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before your God. Sounds about right, right? That's what Balaam was saying to Balak. Obey the law written on your heart and the Lord will hear you. And in Balak's case, if he were to heed those things, he would find that he would never want to curse the people of God's great affection. And so the whole situation wouldn't have even taken place, right? If he listened to Balaam, if he thought about God's will, he would have changed his heart on the matter. It was Balak's heart that was the problem. He had a hard heart, a heart of stone, that caused him to hate the children of Israel, and yet an obedient heart, is the only cure for a heart of stone. How about the example of Saul and Samuel? Saul was going to offer sacrifices in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. And what was Saul doing, really doing in these things? He was violating the first table of the law. He was failing to love God with his whole heart and soul and mind and strength because a heart of love for God wouldn't do good things for wrong reasons. Instead, it would long to please God from the bottom of the heart and from the bottom of the affections and from the deepest crevices of the mind. If Saul loved God, he would have obeyed God to the T. And God's delight would have been found in Saul's obedience to his voice. And that obedience would have revealed Saul's love for him. If Saul loved God, he would have done everything just as the Lord had commanded him to. He would have killed the king, and he would have killed the livestock, and he would have never dreamed of offering a sacrifice that God didn't want. And what we see instead is just a bare and cold disobedience from Saul, the absence of love for God with the whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. So what is our takeaway? God measures our love by our obedience to his revealed will. Love him. Love others. And as John says, if you don't love others, you are disobedient and there is no love of God in you. If we find ourselves lacking spiritual fruit or assurance or faith or whatever else, if we are lukewarm and we know it and we don't know how to combat it, here is the key. Obey the revealed will of God. The Word of God is a lamp to our feet and a guide and a map to the celestial city. It's really that simple. Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. What is the will of God? Do his commandments. Love him with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. In the beginning of the message, I spoke about covenant of works in the garden. Adam was to do the will of God and by that obedience he was to earn his own righteousness and life. It was Adam's love for God that was tested by Satan and it was his love for God that was found lacking when he took the bite of the forbidden fruit. That's what we do every single time we sin. We reveal a lack of love for God in our hearts. Every sin shows that we do not love God with all the heart or with all the mind or with all the soul or with all the strength. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But there is good news. We are under a new covenant. It is Christ's love. It is Christ's obedience to the revealed will of God that has earned our righteousness and our eternal life. And we lay hold of that righteousness by faith. And a born again believer will show his love for God as he does God's will. A Christian will be willingly obedient to God's holy and revealed will. That's a fact. And so this prompts us to look within our souls, doesn't it? Do we find a love for God that is according to the Ten Commandments? A love for God and a love for our neighbors? Are we in agreement with God and his law? Are we seeking Him and learning His will for our lives and then implementing those things into our lives? Obedience is not passive. It is an eager desire to know and serve God and our neighbor. It is an active dying to self, a dying to sin, and a living to Christ and His righteousness. That's what we should see when we look into our hearts and when we look over our life and the direction we're traveling in our lives. Love fulfills the law. I pray that that is exactly where the Spirit in His power is taking all of us. And let us love Him with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind, and with all the strength. And let's show Him that love with our earnest obedience to His revealed will. May that be the Spirit's work in all of our lives. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, once again, we realize that Love truly does fulfill the law. And so in a sense, for you to command us to love is to place us under the law, but we know that that is not your purpose at all. Our obedience to you is so much greater because it actually comes from the love we've experienced from you. It's a reaction to your love. And so we thank you, dear Lord, for the way that you have poured your love upon us, how you have revealed it to us in your word. And we thank you also that we can see the value in your law. We see your righteousness in it. We see your holiness in it. We see your glory in it. And so it is truly you that we are obeying out of love and out of adoration. And Lord, we just ask that that would be the pattern that we all see in our lives, not perfect. For we'll never see that in this side of glory, but we pray, Lord, that we would see a movement of your spirit in our lives, convicting us, moving us in the righteousness of your son. Help us, dear Lord, to serve you with all of our hearts, to love you and to love our neighbors. And we pray that you would prepare us for the celestial city that you have promised for us. And we thank you for these things in Christ's name, amen.