New Life Baptist Church, College Station Texas

In last night’s mes­sage, we saw that God — not man — spoke the Ten Com­mand­ments. That is very impor­tant to under­stand, because then it is clear that the Ten Com­mand­ments are not man’s sug­ges­tions, but God’s com­mands for us.

But it just as impor­tant that we under­stand who God was speak­ing to. In Exo­dus 20:2, God says, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” It is the peo­ple of Israel whom God is address­ing, and more specif­i­cally, it is the peo­ple of Israel that God brought out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slav­ery. God is speak­ing to the for­mer slaves that He set free by His power. This is crit­i­cal to keep in mind! God is speak­ing not to those who were not His peo­ple, but to those who by His grace had become His people.

This is of the utmost impor­tance to under­stand. The Ten Com­mand­ments can never be under­stood as, “Do these things and you will become my peo­ple.” That’s the com­mon view of the Ten Com­mand­ments in our day. Peo­ple view them as the Judeo-Christian ver­sion of the Five Pil­lars of Islam – do these ten things and you’ll be accepted by God.

But the peo­ple of Israel had already been accepted by God! They had already been bought by Him out of the house of slav­ery. I want you to remem­ber John Stott’s wis­dom, which I shared last night:

The peo­ple were given the law not in order that they might become the redeemed, rather it was because they had already been redeemed that they were given the law. The law of God is the way of life he sets before those whom he has saved, and they engage in that way of life as a response of love and grat­i­tude to God their Redeemer. (Stott, The Mes­sage of Exo­dus, 213, bold mine).

There­fore, the Law is God’s rev­e­la­tion to believ­ers for how He desires us to live our lives. Because we are His peo­ple, we seek to honor Him by keep­ing His com­mands. And when we fail to keep His com­mands (as we do time after time because of our sin­ful hearts), we repent:

1) agree­ing with God that we have sinned against Him,

2) con­fess­ing our sin to Him,

3) and receiv­ing for­give­ness for our fail­ures through fresh faith in the per­son and work of Jesus, who kept God’s com­mands on our behalf and died for our fail­ure to keep them.

This is just the first pur­pose of the Law, though, because God’s Law is not just for believ­ers. God’s Law is also for unbe­liev­ers. This is what Paul writes in Gala­tians 3:23–26:

Now before faith came, we were held cap­tive under the law, impris­oned until the com­ing faith­would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be jus­ti­fied by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

So what is Paul say­ing here? I really love the way the New King James ver­sion ren­ders this sec­tion, where verse 24 reads, “There­fore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ.”  For unbe­liev­ers, the point of the Law is to bring us to Christ. God’s Law reveals our inabil­ity to keep God’s Law, much like we learned last week that His holi­ness reveals our unholiness.

Whether you are a believer in Jesus or not, you must under­stand these twin pur­poses of God’s Law: it is to reveal God’s will to His peo­ple (as well as to encour­age con­tin­ual repen­tance) and it is to bring unbe­liev­ers to see their need for God’s grace in Christ. Have you under­stood God’s Law in this way?

In last night’s ser­mon on Exo­dus 19 (“The Holi­ness of God”), we learned that God is the stan­dard of holi­ness, and when we com­pare His per­fect holi­ness to our unho­li­ness, we are left despair­ing of any attempts to make our­selves holy. This real­iza­tion causes us to stop attempt­ing to jus­tify our­selves before God and does not allow for us to com­pare our­selves favor­ably with oth­ers. What does it mat­ter if I am more holy than another sin­ful per­son? God, and not any other cre­ated being, is the standard.

But the rev­e­la­tion of God’s holi­ness is not meant to merely drive us to despair of our attempts to make our­selves holy; it is meant to lead us to see our need for God’s grace. In his study, “The Gospel-Centered Life,” Bob Thune gives us the chart below:

If we start at the far left (the straight line), Bob is illus­trat­ing the fact that every one of us goes through a time in life where we are not con­sciously aware of God’s holi­ness or our own sin­ful­ness. At this point, we have no healthy fear of God and thus do not seek God for His grace.

At some point, though, God begins to open our eyes to the truth that He is holy and we are sin­ful. Now we begin to see the truth that we are sep­a­rated from God because of our sin and rebel­lion. This is where the two lines diverge.

Some time after this ini­tial rev­e­la­tion from God, we rec­og­nize that there is no way for us to make our­selves holy enough to please God, no way to make up for the sins we’ve com­mit­ted. It is at this point God brings us to repen­tance and faith in Him. We are con­verted by His Holy Spirit when, by His grace, we repent of our sin and place our faith in Jesus — the one who lived, died, and rose again on our behalf.

Our aware­ness of God’s grace at this point, though, is fairly small. This real­ity is cap­tured by the first cross. But as we come to learn more about God’s holi­ness and our own sin­ful­ness through the Word of God, the Spirit of God, and aware­ness of our own hearts, we see a greater and greater need for the grace of God — rep­re­sented by the larger and larger crosses. It’s not that we need more of God’s grace later in life, but that we are more aware of our need for God’s grace the more we grow in faith. We need the grace of God just as much the day we were con­verted as we do on the day we die.

Have you rec­og­nized God’s holi­ness, your own sin­ful­ness, and your need for His grace? If so, would you say that you are more aware of your need for God’s grace today than yes­ter­day? Than last month? Than when you were converted?

We invite you to join the con­ver­sa­tion on Face­book and Twit­ter.

In most evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian churches, there is no short­age of teach­ing on our need for God. What seems to be miss­ing from most churches is teach­ing on our need for one another. In last night’s mes­sage on Exo­dus 17:8–18:27 (“Designed to Need God and Oth­ers”), we learned that we do need both God and oth­ers. We saw this very clearly in three pas­sages of Scrip­ture from the book of Hebrews:

1. “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hard­ened by the deceit­ful­ness of sin” (Heb. 3:13). We need one another’s exhor­ta­tions so that our hearts do not grow hard through the deceit­ful­ness of sin. This means we have to know one another well enough to under­stand each other’s temp­ta­tions and sins and to speak the truth in love in a way that can be received.

2. “And let us con­sider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglect­ing to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encour­ag­ing one another, and all the more as you see the Day draw­ing near” (10:24–25). We need each other’s encour­age­ment so that we don’t cease lov­ing and serv­ing other peo­ple. One of the great­est ways we encour­age one another is through meet­ing together reg­u­larly and face-to-face at cor­po­rate wor­ship, in Life Group, and at other times through­out the week.

3. “Remem­ber your lead­ers, those who spoke to you the word of God. Con­sider the out­come of their way of life, and imi­tate their faith…Obey your lead­ers and sub­mit to them, for they are keep­ing watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groan­ing, for that would be of no advan­tage to you” (13:7, 17). We need godly lead­ers who will give us lives to imi­tate as well as godly instruc­tion before God; godly lead­ers are evi­dence of God’s love and pro­tec­tion over us.

This is a very gen­eral overview of just one book and it is abun­dantly clear that we not only need God, but that we need each other. God often moves and speaks through oth­ers. Our lives should reflect that truth as we min­is­ter to oth­ers and receive min­istry from oth­ers as well.

Does your life reflect the truth that we need both God and oth­ers? Join the con­ver­sa­tion on Face­book and Twit­ter.