More Great Gospel Preaching and Reformed Orthodoxy from the First Jackson PCA Pulpit: on the Decalogue = “Grace Before Law”

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Exodus 20. Today we are beginning an exposition of what has been called in the English language for the last 500 years, the Ten Commandments. In the Hebrew Bible this section is known as the Ten Words or the Ten Pronouncements, but as begin to study them together it’s important for us to remember that we live in a day and time that doesn’t like law. We are very suspicious of law. We have an anti-authority spirit about us. We live in a day and time where the law is regarded as something impersonal, abstract, distant, tyrannical, restrictive and threatening and we need to realize how the mindset of the age impacts us in our thinking about biblical law. That’s one reason why we chose to study chapter 19 prior to our study of God’s law as it’s set forth in chapter 20, because chapter 19, and frankly the two verses we’re going to look at today, are devoted to setting the table, to giving the context, to explaining the situation and circumstance and relationship in which God’s law is being given and propounded. That context is a context of grace; it is a gospel context; it’s a context of redemption; it is a context of covenant relationship and realizing things will help you lose those suspicions about law and authority and rule and rights and wrongs which pervade the mindset and the psyche of those in our generation.

There’s nothing more relevant or more timely or more practical for us to recover now than a biblical understanding of the biblical description of infleshed love and righteousness. You could really define the law that way. The law is infleshed love and righteousness. It shows you what righteousness looks like in a specific circumstance. It shows you what love looks like in a specific circumstance. That’s what the law is. It is a reflection of the character of God and an authoritative expression of what it means to love and to be righteous.

And the subject of God’s law is vital. If you have carefully and prayerfully pondered the subject, the way that God’s law relates to the Christian you have done well, because a proper understanding of God’s law is essential for a healthy Christian life and experience. And we’ve been trying to give a background in order that we might understand the role of the law as we study it in Exodus 20. The law of God is founded in grace and is the expression of love both to God and man. The law of God is founded in grace. That’s a lesson that we learned very clearly in Exodus 19 and it is the expression of love. We learn that from the way Jesus Himself summarizes the law in the New Testament.

What does it mean to love? To keep his commandments he would say and yet we live in a day and time where there is a great deal of suspicion of that even in the church. If you are found in your prayer closet mumbling the words ‘how I love your law, O Lord,’ your wife may report you to the ecclesiastical authorities as a closet legalist. I mean, that’s not how evangelicals talk. Aren’t you a legalist if you talk about loving the law? And yet the Old Testament saint’s highest expression of his devotion to, and loyalty to, and love of God was, ‘how I love Your law, O Lord’ and you say, ‘yes, but that was the Old Testament.’ Well, think about that for a minute. On the night before His crucifixion, in the upper room to the only core of disciples He had left on planet earth, Jesus said to them, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” The expression of love that He wanted to see from His disciples to Him was obedience to His commandments. In fact, if you sneak a peek at the last verse that Brister Ware read in Mark 3:35 today, you will see Jesus define His disciples as those who do the will of His Father. That’s a New Testament description of a disciple, of a believer, of a follower of the one true God, not just an Old Testament description but a New Testament description and therefore the subject of the law, the subject of obedience and how they relate to God’s call of grace and the gift of faith is vital for us to understand. So let’s look to God’s word in Exodus 20:1,2 and hear it attentively:

“Then God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Amen….

The whole sermon is great. Please read it. True “sonship” is spelled out in a way that reminds me of my reading in Proverbs. And it is totally confessional:

3. Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant [of works], the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace; wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ; requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit, to make them willing, and able to believe.

5. This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation; and is called the old testament.

6. Under the gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the new testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.

Q. 100. What special things are we to consider in the Ten Commandments?
A. We are to consider, in the Ten Commandments, the preface, the substance of the commandments themselves, and several reasons annexed to some of them, the more to enforce them.

Q. 101. What is the preface to the Ten Commandments?
A. The preface to the Ten Commandments is contained in these words, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Wherein God manifesteth his sovereignty, as being JEHOVAH, the eternal, immutable, and almighty God; having his being in and of himself, and giving being to all his words and works: and that he is a God in covenant, as with Israel of old, so with all his people; who, as he brought them out of their bondage in Egypt, so he delivereth us from our spiritual thraldom; and that therefore we are bound to take him for our God alone, and to keep all his commandments.

Q. 102. What is the sum of the four commandments which contain our duty to God?
A. The sum of the four commandments containing our duty to God, is, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength, and with all our mind.

Q. 103. Which is the first commandment?
A. The first commandment is, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Q. 104. What are the duties required in the first commandment?
A. The duties required in the first commandment are, the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the only true God, and our God; and to worship and glorify him accordingly, by thinking, meditating, remembering, highly esteeming, honoring, adoring, choosing, loving, desiring, fearing of him; believing him; trusting, hoping, delighting, rejoicing in him; being zealous for him; calling upon him, giving all praise and thanks, and yielding all obedience and submission to him with the whole man; being careful in all things to please him, and sorrowful when in anything he is offended; and walking humbly with him.

Grace and faith: the Preface and the First Commandment.

As one wise pastor once said defending the Reformed Faith from its detractors:

It seems pretty clear to me that the first word of the decalogue (not commandments) has to do with trusting Yahweh alone. The language of “having” or “possessing” no other god is marriage language. Israel, the bride, is to cling to Yahweh, her Husband and Lord, in faithfulness. What is this but salvation by faith? How is that wrong?

Just ask the preacher at First Presbyterian in Jackson, Mississippi. It is not wrong. It is the Biblical message.

For more on this, see my: “Obedient faith is not threat to Protestant Doctrine; it IS Protestant doctrine.”

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