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[0:00] Well, we've already considered the fact that the law cannot condemn those who belong to Christ.! Their acceptance with God rests entirely upon Jesus' obedience.

[0:14] ! And yet the Bible is still full of warnings to us. And I mean those of us who are justified before God. God commands us to stop doing certain things.

[0:26] He warns us of the consequences of doing those things. And sometimes He brings painful correction into our lives. He also promises to bless our obedience.

[0:39] So how does all of this fit together? Well, if you will, go with me to Romans chapter 6. We'll start here. Romans chapter 6.

[0:53] I'll begin reading at verse 11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

[1:04] Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

[1:24] For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. First of all, I want you to notice who Paul is talking to.

[1:37] Verse 11 describes people who are alive to God in Christ Jesus. In short, we're talking about believers. We're talking about Christians. And what does he tell these Christians to do?

[1:50] In verse 12, he tells them to not let sin reign in their bodies. So evidently, being alive in Christ hasn't removed their need to hear this command.

[2:04] As believers, we still have sinful desires that we are under obligation to God to resist. And I don't think that comes as a surprise to any of us.

[2:16] Then in verse 13, Paul gets very practical. So think about what happens when you're, say, angry. Naturally, if you're angry with someone, you want to use your mouth to hurt them.

[2:33] Maybe you've thought of exactly what to say, and you even anticipate the sting that it will create in the other person, not to mention the satisfaction you'll feel when that happens.

[2:43] They deserve it. They've made me angry. But wait, Paul says, I almost get the mental picture of someone taking his tongue and laying it on an altar in devotion to sin.

[3:05] But Paul warns us not to do that. Our bodies belong to God along with each and every member of our body. So instead of laying our tongue on an altar to sin, we take our tongue and we lay it on an altar to God.

[3:20] Paul says, Present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. But of course, we all know how challenging that can be at times.

[3:31] So listen very carefully to what Paul says in verse 14. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace.

[3:44] So as Paul is dealing with this issue, he presents us with a command followed by a promise. And what's the promise? The promise is that sin is no longer your master.

[3:59] You belong to Christ now. Of course, sin still wants your allegiance. But you don't owe it anything. And sin does not have the authority to say, you can't follow Christ.

[4:13] You can't give your allegiance to him or use your members as instruments of righteousness. I'm your master. You must obey me. No, we don't belong to sin anymore.

[4:25] Sin, Paul says, will have no dominion over you. Because it can't. So that's the promise. And the command says, because sin has no dominion over you, don't you dare think about handing yourself back over to that sin, which Christ has freed you from.

[4:46] And this is an interesting dynamic that we actually see throughout Scripture. The Bible often presents us with a command and a promise side by side.

[4:59] So for example, Ephesians 4.30 says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

[5:09] So in that case, Paul tells believers not to grieve the Holy Spirit. And in the same verse, he reminds them that the Spirit, the same Spirit that you could potentially grieve, has sealed you for the day of redemption.

[5:25] So the Spirit guarantees our future. We cannot ultimately be lost, but that same Spirit can be grieved by our conduct.

[5:37] So if nothing else, we learn that as Christians, we cannot assume, because we are secure in Christ, that our behavior, that our obedience, or lack of obedience, to God's moral law specifically, doesn't really matter.

[5:54] We can't come to that conclusion. It certainly does matter. In fact, our disobedience even has consequences. And this is why the Confession says what it says in paragraph 6 of this chapter.

[6:08] In fact, let me read the remainder of this paragraph. It says, The law is also useful to the regenerate to restrain their corruptions because it forbids sin.

[6:21] The punishment threatened by the law shows them what even their sins deserve and what troubles they may expect in this life due to their sin even though they are freed from the curse and undiminished severity of it.

[6:35] The promises of the law likewise show them God's approval of obedience and the blessings that they may expect when they keep it even though these blessings are not owed to them by the law as a covenant of works.

[6:49] If men do good and refrain from evil because the law encourages good and discourages evil, that does not indicate that they are under the law and not under grace.

[7:01] So last time, we talked about some of the ways the moral law is still useful to the believer even though he or she is not subject to it as a covenant of works.

[7:13] That is, we are neither justified nor condemned by how well we keep the law. But it is still useful. And here the confession adds another use for it.

[7:25] And if I were to put this in my own words, I would say the law is useful to those of us who are regenerated or born again because it restrains disobedience by forbidding sin.

[7:40] Now, that point may seem too obvious to even make. Of course, the law forbids sin. Most of the Ten Commandments say something along the lines of you shall not fill in the blank.

[7:55] But what we have to understand is that being born of God's Spirit, given a new heart that enables us to keep the law as we've talked about, does not mean that we suddenly become perfectly obedient.

[8:10] It also does not mean that we suddenly have a perfect knowledge of good and evil or even a perfect knowledge of ourselves. And I suppose we all know this from personal experience, don't we?

[8:23] Think about what Paul tells Titus in Titus chapter 2. He writes, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

[8:44] I think one of the best illustrations of this is Israel's exodus out of Egypt. So, think of Egypt as sin. It had complete control over Israel, which we can think of Israel as the child of God.

[9:00] But then God frees Israel from their enslavement to Egypt just as the believer is freed from sin's dominion. But what happens next? Did Israel walk away from Egypt rejoicing and keeping the commandments of God perfectly from that day forward?

[9:19] Not at all. They spent the next 40 years wandering the wilderness, learning and being disciplined. We might say that God was putting Israel through 40 years of sanctification.

[9:30] salvation. And the same is true for the believer. We may no longer be under dominion of sin and we may be enabled to serve the Lord willingly and happily keep His commandments, but we all know we're far from perfect.

[9:48] And so the same grace that saved us is the grace that trains us in the present age. And of course part of that training comes through the commandments of God which show us what sin is.

[10:05] Naturally, we might be willing to identify certain sins as sins. Murder is a pretty easy one to recognize. But what about say gossip?

[10:18] We might think well, I'm only gossiping because I'm concerned about this other person. But then we open the Bible and God names what we are doing as sin.

[10:32] And suddenly our corruption is restrained as the confession says. But the Bible actually goes further than that. it not only reveals our sins and tells us what we should not be doing, but it actually shows us what happens to people who refuse to listen.

[10:52] In other words, it warns us. And there's an example of this in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 if you want to turn there. I mentioned the Israelites' time in the wilderness and Paul addresses that further in this chapter, 1 Corinthians 10.

[11:11] Let me read some of this starting at verse 1. For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink.

[11:33] For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness.

[11:46] Let me stop right there for a moment. Notice that word that Paul keeps repeating here. The word is all. Every one of these Israelites had come through the sea.

[11:58] They had all received the same blessings that God had provided. If we could go back in time and ask what God had done for them from start to finish, they would have told you about things that none of us has ever seen and would have a hard time imagining.

[12:16] But then, what does Paul say in verse 5? God was displeased with most of them and they ended up dying in the wilderness. You see, despite all of those incredible privileges, it was still not safe for the Israelites to disobey God, their Redeemer.

[12:40] But, why does Paul bring this up to the church at Corinth? Well, back in chapter 8, he addresses people eating food that was offered up to idols.

[12:52] Now, for some of the Corinthians, they understood full well that an idol wasn't really a god. It was nothing. It was a toy. And so, they thought that knowledge gave them freedom to take part in this food.

[13:08] What's the harm? At the end of the day, it's just food, despite what anybody else might think about it. Well, let's keep reading and notice the example Paul uses regarding the Israelites here.

[13:19] Verse 6. Now, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were.

[13:32] As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. That was the moment when they built the golden calf. We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did.

[13:44] And 23,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents. Nor grumble as some of them did and were destroyed by the destroyer.

[14:00] Now, these things happened to them as an example. But they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

[14:14] No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.

[14:31] So, Paul tells the Corinthians who think to themselves, they had other issues, but they think to themselves that eating this food offered to idols in the context of the Christian church and quite possibly during the Lord's Supper itself isn't a big deal.

[14:50] that maybe they need to see something of themselves in the history of Israel. In fact, he makes a pretty alarming parallel down in verses 20 through 22.

[15:03] They have more in common with the Israelites than they'd like to think. But Paul doesn't stop at warning them about idolatry. He warns them about sexual immorality.

[15:14] He even warns them about grumbling, which I think is significant because that is one of those sins that seems to be almost harmless, right?

[15:26] And that's really the point. Paul is confronting the believers in Corinth with the moral law of God. They are believers.

[15:38] Just as the Israelites were the redeemed people of God, yet they needed to be reminded of what God's law says. It's still authoritative.

[15:48] It's still binding on the believer. Even as the redeemed people of God, they are either ignorant of the law, as it would seem, or they have simply neglected what it says.

[16:01] So they have to be told again. They still need to learn. And then comes the warning in verse 12, therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

[16:15] now a warning like this to believers may sound a little strange. But I just want to point out that Paul actually applies this warning to himself.

[16:30] If you were to look back at the end of chapter 9, you'll see that Paul compares the Christian life to a race. He says that every athlete exercises self-control because he wants to win the prize.

[16:41] Then in verse 27 of chapter 9, he says that he disciplines his own body and keeps it under control lest after preaching to others he himself should be disqualified.

[16:57] So, Paul is not issuing a warning here that he doesn't apply personally to himself. Even so, it's still somewhat surprising. If God has promised to preserve his people, why does he warn us about potentially falling?

[17:14] And I think the implication here is falling away completely. Well, I suppose the first thing we should understand is that God's warnings are actually one of the means he uses to preserve us.

[17:34] So, think about what happens when a child or a parent sees his child approaching a busy road. What does he do? Well, he calls out stop! Don't go in the road!

[17:46] And then what does the child do? Well, God willing, he stops. His life is saved. So, what does the warning accomplish? Of course, it prevented the child from walking in the danger.

[17:59] It spared the child. So, the fact that God promises to preserve his people doesn't make his warnings unnecessary. In fact, he preserves us in part through those very warnings.

[18:14] In Hebrews chapter 3, the author writes, Take care, brothers, lest there be any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.

[18:26] 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. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

[18:42] So, there's a similar warning and there's a responsibility to respond to that warning. And God actually works through that warning to keep his people from abandoning the faith.

[18:58] But getting back to what Paul says here in 1 Corinthians 10, you'll notice that even after Paul issues the warning, he immediately reminds us that God is faithful.

[19:12] He will not allow us to be tempted beyond our own ability. He will always provide a way of escape. And then he adds, therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

[19:26] So, we have a warning, followed by a promise, followed by a command, and they're all working together, you see. God warns us about the danger of sin, he promises us the help we need to resist temptations, and then he commands us to act accordingly.

[19:46] Now, the confession goes on to say, the punishment threatened by the law shows them what even their sins deserve, and what troubles they may expect in this life due to their sin, even though they are freed from the curse and undiminished severity of it.

[20:07] So, when we read these accounts of divine judgment in the Bible, we should recognize that we are reading the punishment that our sins deserve.

[20:20] The fact that we've been forgiven doesn't mean our sins have somehow become less serious. The wrath of God against sin hasn't diminished.

[20:32] Rather, Christ has borne that wrath in our place. And I think that's something we need to keep in the forefront of our minds whenever we are tempted to take sin lightly.

[20:44] We should look at the judgments of God in Scripture, namely those upon Christ, but anywhere throughout Scripture, and say, that's what I deserve. Thanks be to Christ who has delivered me from it.

[20:57] God's sins. But even though Christ has delivered us from the eternal condemnation our sins deserve, that doesn't mean we're delivered from every consequence of those sins in our life.

[21:14] So if you will, turn over one chapter to 1 Corinthians 11. In this chapter, Paul addresses the Lord's Supper, and the Corinthians have been making a terrible mess of it.

[21:29] Keep in mind that when the Corinthians observed the Lord's Supper, they did so with a full meal. So they'd sit down for a meal, they'd have the Lord's Supper in the process, and what was happening is that some were eating and drinking excessively, while others had nothing at all.

[21:46] So some could afford to bring all kinds of food for themselves, they weren't sharing, and others couldn't afford to bring anything, and the prosperous, they're just eating it, hoarding it, right in front of the others.

[22:01] So Paul says that what they're doing is contrary to the purpose of the Lord's Supper. So their gatherings here, they're actually doing more harm than good.

[22:15] Look down at verse 27. Verse 27, whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

[22:28] Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

[22:40] That is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

[22:51] But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. In the case of the Corinthians, Paul confirms that the reason some of them have gotten sick and some of them have even died is because they were under divine discipline.

[23:11] they were being punished for mistreating one another and the Lord's supper. But then notice what he says in verse 32.

[23:22] He says that when believers are judged by the Lord, they're disciplined so that they won't be condemned along with the world. On the one hand, God is bringing judgment upon these people, believers, the church.

[23:39] But on the other hand, Paul distinguishes that judgment from the condemnation that the world will receive. Well, what exactly is the difference?

[23:53] Well, think of the difference between a criminal being punished by a court of law and a child being disciplined by his father. A judge punishes a criminal because justice demands it, but a loving father disciplines his child because he wants to correct him for his own good.

[24:16] And while the two may often look very simpler from the outside, their purposes are very different. Now, again, the Christian's condemnation has already been borne by Christ.

[24:28] Hebrews 10.14 says that by a single offering, Christ has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. sanctified. There is absolutely nothing left for us to pay toward our penalty for sin, but we are still being sanctified.

[24:48] God hasn't finished sanctifying us, and sometimes that means bringing painful correction into our lives. Consider David. After his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, the prophet Nathan confronted him.

[25:07] And David, he confessed his sin. And then what did Nathan say? In 2 Samuel 12, he told David that the Lord had put away his sin.

[25:19] David was completely forgiven. But, if you keep reading, you'll find out that David still suffered consequences. His forgiveness didn't prevent all of those consequences, and the consequences did not mean that his forgiveness was somehow incomplete.

[25:36] And I think if we turn over to Hebrews chapter 12, it will help us to understand not only why God disciplines his children, but why that discipline is actually an expression of love.

[25:53] So, the letter to the Hebrews was written to Christians who were experiencing considerable hardship. In chapter 10, the writer tells us that many of them had been publicly mistreated.

[26:08] They had suffered the loss of their property. Some of them had been imprisoned. But, these weren't people suffering necessarily because they had committed some particular sin.

[26:20] Many of them were suffering precisely because they had remained faithful to Christ. so, with that in mind, let me read Hebrews chapter 12 starting at verse 3.

[26:34] Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

[26:50] And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

[27:01] For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons.

[27:14] For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.

[27:31] Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

[27:45] For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

[27:58] Now, the first thing to notice here is how the author of Hebrews tells these Christians to consider Jesus. They are suffering, and perhaps they're beginning to wonder whether God has abandoned them.

[28:11] What is going on here? And the author directs their attention to Christ, who endured tremendous hostility from sinners. He faced terrible suffering, suffering that we cannot begin to comprehend, and keep in mind that Jesus was wholly innocent.

[28:29] And then he points them to Proverbs 3, where God speaks to his people as a father speaks to his children. This is not God the judge pronouncing sentence upon criminals.

[28:43] He's speaking to his people as their father, and what does he say? Don't regard his discipline lightly, and don't become weary when he reproves you.

[28:54] Why? Because the Lord disciplines those he loves. I think we sometimes have the wrong idea about discipline.

[29:06] When we hear that word discipline, we immediately think of punishment for something we've done wrong. And obviously, discipline does include that, but the word generally speaking has a broader meaning, and it certainly does here in Hebrews 12.

[29:25] It includes the training and instruction of a child. Of course, a father doesn't train his son only when his son has done something wrong, right?

[29:37] He teaches him to work. He teaches him to exercise good judgment, to persevere when things become difficult, and sometimes that training can be painful, even when the child hasn't done anything wrong.

[29:52] In fact, consider Hebrews 5.8. This is speaking of Jesus, and it says, although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.

[30:06] Obviously, Jesus was not disciplined for disobedience. Hebrews 4.15 tells us that he was without sin, but through his earthly suffering, he experienced obedience in circumstances that required tremendous endurance.

[30:27] Suffering can be a part of God's training without necessarily being the consequence of some particular sin. Now, what is the ultimate purpose of this discipline?

[30:40] We see it there in verse 10. He disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. That's the purpose.

[30:53] God is making us holy. He's making us what we were supposed to be, what we were when he first created us, what we will be again. And sometimes the circumstances we would like most to escape are actually the very circumstances he uses to accomplish this purpose.

[31:17] Now, I'm not suggesting, and I don't think the Bible is suggesting, that we should enjoy suffering. In fact, verse 11 explicitly says that discipline is very painful, it's not pleasant, but it eventually yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

[31:37] afterward is the key word here. Afterward, when we suffer, we're not naturally prone to thank God for what he's doing, but in hindsight, in hindsight, we can look back and we can recognize how he used trials to teach us.

[31:56] Maybe it was patience, or humility, or dependence upon him, or perhaps it was to turn us away from a sin that we had been previously unwilling to surrender until we were met with that discipline.

[32:11] Psalm 119, verse 67 says, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word. And just a few verses later, the psalmist says, It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.

[32:28] That's quite a confession. The psalmist can now look back and say his affliction was good for him. Why? Because it taught him to obey God, specifically God's statutes, his commandments, his moral law.

[32:49] So, just to clarify, God disciplines his children either because they have sin and they need correction, or because it is the means by which he is teaching them something they really need to learn.

[33:04] God's sin. So, we don't want to walk away thinking that just because we're going through a trial, that must mean we've committed some sin. Think of Job.

[33:15] He was an upright man, and yet he suffered. Christ himself suffered, and he learned obedience through it. There's also the blind man in John chapter nine.

[33:27] You remember him when the disciples saw him? They asked Jesus, who sinned? This man or his parents? And Jesus said, neither. That's not the point of his suffering.

[33:41] Regardless, the trials or the discipline are ultimately for the same purpose. It is to teach us holiness. It is to make us more holy.

[33:53] It is to increasingly conform us to the image of Christ. It's to sanctify us. And God does this specifically because he loves us.

[34:03] It is for our good. Now, there's another part of this that we haven't talked about yet, and here's how the confession words it. The promises of the law likewise show them God's approval of obedience and the blessings they may expect when they keep it.

[34:25] So far, all we've talked about is the prohibitions of the law and its warnings, but we have to remember that the law also contains promises. And those promises are intended to encourage us to obey God, and we find a great example of this in Ephesians chapter 6.

[34:45] Let me read a part of this for you. In Ephesians 6, Paul says, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise.

[34:59] that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

[35:11] Now, this commandment, honor your father and mother, obviously was originally given to the Israelites way back when, as was the promise that was attached to it.

[35:22] Of course, it referred to the land that God was actually giving them in Canaan, but here, Paul is writing to Christians in Ephesus, many of whom were Gentiles.

[35:35] They weren't Israelites, living in the promised land, and yet, Paul still applies both the commandment and the promise to them. Clearly, he believes the promise continues to have significance for God's people.

[35:51] So, how does this apply to us? Does this mean that every child who honors his parents will live a long life? No, I don't believe that's what the Bible teaches.

[36:05] But there is a general principle here that remains true. God has established a certain order for human life. He's the creator.

[36:17] And obedience to that order is ordinarily good for us. think about all of the trouble a child can avoid simply by listening to the wise instruction of his parents.

[36:31] And we could say the same about every commandment. Think about how honesty protects us from the consequences of deceit.

[36:42] Or faithfulness protects our marriages from the consequences of adultery. or wisdom in our speech can spare us all kinds of unnecessary conflict.

[36:57] Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes doing what's right actually brings trouble into our lives, right? But I want to show you something. Let me read from 1 Peter 3.

[37:08] Peter is writing to Christians who are experiencing hostility because of their faith, just like the Hebrews. And he essentially tells them how they should respond when other people mistreat them.

[37:21] Listen to what he says. Finally, all of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.

[37:43] For, this is an Old Testament quote, whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good.

[37:56] Let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

[38:08] Now, who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. So here, Peter quotes Psalm 34 and he tells these believers that if they want to love life, if they want to see good days, they should keep, namely, their tongues from evil.

[38:30] They should turn away from evil, they should do good, they should pursue peace, and then he gives them a promise. He says that the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayers.

[38:44] But here's something I find especially interesting. If you go back to Psalm 34 and you read the entire Psalm, you'll discover that David says something else. In verse 19, he says, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

[39:06] so in the very Psalm where David tells us how we can see good days by doing good, by following the commandments, he also tells us that the righteous will experience many afflictions.

[39:23] And Peter is essentially making the same point. He says that even if Christians suffer for righteousness' sake, they are blessed. blessed. So think about what that means.

[39:36] The Christian who refuses to lie, for example, maybe he loses his job. Or the Christian who refuses to retaliate, maybe mistreated.

[39:48] But neither of them has lost God's favor by obeying him. Peter says they are blessed. God sees what they're doing. He hears their prayers and he will make good on his promises, even if they don't see the full blessing right here, right now.

[40:09] But wait a minute. If God promises to bless our obedience and discipline us for our disobedience, aren't we back under a covenant of works?

[40:22] Well, the answer is no. Now, I don't have time to turn there, but if you were to go and read Luke 17, even if we did, everything God commanded, all we would have done is our duty.

[40:36] Of course, none of us have obeyed him perfectly. So, we can't put God in our debt. We can't say, Lord, I've done what you've asked, now you owe me a good life.

[40:49] And yet, God is pleased to reward our obedience. obedience. Now, this is the obedience he produces in us by his grace.

[41:00] We've talked about that in some of the previous lessons. Philippians 2 says, God works in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So, even the obedience he rewards is something he has gifted to us.

[41:17] So, the rewards aren't wages we've earned. They're blessings that our heavenly father has freely promised to us. And that explains the last sentence of this paragraph in the confession, in this particular paragraph of the confession.

[41:38] If men do good and refrain from evil because the law encourages good and discourages evil, that does not indicate that they are under the law and not under grace.

[41:50] It's not legalism to obey what God commands or to avoid sin because he warns us against it or to hope for the blessings that he has promised.

[42:03] Now, it would be legalism to imagine that our obedience makes us acceptable to him, but in Christ, we're already accepted.

[42:15] In short, we're not trying to earn a place in God's family. we are learning how to live as children who already belong to him.

[42:29] Let's pray. Father, will you forgive us for the times we have taken your grace for granted or treated your commandments lightly?

[42:43] Teach us to receive your warnings with humility and your promises with great faith. help us to remember that you are working all things together for our good, even when your providence is painful or difficult to understand.

[42:57] I pray that you would continue your gracious work of sanctification in us, that we might increasingly reflect the holiness of Christ. And we ask you these things in his precious name.

[43:10]  Amen. Amen.