Tim Keller (4:15)

We started to look at the Book of Deuteronomy. The Book of Deuteronomy is a series of sermons that Moses preached just before he died. And in it he lays out in the most comprehensive and practical way how you should live if you experience the grace and salvation of God. If you experience God, how should that actually affect the way in which you live your life? It's very, very, very practical book and an incredibly comprehensive book. Now, today we get to the Ten Commandments. This is one of the most influential texts in the entire history of the world, God's law, 10 commandments. And even though it's also mentioned in Exodus 20, this exposition of it here in Deuteronomy 5 is really the most complete exposition and explanation of God's law, the Ten Commandments, that there is anywhere in the Bible. So let's take a look and see what we. What we're taught about it. It's awfully basic, but it's awfully basic because it's awfully important. So we have to look at it. Now. There's four things I think we're going to learn here about God's law. The origin of God's law, the origin of the law, the substance of the law, the problem of the law, and the solution to that problem, the origin, the substance, the problem of that, of the law, that every culture has to deal with. And the solution. Okay, first, the origin. Notice in verse 16, when it talks about honoring father and mother, it says, I want you to honor your father and mother, that things will go well with you. But that is not only that promise, as it were, is not only attached to that command. Because at the very end, the last verse, verse 29, it says, I wish that you would always do all of my commands that things may go well with you. And that word, well, going well doesn't just mean, you know, things go smoother. It means full flourishing. And this is the first and very important thing to understand. What is God's law? Is it a set of arbitrary decrees that God has come up with? You know, a king could come up with a whole set of decrees just to try to make sure his subjects keep off the street, stay busy, just to prove their loyalty. You know, the king sits down and says, well, okay, I'll have him do this. I'll have him do this. I'll have him do this. In no way should you understand God's law like that. Of course God makes decrees, but the law of God is an expression of his actual nature. So when God says, don't lie or bear false witness, he. He says that because he doesn't lie, because he is a God of integrity, because he is a God of truth, and he is utterly consistent. But since you and I are made in his image, you know what that means, the law of God, then, therefore reflects our nature. This is extremely important. Hear this. It reflects our nature. We were made in his image. And if the law expresses his nature, then it actually reflects what we need to be to be fully who we are. So, for example, think about lying for just one second. All kinds of scholars have understood over the years that you have to have truth and trust in a society for there to be any kind of economic life, civic life, family life, life. We have to be able to trust that what's being told to us is true or everything breaks down. You know, when the Soviet Union essentially collapsed from within, there was a lot of analysis, but everybody mentioned at least one thing, and that is that nobody could trust anything they read. Nobody could trust anything they heard. They couldn't even trust the weather reports. They couldn't trust anything. And as a result, there was absolute breakdown. Why? Because when God says, don't lie, he's not giving you busy work. It's not an arbitrary decree. He is saying to lie goes against your nature as human beings and what I made you. And therefore to violate the law of God violates you. If a doctor, let's just say you've got high cholesterol or you got incredibly bad, you know, you got a heart problem. And if your doctor says, don't you eat xyz? If you do eat xyz, nobody's going to give you a fine. Nobody's going to come and give you a ticket. Nobody's going to come and put you in jail. They won't have to because the consequences are natural. If you violate your doctor's order, you're violating your own nature and you're unraveling your own fabric. And God is saying that here. He says, don't think of the law of God as arbitrary decrees. The law of God outlines who you are. To violate the law of God sets up strains in the fabric of reality that only lead to breakdown. The law of God outlines the kind of life in which you will find who you really are, will find your absolute being. You will finally flourish. That's number one, very important. So there we see the origin of God's law. It's in the nature of God and in the nature of our own being. And it to violate it violates our own being. And to fulfill it fulfills yourself, number one. Number two, the second thing I want to look at here is the substance of God's law, and here's what I mean by that. During the next few months, we're going to be looking at what Deuteronomy says. And the middle part of Deuteronomy is actually an exposition of each of these laws, the ten Commandments. So there's no need for me to go down and say this means this. I'm not going to go through right now and say each commandment means this. What I want you to see is something that I usually don't notice, that I don't think many people notice. And that is how all these commandments hang together. I want you for a minute to see that they all are absolutely interdependent. When I first became a Christian, one of the Bible verses that really bugged me was James, chapter 2, verse 10. And in James 2, 10, it says, if you're trying to obey God's law, but you violate it at any point, you've broken all of God's law. If you violate the law of God at any point, you've broken all of God's law. And I that bugged me because I felt like, look, if nine out of ten isn't bad today, you know, if I've kept nine out of ten laws, I win some credit. What does it matter with this God? 90%. That's an A. It used to be. And I wanted to know something about that, See, and now I realize I really got it wrong. James wasn't saying, oh, God doesn't grade on a curve. What James is trying to say is you actually can't break one law without breaking them all. And you can't keep one law without keeping them all. That they're much more interdependent than you ever thought. Let me explain. First of all, let me just, let me show you three combinations, three ways in which the ten Commandments combine. First of all, they combine the vertical and the horizontal. Now that's one that you've probably heard. The first table of the law. Laws one commands one to four are about God. How do I honor God and how do I love him? With all my heart, soul, strength and mind. So the first four commands are about how do I honor and love God? With all my heart, soul, strength and mind. The next table of the law, which is commandments 5 through 10 are horizontal. How do I love my neighbor? As myself. How do I honor their personhood? And so there you have horizontal, pardon me, Horizontal. How do I love my neighbor? As myself. Vertical. How do I love the Lord God? With all my heart, soul and strength of mind. So it combines the horizontal and the vertical. It's not just spiritual, it's not just social, it's both. It's not just personal and spiritual. It's not just external and social, it's both. That's the first combination. Second combination you may not have thought of, at least I have until fairly recently. It also covers the inner and the outer. It covers the inner, psychological, spiritual, motivational as well as the external and practical. Now I want you to think this. Now we actually talked about this last week and we'll keep talking about it because Deuteronomy brings it up all the time. Commandments 1 and 2 where it says have no other gods before me and make no graven image of anything, whether birds or fish or sun, moon, stars, worship no graven image, have no other gods before me. That is talking about your very heart of hearts. If anything is more important to your hope, your meaning in life, your self worth and your security than God's love, you're sinning. Okay, now we've talked about this before, but let me give you one more illustration. I occasionally use this, but it's one of my favorite ones. Many, many years ago, there was a girl in our youth group back in Virginia. Some of you heard me say this before, but I think this will still bring this home. And she was 15, I think, or something like that. And she was sitting there saying how discouraged she was about her whole life. And so we went through being a 25 year old pastor. I gave her theology you know, and I said, you know, are you a Christian? Yes. You know, I'm born again and I have the righteousness of Christ and I have the Father's love and, and I have a guaranteed place in new heavens and new earth. And then she says, but you know what, what good is all that if the boys don't even know I'm alive now? Cute, right? Right. Titter, titter, titter. That's great. Okay, but here's what she was doing. Did she not believe in the gospel? Did she not believe in God and all these great things? Yeah, but God was on audio and the boys were on video. I mean, if you're listening to something on audio at the same time you're watching a movie, you know something on video, what's going to win? What's going to get your attention? It's going to be the movie, not the audio. Right. It's going to be the image, not the sound. She believed in God, but boys had captured imagination, imagination, image, boys had grabbed her heart. Boys were more important to who she was than herself worth. Which by the way is true of just about any 15 year old girl probably. I mean, I mean, I'm not trying to pick on her, but you see why the ten Commandments are getting at the very heart of things. What turns your crank, what captures your imagination. What is your real motivation? Why do you really get up in the morning? What is your real hope? What is your real meaning in life? What is it? Is it anything more than God's love? Now that's the first thing the commandments are after. So it's talking about the inner. And then in Commandment 10 it gives you this sign. How do you know if there's something more important to you than God? Lack of contentment. Yes. Commandment 10 says thou shalt not covet. But do you know what that means? That's a command to be content. If you love God more than anything else, when you look out there at the things you don't have, you might say, I like them. But they won't drive you, they won't gnaw at you. The 10th Commandment is a command to have inner peace. The 10th Command is a call to love God enough to be content. It's like everybody wants success, everybody wants a relationship, everybody wants to be loved. Everybody wants achievement. But if God's your ultimate comfort, your ultimate concern, your ultimate security, then when you don't have the money and you don't have the relationship and you don't have these things, they won't call you now if you have made that inner transformation. That's amazing. If you put God in the very center of your heart, then you can keep the Sabbath day. See, let's go to the external now. Why? Because if you're content, you won't overwork. Then you won't commit adultery, because if you're content, you won't use sex as a way of self fulfillment and self realization, but only as a way of doing building commitment with another person in marriage and building community. See, only if you have the inner transformation will you be able to do all these other things that the commandments say you should do. So in a way, you know, the Ten Commandments command that you be born again. The Ten Commandments command an inner transformation and an inner peace and contentment as well as all these practicals. So here you see, the commands not only combine the external, pardon me, the vertical and the horizontal, but it combines the inner and the outer. And last of all, briefly, it also combines the individual, personal and the corporate. You know, in our culture right now, there's very often values are fragmented. You've got a group of people over there who stress caring about the poor, justice and equity and including everybody. But when it comes to the personal morality, that's social morality. But when it comes to personal morality, you know, what you do with your sexuality is your business. And then over here you got a bunch of people that talk about traditional values and, you know, being religious and being moral and not committing adultery and all those sorts of things. But when it comes to concern for the poor and all that, that seems to be not so important. But if you actually read the Ten Commandments and understand what they're all saying, and we're going to see that over the months, there's a combination here. You know, Commandment 2 is no false religion. Commandment 4 is honor your father and your mother, traditional family values, no adultery. But on the other hand, thou shalt not steal, as we will see later on, means caring for the economic, of well being of everyone. Thou shalt not kill means not harming anyone, caring for their physical safety and their physical conditions. So you're going to see that when it comes to thou shalt not kill, it means caring about the hungry. And therefore there's this combination. Even the Sabbath, as you can see, if you look carefully, there is really an act of liberation. If you overwork, you are a cog in an economic system. It's using you and exploiting you, even if you're doing it voluntarily. And therefore there's Cultural analysis here and social analysis and religious theological analysis and. And individual personal morality and social morality. It's all there. Now let's go back here for a second to James, chapter 2, verse 10. And you see what it means when he says, if you break one, you break them all. They're all interdependent. For example, what if you say, oh, I'm very good. I go to church and I read my Bible and I pray and I honor God. I honor God. I honor God. Now I'm abusive to my employees. I'm harsh, I'm nasty, I'm. I'm unkind. I'm cruel to people, but I love God. See, wait a minute. If you say, I'm okay at the first part of the commandments, I'm honoring God, but I just don't love people. You're not honoring God if you don't love people. They all are of a peace. You can't keep commandments one to four without keeping commandments five through 10. Or you say, well, I lied. Well, I stole, but at least I didn't commit idolatry. And we talked about this last week. You always commit idolatry. If you lie or steal or break any other commandments, why would you lie? Unless you made approval or saving face or money or something like that more important than God, you wouldn't lie. You wouldn't steal. You wouldn't do anything wrong. If God was actually absolutely first in your life, you wouldn't need to. You wouldn't have to. There'd be no motivation to. You see, they're all of a piece. You can't actually keep one without keeping them all. You can't break one without breaking them all.

Podcast Host (20:01)

We all chase things like success, true love, or the perfect life. Good things that can easily become ultimate things when we put our faith in them. Deep down, we know they can't satisfy our deepest longings. The truth is that we've made lesser gods of good things, things that can't give us what we really need. In his book Counterfeit the empty promises of money, sex and power and the only hope that Matters, Tim Keller shows us how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the truth about societal ideals in our own hearts and shows us that there is only one God who can wholly satisfy our desires. This month we'll send you Counterfeit gods as our thank you for your gift to help gospel and life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. You can request your copy@gospelandlife.com give that's gospelandlife.com. give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

Tim Keller (20:56)

So there's the substance, the interdependence of the Ten Commandments. It's not the sort of thing we usually talk about because we have almost immediately when we're teaching them, we break them down and say, well, this commandment means this and this and this, and we'll get there. But I want to show you that they are all of a piece. Isn't that amazing? But that leads us to our third point. It leads us to our third point, which is the problem of the law. If you want to have an understanding of the problem of the law, you take a look at verse 24 and 25. Here's the first response. This is what the children of Israel said as soon as they heard it. Notice what they say. The Lord our God has shown us his glory and his majesty. We have heard his voice from the fire, but now why should we die? The great fire will consume us and we will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer. Now notice what they're saying. To hear God out of the fire is wonderful and yet terrible. It's great. What an honor. And we don't want any more of it. We talked about this last week. The fire of God is the beautiful danger of the absolute holiness and perfection of God. But here's what they're seeing. It's what you feel whenever anybody. You know, I didn't even go through the Ten Commandments, did I? I didn't even really go through and exactly explain what they all are. But even when you do this little summary I just gave you, you start to feel the weight of it. And here's the problem of the law, here's the problem they felt. On the one hand, when you hear the law of God, you say, of course, of course I should live like that. CS Lewis in his book the Abolition of Man, in the very back there's an appendix in which he shows that the Ten Commandments are essentially held by all the religions of the world, as different as the religions of the world are. And boy are they all, are they. And who's God, and who are we? And where do we come from? And how can we be saved? The religions of the world are absolutely different on all those things. And when you ask them, how should we live in the world, there's almost a complete consensus. The Ten Commandments are virtually common sense. Romans 2 says they're written on our hearts, no matter who we are. And Lewis makes a Pretty good case of it. So on the one hand, when you hear the law of God, you say, of course I should live like this. How could I not live like this? But on the other hand, you say, but I can't live like this. The law of God, the children of Israel realized, is something they can't live with and they can't live without. They can't live with it and they can't live without it. And this is a problem that every culture has to deal with in different ways, and yet every culture plays out. Let me give you a real quick example, very brief example of this. Today you have what's often called culture wars. And the culture wars to a great degree have to do with this idea. Is there a divine moral absolute? Is there a set of divine absolute moral laws that all people must obey that are true for everyone? Now, on the one hand, you have the secular people who are say. Who are saying no, that morality is relative to the individual and it's relative to the culture. And there is no set of divine moral absolutes that are true for everybody. And if you think you've got them, and if you think you've got the truth, you're the problem with the world. On the other side, we have traditional people. And traditional people say there is. Traditional people tend to be religious. They come from various religions. And they say, yes, of course there is a divine law. Of course there is a set of moral absolutes. And you relativists, you people who don't believe in them, you're the problem with the world. But both those positions have severe problems. And I mean severe problems. Because on the one hand, the secularist, if you say to the secularist, tell me, if there is no God and we just evolved, on what basis can you say that it's right to be kind and wrong to be cruel? On what basis? How can you say, you know, how can you impose your views on other people? And it's a difficulty. On the other hand, the religious people have a terrible record of oppression and using the warrant that they have the truth to harm other people. And I think this all came together to me in a way, in a little. It was actually not a whole article, but part of an article I read in New York Times Magazine not too long ago in which it said that a university in Israel back in 2003 did a study of all their religious, of all their communes. You know, they have hundreds of communes around Israel, and in those communes, some are religious and some were secular. And the religious ones were doing far better than the secular ones economically. And they did a kind of thorough study and they discovered something, namely that secular people, especially secular men, especially secular males, secular people are far more selfish and individualistic than religious people. And that's one of the reasons why the communists didn't do very well. But you see the nub of the problem. Secularism makes people individualistic and selfish, but religion makes people tribal, divisive, self righteous. See, without the law, if everything's relative, then why not live any way I want? But with the law, when I've got the truth, then I can, I feel like I can bash people. So secularism makes people individualistic and selfish, but religion tends to make people tribal. What are we going to do? We can't live with the law of God and we can't live without it. It's the same thing that the children of Israel had a problem with. What's the answer? Here it is. One of the most amazing things about the. About this whole passage is verse 29. Because in verse 29 God speaks and says, O that this people. O that this people would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always. So it might go well with them. Now, even in English it looks like what God's getting emotional. This consuming fire is getting emotional. Oh, that these people would incline their hearts to fear me. And boy, he is. First of all, the word fear is not what you think it means because in English it means to be afraid. But in the Old Testament, in Hebrew and the Old Testament it actually means the opposite. To fear someone is to experience awe and wonder before the grace and glory of something. It's like to be enraptured by an incredible piece of music or an incredible piece of art. That's what it means. And here's what God is saying. Oh, that my people would want to obey me out of love. Oh, that my people would not just obey me because they're afraid of me, because they know they have to, but because they love me. And the Hebrew actually is even more nuanced than that because Chris Wright in his commentary on Deuteronomy points out that the Hebrew phrase that is rendered here, O that. See, that's an English way of getting across the Hebrew phrase. But oh, that means unfulfilled longing. And we have a number of places in the, in the Old Testament like Isaiah 48 and Jeremiah 2 and Hosea 11, where God says, oh that. And what it means is how I long, how I weep with unfulfilled desire that my people would not just obey because they have to, but because they want to. Not just obey because I'm God, but because I'm your God. And one of the most. One of the most obvious things I realized as I was looking through this passage just last night actually, was one term is used throughout the law of God more than any other term, and that is this preposition. Verse 6, I am the Lord your God. Verse 9, I am the Lord your God. Verse 11, I'm the Lord your God. Verse 12, I'm the Lord your God. Verse 13, I'm the Lord your God. 15, your God. 16, twice your God. And then, of course, Moses keeps saying, he's the Lord our God over and over again. Why? Look, if you hear somebody say my John or my Susie, you know, immediately we're talking about, you know, I don't know, husband, wife, child, sibling, somebody incredibly close. And this is what God is saying. I don't want you to obey me because I'm God. I want you to obey me because I'm your God. I want there to be intimacy. I want there to be love. This is an amazing thing. Why did he give us the law? You say, to get us to submit to him. No. That's why you and I would do it. But he's God. If he wants to get us to submit to him, all he's got to do is snap his fingers and we got to do it. You know, we couldn't help it. He couldn't possibly be giving us the law to make us submit. He doesn't need to do that. Why would he be giving us the law? He's telling us. He says, I want a love relationship with you if you obey me. That's you giving me love. And it's also me giving you love because this fulfills your deepest being. Oh, that my people would say, not I obey you because you're God, but I obey you because you're my God. Is there any hope for this vision? It's unfulfilled longing. He knows this isn't happening. Centuries later, a man comes to Jerusalem, looks at Jerusalem and begins to weep in Luke 19:41 and says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. Oh, that you would know the things that pertain to your peace. But now they're hidden from your eyes. It's Jesus. And one week later, he went to the cross. Why? To pay the penalty for our breaches of the law. To pay the penalty for our sins. The way in which we fail to obey the law. Okay, you've always heard that. Yeah. But here's something I don't know. That we know enough or know well enough or maybe know it all. When he was on the cross, he was forsaken. Now, psychologists will tell you the worst thing that can happen to you is to be forsaken by someone that you love. Death of a spouse or divorce are the two worst things that can happen to a human being. But compared to that, this. To compare to this, that's nothing. Because the Father and the Son had known and loved each other for all eternity. And on the cross, Jesus is forsaken. He's experiencing the penalty for breaking the law. He's dying the death we should die. But when he goes to the cross, here's the question. Why he didn't have to go to the cross. He tells you the reason. Because when he cries out, he doesn't say, God, God, why have you forsaken me? He says, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? That's covenant language. That's deliberate covenant language. And you know what that means. On the cross, Jesus Christ was not just dying the death we should have died, but living the life we should have lived. Jesus Christ is fulfilling the law. He is being. He is doing what God wants us to do. My God, do you realize what he was doing when he went to the cross to die for our sins? He was loving the Lord, his God, with all his heart, soul, strength and mind and way. No one ever has. No one's ever been sent to hell and still love God. You know, Ahab says, from hell's heart I stab at thee. Remember, Captain Ahab, from hell's heart I stab at thee. But that was just a metaphor. Jesus Christ was literally in hell. And he said, from hell's heart, I'm still loving you. I'm faithful to you. No one's ever loved the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind like that. And no one ever loved his neighbor like that. Because he went to hell for you and me. He was fulfilling the law perfectly fulfilling the law completely in a way that no one else ever has. And that's why when 2nd Corinthians 5:21 says, God made him sin, that we. That who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. It means not only is our sins put on him and he's given what we deserve, but his righteousness comes to us. His obedience, the fulfillment of the law, comes to us. Now, God treats us as if we'd done everything he'd ever done. And that means two things. One is, I don't have to be afraid to obey the law because I'm accepted because of what Jesus Christ has done. I don't have to be afraid now. I can go to the law out of delight. I know I'll be imperfect about it, but I won't have to feel incredibly guilty all the time because even my imperfect obedience to the law is a way to begin to love the One who did this for me. And secularism makes people individualistic and selfish and religion makes people tribal. But the Gospel humbles you out of selfishness and humbles you out of being tribal and superior and turns you outward to serve others, walking in the footsteps of the One who died for his enemies. Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before, since we have seen his beauty are joined apart no more. To see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice. Jesus Christ was the ultimate covenant keeper, so that we covenant breakers. He was the ultimate law fulfiller so that we law breakers can now obey the law out of love and gratitude, with relief and a lack of fear, with only joy, so we can please and resemble and delight the One who did that for us. Let's pray. Our Father, the law of God is exceeding, broad and incredibly powerful and impossible to live with without Jesus. But with Jesus, when we see him fulfilling that law. Now we want to obey the law and we're not afraid of trying. We want to obey it and we're not afraid of trying and failing because we will. It just transforms completely our whole approach to the law. And we ask that you would help us to keep these things in mind so that we don't get back into the problem that everyone else has who doesn't understand the gospel either. The problem of throwing the law off. And there's so much devastation that comes when we just go away from it or trying to obey it. And there's so much guilt and pride and anxiety that comes from doing that. Father, we'll never overcome our problem with the law unless we understand that Jesus Christ on the cross loved you with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, loved us neighbors as himself in unsurpassable ways in our place, in our stead on our behalf, so that now we know there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Help us take all this in. Let it move us, let it change us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Podcast Host (36:19)

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel and Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life Monthly Partner. Your monthly partnership helps us to plan and steward our resources throughout the year to be the most effective in reaching people all over the world with the life giving power of Christ's love. And as a small thank you for your monthly support, we will mail you a physical copy of each New Life in the Gospel Quarterly Journal that you can enjoy and share with others. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com partner that website again is gospelandlife.com partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 2007. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

Tim Keller (37:14)

SA.