Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 10:8 (Submitting to Rules) (Part 29)

Back in your midst to enjoy your fellowship and to share the word of God with you. This morning. I would like you to turn in your Bibles to Proverbs, the tenth chapter, this morning, where I'm going to read just one verse, the eighth verse, and then we'll very soon be looking at a series of passages in Proverbs on this same theme, the theme of submitting to rules, Proverbs, the tenth chapter at the eighth verse. Hear now, God's word, the wise in heart will receive commandments, but a prating fool shall fall, and thus far the reading of God's word. The Book of Proverbs is calculated to teach us wisdom. Do you know that if you are to be asked one of the questions that is part of the syllabus for teaching theology at the high school, the course in theology I teach from JI Packer's book, Knowing God. If I were to ask you this question, what book of the Bible has been given to us to teach us wisdom? No one in this congregation who has been even half awake over the last year should have any difficulty answering it's the Book of Proverbs, of course. But how wise are we? You know, one of the problems we have in learning wisdom is that we often think that wisdom involves some kind of an esoteric, subtle insight into some very complex issue about life or morality, when, as a matter of fact, true wisdom stares us in the face with a kind of bold and obvious trouble, truthfulness that we don't see because we're looking for little clever insights and have overlooked the main point of what God wants us to learn. The Pharisees, of course, had a reputation for doing that. Jesus, in one of the most memorable aphorisms of all the New Testament, characterizes the Pharisees in this way. When he says, you struggle, rain at gnats and swallow camels. Here you're so concerned about little picky details and your little esoteric interpretations and all the fine manipulation you have of the Word of God and the most obvious things are completely missed by you. This morning we come to a theme which in one sense the preacher is almost embarrassed to present to you, because after all, I'm supposed to bring to your attention all these esoteric insights too. I'm supposed to have some mature and advanced intellectual account of what you're going to be studying, when, as a matter of fact, I have one very simple and varnished truth to lay before you this morning, and that is, as the Book of Proverbs teach, if you want to be happy in Jesus you must trust and obey. Trust and obey. For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. The book of Proverbs teaches us that wisdom involves an obedient heart, wisdom involves submission to rules. Very simply, wisdom acknowledges the authority of God's commandments and wishes to obey him. That's such an obvious truth. In fact, it's one which I suppose certain congregations of a reconstructionist strife are supposed to be known for. I think there are probably some people who think, well, that's all they ever preach at that church, right? Just because they have this theonomic conviction, it's always on the law of God, always on commandments and so forth. Well, that isn't true, and you know it's not true. If you're part of this congregation, you've heard our preaching series, you realize that it's not a hobby horse for us. But let me tell you something. To the degree that the law of God comes up, to the degree to which we hear repeatedly the need for obedience to God's word, the. The reason for it is not because it is a personal hobby horse with us. It's because it's one of the key basic fundamental insights of God's Word. And if you want to see that, just go with me through the book of Proverbs here. We'll look at a few passages and notice how this is presented so very clearly. A wise heart is one that submits to rules, in particular, God's rules. We see this in Proverbs 10, verse 8, which we have read this morning already. The wise in heart will receive commandments, but a prating fool shall fall. A prating fool? Any prating fools among us, no one wants to stand up and take that mantle upon himself. Yes, I am your token prating fool in this congregation or in this society in our neighborhood. No, of course, no one looks upon himself that way. And so if there is such a thing as a prapping fool, and no one's willing to say, hey, that's me, I'm identifying myself, then we need to have some way of identifying a prating fool apart from someone testifying that that's him. Well, now, what according to this verse, tells you who a prating fool is? Well, Proverbs is often presented in terms of antithetical parallelism. That's a big term, big expression for saying that. You have two poetic lines. What is expressed in the first is, is then not contradicted, but the contrast or a conflicting point or item out of the first line is now brought into the second. And so we look at Proverbs 10, 8, and you notice the second line says, A prating fool shall fall. But it's introduced with the wise. In contrast to the fool, the wise in heart will receive commandments. Who then is the prating fool, do you figure? What's the one who won't receive commandments? Here's the person who's just mouthing off all the time about how he doesn't have to submit to rules. He's above all this. He is, to use a word that you've heard in Sunday school quite often recently, autonomous. The autonomous man is a law unto himself. He doesn't accept external direction. He doesn't have someone, some authority standing over him or outside him, who tells him how to live his life. He makes up his own mind. He uses reason to guide his own steps. He is his own boss. He is a prating fool. Because the Bible says, if you are wise, then you've learned this very simple lesson, that God's commandments are for your good, and God's commandments are necessary, and God's commandments are to be obeyed. Proverbs 13, verse 13. Whoso despises the word brings destruction on himself, but he that feareth the commandment shall be rewarded. Again, no esoteric insight, just a very basic truth that you've got to get squared away on here. If you despise the word of God, it's amazing. People think that if they despise the word of God, the word of God suffers something. You know, if you despise me as your neighbor, or as your pastor, or as your friend, then of course I suffer something because of your attitude, right? I may either be embarrassed, I may be heartbroken over your attitude. Whatever it is, I suffer something. People think, well, if I don't happen to like what God says, or if I can talk out against what is found in the Bible, then so much the worse for anybody who believes that, or so much the worse for the Bible, or so much the worse for. But what we found in that book, Book of Proverbs says, you got it all wrong. You've got it all wrong. Because the person who despises the Word doesn't bring destruction upon the Word, he brings destruction on himself. I'm reminded of the little aphorism that is heard in our circles often, that in one sense, a society doesn't break the law of God. In the end, the law of God breaks the society. Those who will not keep the commandments of God may think they are Liberated individuals may think that they finally come into life, have finally grown up, they're finally enjoying freedom here, but as a matter of fact, they're destroying themselves so that he that fears the commandment is the one who is going to be rewarded. Why do we hear about law and submission and obedience in this congregation? Is it because it's a hobby horse? Well, if it's a hobby horse, it's a hobby horse of the inspired riders. We don't just find this in two passages in Proverbs. Turn to the 19th chapter, verse 16. He that keepeth the commandment keepeth his soul, but he that is careless of his ways shall be put to death. You've probably noticed, parents, haven't you, that sometimes when it comes to disciplining your children, though you have all the best intentions in the world to be reasonable and to teach them the way they should go, and they hope that they'll understand why they shouldn't act this way and so forth, that the time comes when you've got to give up reasoning and resort to what compulsion you do it or you'll be spanked. Of course, we've all been taught in the Dr. Spock generation, of course, you don't ever do that with children, right? Children are to be respected. They're like little adults, after all. And if they don't see that they're supposed to live in a certain way, then they're just going to have to learn in the school of hard knocks. So the Bible doesn't teach that. And you come back later. There'll be a lesson eventually in the series on Proverbs on how to raise children. And what the book of Proverbs says has been very down to earth, down to the seat of the pants advice about how to raise children. Here we learn that the person who is careless of his ways shall be put to death. If you don't see in spiritual maturity, if you don't see just in terms of social consequences, if you don't have the common sense sense to know that you should obey the laws of God. The Bible says, well, if you're careless of your ways, maybe you'll listen to this. You may very well be put to death. Your translations may have shall die, and that's one possibility, although the pointing of the Hebrew is much stronger than that. It means shall actually be put to death. Those who break the laws of God will eventually pay the consequences. We think immediately, of course, of those laws of God that carry social penalties, some of which involve capital punishment. They shall be put to death because they engage in a kind of behavior that is so reprehensible in the eyes of a holy God that our society must punish it in this way. Those very things, by the way, are the matters which our society today is tolerating and cannot find a way to take care of. Our society can't believe that anyone would believe in executing a person for adultery. And then of course, we shake our little empty heads and wonder why it is no one respects the marriage estate anymore. Our society can't believe we'd be so primitive as to believe in executing those who engage in public homosexual behavior. Then we shake our little empty heads and can't understand why this AIDS epidemic is upon us and we can't find any way to control it. The book of Proverbs says, he that is careless in his way shall die, shall be put to death. We need to learn to respect the commandments of God. Those who break the commandments of God, there are consequences. If they are not socially imposed, if they are not natural consequences of disobedience, then in the end they will be eschatologically imposed. God himself will impose the final death on those who disregard his commandments. Look at Proverbs 28, verses 4 and 5. It's one of my favorite passages in Proverbs. Not in a self righteous sense, but it's very important, I think, to gain this perspective and the confidence it can give you. They that forsake the law, praise the wicked, but such as keep the law, contend with them. Evil men do not understand justice, but they that seek Jehovah understand all things. Powerful words here. Those who forsake the law, praise the wicked. I mean, it almost makes me shiver when I stop to think about it. You watch the tv, you read the newspapers, and so forth. Who is it that is set forth in our society? Who is it that is lauded and applauded and praised in our society? The wicked. Not people who do quite quiet acts of charity, not people who live humble lives of moral principle, but people who flagrantly flaunt the law of God, whether it be in their own personal sexual mores, whether it be in the way they carry about in the financial world, whatever it may be. These people are ballyhooed and praised. And who is it that's praising them? The book of Proverbs tells you, those who forsake the law, the wicked and those who forsake the law are all in the same company and they love to promote one another. Now ask yourself, how much have you been doing by way of contending with such people. The Bible says if you're unwilling to contend with the wicked, you don't keep the law yourself. Wow. You see, keeping the law is not simply a matter of. Of your not committing adultery, of your not stealing, of your not bearing false witness. But keeping the law requires you to contend with those who do. Because when you don't raise your voice, when you don't lay in your testimony against those who break God's law, you consent with them. You say, as far as you're concerned, it's different strokes for different folks. You're just a relativist. And if you choose to live your life that way, that's fine with me. And God is offended by that because he not only wants our external conformity to his law, he wants us to take a stand for righteousness in our society, among our friends, and in our families. And so those who keep the law are going to contend with the wicked. But now notice verse 5. Evil men don't understand justice. Those who seek Jehovah understand all things. There are people who can't understand what fairness, what righteousness, and what justice demands in our society. I can't help but use as an illustration here the correspondence that I'm carrying on with Dr. Gordon Stein. Many of you know that I debated Dr. Stein at the University of California about a year and a half ago. Now he is an atheist, president of a number of atheist organizations, or the editor of journals and publications that promote atheism. Spends his time going to college campuses, setting up a booth and encouraging atheistic thought and people to give up religious conviction, that sort of thing. And after our public debate, we began to engage in correspondence back and forth. And you don't need to know all the details, the grist, the. That mill. But part of our correspondence of late has had to do with his challenge that if I believe in a God who is all good and believe in a God who is all powerful, then I've got a contradiction on my hands. Because evil exists. And obviously if God is all good, he wouldn't want evil in the world. And if God is all powerful, he'd be able to prevent evil in this world. And so if there's evil, he can't be all good and all powerful. And so then he says, what do you do with that, Dr. Bonson? I wrote back and I said very simply, well, I do two things with that. First of all, if one believes there's a morally sufficient reason for evil in this world, then God hasn't lost his goodness by allowing it and the fact that you, Dr. Stein, don't know what that morally sufficient reason is, and the fact that I can't satisfy you with what it is doesn't mean that God doesn't have it. So there is no logical problem here as long as I grant that God has ordained evil for some good reason. I realize that's not psychologically compelling, but it's logically sufficient to answer the problem. But secondly, I said there is no problem of evil if you're an atheist, because from your standpoint, you can't call anything evil anyway. All you can say is you don't like it, or a lot of people don't like it. And so in an atheist worldview, there's no standard by which anything can be called evil. The problem of evil is your problem, not mine. Because given my worldview, I can condemn those who torture little children, I can condemn rape, and I can condemn Hitler, but you can't. Well, he responded to that, that I was absolutely wrong. Because atheists do have a criterion by which to measure evil. And he told me what that criterion was. Would you like to know what an atheist says is the basis for good and evil? He says evil is whatever does not aid the survival of society or the human race. Whatever does not aid the survival of society, of the human race is to be seen as evil. I wrote back to him that I thought that that required a little more thought on his part. There were some problems, obviously. I ask him first, how would anyone know that that's the genuine criterion of evil? I mean, how do you know that not aiding the survival of the human race is evil? On what basis do you say that we're supposed to believe that? Because Dr. Stein says so. How did Dr. Stein find out about that? Secondly, I said there are plenty of atheists who wouldn't say that's the criterion of good and evil. So now why should we believe this atheist rather than another atheist? How are we supposed to resolve these differences in an objective fashion? I said, you choose that as your criterion, another atheist chooses another. That sounds like relativism to me. Thirdly, I said the criterion that you have proposed leads to rather absurd consequences. You see, my sitting down on a Saturday afternoon and watching a Dodger baseball game doesn't aid the survival of society or humanity. I trust it doesn't afflict any adverse consequences on it either. But the point is it's not aiding the survival of society. And so your criterion would have to condemn me for doing this. I must always be about doing something that's Helping humanity on that criterion. I realize he could reword his criterion and save himself that embarrassment, but I'm not in the habit of saving atheist embarrassment. I also think that the criterion he has proposed is extremely vague. We're supposed to do that which aids the survival of the human race. Well, does that condemn abortion or does that condone abortion? You see, it's so vague, you could look at it any number of ways. Some people say we're helping the human race by not having an overpopulation problem. Abortion's to be condoned. Others would say, well, you're actually killing part of the human race. Abortion is to be condemned. Well, where do you come down on that? You can state a vague principle, but it doesn't have any authority unless you can make relevant application of it. I also suggested that his criterion assumes the inherent value of the human race and of society. I said, are there not other values to be taken into account? Could say the value of honesty or love or dignity ever call for us to sacrifice the interest of humanity or the human race? I mean, after all, if torturing and killing an innocent person would actually aid our society, would we feel morally clean in doing it? Or are there not other things besides the survival of our society that we believe in? And so I concluded, if I can read this short paragraph from my letter said, you actually have no moral absolute. You have little more than a fuzzy personal opinion. And without a moral absolute, you're not philosophically justified in condemning anything at all. Hitler's genocide, racial hatred, rape, running over children for entertainment, or anything. Now, I realize that you do personally condemn such things as evil. My point is that in doing so, you make use of my worldview and not your own espoused worldview as an atheist. Well, now he's responded to these words, and Dr. Stein informs me that as it turns out, absolutes are not really necessary to be moral. And you know how he knows that? Because he said communist societies run smoothly and they even have hospitals and they don't believe in moral absolutes. So there you have it. To which I reply, one, communist societies don't run smoothly, but rather by repression and deceit and murder. Secondly, communists, as a matter of fact, believe in moral absolutes. They have the wrong ones, I realize, but philosophically, Dr. Stein's wrong. Communists believe in the moral absolutes dictated by the historical dialectic. Whatever advances the revolution is to be justified. And moreover, the fact that some communists run hospitals doesn't strike me as a very compelling argument, because here the issue is what view of the World comports with acting in a moral fashion, not a question of what individuals act in a moral fashion because it's a notorious truth. I reminded Dr. Stein this was true about him all the time that people act contrary to their worldview. They say one thing and act in another. There are people I went to college with, people like this back in the 1960s who absolutely insisted that everything is relative and that's why they could live their lives sexually any way they wanted. But they knew that it was unalterably wrong for us to be in Vietnam. Well, I realize they say that they are relativists, but in their lives they do believe there are some moral acts, absolutes. So the fact that communists may do things contrary to what their philosophy would require doesn't prove that you don't need moral absolutes. But I think you need to know that the most damaging, the Most incredible thing Dr. Stein said in response to me was that as a matter of fact, and I'm quoting him, there are no such things as genuine moral precepts in an atheist world. He said, when you think about it, the only moral rules are those of society, society's elders, and they are to be obeyed, if at all, for the sake of one's own self survival. I responded to him by saying, make sure you are loud and clear to the world on this point so people can be fully informed in their choice. Regarding atheism, I think you've condemned yourself out of your own mouth because your view reduces justice to whatever is, in the interest of the script, the elders of society, in which case Hitler's genocide being acceptable to the German leaders, is justice on your view or on the other hand, your view reduces justice to whatever social norms an individual chooses to obey for its self survival. If I think I can get away with rape and be happier for it and not get caught, then that is justice for me. I said on your view. There exists no moral absolute by which one may condone or condemn the actions of tyrants or the actions of criminals. Because in an atheist world there is no justice. The book of Proverbs tells us that Proverbs 28:5 evil men do not understand justice. They that seek Jehovah understand all things. You look around you. Why is it the courts are weighed down with lawsuits, people suing each other to death? Well, because the law of God is not being obeyed. The law of God says if you go to court and you make accusation against the person and that proves not to be true, then you paid the penalty. You were trying to get him to pay. I want you to know common sense should tell you that's going to cut down the lawsuits probably to less than 10% of what we now see. When a man says, I've got to have such a good case and be so principled about this that I'm willing to face that I am so convinced this other person is wrong and that I'm going to pay the price if I can't prove it, I'm going to go ahead with this. We live in a society that interferes in the marketplace in the name of so many grandiose generalized moral ideas and principles. And yet what ends up happening by our interference in the marketplace and the violation of God's law about those matters is that productive people are hurt. They have to worry about tax codes and they have to worry about whether the whim of politicians is going to change matters such as the tax code. And you don't know rationally how to plan your future, do you get an IRA or do you worry about what Congress is going to do next year about that? You see, unjust men are not able to run a society smoothly, and what happens is the productive people are hurt and special interests are advanced. Proverbs tells you very simply, evil men do not understand justice. Turn to Proverbs 28:7. Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son. But he that is a companion of gluttons shames His Father. Verse 9. He that turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. I wish that were written in large letters on a banner and hung up in the halls of Congress so that every time they open their sessions with a nice little chaplain walking in saying his little innocuous prayer, they would realize how abominable it is in the eyes of God to say a prayer when you have no intention of keeping the law of God. Don't appeal to God for His protection, and don't appeal to God for His grace and guidance when he has given it in his word. And you say we really don't care about it. And by the way, the separation of church and state prevents us from even worrying about what God has to say on any particular matter. The prayer of those who won't keep the law is not going to be heard. It's going to actually bring greater condemnation upon them. And if that's true in the halls of Congress, it's true in the halls of churches and in your own home too. If you're not willing to be submissive to the laws of God, don't bother to pray. Obviously, our keeping the law doesn't earn God's favor. Our keeping the law does not, as it were, buy off God so that he'll do things for us. But what God says is, you don't come in a submissive, prayerful way to me if you don't have a heart that is submissive to me. And a submissive heart is willing to keep the commandments. Proverbs 29:18. If we can take one more example here from the Book of Proverbs, where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint. But he that keeps the law happy is he. The word vision here, by the way, refers to revelation, a prophetic vision where there is no word from God, no revelation from God, then people will cast off restraint. Very simply, they run amok when there isn't any revelation of God's character. In a society, the people just do anything they want, as the Book of Judges teaches us. Then every man does what is right in his own eyes. But the person who keeps the law, that's the person who's happy. Remember what I told you, Trust and obey. But there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. That's the theme here of the Book of Proverbs. It's very obvious. It's something, however, that our society has yet to learn. I want to give you a few illustrations of this before we close this morning. Some of them have been borrowed from a 1972 article by Richard Mao in Worldview magazine, and many also are found in a recent article I've written for Transformation magazine entitled the Use of the Bible and Social Ethics and what we See all around us, it seems to me very simply, is the hatred of rules. The hatred of rules. One of the few beliefs that that unites men of differing philosophical convictions, differing social outlooks today is that it's wrong to submit to moral direction that's imposed from above or from outside ourselves. You look at Bertrand Russell's famous essay A Free Man's Worship, or read Julian Huxley's famous book on religion without revelation. Consider Jean Paul Sartre, the existentialist, railing against the bad faith that I did what I did in order to submit to someone else. Listen to Herbert Marcuse's call for liberation in our society. Each of these condemns, in one way or another, submission to external authorities. But it's not just intellectuals that do that. You see, in other circles it's called doing your own thing. Frank Sinatra's retirement song put it very well, didn't he the record shows I took the blows and did it my way. You see, whether you're an intellectual or an entertainer or just part of the popular culture, there's this hatred of having some external authority or law imposed upon us. In fact, the philosopher Patrick Noel Smith has charged that the commands that come from outside oneself, when we submit to them, we are submitting to an infantile morality. His words. He says it may be necessary in the development of a child, but it is not proper to an adult. In the very Same Book, Graham DeGraffis says there is no room in morality for commands, whether they are the fathers, the schoolmasters or the priests. Now listen, there is still no room for them when they are God's command. Mature people don't submit to commands. And that is a cruel. And these are two important philosophers in our age. They are seriously proposing submission to commands is infantile. Indeed, Jean Piaget, the rave Swiss psychologist of childhood development, has written a book entitled the Moral Development of the Child, in which he says the child naturally and normally passes out of a stage where commandments are received and accepted to a more mature stage where the child reflects for himself on the point of moral rules and appeals to reason to make his decisions. And Piaget calls this the autonomous stage of human development. The child changes his attitude toward the one who previously issued the commands, now seeing the commander as his equal. And that's why you don't receive commands, because you don't have to submit to an equal. Or think of the popularizer of Sigmund Freud, psychology Erich Fromm, who completely recasts the biblical story of man's fall into sin in his book Escape from Freedom. He there says, and I'm quoting him, acting against God's orders means freeing himself man from coercion, emerging from the unconscious existence of pre human life to the level of man acting against the command of authority. Committing a sin is in its positive human aspect the first act of freedom. That is the first human act. The act of disobedience as an act of freedom is the beginning of reason. Isn't that incredible? Very simply, Fromm is propounding a spontaneous individuality that does not submit to commandments. Anyone's commandments in life doesn't submit to any external power or authority because when you do so that's infantile morality. It's worse than that. It's less than human. It's less than submitting to reason to do that sort of thing. You say, well of course, the world says all that. The world hates commandments. I Have a word for you. It's not just the world who says that. Modern theologians are saying this too. Perhaps the best known, the most academically respected modern theologian in the last decade has been Wolfhard Pannenberg. Pannenberg, I'm quoting him, says the proclamation of imperatives backed by divine authority is not very persuasive today. Today, in a rationally organized world, people are accustomed to act according to reasons. To disobey an imperative that is proclaimed without clear reasons and effective sanctions will appear wrong to fewer and fewer people. Indeed, according to Panenberg, to quote another place, the view of Scripture as divine word that must be obeyed is an authoritarian element that prevents the church from performing adequately in secular society. Well then, Panenberg, what is the basis of morality? He says, well, we need to understand ourselves in terms of an evolving reality as a whole that we call God and have a future orientation. You say, yeah, well, what does that mean I'm supposed to do about racial hatred or about stealing or rape? Well, he concludes, and I'm quoting again, there simply is no definitive measure to tell us what is just for all times and in all situations. This is a modern theologian of repute, of course. In his infamous book Situation Ethics, Joseph Fletcher condemned any morality that submits to a specific scriptural commandment. He called that a prefab morality which serves as a kind of neurotic security device to simplify moral decisions. Those are his own words. To put it bluntly, in his words, law ethics is the enemy. You say so the world hates commandments. You understand that. But modern theologians hate commandments too. And you say, okay, but modern theology is divided between those who believe the Bible, these men obviously don't, and those who are evangelicals. Well, I've got a word for you. Evangelical theologians hate commandments too. That's how bad it's gotten. Sadly, in our day, evangelicals have done very little to stem the tide of this overwhelming antinomian sentiment. FF Bruce, one of the best known evangelical scholars of our day, has written that the Christian life is not to be lived by an objective external code of law, but rather by the inward impulsion of the Holy Spirit. Louis Smedes, who teaches at Fuller Seminary, contends that New Testament believers are to follow the will of God, not rules. I'm not sure why that contrast is put that way. Walter Martin has insisted that the New Testament ethic is one of love, not like the Old Testament ethic of law. John Zens tells us that the institution of the New Covenant brought a new law for God's people. One that's in the hands of Christ rather than in the hands of Moses. And so what I'm getting at here is that the book of Proverbs, don't worry about those esoteric, detailed, subtle insights. Let's go back and learn the basic fundamental morality that a wise man is to have the wise of heart, submit to commandments. That's a lesson we need to learn, the modern church needs to learn, and our world needs to learn. So there's a great deal of fallacious reasoning employed by such antinomians. And here's I'm going to. Very simply, you can get hold of this. Don't ever let it go. Whenever someone tells you that there are to be no rules, would you please remember that he's contradicting himself? Anyone who tells you there are to be no rules has created at least one rule, right? The rule that there are to be no rules. So anyone who insists that we are not to submit to rules is talking nonsense, because at least we're to submit to the rule that we're not to submit to rules. Modernist theologians not only have that logical problem on their hands, but they throw out the law of God along with the entire notion of an infallible and authority, authoritative revelation from God. The book of Proverbs constantly reminds us where there is no vision, where there's no revelation, people run amok. Our outlook on morality first and foremost presupposes a theological conviction that God exists and God has spoken infallibly and clearly in the Bible. And thirdly, remember that evangelical theologians who dismiss the notion of obedience to God's command commandments are not really thinking consistently and clearly, and they're not thinking biblically at all. When you set up an antithesis between the Spirit and the law, as FF Bruce does, you're going to have difficulty getting through Romans the eighth chapter. Because what Paul teaches there is that by the Spirit we fulfill the ordinance of the law. And when you set up an antithesis between law and love, as Walter Martin does, you're going to have a very difficult time reading the Old Testament. Because in the Old Testament you read the law that you are to love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself. And when Jesus cites that, he cites it as a law. So you can't have law on the one hand and love on the other, because love is a law. And beyond that, if you read the words of Jesus, you'll find out that if you love God, you will keep his law. If you love me, Jesus says, keep my commandments. Second John, the six verses verse says, and the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. This love law contrast is absolutely impossible from a biblical standpoint. And when you set up a contrast between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, as John Zems does, you're going to have a very difficult time reading Jeremiah 31 that teaches about the New Covenant. Because the New Covenant writes the law of God upon our hearts, you're going to have a hard time pitting Jesus against Moses. When you read the words of Jesus that send us to Moses to learn what righteousness is, as you find in Matthew the fifth chapter, you see, it's impossible to maintain this outlook and also hold on consistently to the infallibility and truth of God's word. Very simply, friends, we need divine commandments. Sin has so adversely affected our human capacity for clear moral deliberation and making decisions that are just and loving, and sin has rendered us all so prone to self deception and confusion in moral matters that any moral guidance we receive from outside of ourselves, from one who is perfectly understanding and righteous, one who knows what we need most for harmony and happiness in life, one who never makes a mistake and knows right from wrong, any guidance that we can receive from God in moral matters should be welcomed by us. The wise in heart will say, thank you God, I need light because I'm stumbling in darkness. Show me the way to walk. Give me your law graciously and the moral state of individual people, yourselves and those you know, and the moral state of mankind as a whole is so sorry today and so unreliable that moral guidance from God is entirely necessary to rectify our errors and show us the proper way to get on in life. You see, given what the Bible teaches as a whole about the sinful condition of man, and what the Bible teaches as a whole about the moral nature of God, given these things and the fact that God is infallibly, publicly revealed what kind of behavior is just and loving in the Bible, it makes perfectly good sense to treat the Lord's ethical directives as absolutes for our conduct, as commands to be obeyed, and obeyed on principle. There's nothing infantile about that. There's nothing sub human about that. There's nothing sub reasonable about that. It's the height of wisdom to say, if God says it, then it must be true. I must do it. So those who reject the notion of submitting to God's commandments either do not understand the human condition or they don't accept the authority of God. Those are the only options when all is Said and done. You don't really understand what the human condition requires, or you don't submit to the authority of God. Proverbs 10, the eighth verse. The wise in heart will submit, submit to commandments. Now, this morning we've pretty well excoriated our antinomian world. We've pretty well excoriated modern theologians who have given up God's law. We've excoriated atheists who don't know what justice is. And we've excoriated evangelicals who have this ridiculous approach that says the law can be set aside. But you see, before we end, don't you think we ought to do bit a little. Little roasting of ourselves too? You see, we say we believe in the law of God. We say that in this congregation. The Westminster Confession says that out is one of the articles of our religion. We give mouth to that, and we have a reputation for that. But I have to ask whether there aren't ways in which those who confess submission to God's commandments nevertheless avoid that submission. Anyway, you may want me to go back on vacation if I tell you about this, but before we end, can I mention at least six possibilities here? Six ways in which we perhaps are not so wise? We don't really submit to the commandments of God. The first way is, I think, in an arbitrariness that we're all guilty of an arbitrariness in choosing which are the really important commands to be kept and enforced. Obviously, the ones we keep or find convenient are important. And the ones that kind of impinge upon our lifestyle and will call for some changes we consider subordinate and secondary. We ask ourselves about Christian education. Why is it we don't have our children in Christian schools? Does the law of God say anything about that? Or have we found reasons why? Well, that's not so important now. Here's the second way. I think we have to contend with our own problems. Disobedience. We rationalize regarding our disinterest or our disobedience to provisions found in God's law. You know what rationalization is? It's finding a reason for something you wanted to believe anyway. And I find this is very difficult in pastoral counseling and calling on people if you want to bring up something that perhaps the law of God would correct in their lives, they have an incredible barrage of reasons why it nevertheless is okay for them to neglect that those are rationalizations. My friends, if we really are wise of heart, when the law says something, we're broken by it. We say, I'm wrong. You can't edge this way and edge that way and get around it. The law says you are to do this and not do that, and we've been caught. Let's not make excuses. I'm involved in a case involving divorce where both parties are guilty, mind you, but one in particular I have spent hours talking to. And I cannot believe I have never seen the human capacity for rationalization as great. There is a reason for disobedience to every provision of God's word because of this and that and what other people did and what he said and she did and so forth. My point here is not to step on someone else's toes, but to step on mine and yours. We all do that. Thirdly, traditionalism is a tremendous problem in our midst. Traditionalism and understanding what our duty is as laid down by the commands of God. You know, we fall into a comfortable habit of doing something, or we're brought up in a certain way, or we're used to our society or our group of friends doing things in a certain way. And when someone suggests maybe that's not right, let's talk about Sabbath patterns, okay? You bring this up to people and they'll say, oh, well, I mean, it can't be so wrong to have our kids in swim meets on the Lord's day. Well, when you don't do the highest calling of a child of God to come and stand with his people and praise his name, you prefer a swim meet to that. And people will look at you and say, well, of course it's perfectly swim. There's nothing wrong with swim meets. And of course there isn't anything wrong with swim meets unless they get in the way of submitting to God. It's not just the Sabbath. This is just one illustration. We all have our comfortable ways of doing things. And when the law of God speaks and we say, well, boy, maybe I haven't been doing things right, we shouldn't then start rationalizing. We should say, our traditions must change. Fourthly, we're all guilty. I think of an appeal to generality in the Bible over against details. When it comes to obedience. We all like to believe that we're supposed to be loving, follow the golden rule. I mean, as long as things are kept very general, boy, we can be firm on that. But you see, getting down to the details of what that means in the nitty gritty complexities of life, that gets tough. And you know what we do, we tend to do? We tend to say, well, I'm so busy, I can't stand study. That I don't have time for that. And of course, if you don't study it, then you don't know what's demanded. And if you don't know what's demanded, then you can't do it. Which means that your being willing to leave your knowledge at the level of generality is itself a sin. The foolishness that will not submit to commandments. Let me remind you of Jesus words in Luke 16:10. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful in much. And he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If you say, I don't have to pay attention to the little details, I can be unjust in that which is least. Jesus warned you, then you will be unjust in that which is much. You see, the Pharisees, it wasn't simply that they paid attention to little details like tithing and so forth, and then didn't look at the weightier matters of the law. Jesus condemns them because they weren't keeping the law. All Fifthly, I think we all tend to appeal to the tenor of God's commandments against the text of God's commandments. We're all willing to kind of put up with a generalized feeling of what is Christian and what is good and what is righteous, rather than actually going to the Bible and letting it speak to us out of the text. I think here especially of the refusal of people to live on principle to their marital vows. See, if you come in the text of the Bible, a detailed study of the text of the Bible says, you don't really have the right to divorce this person. And you say, well, yeah, but there are other things, even though I haven't understood them in context, that give me that right and I'm going to do it anyway. Don't think that God won't see your unsubmissive, foolish heart. And lastly, there is, I think, a true tendency on all of our parts to resist recognizing authorities in our lives put there by God to help us apply his commandments. We all have that do your own thing stuff flowing in us, don't we? We all tend to be a little unruly to our parents, don't we, children? We want to be our own boss. We all tend to resist teachers telling us what to do and how to do it and when to do it. We all tend, I can find, to be just a little resistant to police and their intrusions in our lives and getting away with traffic violations or whatever it may be. We all carry that over also into our church affairs. When the elders finally show up and say, hey, we really need to call you to greater faithfulness to Christ. And we say, who are you to be talking to me like that? There is that in us. We better see it, we better recognize it. Because if we don't, those of us who stand condemning the world for its hatred of God's law will find ourselves eventually condemned by the very same law. Now, wisdom is not a matter of esoteric insight. Wisdom is big and plain and obvious. Wisdom is submitting to God's commandments. Let's pray, Father. Were it not for the promises that you have given us in the Scriptures of forgiveness for the sake of Jesus Christ our Savior, we would run and hide. We would dare not lift up our voices to you this morning and expect that you would hear us. And so we thank you that you receive us not as those who are righteous, those who are obedient, those who have anything to morally commend themselves to you. For we come to you as those who are brokenhearted and humbled by our sin. For we see that even within ourselves, those who profess allegiance to your commandments, there is that worm of disobedience eating away. We do ask you to forgive us for our inconsistencies and our rationalizations. Forgive us for our unruliness and failure to submit to your commandments and to receive us not because we have obeyed, but because by your grace and through your Holy Spirit, we do have a desire to do so. Grant our desire, Father, give us greater obedience this week. Help us to grow up by the power of the Spirit into spiritual maturity, to have the strength to follow out our principles, to examine our hearts by the glass, glaring light of Scripture, so that all darkness might be chased away and you might put in its place a pure, undying love for the righteousness that is your own character. We ask you, Father, that you would honor our prayer for the sake of Jesus Christ and make us more and more like unto him, for we pray in his name. Amen.