Sermonette: God's Merciful Course Correction
Conquering the Deadly Leaven of Antinomianism
#1647s-pm
David F. Maas
Given 16-Apr-22; 22 minutes
description: After our Creator appraised the sad spiritual condition of our forebears on the Sinai (Deuteronomy 5:29), He set about making a course correction, namely crafting a new and improved Covenant involving a very intricate, complex heart transplant operation requiring a rigorous and challenging sanctification process. The end result would be the elimination of the deceitful Jeremiah 17:9 heart with its insane hatred toward God's holy and spiritual law (Romans 8:7), replacing it with the Jeremiah 31:31-33; Hebrews 8:10; 10:16 mind and heart, imbued with God's Holy Spirit, which is not only subject to God's law, but embraces it—removing the law from the external letter to the internal spirit, incorporating the very mind, character, and wisdom of Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 2:16). Though Jesus' half-brothers James and Jude warned of scoundrels leavened with anti-nomianism creeping into our fellowship, turning grace into license, including the current greater church of God as well as the entity which devolved from our previous fellowship, have become contaminated with law hatred, falling into the trap, warned by the apostle Peter in II Peter 3:16, that "the untaught and unstable will twist to their own destruction" including the faulty assumption that the "end of the law" in Romans 10:4, when instead it pointed to a more encompassing goal of emulating Christ, keeping the magnified spiritual law. The tutor or schoolmaster metaphor (often erroneously interpreted as meaning the law will be set aside when the grace of Christ replaces the law) also shows the progression of learning the law by a textbook (the letter of the law) to having internalized the knowledge (the spirit of the law). God's Holy and Spiritual Law will be in force perpetually (Psalm 119:152).
transcript:
Greetings Brothers and Sisters from Colton, California. Please turn over to Deuteronomy 5:29.
Deuteronomy 5:29 Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!
Our Creator then mercifully set about to make a course correction, namely crafting a new and improved Covenant involving a very intricate, complex heart transplant operation requiring a rigorous and challenging sanctification process.
As Paul Harvey would proclaim, for the rest of the story, let us proceed to Hebrews 8:10.
Hebrews 8:10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts: and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
The Amplified Bible provides additional insight:
FOR THIS IS THE COVENANT THAT I WILL MAKE WITH THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL AFTER THOSE DAYS, SAYS THE LORD: I WILL IMPRINT MY LAWS UPON THEIR MINDS [Even upon their innermost thoughts and understanding] AND ENGRAVE THEM UPON THEIR HEARTS [effecting their regeneration]. AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.
The apostle Paul, or whoever composed the book of Hebrews, quoted this scripture from Jeremiah 31:31-33. Almighty God has always been supremely adept at making smooth, spiritual course corrections, a marvelous trait of godly character which I highlighted in my October 15, 2014 Feast Sermon titled: “Spiritual Fine Tuning,” in which I had used the analogy the Round Robin technique, practiced by the California Highway Patrol to slow down traffic to move dangerous debris out of the roadway. I experienced one of those procedures on the 118 Freeway just a few days ago.
Both God Almighty and His appointed servants have had to divert God’s people from perilous missteps leading to irreparable harm or destructive bondage. Sadly, God’s chosen people perennially have continually had extreme difficulty staying out of ditches, at times veering totally off course into destructive heresies. Jacob’s offspring have always been a rebellious, stiff-necked people who adamantly never want to be told what to do [I certainly include myself int this appraisal], described by both Moses in Exodus 32:9 and Stephen in Acts 7:51-53 who blisters the ears of the hypocritical religious leaders. Stephen says, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you." Stephen sternly reminds them in verse 53 that they received God’s Holy Law by the direction of angels—but have not kept it.
Indeed, all of us realize that our natural carnal natures are hardwired to intensely hate God’s law, as the apostle Paul warns us in Romans 8:7 that “the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.” But God’s people, imbued at baptism with the earnest payment of God’s Holy Spirit (referencing Ephesians 1:14) ARE miraculously rendered SUBJECT to God’s Holy and Spiritual law (Romans 7:12,14) and are furthermore encouraged to embrace it, love it, and uphold it as something precious (that’s Romans 3:31).
Sadly, as Jesus’s half-brother Jude (as well as the apostle Paul) have warned us, “certain men have perennially crept into our fellowship, who have attempted to turn the grace of our God into lewdness [or license], namely law-breaking denying our Lord Jesus Christ (referencing Jude 1:4).
Kim Myers gave us examples last Sabbath in which various splinter groups in the Greater Church of God (an entity which includes us here) have compromised with God’s Holy and Spiritual Laws as well as major doctrines-a variety of what Josh Montgomery described in his March 25th article, “The Leaven of Double-Mindedness.”
Adding to the difficulty of maintaining a hermeneutically smooth course, the apostle Peter has kvetched about the complexity of many of Paul’s writings, pointing out that “some things are hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” (II Peter 3:16) In my humble opinion, if the apostle Paul had been blessed with the schoolmaster or copyeditor which I had the privilege to learn from for over a decade (truly an English Teacher’s teacher), namely my dear Brother in Christ, the late Charles Whitaker, the apostle Peter could have breathed easier while navigating or processing the apostle Paul’s complex, convoluted phrases, and tricky metaphors or slippery figures of speech.
Sadly, our previous fellowship, the WCG, having consumed the deadly antinomian leavening of mainstream Christianity, morphed into the so-called Grace Communion fellowship, ‘outprotestanting’ the Protestants in proclaiming that Grace has replaced the harsh Old Testament Law with the horrible burden of the Sabbath, and that Jesus Christ has removed all responsibility to keep the law if we only believe on His name.
Protestant theologians love to glom onto Romans 10:4, proclaiming gleefully that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes,” hopelessly ignorant of the full range of meaning for the Greek word telos, which Dr. George E. Howard in his insightful September 1969 article in the Journal of Biblical Literature, explained that the word telos, rather than denoting an end or putting a stop should actually be translated as “goal,” “aim,” or “purpose.”
Brothers and sisters, our goal, aim, or purpose, is to develop the mind, character, and wisdom of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, ardently keeping God’s holy and Spiritual Law flawlessly, perpetually, and eternally. The apostle Paul was never trying to denigrate or abolish the law in Romans 10:4, but rather, he was teaching that our goal in keeping the law is to become like Jesus Christ in thought, word, and deed. We all need to read and re-read Earl L. Henn’s insightful June 1995 Forerunner article, “Was God’s Law Nailed to the Cross?”
Remember, Jesus Christ is the living Word of God, the unleavened bread of eternal life which we commemorate beginning today for seven days, symbolic of our spiritual trek to God’s Kingdom. He is the perfect representation of how we must keep the law, what our motivation should be in keeping the law, and what the law really teaches—namely the unbounded love for Almighty God as well as the unbounded love for His Creation of beings created in His image (referencing Matthew 22, verses 36-40). Consequently, as we follow God’s laws and commandments, we must bear in mind that we keep them to help us develop Christ’s character, mind, and wisdom.
One of the current pastors in Grace Communion fellowship, the entity that devolved from the WCG, had the temerity to suggest that God the Father and Jesus Christ are not bound to the Law they created, obviously forgetting the insights of Habakkuk 1:13 that God Almighty’s “Eyes are too pure to look upon evil.” Sadly, we cannot yet say that about ourselves.
Hebrews 6:18 identifies two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. Sadly, we cannot yet say that about ourselves.
One of Paul’s metaphors which causes some individuals to stumble regarding law-keeping is the schoolmaster or tutor metaphor in Galatians 3:24, which states, “Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith,” alleging that this faith in Christ replaces that harsh Old Testament law, with all its regulations trying to tell us what to do.
Let us take a mature look at this schoolmaster analogy. I myself have served for over 50 years as a schoolmaster and have had, in turn, many schoolmasters over me, including my 8th Grade English Teacher, Miss Helen Bornemann, who had been a classmate of Laura Ingles Wilder. Miss Bornemann, teaching me the laws of grammar and rhetoric, would tell me repeatedly, “David, only an owl goes “to who” or my Algebra teacher Barry Noack, who would tell me repeatedly, “In a subtraction problem involving a positive and a negative number, you simply change the sign of the subtrahend and add.” Both of those teachers are no longer alive, but the laws of grammar and mathematics are still in my head thanks to their tutelage.
Likewise, the eternal laws of harmony and music theory drummed into me by my piano teacher, Mrs. Lucille Steadman, are still very much alive in my cranium and nervous system, even though she is no longer alive. Charles Whitaker’s tutelage on the laws of rhetoric: “David, use the active instead of the passive voice; get rid of this redundant or unidiomatic word; break this lengthy sentence up, or locate a proper antecedent for this pronoun” still resound throughout my mind” even though I no longer have him to guide my steps. One is able to move on from his mentor or schoolmaster only when he can do as well as the schoolmaster or even better. I feel extreme gratitude at the great number of my former students, many within the sound of my voice, which have applied the grammatical and rhetorical laws I have taught them, moving way beyond what I have taught them.
Brothers and sisters, we will all be schoolmasters in the Wonderful World tomorrow when we will be teaching our clients God’s holy and spiritual law full strength, from our permanent internal resources.
The disciples, during the night of their last Passover with Jesus Christ, must have been taken aback when their Schoolmaster proclaimed, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to my Father (referencing John 14:12). Jesus assures us that we prove ourselves to be His disciples by bearing much fruit (John 15:8).
Our Lord and Savior demands of His disciples then and now, works and law-keeping which magnify the love of God. We have to ignore the siren songs of the Protestant antinomians promising freedom from the law. We absolutely do not want freedom from God’s righteous, holy, and spiritual law. We want freedom from sin (which is defined as law-breaking I John 3:4). There is no freedom apart from the law; there is no faith without works; there is no grace without the law; there is absolutely no righteousness apart from the law; there is no godly love apart from the law because the love of God is that we keep His commandments (I John 5:3).
I would like to conclude this message with a metaphor from music theory. We could say that the ten commandments of music consist of the musical scale, namely the bass clef , G-B-D-F-A (Good-Boys-Do-Fine-Always), and the treble clef, E-G-B-D-F (Every-Good-Boy-Does-Fine). Upon these two staves, every musical composition in history has been composed. We could, I suppose, compare the musical notes as the letter of the law. As long as the musician is tied to the notes on the score, he or she doesn’t feel liberty in the law—but once the notes become a permanent part of the musician’s inner core or nervous system, freedom can be seen—as we easily witness from the piano performances of Alicia de Larrocha or Anna Fedorova, who no longer need the music because the music is permanent part of them, just as God’s laws will be permanently written into our hearts forever and God’s law will be our first nature rather than our second nature which will be with us forever (that is, Hebrews 8:10; 10:16, Jeremiah 31:31-33, Psalm 119:44, and Psalm 119:111, 152).
Brothers and sisters, God’s holy and spiritual laws will be in force for eternity- long, long after the last fleshly human being has been sanctified and glorifies- when we will all collectively own God’s law as our own precious family property.
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