Hebrews 8:10-12:

10 This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel
after that time, declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
11 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
12 For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
13 By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.

Galatians 3:21-25:

21 Is the law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. 22 But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

Romans 7:7-13:

7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”[b] 8 But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. 9 Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. 11 For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

In a sense, we are in a similar situation as Israel. We have lost the ability to recognize sin as sin. The Law of Love has become so distorted in our time that the original definition has been lost. Love has become purely an emotion and a justification for almost anything we care to do or excuse in others. It has no demands or consequences. “Christianity is a religion of love” is used to excuse anything. We no longer understand the parts of the Law that are the basis for our entire Western culture. The Law cannot save but without the principles of the Law we cannot preserve our own society. We hear Christ say the two greatest commandments are Love God and Love Your Neighbor but we don’t know what that means.

Second, what Chuck Colson said is true: “A community defends itself against chaos either by inner cops or outer cops. If there is no inner commitment to right behavior then there must be exterior force.” We will have more and more rules because we cannot handle freedom. Remember what Lord Moulton said about society needs people who will obey the unenforceable? On the one extreme is chaos and the other is tyranny. If we do not have an internal gyroscope or tradition or honor code we will have an imposed authority that will certainly not share the same values.

A World Split Apart. An address to the Harvard Class Day by Alexander Solzhenitsyn on June 8, 1978

“Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.

However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century’s moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.

In the time of the Judges every man did what was right in his own eyes. It does not say everyone did wrong – just what was right in their own opinion and definition. People don’t set out to do wrong but when left to themselves with no common values or consequences even their best intentions become corrupted.

What happened in the time of the Judges will happen again. When people do what is right in their own eyes it eventually creates chaos and when there is chaos they ask for a king. They no longer can remember the covenant so they cannot govern themselves.

No one sets out to become evil or depraved. We set out to become good. We want justice and fairness and goodness – but without God. Peter Kreeft in his book about “The Lord of the Rings” says, “Orcs are elves gone bad. The best things when corrupted become the worst things.” It’s true, isn’t it? All the good intentions of human religion end up in Romans 1 – their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.

Third, the whole intent of the Law was to prepare Israel to be a kingdom of priests – not simply spiritual body builders. The Law is like the scales a musician uses to enforce the basics. They are the practice but they are not the purpose. The purpose of the Law was to prepare the people for their purpose – to bless the world and bring praise to God.

Exodus 19:5-6:

5 Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6 you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’

2.  The foundation of the commandments is the first – it is the way God introduces Himself. “I am The Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

Not as the creator of the universe. Not as “first cause” or ground of being but in a personal relationship to them.

This is what is on the front of God’s business card – how He thinks about Himself. This is at the heart of who He is. I am “your God” who brought you out of slavery and these are the rules of the relationship in which we will live together. I am not a disconnected Supreme Force.

In fact, God’s language about his relationship with Israel would be incomprehensible to any self-respecting god or supreme force.

Hosea 11:1-4:

11 “When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 But the more they were called,
the more they went away from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals
and they burned incense to images.
3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize
it was I who healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts
a little child to the cheek,
and I bent down to feed them.

No other god in history can afford to do that and still be a sovereign.

3.  But it also established their relationship to Him. “This is who you are and your relationship to me.”

We resent what He wants us to remember. We are fine with having “humble roots” as long as they serve to highlight how far we have come from there. “Yes, that is who we were but you don’t need to keep bringing it up.”

We are no longer slaves or servants. We are free people. We are volunteers. We are members. And you are “the man upstairs”, “my co-pilot”, my “personal spiritual trainer”.

But God says, “I am who I say I am and you are who I say you are.” The whole basis of the relationship is gratitude. “All that I have is yours and comes from your hand.” I was a slave in Egypt and You brought me out.

4.  Why? So they won’t forget God when they enter Canaan. Canaan is the promised land flowing with milk and honey but it is also a dangerous place. There are external enemies and internal enemies – and it is the internal enemies who are the most lethal.

There are idols the people in the land worship and spend their lives serving and you will find yourselves being gradually seduced by them – because they make sense. They will appeal to your natural desire for security, success, power, meaning, purpose, religion, health, and a good life – but they will make you forget me without even noticing. Forgetting me will destroy you in time. Remembering me and remembering who you are – a kingdom of priests and a peculiar people – is your only hope.

Joy Davidson, the brilliant wife of C.S. Lewis, in her book “Smoke on the Mountain” wrote “the whole Old Testament is the story of Israel forgetting God. We lose God not by clear conviction but by vague drifting, not by denying God but losing interest in Him.” Her husband put it this way in the “Screwtape Letters”: “… the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

Hebrews 2:1 describes it as drifting like a boat that becomes untied from a dock and is carried in the current. It’s not open rebellion but a loss of interest.

And when we forget God and his rules we forget who we are and instead of a kingdom of priests we become a kingdom of pawns. We want the things the world wants and we want the blessings of practical religion.

Isaiah 30:10-11:

10 They say to the seers,
“See no more visions!”
and to the prophets,
“Give us no more visions of what is right!
Tell us pleasant things,
prophesy illusions.
11 Leave this way,
get off this path,
and stop confronting us
with the Holy One of Israel!”

Deuteronomy 8:6-20:

6 Observe the commands of the Lord your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. 10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the Lord your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today. 19 If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed. 20 Like the nations the Lord destroyed before you, so you will be destroyed for not obeying the Lord your God.

We turn our attention from God to ourselves. We are no longer here to serve but to be served. Our goal becomes finding a life of meaning for ourselves or self-fulfillment or doing great things for God. We don’t want to waste our lives being invisible or unnoticed. We want to make a difference…and we forget God. Perhaps the most seductive idol in our society today is self-fulfillment and self-identity.

5.  So, that is why we still study the Law.

We need to remember who God is in the midst of all the talk about other gods and other paths to God. He alone is God.

We need to remember what He has done for us and who we are. He brought us out of slavery – but into a life of being a servant and not a volunteer.

We need to remember why He did that. To be a kingdom of servants to bring him praise.