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Discussion Forum : Articles and Sermons : I love the law - it is my best friend and personal trainer.

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 Re:

I was born way after the great revolt in 1956. Before and right after 1956 there was a fierce persecution however after that the persecution softened. All that time as it is also written in Wurmbrand's book there was a "shop window" church that had a pact with the state. Everyone, not only christians learned how to read between the lines and receive coded truth. Some people who seemingly served the state were just and merciful in secret. Hungarians knew well how to resist authority, it is rooted in our history as we often were under foreign occupation. This backfires sometimes as we could be also unjust and rebellious against our leaders. I know of a relative who was arrested for protesting against the state's taking over christian schools, but later got released, i heard that the state limited the number of converts a church was allowed to have, and the state sent informants to sit in the pews to report any suspicious activity in the church. A wife of a preacher could not get a teaching job and his children could not (easily) study to become teachers. In schools christianity was constantly ridiculed. Free pentecostal churches were harassed by the police. Till I came to the US I always thought that this kind of soft persecution was natural...

 2016/5/29 14:56









 Re:

My sister those in restricted nations due regard persecution as part of their walk with Christ. But when they get to this nation there so surprised about the lack of persecution in America. I think even Richard Wurmbrand lamented about a sleeping Church in America. And that was in the 1960s when he came to this nation. Imagine what the church is now.

Brother Blaine

 2016/5/29 15:14









 The Old Covenant was a school of grace

THE FIRST COVENANT by Andrew Murry

"Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice, and keep My covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me."-Ex. xix. 5.

"He declared unto you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, even ten commandments. "-DEUT. iv. 13.

"If ye keep these judgments, the Lord thy God shall keep unto thee the covenant, "DEUT. vii. 12.

"I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, which My covenant they brake."-JER. xxxi. 31, 32.

WE have seen how the reason for there being two Covenants is to be found in the need of giving the Divine and the human will, each their due place in the working out of man's destiny. God ever takes the initiative. Man must then have the opportunity to do his part, and to prove either what he can do, or needs to have done for him. The Old Covenant was on the one hand indispensably necessary to waken man's desires, to call forth his efforts, to deepen the sense of dependence on God, to convince of his sin and impotence, and so to prepare him to feel the need of the salvation of Christ. In the significant language of Paul, "The law was our schoolmaster unto Christ." "We were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith, which should afterwards be revealed." To understand the Old Covenant aright we must ever remember its two great characteristics ---the one, that it was of Divine appointment, fraught with much true blessing, and absolutely indispensable for the working out of God's purposes; the other, that it was only provisional and preparatory to something higher, and therefore absolutely insufficient for giving that full salvation which man needs if his heart or the heart of God is to be satisfied.

Note now the terms of this first Covenant. "If ye will obey My voice and keep My covenant, ye shall be unto Me a holy nation." Or, as it is expressed in Jeremiah (vii. 23, xi. 4), "Obey My voice, and I will be your God." Obedience everywhere, especially in the Book of Deuteronomy, appears as the condition of blessing. "A blessing if ye obey" (xi. 27). Some may ask how God could make a covenant of which He knew that man could not keep it. The answer opens up to us the whole nature and object of the Covenant. All education, Divine or human, ever deals. with its pupils on the principle- -faithfulness in the less is essential to the attainment of the greater. In taking Israel into His training, God dealt with them as men in whom, with all the ruin sin had brought, there still was a conscience to judge of good and evil, a heart capable of being stirred to long after God, and a will to choose the good and to choose Himself. Before Christ and His salvation could be revealed and understood and truly appreciated, these faculties of man had to be stirred and wakened. The law took men into its training, and sought, if I may use the expression, to make the very best that could be made of them by external instruction. In the provision made in the law for a symbolical atonement and pardon, in all God's revelation of Himself through priest and prophet and king, in His interposition in providence and grace, everything was done that He could do, to touch and win the heart of His people and to give force to the appeal to their self-interest or their gratitude, their fear or their love.

Its work was not without fruit. Under the law, administered by the grace that ever accompanied it, there was trained up a number of men whose great mark was the fear of God, and a desire to walk blameless in all His commandments. And yet, as a whole, Scripture represents the Old Covenant as a failure. The law had promised life; but it could not give it (Deut. iv. 1 ; Gal. iii. 21). The real purpose for which God had given it was the very opposite: it was meant by Him as "a ministration of death." He gave it that it might convince man of his sin, and might so waken the confession of his impotence, and of his need of a New Covenant and a true redemption. It is in this view that Scripture uses such strong expressions- "By the law is the knowledge of sin: that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may become guilty before God." " The law worketh wrath." "The law entered, that the offence might abound." "That sin by the commandment might appear exceeding sinful." "As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse." "We were kept under the law, shut up to the faith, which should afterwards be revealed." "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith." The great work of the law was to discover what sin was: its hatefulness as accursed of God; its misery, working temporal and eternal ruin; its power, binding man down in hopeless slavery; and the need of a Divine interposition- as the only hope of deliverance.

In studying the Old Covenant we ought ever to keep in mind the twofold aspect under which we have seen that Scripture represents it. It was God's grace that gave Israel the law, and wrought with the law to make it work out its purpose in individual believers and in the people as a whole. The whole of the Old Covenant was a school of grace, an elementary school, to prepare for the fullness of grace and truth in Christ Jesus. A name is generally given to an object according to its chief feature. And so the Old Covenant is called a ministration of condemnation and death, not because there was no grace in it-it had its Own glory (2 Cor. iii. 10-12)-but because the law with its curse was the predominating element. The combination of the two aspects we find with especial clearness in Paul's epistles. So he speaks of all who are of the works of the law as under the curse (Gal. iii. 10). And then almost immediately after he speaks of the law as being our benefactor, a schoolmaster unto Christ, into whose charge, as to a tutor or governor, we had been given, till the time appointed of the Father. We are everywhere brought back to what we said above. The Old Covenant is absolutely indispensable for the preparation work it had to do; utterly insufficient to work for us a true or a full redemption.

The two great lessons God would teach us by it are very simple. The one is the lesson of SIN, the other the lesson of HOLINESS. The Old Covenant attains its object only as it brings men to a sense of their utter sinfulness and their hopeless impotence to deliver themselves. As long as they have not learnt this, no offer of the New Covenant life can lay hold of them. As long as an intense longing for deliverance from sinning has not been wrought, they will naturally fall back into the power of the law and the flesh. The holiness which the New Covenant offers will rather terrify than attract them; the life in the spirit of bondage appears to make more allowance for sin, because obedience is declared to be impossible.

The other is the lesson of Holiness. In the New Covenant the Triune God engages to do all. He undertakes to give and keep the new heart, to give His own Spirit in it, to give the will and the power to obey and do His will. As the one demand of the first Covenant was the sense of sin, the one great demand of the New is faith that that need, created by the discipline of God's law, will be met in a Divine and supernatural way. The law cannot work out its purpose, except as it brings a man to lie guilty and helpless before the holiness of God. There the New finds him, and reveals that same God, in His grace accepting him and making him partaker of His holiness.

---------------

look at what he said here

"In studying the Old Covenant we ought ever to keep in mind the twofold aspect under which we have seen that Scripture represents it. It was God's grace that gave Israel the law, and wrought with the law to make it work out its purpose in individual believers and in the people as a whole. The whole of the Old Covenant was a school of grace, an elementary school, to prepare for the fullness of grace and truth in Christ Jesus."

 2016/5/29 15:15









 Re: The Old Covenant was a school of grace

John says "We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." 'The law was given through Moses;grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ." "For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace." What the law demands, grace supplies. The contrast that John pointed out is expounded by Paul; The law came in so that transgression would increase," and the way be prepared for the abounding grace more exceedingly. The law demands, but makes no provision for its demands being met. The law burdens and condemns and slays. It can awaken desire but cannot satisfy it. It can rouse to effort but cannot secure success. It can appeal to motives, but it gives no inward power beyond what man himself has. And so, while warring against sin, it becomes its very ally in giving the sinner over to a hopeless condemnation. "The power of sin is the law." (1 Cor 15:56) (The Two Covenants, Andrew Murray)

 2016/5/29 15:38









 Re:

"And so, while warring against sin, it (law) becomes its very ally in giving the sinner over to a hopeless condemnation."
True.
So how do we prevent this situation? By not listening to the law in the first place? NO! We prevent this situation by not trying to war sins while we are in the flesh but cry out to Jesus, let the flesh die that's when we can walk by the spirit.
If we avoid the law because it might bring condemnation what will move us out from our fleshly state?

 2016/5/29 17:29
proudpapa
Member



Joined: 2012/5/13
Posts: 2936


 

A.W. Tozer : NO ONE CHANGES GOD'S LAW :

Because we live in a period known as the age of God's grace, it has become a popular thing to declare that the Ten Commandments are no longer valid, no longer relevant in our society. With that context, it has become apparent that Christian churches are not paying attention to the Ten Commandments. But Dwight L Moody preached often in the commandments. John Wesley said he preached the commands of the Law to prepare the way for the gospel. R. A. Torrey told ministers if they did not preach the Law they would have no response to the preaching of the gospel. It is the Law that shows us our need for the gospel of salvation and forgiveness! It is accurate to say that our binding obligation is not to the Old Testament Law. As sincere Christians we are under Christ's higher law-that which is represented in His love and grace. But everything that is morally commanded in the Ten Commandments still comprises the moral principles that are the will of God for His people. God's basic moral will for His people has not changed!
https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/articles/index.php?view=article&aid=4970

 2016/5/29 18:43Profile









 Re:

2nd Timothy 3:16
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

 2016/5/29 18:52









 Re:

Colissians 2:16-17

Therefore do not let anyone act as your judge in regard to food, or drink and respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day--things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

My goodness folks. If the substance belongs to Christ, why are we looking at the shadow. Hebrews 10:1 tells us,

For the law, since it if it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things,

Brothers and sisters we have the substance of Christ. Why do we want to go back to the shadow to look at God.

If I wanted to go to the California Redwoods to see a redwood. I would not look at the shadow of the Redwood. But I would look at the actual Redwood itself. The law is only a shadow of Christ. But we can look to Jesus himself. He is the substance and the reality of God himself. Let us look to Jesus. Not to Moses or the decalogue.

My thoughts.

 2016/5/29 19:22









 Re:

When we read the ceremonial part of the law we keep it in mind that it is a shadow, but still helps us understand the real thing. For example the expression "Jesus is a lamb" is much easier to understand when we know the ceremonial law about the Passover lamb.The moral part of the law such as "do not kill" has not changed and is not a shadow.

 2016/5/29 20:05









 Re:

Quote:
by bearmaster on 2016/5/29 15:14:28

My sister those in restricted nations due regard persecution as part of their walk with Christ. But when they get to this nation there so surprised about the lack of persecution in America. I think even Richard Wurmbrand lamented about a sleeping Church in America. And that was in the 1960s when he came to this nation. Imagine what the church is now.

Brother Blaine



Yes, the church is in a deep slumber... Brought about by false doctrine (easy believism and false security). Only those who live godly lives suffer persecution. What does that tell you?

Do you know what the law of Christ is?

Anything He tells you to do (which is always motivated by love).



 2016/5/29 20:09





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