Break one and you're done!

Visiting Ohio Amish country last month for a Bible conference, I noticed inside the old diner in downtown Berlin was posted a copy of the Ten Commandments, only a few feet from a rack of salvation tracts.

In Jordan’s 8:30 A.M. Sunday morning radio show on WYLL 1160 Chicago (which can be heard live over their website) he commented, “You ever hear anybody say, ‘We need to post the Ten Commandments on the school house door or the court house wall’? One of the silliest things I ever heard in my life is for some Christian preacher to say, ‘We need to post the Ten Commandments.’

“Listen, if you want to go around posting the Ten Commandments, you need to convert to Judaism because that’s what it is! Don’t be some Christian preacher, some Christian pundit, some Christian promoter, promoting the Ten Commandments and think you’re promoting Christianity; you’re promoting Judaism.

“Galatians 3:10 says, ‘For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’

“The curse of the law is that you can’t keep it. That’s why the Bible says 'Christ hath REDEEMED us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.’ (Gal. 3:13)

“What the law did was point out the failure of man. That’s why the law gives strength to sin because it keeps pointing out, in spite of how good you do, you don’t do it perfectly. You see, the law is weak through your flesh because you can’t keep it. I Corinthians 15:56 says, ‘The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

*****

“Do you know there are 613 commandments in the law? You usually hear about the first ten, you probably can’t name them, and if you could, it would be hard to get them in order. If you could name them in order, you couldn’t pick out two of them that you actually do perfectly.

“James 2:10 says, ‘For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.’

“You go around, stick out your chest and bust your buttons about keeping six or seven of the Ten Commandments and yet there’s 606 more that you didn’t even know about and you break about half of them in a lifetime.

“All you got to do is break one and you’re guilty of ALL of it. How many times do you have to steal something before you’re a thief? How many times you have to murder someone before you’re a murderer?

*****

“The law says, ‘You have these responsibilities. Here’s a command, or here’s a promise, that’s connected with a condition of your performance, and you don’t perform so you don’t get the blessing.’ That’s what law is.

“Is it a good work to shovel your neighbor’s snow? Sure it is. But then, why did you do it? That’s really the question. If you did it just to be proud, show how good a neighbor you are and make everybody love you, what is that? That’s self-gratification. That’s why Paul says, ‘The thought of foolishness is sin.’

“Now, if you went out there just to do it because it’s the right thing to do, and this is the kind of thing you do because this is who you are, that’s a little different motivation.

“That’s why in Matthew, Jesus tells them, ‘You’ve heard it said, Thou shalt not kill. But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.’

“You know those verses? The one everyone quotes is, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’

“But do you know what Christ does? He takes the law and internalizes it and says, ‘It isn’t just what you do; it’s who you are that’s being revealed by what you do.’ You know what you need? You need that taken out of the way.

“What’d Christ do with that system? He abolished it! I love that. That means He wiped it out. The verse says, ‘Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace.’ (Eph. 2:15)

*****

“You remember when Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and said, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, if you want peace and prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, open this gate and tear this wall down’?

“That wall represented the Iron Curtain. That term came from a speech Winston Churchill gave up in Minnesota about an ‘iron curtain falling across Europe.’ He talked about the division of the Cold War. ‘Get rid of this symbol of that division!’

“Paul said, ‘You know what Jesus Christ did with the law? He tore it down. He got rid of it. He abolished it. Now how did he do that?’

/;.

“Colossians 2:14 says, ‘Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.’

“When you blot it out, you wipe it out. You abolish it. You take it out of the way. He says ‘blotting out’ because it’s talking about something that’s written down that was against us. That’s what the law is. It isn’t for you; it’s against you. If you don’t get that out of God’s Word, you’ll never get the issue of religion and the law.

“It’s the Cross work of Christ that sets us free, not only from sin but from the condemnation of the law against our sin.”