Grace Bible Church
Pastor Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Weekly Review Tree of Life Week Ending 091017
Dispensation of the Mosaic Law. The Doctrine of Human Freedom.
We began with a simple principle: Keeping the Mosaic Law in and of itself is not happiness. The Law merely provides a place where happiness can live and be sustained.
Some call this the edification complex of the soul and some call it the soul structure, either way the house that is built is built within your soul. And this is why the apostle Paul said in EPH 4:27, “Do not give the devil an opportunity = a topos — room in your soul.
Because if you do, things like ACT 5:3 will happen when Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and kept back some of the money for themselves and lied to the apostles by saying that they gave all the proceeds to the church. Ananias with his wife Sapphira gave Satan a room in their soul.
2CO 2:10-11, But whom you forgive anything, I forgive also; for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, in order that no advantage be taken of us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
This is why the apostle Paul said in EPH 6:11, Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
EPH 6:16, in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one.
There is a house that a believer builds when he fulfills the first commandment which has to do with loving God which is revealed by your love for Him and putting Him first in all areas of your life.
PRO 24 really talks about this house. PRO 24:1, Do not be envious of evil men, Nor desire to be with them;
You cannot love God and put God first in your life with any type of mental attitude sins. You cannot love God and be a jealous person. Jealousy leads to pettiness which destroys the believer. Jealousy destroys any form of spirituality.
In fact, mental attitude sins destroy both moral, battle, and spiritual courage. Nerve is moral courage in battle. You cannot be a mature believer until you are authority oriented. You must be willing to take discipline whether fair or unfair. Only arrogance wants to start at the top.
The mature believer doesn’t slander or malign, PRO 24:2, For their minds [the evil person] devise violence, And their lips talk of trouble.
Verbal arrogance is destructive to the soul. In fact, anything disastrous to the soul is disastrous to loving God and putting God first in your life. Genuine spirituality functions from integrity, right priorities, and a true scale of values.
A spiritual believer is not obsessed with violence. A person obsessed with violence makes a poor soldier. The regenerate concept of spirituality is found in PRO 24:3-4, By wisdom a house is built, And by understanding or doctrinal incite it is established; And by knowledge the rooms are filled With all precious and pleasant riches.
Spiritual growth to maturity is the greatest help for loving God and putting God first. The house is the construction of the edification complex of the soul through the metabolization of doctrine. The house is almost built when you are in spiritual self-esteem and spiritual autonomy and is completed in spiritual maturity.
This is something you prepare for all of your life if you truly do love God and put Him first. Preparation for loving God and putting God first demands accumulating in your soul certain technical data. You must also have doctrinal preparation, if you are a believer.
Therefore, the spiritual believer strengthens his love for God, PRO 24:5-6, A wise man or woman is strong, And a man of knowledge increases power. For by wise guidance you will wage war, And in abundance of counselors there is victory.
Through the art of building a house in your soul for God you will execute spiritual warfare, therefore victory resides in the greatness of the one who does so.
If not = LOSER
1JO 2:28, And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.
Now, in order to understand this we have also begun to note certain principles for freedom contained in the Decalogue, where it is necessary to study them exegetically, beginning with verse 1-3 in the book of Exodus 20.
EXO 20:1-3, Then God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me.”
Therefore, the whole purpose of the Ten Commandments is to show you the principles by which the freedom of your soul can be maintained; and this individual freedom in turn provides the objectivity necessary to protect the freedom of you and your nation. Also notice that God is the Source of Freedom.
In EXO 20:2 we read again, “I, the Lord your God, is the one who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
In the Hebrew there is no verb in this verse. The “am,” is in italics, it has been inserted, and is misleading. In the correct declaration, “I, the Lord thy God,” God is not establishing His existence, but is establishing Himself as the Source. The Source of all human freedom is God Himself; and God, in His grace, sets up laws to protect freedom, laws to punish violation of freedom and laws regarding self-enslavement.
The principle is that the Lord is saying, “I have caused you to go forth out of the land of Egypt.” They didn’t earn their freedom; they didn’t deserve it; they didn’t work for it — it was the GRACE OF GOD ALL THE WAY!
This introduces a category of doctrine known as the Doctrine of Human Freedom. And although we will not study this Human freedom doctrine in detail, there are some important principles we need to know concerning human freedom and the Decalogue or the 10C:
- Freedom Demands Responsibility.
Responsibility is necessary for freedom to be maintained. The Mosaic Law demands personal responsibility on the part of every member of the human race. This is why HOS 8:7 says For they sow the wind, And they reap the whirlwind.
However, once they were free from physical slavery, the Jews had the responsibility of not only exercising their freedom, but also of protecting and maintaining their freedom.
- Human Freedom is a Primary Factor in the Resolving of the Angelic Conflict. Human volition must be intact to accept or reject Christ as Savior. Believing in the Lord Jesus Christ requires the non-meritorious function of volition. This is why “whosoever or whoever” can be saved in the midst of this conflict.
- Human Freedom also Gives mankind the Opportunity for a Relationship with God. Through the operation of human freedom, God in His grace gives man the opportunity to have a relationship with Himself. This is turn gives meaning, purpose and definition to life. All true purpose in life must be related to God.
- God has Designed Laws for the Protection of Freedom in the Angelic Conflict. Without divine provision for the stability of the soul, man is no match for Satan, “the god of this world” (2Co 4:4).
Without God’s principles for maintaining freedom, there would be no norms or standards to guide the soul and no restraints on the old sin nature; and that would result in the old sin nature’s dictating to the soul (emotional revolt of the soul).
Legalism is the greatest enemy of all of God’s grace provisions, and the Decalogue has been distorted and abused by legalism. Legalism is Satanic in origin and is part of Satan’s strategy in the angelic conflict to destroy the true purpose of the Ten Commandments, and in this way destroy human freedom.
A true understanding of the function of the Decalogue or the 10C will free you from some of the legalistic traps and self-righteous attitudes that have existed historically during the Church Age, not to mention all the legalism prior to the Church Age!
- All Sin, Known or Unknown Involves the Action of the Volition.
The only way you can avoid deliberately sinning is to have your volition removed from your soul; and this is impossible, unless you are an individual who is not mentally sound.
In the Garden the Lord Jesus Christ held Bible class every day for the man and the woman. Subsequent events reveal that Adam understood the issue involved in God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not eat,” given in GEN 2:17, but that the woman did not.
After the woman sinned, as recorded in GEN 3:13, she said, “The serpent beguiled me…” Hers was an unknown sin, as it were.
For in GEN 3:13, Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” And the woman said,” The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
2PE 2:1-3, But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.
2PE 2:12-13, But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery and that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children;
Since the serpent beguiled the woman, it is evident that she had developed an unstable soul in innocence. Even under perfect condition, with Jesus Christ doing the teaching, half of the assembly which one of the assembly of two was not always tuning in!
Read carefully GEN 3:6, When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate;
Even though she did not understand what she was doing, her volition was involved. Adam, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was doing. The fact that both were involved in the sin is stated clearly in 1TI 2:14; but there was a difference: the woman was deceived, but Adam deliberately sinned.