Yesterday, I read great sermon and wish to share some quotes from it. I find them great.
Grace rescues us and enables us to obey.
-
God’s grace in Christ, when we understand it, makes us so grateful to him that we become zealous for good works.
-
Our gratitude is also empowered by God, because he gives us his Holy Spirit to enable us to devote ourselves to good works. When we see this, then Psalm 119 makes perfect sense to us: The psalmist goes on and on about how much he loves God’s law and how beautiful it is and how he longs to keep every bit of it. This is the heart of someone who has been saved by God’s grace in Christ—someone who wants to thank God forever with a life spent pleasing God.
-
The law is too high for us—we can never keep it. We need a Savior. We need Jesus.
Such a great salvation as this makes us grateful to God—and the law teaches us how to say thanks to him with our whole lives.
But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.
-- 1 Thessalonians 5:21
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
-- Philippians 1:6
I don't think that the Laws in of themselves are hard to keep, though we all tend to fall short of keeping them 100% of the time.
I agree with Paul that the Laws were made to put the way to sin, pint the way to a people that need guidence to understand sin as the Hebrews needed after centuries in bondage and being exposed to so much pagan customs.
It is important for us to understand that some were even created to NOT be possible to keep, as per Ezekiel 20:
18 “I said to their [l]children in the wilderness, ‘Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers or keep their ordinances or defile yourselves with their idols. 19 I am the Lord your God; walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and [m]observe them. 20 Sanctify My sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that you may know that I am the Lord your God.’ 21 But the children rebelled against Me; they did not walk in My statutes, nor were they careful to observe My ordinances, by which, if a man observes them, he will live; they profaned My sabbaths. So I [n]resolved to pour out My wrath on them, to accomplish My anger against them in the wilderness. 22 But I withdrew My hand and acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out. 23 Also I swore to them in the wilderness that I would scatter them among the nations and disperse them among the lands, 24 because they had not observed My ordinances, but had rejected My statutes and had profaned My sabbaths, and their eyes were [o]on the idols of their fathers. 25 I also gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live; 26 and I pronounced them unclean because of their gifts, in that they caused all [p]their firstborn to pass through the fire so that I might make them desolate, in order that they might know that I am the Lord.”’
