Law and Order
Category: Salvation & Gospel
Key Passage: Psalm 19
Speaker: Tom Wallace
Date: October 4, 2020
Well, I am delighted to be here with you this morning. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve had the last two or three weeks cancel out on me, and so you have to bounce with the ball in times like these. I was scheduled to be over in Clinton, North Carolina, a couple Sundays ago. They had to cancel that out. And then I was supposed to go to Cleveland, Ohio. We canceled that out. And then last Sunday I was supposed to be in Shreveport, Louisiana. We canceled that out.
Now, I got to come today and tonight, and then I’m supposed to be in Jay Main, right out of Boston, Massachusetts next Sunday, and we’re just kind of iffy on that one. But what a joy to have somebody to preach to. I’m going to talk to you about law and order this morning. Law and order.
If you’ll turn to Psalm 19, we started in Psalm 19 in the Sunday school hour, and I want to go back there again and put a little different emphasis. The law of the Lord is perfect, one of the verses says.
Now, we’re going to divide up Psalm 19 into three sections, and I want to show you, first of all, God up in the sky. You don’t have any trouble finding him if you’ll look up in the sky. I get up 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, go out on my back porch and see two stars. The moon is here, the two stars.
And I just say, Lord, you’re still in charge. I’m happy I’ll go back to bed. The Lord is a Lord of order. Everything is where it’s supposed to be if he has his way. Okay, God in the sky. The Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God in verse 1.
Now, starting in verse 7, we see God in the scriptures. You look in the Bible and you’ll see God is there everywhere you go in the Bible. And then the last few verses, 12 through 16, deals with God in the saint. The Bible says, “Who can understand his errors? Who can understand himself?” And so we see God in the sky and God in the scriptures, and then God in the saints, or you and me.
Let me read for you these first six verses. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, night unto night showeth knowledge. There’s no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth from the end of heaven and his circuits to the end of it, and there is nothing that is hid from the heat thereof.”
The word heat there is our word x-ray. There’s nothing hid from God’s x-ray. And so this is talk about looking at God in the sky and on the earth through the trees and the animals and through all of creation. So God is everywhere.
Now, in verse 7, it speaks about the word of God in the scripture says the law of the Lord—that’s the Bible—is perfect concerning converting the soul. This word perfect means absolutely dotting every i, crossing every t, every comma is in the right place, every doctrine is true. There is no imperfection in the Bible.
“The law of the Lord,” the Bible, “is perfect converting the soul, and the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandments of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eye. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous, all together more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping them there’s great reward.”
Now, all that has to do with the Bible and our relationship to it. So if I can get right with God in the first six verses, then the next few verses will help me to be right with the Bible. And then with the combination of being right with God and right with the Bible, then automatically I can be right with myself in what I believe, the way I act, for the places I go, the things I do, and the decisions I make.
It says, “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret fault. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins and let them not have dominion over me.” And then I shall be upright and I shall be innocent of the great transgression, original sin. I can be totally forgiven and cleansed from the original sin curse. I can get saved. And my sins are gone, gone, gone. Yes, my sins are gone.
And then he closes by saying, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable unto thee in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.” So there we have the threefold division: God Almighty and our relationship to him, the scripture and our relationship to the Bible, and then our relationship to ourselves.
Now, back in the beginning, there was no law. And in the first verse number seven, where it talks about the Bible, it says, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” It is absolutely complete and covers every base, every situation, every circumstance, everything that man could possibly be involved in. God has covered it with a basic law.
And if I could just find out what that law is and apply it to my life, I could understand what it was like with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. For in the beginning, there was no law. Absolutely no law. God created Adam and Eve, and he didn’t have a law. Everything was perfect and in order. There’s no need for a law. It was natural to do right, natural to think right.
Everybody was filled with the Holy Spirit. The Bible says the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep in Genesis 1:2. There was peace on earth and goodwill toward men. The Bible said there was total abundant life. We have to work at it. The Bible says that Jesus came to give us life and also abundant life. But abundant life was just normal in the garden.
There was joy unspeakable and full of glory, as the Bible says. There was peace that passeth all understanding there. There was exceeding riches of his grace, as the scripture speaks in the New Testament. There was exceeding abundantly above all that they could ask or even think. Man was created in the image of God. The fruit of the spirit prevailed. Love and joy and peace, long-suffering, gentleness, and goodness, and faith and meekness and temperance prevailed over all things.
And then the three beginning fruit of the spirit—love, joy, and peace—that’s an inward relationship and has to do with our soul. Long-suffering, gentleness, and goodness is an outward relationship and has to do with our body. And faith and meekness and temperance is an upward relationship, and that has to do with the Spirit of God that lives in us.
And we are God’s image: body, soul, and spirit. Let us, the trinity, make God in our image, and like God is a trinity, he says, “Let’s make man a trinity.” Let’s make him a spirit and a body and a soul, and that was complete.
Now, man possessed total knowledge. Adam named the animals and the flowers and the fruit and the birds and the trees and all the other things. He had perfect vision. He had perfect hearing. His temperature was 98.6. His blood pressure was 120 over 80. He weighed 170 pounds. His height was 5 foot and 7 inches. He had medium brown hair. He had hazel eyes. He was perfect. You see anybody around here like that?
Now, I was 5’10", but I went from my physical, and the girl put the thing on my head, and she said, “5’6”." I said, “No, no, 5’10”." She said, “Oh, no, 5’6”." I said, “Well, I heard that as you get old, you lose.” She said, “You do.” I lost 4 inches. I developed a problem. I got bursitis, and as a result, I was having complications, and I went to a therapist.
And he said, “Brother Wallace, what you need to do,” he said, “10 times a day and 10 times each time, you need to do this.” He said, “Your trouble is not in your leg. It was over here, and this leg, it moved over here. He said, ‘Your trouble’s in your backbone.’” He said, “Do this 10 times.” I started doing it. I went back to get a physical, and the girl said, “5’7”." I got an inch back.
Okay. But my point is—my point is not me. The point is, Adam was perfect, okay? He had a perfect agreement between Adam and Eve. Nothing was different in their ideology, in their desires, their ambitions, their wants.
It was a marriage of perfection. There was absolutely no need for him to say, “Look, woman, I’m the boss.” He didn’t have to say that. And he said, “You’re supposed to be in submission,” or “You’re supposed to…” No, no, they just agreed. They understood their place. They were fulfilling a role. So are we. We are carrying on a drama. And I and you, we’re actors or actresses in God’s drama. If I can find out what I’m supposed to do and memorize my lines and say them according to the script and not according to my desires and ambitions and wants, I could find out what life is really all about spiritually.
Nobody or nothing ever rusted, nothing ever rotted, nothing ever spoiled, nobody ever cheated, nobody lied, nobody stole, nobody robbed, and nobody ever killed. There was no pride or greed or wrath or lust or envy or covetousness or gluttony or slothfulness or any of the seven deadly sins mentioned in all the writings of the great theologians of the past. There was no fraud or deceit, no sham and no hypocrisy. It was absolutely beautiful.
There were no negative sounds until after the fall. And once we have the fall, suddenly negativity set in. And now we have the screech of an owl. We have the scream of an eagle. We have the hiss of a snake. We have the calling of the crow. We have the mourning of a dove and the barking of a dog and the meowing of a cat and the mooing of a cow and the neigh of a horse and the grunt of an ape and the gobble of the turkey and the cry of a baby and the roar of a lion and the bleating of the sheep and on and on and on. Negative. None of that was there in the garden. Everything was positive.
There were two trees there. One was the tree of life, and the other was the tree of death, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And God says, “I’m going to make a law. My first law: Do not touch or do not eat of the fruit of that tree.” It’s that simple.
Satan has rebelled in heaven now in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, and now he’s going to try to interfere. So I’m going to set up a law, and don’t take off that tree—just one law. Well, you know the story. They failed to obey, and now we have all kinds of things. We have the negativity setting in. We have the all of the joy and all the peace and the contentment starts to drain away. They start to blame each other and make excuses for it.
And then after the one law is given, the things begin to deteriorate until we come down to the days of Noah, when man sees the wickedness on the earth and he is sorry that he ever bothered to make man. And the Bible says now, the Lord says, “I’m going to have to do something about this.” So he sent a judgment, and then after that judgment of the flood, he says, “Now I’m going to set up a book of laws, ten of them.” So he takes one law now, and we’re going to make it into ten.
And my ten laws are: “Thou shalt not have any of God before me,” and “Thou shalt not make any images unto God.” And “Don’t take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” and “Don’t take God’s day and use it for yourself.” “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days might be long upon the earth,” and “Thou shalt not kill,” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not lie,” and “Thou shalt not covet.”
These are the ten laws, and we’ll go by those, and a man began to operate under the laws. Now, as time began to progress, the scribes and Pharisees began to come in and say, “Now in a case where a man happens to accidentally kill his neighbor’s donkey, this should be applied.” And “If a person shoot at leprosy, then this would have to be applied.” And they added 640 laws to the Ten Commandments under the Jewish realm. So now we have a lot of laws.
And then the scripture teaches us then that in the days when the Lord Jesus came on the scene, there was a great, great ruling class of scribes and Pharisees trying to enforce these 640 laws. And Jesus says, “Now think not that I am come to destroy the law.” This is Matthew 5:17. “The law and the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy that. I am come not to destroy, but to fulfill.”
“I’m going to fulfill the law, for verily I say unto you till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all be fulfilled.” And he explained to us, he says now in Matthew 5:21, “Now the law says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ but I want to interpret that for you in your day. I say unto you that if you have any anger or any kind of animosity or any kind of ill feelings toward your friend or your brother or your neighbor, you are guilty of outwardly breaking the law. You have killed your neighbor or your husband or your wife or whoever.”
He said, “Now I also want to interpret for you the law, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ the outward aggressive act of adultery. But I say, my interpretation is that if you even have a lustful thought toward the opposite sex, you are guilty of outward adultery.” And Moses said, “But I say,” and he broke down all ten commandments and said, “It’s one thing to outwardly break the law, but I say unto you if you even have a thought or a feeling, or if you even get an intention, you are guilty of breaking the outward law.”
And then the Bible says in that in Matthew 5:48, “Now, I challenge you,” he said, “in relation to this law, ‘Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.’” He said, “I want you to set me as your example and your pattern and look to me and my interpretation and realize that I want you to understand that your thinking and your feelings and your emotions and all have to be brought under control also just as well as your actions.”
And then a little later, James, the half-brother of Jesus, who was born to the same mother, and the Bible says that he wrote the book of James, and he says in chapter 2 and verse 10, “Whosoever shall keep the whole law outwardly or inwardly”—everybody who keeps the whole law and doesn’t violate one of the ten commandments or one of the inward commandments, but yet breaks the law in one point outwardly or inwardly—“he is guilty of breaking the whole law.” Really? Absolutely. I’m seeing that it is going to be absolutely impossible for me or you to make it to heaven by trying to keep a law. I can see it coming.
Now, in Romans 3:19, the Apostle Paul began to speak on this, and he says, “Now we know that whatsoever things the law says, it says to them who are under the law.” Wonder who that is? That’s everybody who breathes. I want you to know that whatever that law says, it says to everybody who’s under that law—there are no exceptions to this—that every mouth might be stopped, that every excuse that we make might be drained away from us quickly, that every mouth might be stopped, and that the whole world might become guilty or recognize or realize their guilt before God.
“So therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified, for by the law comes the knowledge of sin.” He says, “I did not make a ladder with ten rungs on it for you to climb up to heaven on. I made a mirror for you to look into to see who you are so that you’ll know something needs to be done to help you.”
I listened to a preacher not long ago. In fact, I was reading his book, and he said that he belonged to an athletic club down in Miami. And while he was in this club, Michael Jordan came in. And then the golf fella—what’s the guy who, the real, real sharp black boy? Tiger Woods. Yeah, yeah. Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan both were standing there talking.
And he said, “I walked up to them. They both knew me. I knew them from our relationship.” And he said, “I wanted to witness to them. And I knew I couldn’t maintain them long.” And he said, “Fellas, would you let me tell you a little story that will help you with your relationship to eternity and to God?” He said, both of them gave him their attention.
He said, “You know, let’s say that a man was walking along and he fell in a hole, and the hole is about 25 feet deep. There’s no way in the world he can get out. He tries climbing up and the dirt just falls away from his fingers, and he is hopelessly, helplessly stuck down in that hole.”
And he says, “People come along and look in there and say, ‘I sure wish I could help you, but there’s nothing I can do,’ so they walk away.” He says, “Jesus comes by, and he looks down and sees the man in the hole, and he says, ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to help you come up out of that hole. I’m going to put a ladder down in the hole, and I’m going to put one that has ten rungs on it. And it’s the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt and thou shalt not.’”
“And he says, ‘Now, here’s the rule: You can climb up the ladder, but you cannot step on any rung of any sin that you have committed or any one that you’ve broken. You have to omit that one.’ So when it says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ if you’ve ever had a bad thought, you can’t step on that step. If you’ve ever had a lustful thought, you cannot step on that, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’”
And he says that, of course, the law teaches that men have broken every one of the Ten Commandments. And so here these men are, helpless in the hole. But they’ve got a ladder they could come out of if they had not sinned, but they have sinned. And they’re right back where they started from.
Jesus said, “Now, I tell you what I’m going to do. I kept all ten of those commandments. I didn’t come to break the law. I came to fulfill the law, and I did it. He who knew no sin was made sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him by faith.”
And Jesus said, “Now I’m going to come down in the hole, and I want you to climb up on my back, and I’m going to climb up out of the hole with you on my back.” That is how we go to heaven. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Our Bible says there’s no other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved than through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now the Bible says in Romans 3:21, “But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested.” God’s righteousness comes into us without any law. We don’t get it that way. “Being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.”
Now our Bible says, “By grace are we saved through faith, not of ourselves, not law keeping, not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works.” Listen to mentioned both. Titus 3:5 says, “Not by works of righteousness or lawkeeping, are we saved? Not by works of righteousness, but by His grace and His mercy, we get saved.”
Now, our Bible explains that the law is a schoolteacher or a schoolmaster, Galatians 3:24. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” The law is to help us see who we are and help us understand if we will come to the Lord and just allow him to give us the gift of eternal life.
And he says, “Now, here’s what’s involved in it. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth.” Whosoever trusts. The word believe in the Bible is our word trust. Now you can believe all about Jesus. You can believe it was virgin born, lived without sin, worked miracles, worked parables, died on the cross, buried to the ground, rose again the third day, ascended to heaven, and is alive making intercession for us at the throne of God. You believe all that, you’ll go to hell if you believe in your head.
But if you receive the gift of God and exercise faith by believing in your heart or trusting—so you trust. I ask people all the time, “Are you 100% sure that you’re going to heaven?” About 75% of them say, “I hope so. I hope so.” That means they are not settled. They have no assurance. They’re not believing. They have some other kind of philosophy in their mind. And the people, as good as they might be, they may be in church every Sunday. They may be doing all the good things they know to do and staying away from the other thing. But if they are not trusting and believing…
If you want to know, “Do I have a car?” “Yes, I do.” “How do you know?” “I have a title to the car, and it tells me I got a car, so I know I got a car.” “Am I married?” “I got a marriage license. I’m married.” Sometimes I wonder, I go get my license. “I’m married.” Yep, I’m married. Okay. “I have a deed to my house.” And the Bible says, “This is the record that God hath given to us eternal life in this life as in his Son.”
You want to know if I’m saved? The Bible says I am, and because I believe the Bible, I tell you, and I declare with my mouth, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” It has nothing to do with getting baptized. It has nothing to do with church attendance or giving tithes or behaving, not drinking liquor, not cursing and lying. It has nothing to do with that. A matter of trusting Jesus, and when he comes in, then he begins to work on us.
Now, as I said, the law is not a ladder, but it’s a mirror. “Whosoever looketh,” listen to this, “whosoever looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, this man being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” Whosoever looks into the law. Now we have to understand that when I look into the law, I see myself. I understand who I am. I come to the Lord and say, “Oh, Lord, be merciful unto me a sinner and come into my heart and save me.” And he gives us the gift.
And when you get a gift, I was listening to a preacher the other day, and he said he was a very wealthy preacher, and he had four kids off in college. And he said he gave all of them a checkbook and he gave them some rules to go by. And he said he had a birthday. And he said one of the kids came in with this very expensive birthday gift. He said, “Hey, Dad, I got this as a gift for you.” He said, “Wonderful.” He said, “He’s given me a gift.” He said, “Boy, I was thrilled.” Then the kid said, “I paid for it with your credit card.”
Okay, that wasn’t a gift. He had to pay for it himself. Now, if you go into heaven, you have to accept the gift of God that’s bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, period. And that’s how you get in.
There was a multimillionaire art collector who had paintings—they were not pictures, they were paintings—all over his mansion walls. He wanted his son to continue because he was getting to be an old man, but the boy wanted to be a soldier, and the boy went away and joined the army. And he was gone for a good long while, and then they got into an intense battle, and the boy was killed.
When the boy was laying on the battlefield dying, his buddy, his best buddy, had been fighting next to him, came and got down on his knees and held his head up while he was dying and stayed with him until he passed away. And then the boy had talked to his dad; he had talked to the son about his dad’s paintings, and he had gotten interested, and so he started trying to do some painting on his own. And first thing you know, he would get pretty good at it.
And he, out of memory, he took time to paint a picture of that boy who had died. And when he got back out of the army and got back in the States, he thought, “I think I’ll go see that dear old man and tell him about his son on the battlefield and everything that took place.” And he said he went, and he had painted this beautiful picture of that boy, and it was very primary. It wasn’t really a piece of art, but it was a picture of the boy.
And so when he knocked on the door, the man accepted him, and he explained who he was. He brought him in. He said, “I brought you a gift. He said, ‘Now I realize this will not fit in with all that you’ve got here, but your son told me all about your portraits and your paintings.’ And he said, ‘I made this portrait of your son.’”
And the man was absolutely flabbergasted with it. He was so thrilled about it that he took it and put it in a prominent place on his wall. And in just a few months’ time, he died. And because he didn’t have any heirs, they put the word out that all of his art collection would be sold as a part of the estate and distributed the way that he had made out his will.
The people gathered from all over the world, and they were all ready and restless and ready to go. And the young boy came to the auction. And they said when they started to auction, he said the auctioneer stood up and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re here to auction off all these beautiful paintings, and he said, ‘You realize we’re talking about millions of dollars here, but there’s been a request made in the will that we have this one painting sold first.’ And so we want to get this painting sold, and then we’ll go to the others.” And everybody grumbled and complained and groaned about it.
He held up the painting, which was a picture. He explained that it was a picture of the man’s son. He wanted to be sure that it had a good place. And all of the art collectors were moaning and groaning about it. And he said, “Who will give me $10,000?” Nobody would. And he got down to $1,000. Nobody would. He got down to $200,000. And that young boy raised his hand and said he’d buy back his own painting for a couple hundred dollars.
And the soul of the man right there for $200. And everybody said, “Now let’s get it all to the sale.” And the auctioneer said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, the language of the will said that whoever bought the painting of the son received all of the other paintings free.” Inheriting multi-millions of dollars. The question of whoever took the Son got the benefits. That’s the story of the law. Whoever takes the Son gets all. We get eternal salvation. It’s as simple as that.
Now, I don’t know if we have anybody here who hopes you’re going to heaven. You think maybe you are, possibly you’ll get there, and you’re not 100 or 1,000 percent sure. You need to realize how hot hell is going to be and how long it’s going to be. And let anything in the way of pride or anything in the way of being embarrassed or ashamed—you need to fix that up because eternity is a long, long time. And hell is really a horrible and terrible place forever and forever.
And so let me suggest that if you’re not absolutely positively sure, you have to realize that we are sinners because anybody who’s ever had a bad thought has broken the law, and that disqualifies you from heaven. “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no not one.” Every one of us are victims, and we are guilty of original inherited sin.
Number two, the wages of that sin is eternal death. And nothing can be done to keep us out of hell unless we recognize three: that God himself came down into the body of Mary and planted himself as a seed, and let himself gestate for nine months, and have a natural birth—a birth called the virgin birth—that caused him to be born without original sin, and he who had no sin was able to live without sin, and then as a result he went to the cross of Calvary and made a total payment for the sins of the world. 1 John 2:2 says, “He is a payment for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Everybody’s sin is paid for.
Now it says later, anybody who comes to the Lord and says, “Lord, would you please come into my heart and give me the gift of eternal life?” He says, “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”—not might, hope, probably, maybe. And he says, “Unless a person’s name is written in the book of life, whosoever’s name was not found written in the book of life will be cast in the lake of fire.”
And so when I want the Lord to come into my heart and give me an assurance of my salvation, I need to invite him in and ask him to save my soul and become a part of my life by coming into my heart. And then I need to ask him to put my name in the book of life.
And I’ve prayed with hundreds of people and said, “Now, if you would, would you pray this? ‘Dear Lord, if for any reason you are not in my heart’—and I’ve had people that have been sitting in church for 20, 30, and 40, 50 years do this—‘if there’s some chance you are not in my heart, would you please come in right now and make me sure of this? Give me 100% assurance. And if there’s some chance my name is not in the book of life, would you please put my name in the book of life? And I’m going to trust you. Please help me to understand. I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.'”
A couple Sundays ago, I prayed with a girl down at Toots, and she did that. A week before that, I prayed with a girl over at Cracker Barrel. And a week before that, it was at a motel desk. And it works. It gives me not only salvation, but it gives me an assurance of it.
Now, I’d like to pray that prayer. Do we have anybody here? Church members or just whoever? Maybe you’ve just wandered in, but you’re not 100, 1,000 percent sure you’re going to heaven. I want to appeal to you to ask him, “Lord, if there’s some way you’re not in my heart, would you please come in? And if my name’s not in the book of life, would you please, please come in right now? I’m going to trust you and depend on you. I’m going to leave it in your hands, and I’m going to heaven because Jesus is my Savior.” That’s the way.
Original File: Salvation- Know for sure - Brother Tom Wallace 10042020 Sunday AM