Just a few years ago (2010), Audi had one of the best commercials aired during the Super Bowl. It poked some fun at the imaginary “green police” out of control. Take a look. (Show Green Police Audi Ad Super Bowl 2010)
Standing at the checkout counter of a store, the clerk tells a customer: "Okay, so it's $37.08. Paper or plastic?"
The customer replies, "Plastic."
Into the scene walks a uniformed officer who says, "That's the magic word. Green police. You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy." The officer then hauls the customer away with his hands in cuffs behind his back.
In quick succession we see different scenes of the green police arresting other people guilty of minor environmental infractions.
Green police line the side of a suburban street sifting through garbage cans at the curb. An officer finds a battery in the garbage. An officer in charge yells, "Let's go. Take the house."
A man stands at his kitchen sink at night with an orange rind in hand. Suddenly a searchlight blazes through the window upon him and a green policeman orders over a loudspeaker: "Put the rind down, sir! That's a compost infraction." The man puts the rind down and runs away into the darkness.
A green policeman stands on the brightly lit porch of a comfortable looking suburban home. When the homeowner walks onto the porch, the officer asks, "Did you install these bulbs?" When the homeowner says yeah, he is hauled away to a waiting squad car, and a TV reporter speaks into the camera, "Tragedy strikes tonight where a man has just been arrested for possession of an incandescent light bulb."
A green policeman busts two teenagers for drinking from plastic bottles.
As green policeman surround a man and woman in a hot tub, one of the officers announces, "The water setting is at 105," and the couple is arrested.
The commercial ends with a green policeman busting two real police officers in a squad car. The green policeman asks the real cop, "Are those Styrofoam cups you're drinking from?" The cop says yeah, and the green policeman responds, "Please step out of the car and put 'em on the hood." (www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTNzuXZyI28).
The green police are pursuing a good thing, a healthy environment, but they are not being helpful at all. In fact, these well-meaning, but overzealous police can cause more harm than good.
So it is with a lot of “good” people I know. They are pursuing a good thing – a life of personal holiness by conforming to the Law of God – but they don’t realize how harmful such a pursuit can be.
That’s not to say there is anything wrong with the Law of God. Proverbs 3:5-6 make it very clear: obeying God’s law makes life go a whole lot smoother. And Psalm 19 says God’s law is “perfect” and “right”, “sweeter also than honey” (Psalm 19:7-8, 10). God’s law is good, but one’s well-meaning, overzealous pursuit of it can do more harm than good.
So shat are you supposed to do if not try as hard as you can to live in obedience to God’s law? What are you supposed to do to find a life of personal holiness, which you know is good for you? What are you supposed to do to enjoy the life God has called you to live without doing more harm than good? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Galatians 3, Galatians 3, where the Bible tells us what to do.
Galatians 3:15 To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. (ESV)
God’s promises cannot be annulled or amended. Once He makes a promise, it stands forever.
Galatians 3:16-18 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. (ESV)
Your inheritance in Christ comes through a promise, not through a law. And therein lies the secret to living the life God wants you to live without all the struggle. If you want to enjoy life as God intended it, then…
DEPEND ON GOD’S PROMISE, not His law.
Live your life not by keeping the rules to earn God’s favor, but with the sure and certain knowledge that He already favors you unconditionally. In other words, let your obedience come not in order to BE blessed, but in the realization that God has ALREADY blessed you.
You see, God blesses the believer without conditions. There is absolutely nothing you need to do to earn his favor. So If you’re going to enjoy the life God called you to live, then you must simply depend on God’s unconditional promise.
That’s what Abraham did. In Genesis 15, God promised Abraham many descendants and a lot of land. But Abraham wanted a sure sign that God would keep His promise, so God gave Him one. He entered into a blood covenant with Abraham, the strongest kind of covenant there is.
Now, in Abraham’s day, when two people wanted to confirm an agreement they had made, they shed the blood of an animal. I.e., they would take a heifer, a goat, or a ram and cut it right down the middle. Then they would set the two halves of the animal opposite each other with a space in the middle. And there they would walk together between the animal halves. In essence, they were saying to each other, “May the same thing happen to me if I fail to keep my part of the agreement.”
Well, God instructed Abraham to prepare a heifer, a goat AND a ram – not just one animal, but three. You see, God wanted Abraham to know that His promise was absolutely certain.
The only problem is Abraham fell into a deep sleep. Even so, Genesis 15 says, “[After dark], a smoking firepot and a flaming torch passed between the pieces” (Genesis 15:17). God Himself was walking between the halves of the animals without Abraham, making this a unilateral agreement.
In other words, God agreed to bless Abraham without any conditions on Abraham’s part. There was nothing Abraham needed to do to receive God’s promised blessing. It was a unilateral, unconditional covenant between God and Himself to give Abraham a tremendous inheritance.
All Abraham had to do was accept it by faith, and that’s all you need to do, as well. Because of the shed blood of God’s own son, God blesses you without conditions. All you need to do is accept His promised blessings by faith. All you need to do is depend on His UNCONDITIONAL promise.
But not only that, depend on his UNCHANGING promise, as well. God will never go back on His Word or alter it in any way. God will never set aside His promise, even if we fail to keep His law.
Look at verse 17 again: The law, which came 430 years afterward – i.e., 430 years after God made His promise to Abraham – [That] law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.
The law, with its conditional blessings, does not in any way cancel out or change the promise with its unconditional blessings. God will never go back on His Word!
Ten years after we were married (1991), Sandy and I received in the mail a notice that we had won an expensive home entertainment center, an all-expense-paid-trip for two to Hawaii, or $5,000 cash. All we had to do was send a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and they would notify us which prize was ours.
Now, I shouldn’t have done it, but I did. I sent the self-addressed, stamped envelope.
A couple of weeks later, we got a nice brochure in the mail describing our “all-expense-paid-trip for two to Hawaii.” There was only one catch. For our “free” trip, all we had to do was send them enough money to pay for one round-trip air fare to Hawaii, plus $15 for processing.
So much for the “all-expense-paid-trip” to Hawaii. What they didn’t tell us was that WE would be paying the expenses. Their promised blessing had a catch, a condition added to it.
Not so with God’s promised blessings. There is no catch. There are no added conditions. God doesn’t promise us an all-expense-paid-trip to heaven and then turn around and say, “Oh, by the way, you have to do this and that before you can go.” No. God blesses you up-front, before you do anything to earn those blessings!
Ephesians 1 says, “God HAS blessed us (past tense. In other words, it is already done. God has ALREADY blessed us… in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3). The moment you come to faith in Christ, God dumps the whole load of heavenly blessings upon you.
Now, you live your life not trying to earn those blessings, but in the joy and delight of having already received them, knowing that you could never lose them. There is no longer any pressure to perform. There is only the delight of living for Someone who accepts you and loves you unconditionally, and that will never change!
Nothing you do or say could ever make Him love you less, and nothing you do or say could ever make Him love you more. So if you want to enjoy life as God intended it, then live in the light of God’s unconditional love. Depend on God’s promise…
DON’T DEPEND ON THE LAW.
Don’t live trying to earn God’s favor. Don’t live thinking you have to “be good” in order to be blessed.
That’s the way of the Law. The law says, “Obey and be blessed; disobey and be cursed” (Deuteronomy 28). The problem is nobody could obey; therefore, nobody could be blessed. So don’t depend on a law, which can only show you how bad you are.
Galatians 3:19a Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made…
The law was added to show us how badly we needed a Savior. Paul said in Romans 7:7, “I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’” The law is like a mirror. It reveals the dirt, but you don’t wash your face with it.
During grade school, John Corcoran never learned to read or write, but he caused a lot of trouble and somehow kept getting promoted to the next grade. He got to high school and mastered new skills. He says, “I started cheating by turning in other peoples' papers; [I] dated the valedictorian and ran around with college prep kids. I couldn't read words but I could read the system and I could read people.”
He received an athletic scholarship to Texas Western College and cheated his way through there as well, getting a degree in education, of all things. Somehow he got a job as a teacher and for the next 17 years taught in high school without being able to read or write. He says, “What I did was I created an oral and visual environment. There wasn't the written word in there. I always had two or three teacher's assistants in each class to do board work or read the bulletin.”
Finally, he left teaching and became a real estate developer. Later in life he learned to read and write and became an advocate for better educational systems. (Charisse Yu, Retired Teacher Reveals He Was Illiterate Until Age 48, www.10News.com, posted 2-11-08; www.PreachingToday.com)
Those who live by the law are a lot like John Corcoran. They know they fall far short of the standard, so they “fake it in order to make it.” They learn to “read the system”, and they pretend to be something they know they are not. The sad thing is many of them live their entire lives trying to persuade themselves, others and God that they are good people, when deep down inside they know it isn’t true.
The law has revealed their sin, and they don’t know what to do with it, so they pretend there is no sin in order to be accepted. It’s a terrible way to live, but the good news is you don’t have to live that way! God loves you and has blessed you unconditionally. So you can freely admit your sins without fear of losing His blessing and acceptance. Live by promise. Don’t live by law.
Don’t depend on a law which can only show us how bad you are, and don’t depend on a law which did not come directly from God himself.
Galatians 3:19b …it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. (ESV)
God gave the law to angels, who gave it to Moses, who gave it to the people. The Law did not come directly from God Himself. It came through mediators.
Esther Schmidt, of Coldwater, Ohio, talks about the time when her daughter-in-law noticed that her two-year-old daughter was ignoring her food. She said to her daughter, “Keri, why aren't you eating?”
Keri replied, “I can't eat; God told me not to.”
Her mother chided: “God wouldn't tell you not to eat your supper.”
Keri looked up at the ceiling; then conceded, “Well, maybe it was Moses.” (Esther F. Schmidt, Coldwater, OH; “Lite Fare,” Christian Reader)
Somehow, the law coming through a stammering, stuttering prophet like Moses doesn’t carry the weight it would as if it came directly from God Himself. And besides, the presence of a mediator presupposes two parties.
Galatians 3:20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. (ESV)
The law required a commitment on both sides to make it work – a commitment from God and a commitment from people. Well, we know that God never fails to keep His part of the deal, but what about us? If we’re honest, we know that we have already failed to keep our part of the deal; we know that we have already broken the law. Therefore, the law cannot make us good, not because the law is not good, but because WE are not good.
So con’t depend on a law which only shows you how bad you are. Don’t depend on a law which came through a mediator; and certainly, don’t depend on a law which is woefully inadequate.
Galatians 3:21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. (ESV)
The law said, “Obey and live; disobey and die.” Well, since we have all disobeyed, we are all going to die. The law is therefore unable to give us life!
Galatians 3:22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. (ESV)
The law puts us all on death row. It puts us all in prison so that we might be driven to the promise of life in Christ.
When King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband to cover up his sin, the law condemned him to die. There were no sacrifices to cover willful sin under the law. There was only the death penalty. What could David do? The only thing he could do was throw himself on the mercy and promise of God. The only thing he could do was depend on God’s promise when he had broken God’s law, and that’s what he did! He relied on God’s promise and found life.
You see, God gave us the law – not to give us a better life, but to point the way to the promise of life in Christ. So depend on Christ, who alone can give you the life you truly want to live. Don’t depend on a law, which cannot do much except condemn you.
In 1927, the director Cecil B. DeMille cast British-born actor H. B. Warner as Jesus in his famous silent film King of Kings. Warner, who 19 years later played the druggist in It's a Wonderful Life, was kept on a short leash during the filming of King of Kings. Cecil B. DeMille was concerned that any behavior by the lead actor deemed inconsistent with the image of Christ would result in negative publicity for the film.
So DeMille enforced strict measures to ensure that Warner kept up a good Jesus-image. Both Warner and his co-star Dorothy Cumming (who played Mary, the mother of Jesus) had to sign agreements that barred them for five years from appearing in film roles that might compromise their "holy" screen images. During the filming, Warner was driven to the set with blinds drawn, and he wore a black veil as he was delivered to the set. DeMille separated Warner from the other cast members, even forcing him to eat alone every day. Warner couldn't play cards, go to ballgames, ride in a convertible, or go swimming.
Unfortunately, the regimen of rules and regulations didn't make Warner more holy or Christlike. Instead, all the pressure to keep the rules only drove him over the edge. During the production of King of Kings, Warner had a relapse into his addiction to alcohol. (The King of Kings 1927 – Did You Know? Imdb, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018054/trivia; www.Preaching Today.com)
Rules, no matter how restrictive, have no power to restrain evil. On the other hand, the promise of life in Christ has the power to transform you from the inside out! So if you want to enjoy the life God has called you to live, depend on God’s promise, not His law.
I like the way Catherine Booth put it years ago. She said, “What the law tried to do by a restraining power from without, the gospel does by an inspiring power from within.” (Catherine Booth. "William and Catherine Booth," Christian History, no. 26; www.PreachingToday.com)
Depend on Christ to inspire the power of His Holy Spirit within. Don’t depend on a law, whose restraining power was never enough to keep you from sinning.
