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We've talked about this so already and now we get a whole new section to talk about this and think about it a little more.

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This is worth considering um.

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You know we have in our Lutheran Church this big distinction between law and gospel

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and we make a you know a lot out of that so we always had the long gospel thing. And

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we know this is you know a key component of who we are as Lutherans .We proclaim the law and we proclaim the gospel.

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We do them both really well, and this is what makes Lutheran Lutheran all this kind of stuff.

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But one of the things that we don't always do real well is think about

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this part of it the law and what it really means and what is going on the law.

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And I want to try to do a better job of hoping you get a handle on this a little bit.

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We have an entire class with we teach called law and gospel so you know you spend

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30 hours on this so obviously we can't do in 90 minutes with the whole justice to it.

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But we could talk about a little bit here

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and I can just give you a few pointers and things to kind of look for.

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One of the problems that happens with law gospel is

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that sometimes law and gospel gets pushed into a polarity or a

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dualism. And

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I have been around long enough and heard enough taught and been teaching enough to realize that it's done quite intentionally.

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And you'll hear people talk about the polarity of law and gospel and they'll talk about that quite positively and very confidently.

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Yeah, it's a polarity of law and gospel polarity they both go together.

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It's like a magnet with the two poles which sounds all well and good, but I'm

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meeting a battle to say no very very bad.

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Law gospel polarity is a bad idea what we have is a law gospel dynamic.

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But polarity is not a good thing because polarity whenever you have a polarity it always works this way.

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You have your magnet here, and you have a positive pole

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and you have a negative pole and so if we're gonna have a law gospel polarity.

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Is there any question where the gospel goes?

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Of course that's the positive thing and then the negative side is the law and

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immediately what starts to happen is you start to do this kind of opposite sort of a thing right down the line.

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And so then the gospel is the thing that makes alive and is light and

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is joy and is

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Good. And the law

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Yeah

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brings death and it's dark and harsh and it brings sorrow and well it's

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bad.

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Look familiar sound familiar?

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And so the goal of preaching is to lay the law on people they can feel very bad.

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And then lay the gospel on them and tell them that they're free from that law. It's okay

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And

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once you end up happening what grows out of this is an idea that the gospel is good. That's what we want.

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The laws bad it should be avoided.

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This is dead wrong.

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It's about as wrong as it can be but it's about as widespread as you can imagine

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because what grows out of this attitude is something known as

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Antinomianism.

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And there's your $25 word for the afternoon, okay.

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Antinomianism.

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Learn it and love it. It's a great word.

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Antinomianism.

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Antinomianism means while nummus is the root for law anti means to be opposed to it against it

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so antinomianism is the no law

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ppposed to the law against the law.

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Antinomianism says now that I'm in Christ and have forgiveness.

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No still can't see me oh good.

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So antinomianism says that I don't need a law

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I'm in Christ. I'm forgiven. I don't need a loan anymore. I'm just living in the gospel and

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This law stuff is ruled out which is I would argue one of these strong undercurrents underneath this whole

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excommunication thing. And

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this whole Church discipline thing because the talk about Church discipline and excommunication

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means that the law has some kind of validity even for the Christian. And

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if I'm suspicious that the law has only negative aspects and is bad

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then what could have possibly had to say to the Christian under the gospel now?

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Just give me the love and a church discipline just smells funny.

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Doesn't seem right this is pretty widespread.

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Antinomianism looks like this.

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Antinomianism is when

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The pastor is telling somebody in his office to count saying husband the wife sort of thing and the pastor looks at husband says no

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you can't do that. That's wrong.

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The guy says I mean forget it I have freedom in Christ.

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What do you  mean you can't tell me that that's legalism. You're being legalistic pastor.

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Antinomianism is when the pastor in a sermon gets pretty pointed about certain behaviors and after the sermon the people come out and say wow

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that was pretty legalistic.

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Hung up on the law there aren't you I thought the gospel motivate us to do good things you're making it sound like the law does.

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That dosen't make me feel very good pastor

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ahouldn't do that.

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That's antinomianism. I

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would contend it's pretty widespread.

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I think it's all over the place and a close cousin of antinomianism is this gem

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licentiousness. And what does it mean to be licentious?

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You have license to do whatever you want.

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Freedom to do whatever I feel like doing.

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Absolutely no restraint. I just do what I want licentiousness these two go together and

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these are serious concerns.

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One of the problems is that both of these can be fed and grow out of a wrong understanding of the law gospel relationship.

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Because if I think of long gospel as a polarity law bad gospel good you're gonna try reaming me?

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That'd be great cool all right, so if the law is bad and the gospel is good

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that means then that I've got to

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flee the law and just hang on to the gospel.

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But that means then that I don't have any use for the law no place, and it's simply ruled out.

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So

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we have to come to terms with realizing that the law has its place and the gospel has its place. They're both

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good.

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They're both good. So the law

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what is it? We have a definition of the day? What is the law?

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This comes straight out of the formula of Concord and we had the time

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I'd make you look it up when we'd read it formula Concord makes it very clear the law is nothing more than the will of

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God. And

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in the epitome it says it's the will of God and the solid declaration goes a little further the will of God for his creation.

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That's what the law is let me try it out.

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So the law is nothing more than the will of God for his creation. That's what it is. Is it

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bad?

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No, when was it established?

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At the creation was built in before the fall.

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Before the fall.

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To

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widespread is this notion that the law was kind of a a fix after a man sinned and it was kind of a

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fix to kind of catch up the problem. So now we've got sin. That's too bad. You know now. We've got to have the law. No,

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the law was there.

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Law is good. It was there Adam was obeying it and following it without even thinking about it was just there.

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The law is nothing more than the will of God for his creation. So this notion that the law is bad is not true.

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The only reason the law is bad is because of one thing my sin.

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It's when I sin that the law becomes a burden. Now suddenly I feel the weight of it. Now something I realized hey

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I'm not doing that and this is a hard thing. Now

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the law hurts me, but it's only because of sin that the law becomes bad, but even then is the law bad?

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No, it's my sin that's the problem.

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And I feel guilty about it the law is just doing its thing. It's the law.

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And

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so obedience to the law is simply obedience to the will of God.

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That's got some kind of cool things that kind of unravel from this a little bit.

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Interesting thoughts that stem out of this. For example then that would mean that the will of God for His creation

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that's the law that extends even wider than simply moral law.

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I would say it includes things like gravity and includes things like just animals doing what they're supposed to do.

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And so when a salmon it swims upstream after being out at sea for how many years and

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fights against the current lays its eggs, and then goes belly up. Why is it doing that?

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It's

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being obedient to the will of God that's been established. It's being obedient to what God has built into it we call it

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inspinct right, but what is it really? It's conformity to the will of God for that creature.

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What it's created to do and so when a goose flies south in this in the winter implies north in the summer

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it's conforming to God's will just doing what it was created to do.

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Doing what it's supposed to do. It's following the law that's built in doing the will of its creator.

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I think this sheds some light on some of the Psalms all of creation praises the Lord.

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How does it do that does it mean the trees open their mouths and start singing?

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No, the tree praises the Lord simply by being a good tree

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And so when it puts out it shoots and puts out nice leaf cover. It's being a good tree by being a good tree

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it's praising its maker. And

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when the grass grows like it's supposed to and stays green it's doing what it's supposed to do

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it's being good grass it

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praises its maker. And when the goose flies where it's supposed to is praising its maker and when the goose hangs out in st.

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Louis all winter long because it has food in a ready-easy supply. It's disobeying its maker and being naughty.

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We don't like it.

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Alright, but yes you get the idea here so that all of creation is in sync the stars praise the Lord.

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How do the stars praise the Lord by going through their courses?

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The planets praise the Lord by going through their orbits all of creation honors God and praises God

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simply by doing what it was created to do.

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You remember the story in the Old Testament of course you do you just had Old Testament last week.

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The story where David is deciding he wants to bring the ark back into Jerusalem.

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And he plops the thing on an ox carton in they go remember and how does it turn out?

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Not so good.

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Yeah,

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the ox

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dumbles and Uzzah

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who is given the corner the back corner reaches out his hand to kind of stop the ark from falling and he touches the ark and

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he's struck dead.

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David's ticked.

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RC Sproul good Presbyterian has a beautiful insight into this and he's right on the money here.

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He says Uzzah's mistake was that Uzzah thought that his hand was

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cleaner than the dirt.

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It wasn't.

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Dirt was actually clean doing what it's supposed to do. Laying there being dirt.

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Uzzah on the other hand sticking his hand out was being disobedient.

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Don't touch the ark by touching the ark also was being disobedient to the will of God and was therefore

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polluted sinful his hand was filthy. The Ark would have been better off hitting the dirt than having Uzzah touch it.

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Because the will of God is what determines what is correct so creation does the will of God just by being creation and the animals

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praise the Lord just by doing what they're created to do and

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people are honoring God simply by doing the things that God created them to do.

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Yes.

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Can the creation sin?

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I think the creation does in a sense because it's broken and it doesn't fulfill the will of God the way it's supposed to .And so

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crops fail and

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geese hang out in St. Louis when they shouldn't and

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clog up the beaches, you know, yeah.

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I think so things get out of hand things are broken

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so the creation is not functioning the way it was supposed to. And yet you still you know

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you still have this kind of both things you still see elements where it's working the way it should

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and then things were it shows evidence of being broken. They're both kind of going together.

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Yeah, even directly, you know we can mess up what's kind of going on what's happening your creation make things worse.

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All right, so we have to be a little bit careful that we understand the law in its proper context

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and so the law needs to be understood much more broadly than simply being the opposite of the gospel. And

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too often that's how we define it gospel makes me feel good law makes me feel bad and you know both

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but man, don't give me that law and I don't want it.

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And so the gospel is there and I simply live in the gospel. That's simply not right. The law is much broader the will of God

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for His creation. All right. So if the will of God for his creation is our definition of law then we would say that

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conscience fits in here as well because

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conscience becomes a reflector on that will of God and kind of as a gauge for us and helps us kind of think about how

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we're doing it has a role to play.

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As we reflect on but what is the will of God and am I keeping it or not? And then our consciences?

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typically condemn us or

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provoke us to a repentance because we realize we're not doing things the way that we should be doing them. Okay.

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All right.

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Now so the law is doing this and the conscience is thinking about God's law

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invariably what ends up happening is a conscience convicts us and that leads to this famous phrase

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from the confessions.

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Lex semper accussa.

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And you'll find this in the apology of the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon said it Lex semper accussa.

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Anybody know this one?

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All right, Lex is law semper is always

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exactly accussa, accuses the law always accuses.

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The

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law always accuses that's what's Lex semper accussa is the law always accuses.

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That's true.

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The law when I start to think about what God's will is and really reflect on it

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ends up nailing me all the time.

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Accuses me points out my error.

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Shows me my my failings makes me feel bad guilty.

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It does that. The law always accuses so some conclude well because the law always accuses therefore then it is

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bad brings death it brings sorrow. It's a negative thing. It's a bad thing

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so it always accuses. So we have to counter this a little bit and also point out the fact though.

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Well, the law always accuses the law doesn't

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only accuse.

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So while it always accuses it can do more than just accuse.

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And that's what we get into start talking about the functions or the uses of the law. That's what we want to move next.

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When you went back when you went through catechism class

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oh how many years ago and you learn all this stuff. How many uses of the law are there? Three. Very good.