Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas
Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday morning service, September 27, 2026 God’s Law, Lesson 4 of 4 (series finale) · A3 D12 · Mark 7:13 · Exodus 20 · 1 John 3:15 · Matthew 5:28 · Romans 7:7 · John 8:36
► Watch this lesson on video (56:43)
You might want to mark a few places this morning - Mark 7, Exodus 20, First John 3, Matthew 5, Romans 7, and John 8.
Now we have spent the last four Sunday mornings building ONE picture - and this morning we are going to step back and look at the whole thing at once. This is the last lesson in our little series on the Ten Commandments. We started by settling WHO it is that makes the law we live by - God made everything in the universe, so God has the RIGHT to make the laws that govern His creation. Then we asked WHY God ever drew a boundary line at all - why He built a fence around forbidden trees and forbidden behavior . . . and we found that these fences were never put up as a cage to trap His people, but to keep His people ALIVE - to keep them safe. It is no different than the fence around a pasture. Somebody says those cattle are penned in - no, that fence is keeping those cattle off the highway so they do not get run over. And last Sunday we asked HOW these boundaries get off the page and down into us . . . and we learned that it is the Bible that draws the line - this is forbidden, this is safe - and it is the Spirit of God that takes that line and writes it on the table of our heart.
So this morning we are going to look at those ten boundary lines one more time. We have already looked at them on the LOVE side - they were given out of love. We have looked at them on the FENCE side - here is why this tree was forbidden. But this morning we are going to look at them on the INSIDE . . . we are going to watch what the Holy Spirit does with each one of these commandments when He gets it down past our head and lays it on our HEART.
And here is why that matters. A person can say all ten of these commandments by memory - and attend church three days a week for fifty years - and still be building his OWN righteousness instead of practicing God’s righteousness in the life he lives. You see, the Bible is not just a book we are supposed to read . . . the Bible is like a PERSON we have a relationship with - and it is either a good relationship, or a lukewarm one. It is a whole lot like a neighbor. We know that neighbor by sight - but do we have any kind of relationship with him? Do we really KNOW him, or do we just holler “how you doing,” “oh, fine,” and go on our separate ways? A lot of times that is exactly how we treat the Bible. Because the difference between religion and faith is really not that complicated - religion is what READS the ten commandments, the way we recognize a neighbor on the street . . . and faith is what lets the Spirit APPLY those commandments to our lives. And when the Spirit applies a commandment, it stops being just a rule on a list . . . and it starts being a LIFE.
God drew the line - Jesus paid the penalty for our crossing it - and the Spirit shows us how to live INSIDE it.
The Fence They Moved
Now let us look at the DANGER that religion carries - because there is a way to hold all ten of these commandments in our hand and still completely miss God. The Pharisees did exactly that - they knew the scriptures backward and forward, and they did not know God at all . . . and I will tell you, there are still Pharisees out in the world, and sitting in a good many of our churches, who know a great deal about the Book and very little about the Lord of the Book.
Last Sunday we read Romans chapter ten - a sincere people, a people who were ON FIRE for God . . . and Paul said that in spite of all that zeal, they were “going about to establish their own righteousness.” Like Goldilocks and those three chairs - this one too hard, this one too soft - they spent their whole lives building a righteousness cut to fit exactly what they were willing to do . . . and when they finally got it JUST right, tailored to their own preferences, they turned around and called it God’s righteousness. And there are people who church-shop the very same way - this church too hard, that church too soft, on and on until they find one that suits them . . . and the ones who cannot find any that suits them go out and start their own. Now that is not some Jewish problem that died off two thousand years ago . . . that is a church-house problem, alive and well TODAY. A righteousness that is measured by what we are comfortable with - shaped by the way our family has always done it - set to whatever our conscience made peace with a long time ago . . . that is OUR righteousness, and it is not God’s. And just a reminder - the Bible says a conscience can be seared over, like a callus, until the thing that used to bother us does not bother us much at all anymore.
The Pharisees were the most careful religious men of their day, and Jesus looked square at them and said they were guilty of -
“Making the word of God of none effect (no power - the power of God cancelled clean out) through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.” - Mark 7:13 (KJV)
They never tore a single page out of the Book . . . they just kept ADJUSTING it - a little here, a little there - until the word of God had no effect on them at all. That reminds me of a property line. We call ourselves landmark Baptists, and one of the reasons is that we believe a truth is like a boundary line, and we do everything we can to stay on the right side of it. Now property lines MATTER - they are not suggestions. Those surveyor stakes mark exactly where our land stops and the neighbor’s land starts. But picture a neighbor who moves the fence just a few feet - not often, just every couple of years, never enough for anybody to notice - until finally it lines up right where he WANTS it. And can you not see a lot of churches drifting in exactly that direction? Then one day we walk the line, and it is nowhere close to where the survey says it ought to be. That is a man moving his righteousness to fit his preferences . . . and notice - the fence always moves the SAME direction: toward whatever requires LESS of him. The survey stakes never moved. God’s word has not moved a single inch since the Garden of Eden . . . it was the FENCE that moved.
So the cure for a homemade righteousness is to SUBMIT to God’s righteousness - and that starts the moment we let the Spirit, and not our comfort and not our tradition, tell us what God’s word actually says. I will tell you something about myself - I have started a little practice as I go through the scriptures . . . this is what I have always thought - all right, now let us lay that down next to what the Book actually SAYS. Just because I am a preacher and I think a thing, that does not make it gospel. We are every one of us liable to have been taught something wrong - not on purpose. I think the world of my mama and daddy - always have - but they are not where knowledge ends, and there are a few little things they had not quite exactly right. We have to be man enough to erase a thought just because it is what we have always been handed, and set it down beside the scriptures . . . because God’s word is a great deal more important than mine, or my parents’, or my grandparents’.
Ten Rooms - the Spirit on the Inside
Now here is how the Spirit works a commandment - He never adds one thing to it . . . He asks us a QUESTION about it, and the question He asks goes straight past what we DO, and lands on what we LOVE.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” - Exodus 20:3 (KJV)
On the surface that one looks easy - I can about promise nobody in this room bowed down to a wooden idol this week. But the Spirit asks - what got our FIRST thought this morning? What would we give up nearly anything to protect? Anything that sits in the place that belongs to God IS a god . . . and it can be carved out of fear, or ambition, or comfort, or pride. The Spirit shows us the gods we never knew we had.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing . . .” - Exodus 20:4 (KJV)
The Spirit takes that one to the picture of God we carry around in our MINDS. A great many believers have built themselves a god who never convicts, never asks anything hard, never says NO - a comfortable god, cut to fit, just like Goldilocks liked her chair . . . and the Spirit says that god is an idol too. Jesus shows us the Father the way He actually IS - not a false picture of Him, and not the softened-up version we would rather have.
“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain . . .” - Exodus 20:7 (KJV)
Yes - a curse word breaks this one . . . but the Spirit goes deeper than the mouth. When a man says “I am a Christian,” and then turns around and treats people with cruelty and contempt, he has hung God’s NAME on a life that brings God shame - and that is taking His name in vain too, in the daily things we do and say. Love is supposed to be the badge that marks us out as His . . . and if we are not wearing that badge, we are claiming to be something we are not.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” - Exodus 20:8 (KJV)
Holy means set apart - separate, special. Now we do not keep the Jewish sabbath - but the Spirit takes the PRINCIPLE and asks about the Lord’s Day. Is Sunday actually set apart . . . or has the week crowded in until Sunday is just one more thing to get through? If we DREAD Sunday, we have missed the whole point - I never yet met a soul who dreaded Saturday. And here is a personal word from your pastor - the Bible does say the ox falls in the ditch now and then . . . but the extra load of laundry, mowing the yard, washing the car - those do not qualify as an ox in the ditch. The commandments are not suggestions.
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land . . .” - Exodus 20:12 (KJV)
The Spirit applies this one to us grown folks too - the way we speak OF our parents, the way we speak TO them . . . and He carries it right on over to the way we treat every person of authority God has set over us, including the ones He set over us in His church. Think about an inheritance. A farmer works his whole life building his place - the land, the cattle, the barns . . . and the child who honors that work, who stays close, who shows up when there is work to be done - that is the child who comes into the inheritance. The child who stays gone, who always has somewhere else to be when there are fences that need mending, and only comes around when it suits him - that child loses more than a relationship . . . he loses the LEGACY. Honor is not a feeling - honor is a position we take . . . and the Spirit shows us whether we are honoring, or whether we are just tolerating. And I will say this plainly, because I have seen it - I have heard grandchildren speak to their grandparents in a tone I would only use to correct a misbehaving dog. There is no excuse for it - it is one hundred percent wrong, and if a thing can be more than one hundred percent wrong, this is it. Now I know I move slow . . . I know I say “would you say that again, I did not catch it” often enough to wear a young person out . . . I know I forget things, and my mind does not hit on all the cylinders it once did. But God has not ASKED the young person to be respectful to his elders - God has COMMANDED it.
“Thou shalt not kill.” - Exodus 20:13 (KJV)
Now that one is like the first - we read it and think, well, I passed that with flying colors . . . did we? Let us hear the Spirit speak through the last apostle, in the very book we are going to open tonight -
“Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” - 1 John 3:15 (KJV)
Murder starts as hatred . . . hatred starts as unforgiveness . . . and unforgiveness starts as a wound we refused to carry to God. The Spirit asks whether we have taken a life from somebody - not with a gun, but with our words, our silence, our contempt, or our flat refusal to forgive. Now I will be the first to admit, forgiving is not always easy, and it is something I have to work at, and I doubt I am the only one. We may not be able to forgive TODAY - that is only human. The danger is not in the struggle . . . the danger is in NOT WANTING to forgive - not even trying, not even praying for the strength. If we WANT to, and we keep on trying and keep on praying, we will find that forgiveness in time . . . and then this verse will not apply to us at all.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” - Exodus 20:14 (KJV)
“But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” - Matthew 5:28 (KJV)
The Spirit takes this one from what we DO to what we look AT - what we turn loose in the imagination, what comes in through our screens. And here is a personal word - I have stood out in the church parking lot and heard folks going on about a movie . . . “oh, that was a good one - if you could just look past the language.” Excuse me - what are we doing watching something like that? Is somebody holding a gun to our head? We are turning entertainment loose over a “thou shalt not” - and the Bible says even the appearance of foolishness is sin. A picture-house full of raw language is a good deal MORE than the appearance of foolishness . . . that is sin right out in the open, and we ought to be ashamed. Now we stump our toe and a word slips out we should not have said - we are human. But when we sit ourselves down in front of it on purpose, that is us saying we value our entertainment over our obedience.
“Thou shalt not steal.” - Exodus 20:15 (KJV)
A paycheck for work we did not do . . . credit for another man’s work . . . and holding back from God what belongs to God - the firstfruits of our income, the service due the Man who died for us, the worship that puts God in His honored place. That last kind of stealing is perfectly LEGAL - and it is still wrong.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” - Exodus 20:16 (KJV)
A false witness does not have to tell a bald-faced lie - he can ruin a brother with a HALF-truth . . . a rumor passed on . . . a story with just enough left OUT to paint the wrong picture. So the Spirit asks us before we ever open our mouths - is it true? is it kind? does it protect . . . or does it tear down?
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife . . . nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” - Exodus 20:17 (KJV)
Now this is the one that convicted Paul himself - listen to him -
“I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust (wanting what is not ours - coveting), except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” - Romans 7:7 (KJV)
We cannot pass a law against WANTING - not even God does that - and no jury on earth can see what a man covets . . . but the Spirit can, and He does. He takes this commandment to our CONTENTMENT, and shows us every place where envy and comparison have quietly begun to take root. It is a mistake to judge what we have by what somebody else has - that is trouble just waiting to happen.
Ten commandments - ten rooms of a life . . . and the Spirit walks through every one of those rooms and asks about our motives, our habits, our PRIVATE world. That is the whole difference - religion checks the boxes on the OUTSIDE . . . faith lets the Spirit go to work on the INSIDE. Religion is recognition - faith is application.
God drew the line - Jesus paid the penalty for our crossing it - and the Spirit shows us how to live INSIDE it.
Which one of the ten did the Spirit stop us on just now? Not the one we passed . . . the one that got QUIET down in here.
Free - Not Guilty
Now some of us hear a lesson like this and feel HEAVY - the more we understand of what God requires, the more impossible the whole thing looks. So let us hear what Jesus said -
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed (really and truly free).” - John 8:36 (KJV)
FREE. Not “guilty” - free . . . because when the Spirit shows us where the line is, He shows us where the MERCY is in the very same breath. When the Spirit convicts of sin, He points straight at the One who FORGIVES sin. He is not prosecuting us - He is turning us loose from the lie that we are doing just fine when we are not . . . and setting us free out of the prison of our own homemade righteousness. When the Spirit convicts, He is opening a door - not slamming one. The man who is convicted and confesses walks out a FREE man . . . but the man who hardens himself against the Spirit stays bound - not by God, but by his own refusal to give in.
Say it plainly for the tender one listening - the Spirit’s conviction is a Father’s hand on a child, not a prosecutor building his case. Nobody in Christ loses his standing over a commandment he stumbled on this week . . . the blood already settled the crossing of that line. Conviction is for cleaning up - not for casting out.
The Life of Faith Is a Continuing
Now we have come a long way in these twelve lessons - from what a Christian IS, through Christian love, through fellowship with God, and now here, to the law of God, revealed in His Word and applied by His Spirit. And here is where it all lands. Last Sunday we closed on “if ye continue in my word” . . . and the whole Christian life, in one word, is seen in CONTINUING. Continue in the Word. Continue letting the Spirit apply it. Continue turning our own standard IN for God’s standard . . . continue in the honest, humble, daily posture of somebody who KNOWS he crosses the line - and keeps coming back to the grace that covers the crossing.
The life of faith is the life that keeps saying YES - yes to the Word, yes to the Spirit, yes to the God who drew that line in the first place . . . because He loved us far too much to leave us on the wrong side of it.
God drew the line. Jesus paid the penalty for our crossing it. And the Spirit shows us how to live inside it. This is the gospel - and this is the Christian life.
Now maybe somebody here has been moving the fence for years and calling it right with God . . . the stakes never moved, and the Son can set us free this morning. And maybe somebody else is already saved - but plumb worn out from checking boxes . . . let the Spirit have the INSIDE. We will never do it one hundred percent - it is not possible. But I will tell you, I once knew a person who claimed to be saved and told me flat out he did not even want to do right . . . and it is a fearful thing - it is bad to fail, but it is a dangerous thing to quit even caring.
Please consider what you heard this morning.
Scripture Used
Mark 7:13 · Exodus 20:3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 · 1 John 3:15 · Matthew 5:28 · Romans 7:7 · John 8:36 (all KJV)
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