Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas
Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday morning service, September 13, 2026 God’s Law, Lesson 2 of 4 · A3 D10 · Genesis 3:1-5 · Exodus 20:3, 13-17 · Galatians 3:24-25 · Romans 8:3-4
Watch this lesson on video (47:33)
This is the second lesson in our little four-lesson series about God’s law. Last Sunday morning we talked about WHO makes the law - and we settled it. God made everything . . . God holds everything together . . . God owns everything - so God has the right to set the terms, and you remember the potter and the clay, and how “we” being the clay do not really get a vote in how God chooses to do things.
Now the word for law in the original language is the Torah - and it means to point or to aim. God’s law is God POINTING us - toward the behavior He expects of us.
So this morning we go past WHO makes the law and on to the next question . . . WHY did God draw a line in the sand at all? What purpose does a fence serve? What purpose does this line God has drawn between right and wrong actually serve? And here is where most people get the cart before the horse - because most folks have this one exactly backwards.
God’s boundary is not a cage . . . it is a guardrail.
The First Lie Ever Told Was About God’s Law
We go back to the Garden of Eden, and we find the first lie that was ever told - and it was a lie Satan told about God’s LAW. The Bible tells us there was one boundary in that garden - one tree - one consequence . . . and God revealed the cost of crossing that line right up front. So we have the boundary, which is God’s expectation - He expects us to stay on this side of the fence. We have the tree, the part inside the fence that has been forbidden. And we have the consequence - what happens if we cross over.
Now when we talk about a fence and a guardrail, that reminds me - if any of you have ever been to Haley and Andy’s house, their house sits right up on a bluff, and they have a fence along the top of that bluff. What do you suppose that fence is for? It is a guardrail . . . it is there to keep the ones on that farm SAFE - so what do you suppose the fence around the Ten Commandments is for? Thou shalt have no other gods before me - thou shalt not kill - thou shalt not steal, and so on. It is not there to hem us in . . . it is there to keep us from getting too close to the edge and falling off. You put a fence around a pasture to keep the cows in - well, why not just let the cows run up and down the road? Because the cows will get hit by the traffic - and if we are not fenced out of improper behavior, we WILL be hurt as well.
So what happened after this lie Satan told? Now notice - he did not really tell a lie about God. He told a lie about God’s law . . . “Oh, that fence is not really important. He did not really mean to put the fence there.”
“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” - Genesis 3:1-5 (KJV)
Subtil - that is crafty, sly. He was good at tricking - and what he handed Eve was a partial truth . . . and a partial truth is a complete lie. We get into trouble the same way when we read only part of a verse in the Bible. Read the first half of a verse and it says one thing - read the whole thing and we say, oh, oh . . . NOW I see what he was talking about. So do not stop halfway down. “Ye shall be as gods” - you will be your own god. You can build the fence wherever you want it to be, because you will know good and evil just like God does.
Now notice what the serpent DID - and notice what he did NOT do. He never denied there was a fence - Satan knew good and well there was a boundary, and not one time did he tell Eve that God had no right to build it. What he did was RE-DESCRIBE the boundary . . . he planted a seed in Eve’s mind - “the boundary is in the wrong place.” God had said of every tree in the garden you may freely eat - all of it, every fruit in that garden, every bit of it except one. And Satan turned it around backwards and made it come out as though God was keeping Eve away from EVERY tree. Was the purpose of that boundary to keep Adam and Eve away from all the trees - or was it to keep them away from the one tree that was poison? Bear in mind there was only ONE fence . . . in a whole garden full of freedom.
You go up to Andy and Haley’s house and there are some fences here and there to keep the animals in - but there is one fence along that bluff. Just ONE. When we go up there and visit - Wyatt and Claire and the little ones - they can go anywhere they want on that whole farm . . . but they are told, never go on the other side of that fence. Do not get in between the fence and the bluff. That was the idea with Eve in the Garden of Eden - Satan took the fence around the one forbidden tree and portrayed it as a holding pen - he made it look like a cage.
And he has been doing that same thing ever since. “You mean, preacher, if I start going to church down here I can’t . . .” and then they start listing off the stuff in the Ten Commandments. I can’t have my Jack Daniels if I go down there to church. I can’t slip over and see Sally Sue when my wife is out of town. You get the idea. They look at the Ten Commandments as a CAGE - something that restricts their freedom and pens them in - when the whole time the fence around those ten commandments is there to PROTECT them.
Sarah and Mark had a couple of dogs that would run with the sheep or the goats out in their little field . . . and the dogs got through the fence. Well, what is so bad about that? . . . it was not long before an automobile mashed them flat as a pancake out on the highway. Why? They crossed the FENCE. And what do you think happens to us when we cross the fence? The fence is there for our PROTECTION - not to hem us in, but to protect us . . . you build a fence around the things you LOVE. You build a fence around the things you want to protect.
Mount Nebo is close, and it is not so much Nebo as some other places I have been - but you go up on a real high place like that and look off, and you can see so far down it makes your tummy do a turn. And typically there is a guardrail there . . . a fence. Now we come up to that fence and we can have one of two attitudes. “Ah, I am aggravated - that fence is keeping me from going where I want to go, it will not let me get the full view.” Or, when we get a little older and a little more mature about it, we can look at that fence as a good thing - “Well, of all the stuff Uncle Sam gets into that he ought not to get into, I am glad they built that fence there, because it is keeping me safe.” That kind of fence is the exact same thing we see in the Garden of Eden.
And that brings up a question . . . where in our lives are we standing at a fence which God put there to protect us - and calling it a cage?
Every Boundary Is a Fence Around Something God Does Not Want to Lose
Now back a couple of lessons ago - we went through the Ten Commandments one at a time, and we looked at every one of them through eyes of LOVE. This morning we are going to look at those same commandments from the FENCE side - and here is the one question I want to ask at every single one of them - what is God PROTECTING with this fence?
Because it is not normal for a person to go out in the middle of nowhere and build a fence – but when a person builds a fence, he builds it around something he does not intend to LOSE. The fence around those cows is there because we do not want to lose the cows. I had an electric fence around my yard so I would not lose my dog . . . well, he crossed the fence, and something bad happened. If he had stayed on the right side of that fence he would still be alive.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” - Exodus 20:3 (KJV)
God is protecting us from building our entire lives on top of something that is going to fall apart. If our god is anything other than our Creator, we are placing our whole life on something that is not going to last.
“Thou shalt not kill.” - Exodus 20:13 (KJV)
What is God protecting here? He is protecting our lives - and every family standing beside that life.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.” - Exodus 20:14 (KJV)
God is protecting marriages . . . and the children caught right in the middle of those marriages.
“Thou shalt not steal.” - Exodus 20:15 (KJV)
God is protecting what men work and sweat to obtain - what a person sacrifices for - what we gain by getting up at four or five in the morning and getting on the road.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” - Exodus 20:16 (KJV)
To bear false witness means to tell something about our neighbor that is not true. And God is protecting the good name of somebody who has not done one thing wrong - “but I don’t like them, so I am going to spread lies.” That fence protects the innocence of other people.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” - Exodus 20:17 (KJV)
Covet here is GREED. I want what they have so bad I will do whatever it takes to get it - I am going to arrange things so their house becomes my house, and their vehicle becomes my vehicle. His ox and his ass - that is his livestock, his living. Now this last commandment is a little different from the others, because it does not just protect the neighbor . . . it protects you and me. It builds a fence around our OWN heart, and the purpose of that fence is to keep poison OUT . . . it will not keep destruction from coming at us from the outside - it keeps poison from starting on the inside and working its way out.
Now look at these commandments - not a single one of them is God being difficult or God being hard on us. You can go look at the other four and see if you can figure out what God is protecting with them . . . but in every one of them you can picture God standing between us and something that is going to hurt us. The fence around the pasture stands between the cows and the traffic.
Now the boundary we are talking about to protect us - is still a boundary - I get that . . . a guardrail is not a suggestion . . . it is there to keep us from going too far. We are not saying the law is soft or something to be ignored. What we are saying - is that the law - the Ten Commandments - is FOR us.
Good Laws Do Not Make Good People
You have heard it said that good fences make good neighbors. Well, a good fence does not turn your neighbor into a good person. A fence does not make wandering livestock BETTER - it does not change their nature . . . a fence keeps bad livestock from wandering.
And here is what surprises folks the first time they think it through - now do not let this go in one ear and out the other. The Bible tells us that no man is justified by the works of the law. Another way of saying that is, good laws do not produce good people. The reason we NEED good laws is because people are not good to begin with. Dardanelle has laws against stealing, does it not? Most folks in Dardanelle are pretty good folks – but some folks in Dardanelle are still THIEVES. The State of Arkansas has a law against murder. Well then, nobody murders in Arkansas anymore, because that law made everybody in Arkansas good . . . no, that is not the way it works.
So if bad things keep happening even where there are good laws - what does a law DO? If a law cannot make me a better person, what is it FOR? Well, a law can do three things. A law can RESTRAIN - it can make the consequences painful enough so that we think twice about crossing the fence. Everybody knows what barbed wire is . . . what are the barbs for? So that when you try to cross it you feel the pain and change your mind. A law can PUNISH - after the fact, after the damage is already done. And a law can EXPOSE - it can tell us exactly what crossing the line looks like, and it can show us our need for something a good deal bigger than just one more rule to follow.
But a law cannot change a person’s HEART . . . it cannot happen. That is one reason the Bible says by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. A law cannot change our nature. A law can tell us exactly where the boundary is - and it can do nothing at all to make us not WANT to cross that boundary. We can look at the barbs on that wire and decide against it . . . but the law has not changed our want-to. We still think, “I wish I could get over there – but it just is not worth it.”
So once again - God’s boundary is not a cage . . . it is a guardrail.
What Happens When We Get Outside the Fence
Now if a fence is protecting something, then getting on the wrong side of that fence is going to COST something. If being on one side is protection, being on the other side is the loss of protection.
But we need to be careful here - because it is easy to hear half a verse, or three or four words of what the preacher says, and think, “Preacher, are you saying God is up there in heaven with a rule book and a pencil, just waiting for us to slip up so He can zap us?” No . . . that is not what is happening with the Ten Commandments at all. Think about this - and it is a pretty good example if I do say so myself. Think about a fish on the bank of the river. A fish was made for WATER. A fish was never designed to live on the bank - and the minute that fish is dropped on the bank and starts flopping back and forth, it starts to die. Now can you see that nobody is punishing that fish? Nobody is standing there beating it with a stick . . . it is dying because it is outside the only place that was ever built for it to live.
I want us to see God’s law as the SHAPE of the life that God built for us to live. When we get outside those boundaries, why are we so surprised that life stops working the way it was meant to work? We do not start suffering because God is MEAN . . . we start suffering because we are a fish on the bank instead of a fish in the water.
Now this does not mean that every hardship in our lives is because we crossed a fence somewhere. Job did not cross a fence . . . the blind man over in John chapter nine did not cross a fence - they asked, why is this man blind, did he do something, did his mama and daddy do something? And Jesus said, none of that . . . this man is blind so the works of God would be seen in him - and then He healed him. So every time we suffer, we should not kick ourselves and think, “Well, I must have crossed a fence somewhere - I wonder which one.”
This goes back to FAITH. When they told me I had cancer, the first thing that popped into my mind was, why? Well, that is not good - asking WHY will never, never, never lead us to a good place spiritually. When we begin to suffer, we need to settle a couple of yes-or-no questions. Does God love me - yes or no? Will God ever leave me or forsake me - yes or no? Will God ever do anything to bring me harm - yes or no? You see where we are going with this. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Now that does not say everything that happens is for the best - it says all things work TOGETHER for good. What is good for us is not always what is comfortable. I have taken medicine that tasted awful, but it was for my good - and I would have suffered more by not taking it than I suffered choking it down. If we have faith in Jesus, that faith is what gets us past the suffering.
So is there any place in our lives this morning - where we are flopping around on the bank - and just calling it bad luck? There is no such thing as good luck and bad luck. God intervenes in our lives every minute of every day, and everything God does for us is ultimately for our benefit.
The Law Walks Us to a Door and Knocks
Last Sunday we said that God’s law is the X-ray. The X-ray shows us exactly where the break is, but it does not set the bone - God’s law shows us where we are BROKEN. Now Galatians takes it one step further than the X-ray.
“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” - Galatians 3:24-25 (KJV)
I actually learned quite a bit from this scripture. I always thought the schoolmaster was the teacher - but bear with me, the language does not support that. In Paul’s day the schoolmaster was the household SERVANT whose one job was the young man of the house. He got that boy up in the morning, made sure he was dressed, kept him out of the mud holes on the way to school, and walked him right up to the teacher’s door . . . and then he stepped back. The servant was never the teacher . . . the servant was the one who got the boy there to LISTEN to the teacher.
And that is exactly what God’s law has been doing for us - waking us up, keeping us out of the ditch, walking us right up to the door, knocking on it . . . and then stepping back to see whether we are going to live by faith, or whether we are going to define righteousness for our own selves. Justified – is what it means to be counted righteous - by FAITH.
“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” - Romans 8:3-4 (KJV)
The Law is weak through the flesh - it is weak because WE are weak. In the likeness of sinful flesh – refers to how Jesus was in a real body just like ours. So what the law could not do, JESUS did for us. Once we cross that line, the law is not able to carry us back over to the other side . . . so God went and did what the law could not do. God sent His Son.
Have we ever THANKED God for the fence? . . . have we ever thanked Him for loving us enough to tell us the truth about where the edge of that bluff is?
The Line and the Bridge
So let us put the whole thing in one bowl this morning. First - God drew the line clearly and plainly, and He said it out loud to Adam and Eve. He told them exactly what it would COST to cross it. Second - every line that God has ever drawn - is a fence around something that He does not want to lose. Third - even with a fence there to protect us, we cross it anyway. I cross it, you cross it - we ALL have, and we all do. And fourth - God built a BRIDGE back across the line we just stepped over. If it had not been for Jesus, when we crossed that line there would never have been a way back for us. Now we do not come back to find perfection . . . we come back to find FORGIVENESS.
And when I say there is a bridge back, that does not mean God has changed the STANDARD . . . it means God sent Somebody to stand where we could not stand . . . Somebody to do what we could not do . . . Somebody to pay what we could not pay.
So let us hear what was actually said in the Garden of Eden one more time - and hear it the RIGHT way this time, instead of the way Satan told it. The fence on the bluff was not there to spoil the VIEW . . . the fence around the forbidden fruit was there to protect the ones in the garden - and it was put there by Somebody who could not stand the thought of losing us, watching us fall off that bluff.
So for the third time . . . God’s commandments are not a cage. God’s commandments are a guardrail. God loves us, and the fence is there not to hem us in - but to protect us. Please consider what you heard this morning.
Scripture Used
Genesis 3:1-5 · Exodus 20:3 · Exodus 20:13-17 · Galatians 3:24-25 · Romans 8:3-4 · Romans 8:28 · Galatians 2:16 · John 9:1-3 (all KJV)
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