SCOTT KARDASH AT NBCC

Working with Paul over the last few years has been a real privilege for me, a real pleasure. And as you know, a lot of you have been with Paul for many, many years. And it's very rare to find somebody with a depth of wisdom and understanding of the Scriptures that Paul has. He has a real detailed recall and is able to connect dots across Scriptures in a way that I've never seen anyone else do it.

Paul approached me and said, you know, we were talking about just other things. And he said, "Oh, well, you'd really like to get something going with some podcasts to get some of these messaging out." I said, "Oh, yeah, I'd love to help you." And so we've put out two series to date, hopefully many more to come: Our Ten Commandments and The Healing of the Soul and the Life-Giving Spirit. And so today I wanted to put some of that in context. Actually, they are related. It's all on a very similar theme. And the theme is all around the Spirit who heals us and reshapes us.

But before I do, I might just mention briefly that for those that don't know, I did speak to Paul during the week. And he's recovering well from the operation. I think he's been home for a few days now. On Friday, he got home. And so he said things could be going as well as could be expected. That's really good news. I have a lot of faith for Paul's situation. I know we're all praying for him.

An Ancient Look at the Ten Commandments

In preparation for this, I did listen to Peter Carblis last week. You all here for that? Did you all hear Peter Carblis? I was very impressed with his ancient Greek. So I decided to one-up him and use an ancient manuscript. He used like modern Greek. He had lowercase. There's no lowercase of the original manuscripts. And I also decided to go for the Hebrew, not the Greek. So this is even older than the manuscripts he was relying on.

Now, would anybody like to give it a crack? Because I can't read it. No? Does anybody know what that might be? No. I didn't know either. I had to look it up. So it's the Ten Commandments. And this is probably the earliest manuscript we have of the Ten Commandments. And it was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And you can see they've got a numbering system, which is a bit mysterious until you realise that it's quite simple. 4, Q, 4, 1. 4 is the cave they found this scroll in. Q means Qumran, which is where the caves were. And 41 was the number that they registered the scroll. So there's nothing magical about the 41. It's just the one. They got two in that sequence.

And you can see that with these ancient manuscripts, they're actually quite different to the modern languages that we have. There's no punctuation. They have the same in the Greek. There's no punctuation. There are no spaces between words. They all run together. There's no chapters or verses. There's no vowels or accents. They call it the Tetragrammaton, which is Yahweh. It's always written out in full. In the New Testament, they contracted Jesus Christ, and they put a line above it. But in our Bibles, the Yahweh is always written as capital L-O-R-D, Lord. So in the Old Testament, you'll see where it's written Lord, capital letters, it's in the original, it's Yahweh. And they had very strict rules about how they created these scrolls, parchment and kosher animals. And of course, in Hebrew, it's right to left, not left to right. If you start on left and try to go to the right, you'd be in real trouble.

But maybe it's better that we deal with the English today. I know I find this a lot easier. The Old Testament law, and God was forming a new nation. And so they needed a set of commandments. And it was part of a covenant that God had with this new nation. He formed them out of nothing. This nation didn't exist. It was a miracle, really, where God spoke to Abraham. And from Abraham, he said, "I will bless through you all the families of the earth, all the nations."

He started with these commandments. He wrote them. He wrote them on two tablets of stone. He wrote them with his finger and gave them to Moses. Remember what happened then? Moses came down the mountain. And what were the Israelites doing? They were already rebellious and worshipping a calf that they'd made out of the gold. And so what Moses did, he smashed the Ten Commandments. They had to go back up and get a new set. The fact that they're on tablets of stone is quite important because where is the law written now? On our hearts.

And Jesus came to fulfill that. He came to fulfill the law. And he helped us understand that there are two commandments that actually summarize everything. Love the Lord your God and love your neighbour. And then he said, "On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets." That's a phrase which actually means the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures. He wasn't just talking about the Ten Commandments, he was talking about the entirety of the Scriptures. And in the New Testament, when you see the word Scriptures, it's referring to what we now call the Old Testament. So they're referring to the Old Testament. They were always talking about the Old Testament when they talked about Scriptures. And Jesus came to fulfill everything in that Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Purpose of the Law

So there's a purpose to the law, and the purpose is still around today. So you can see since the law comes, it produces a knowledge of sin. Have you seen those YouTube videos of Ray Comfort running around and interviewing? Has anybody seen him? And he convicts people through the law. He says, "Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen anything? Even something small?" And he's using the Ten Commandments because most people think they're good people. And they need to have something which exposes sin and to make them realize they need a Savior.

Paul tells us later on in Galatians, the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

And then Paul again says,

But God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned sin and the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

So there's an uplifting of the law, and that's what Jesus came to do.

From the Law of Stone to the Law of the Spirit

And then Jesus ascended. It always surprises me that the disciples spend their time in the Holy Spirit, and they walk in the Holy Spirit. They spend all this time with Jesus face to face, had no clue who he really was for most of that time. And even when he died, they all went back to fishing and they thought, what was that all about? And it wasn't until they saw him resurrected that they realized actually who he is and he's still alive today.

Jesus did ascend and there was a prophecy in Joel, which was fulfilled in Acts.

I will pour out my spirit on all flesh...

And I will give you a new heart. This is Ezekiel now.

And a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and to be careful to obey my rules.

We're seeing a transition here from outer to inner. And then this is a key passage here, and Paul actually talks about this a lot in the healing of the soul.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father. And he will give you another helper.

Who's the helper? The Holy Spirit.

...to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.

And the disciples, they were terrified that Jesus is going to ascend and leave them all alone again. "No, no, no. Go back to Jerusalem and wait and I will send the Holy Spirit."

And then one of the most startling verses I think in the Bible,

...he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

For me, that's amazing that we are joined with our Creator through the Spirit and through our spirit, actually.

The Spirit of the Law: A New Perspective

So that now opens up a whole different view of the Ten Commandments. And this is where Paul has really made some interesting insights. And you can see the letter of the law is phrased in a very negative, "thou shalt not." Most of it's negative, but the spirit of the law in the New Testament enhancement of that is rephrased and uplifted in positive terms.

Take a few examples, "don't murder." The New Testament spirit of the law really is to say, is addressing the root of anger and unforgiveness to become an agent of reconciliation and peace. We're moved from avoiding murder to fostering life. And you see that the whole thing is flipped on its head.

Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labour, that he might have something to give.

So we're moving from a taker to a productive giver.

"Don't tell lies, don't bear false witness." Speaking words of life that fill others' hearts. Not just avoiding literal falsehoods. So we're moving from avoiding deception to speaking truth in love. So can you see this transformation?

The other thing Paul has noticed is that each of these commandments are linked. They're not just a laundry list of commands. One actually leads to the other, and ten actually goes back to one. But if you go the other way, you have a diagnostic tool. So say you're having a problem with honouring your parents. You go back one, and it will help you. And there's p