The Seventh-day Adventist Church was established by God to prepare a living people to meet a living God. We are part of the Reformation, the last part. During the Dark Ages the light of truth, though maintained, was nearly extinguished. Had Christ suddenly brought back the truth in all of its fullness, it would have blinded the people and they might well have been overtaken by despair.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a building. It is beautiful and complete. This building is set on foundations that are eternal and which have never been changed. In the construction of a building, there is a certain order. Unless we are talking about a manufactured home, the foundations must be put in first. In case of a manufactured home, the building is constructed first and then a foundation is prepared for it. It is interesting to note that in times of storms, it is the manufactured home that is often destroyed because its foundation is not an integral part of its construction.

It is possible that, as a church with a special message for these last days, we have taken the foundation of the gospel for granted. If this is so we have made a mistake. In the preaching of the true gospel nothing must be taken for granted.

I say that we might have taken something for granted because it is often the case that our message can make people Seventh-day Adventists easier than it can make them Christians. Over in Sri Lanka someone once told me that other churches make the Buddhists, Christians, and then we seem to be able to make Christians of other faiths Adventists.

It is totally possible that some of the problems that we are having in the church are a result of having members who were never born again. This would account for the bitterness and the lack of love that is exhibited by some in the church. Let me tell you this. A person who is truly born again doesn't now exhibit bitterness and resentment in an ongoing way. Born again people are not mean and unforgiving. They may have their problems, but if they are born again they will be more and more exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit in their daily lives and it will manifest itself in the church and in the home.

But then I was talking about the beautiful building that is the gospel. Martin Luther laid the foundation for our reformed faith when he discovered and made clear that the just shall live by faith. This truth is the foundation of the everlasting gospel, and unless this fact is in place in the life our profession is in vain.

Martin Luther laid the foundation, but it was not God's plan that Luther build the house; that would be done by others. One thing that the Reformers did not fully develop was the role and function of obedience in the life of the Christian. What they themselves may not have understood was that the truth that the just shall live by faith was not a "what," it was a "how".

You see, the whole problem of sin began around shall we or shall we not obey the Almighty. At the root of the question posed to our first mother that day at the tree of knowledge of good and evil was, if you eat of this tree, you won't have to do what God wants you to do; you will be able to do as you please.

My dad used to say that obedience did not put Lucifer into heaven, but disobedience took him out. In the same way, obedience did not put Adam and Eve into the Garden of Eden, but it was disobedience that took them out.

Graciously God decided that it was important that man know the "how" before he could understand the "what". But He would not stop there. Having laid the foundations of the salvation process, he would move on to flesh it out. Some may say that what I am about it say is arrogant, but I believe that it is the message that He gave to the Seventh-day Adventist Church that is what some may call, "the rest of the story."

You see, if you read certain of the Reformation fathers you could come to the conclusion that obedience in the life of the Christian is optional, something that the believer may chose to do as an expression of appreciation for the sacrifice of Jesus in his behalf.

Read my lips. Obedience in the life of the Christian who is alive when Jesus comes is not an option, but it will be the identifying mark at the close of probation of those whose names will be left in the Lamb's Book of Life.

Inasmuch as Lucifer was cast out of heaven for being disobedient to the will of God, and Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden for the same reason, Jesus has a problem, and that is that if He took alive to heaven people who were knowingly disobedient to the will of God, the devil would cry foul, and God would have to take the devil back.

It is for this reason that, though we aren't saved by obedience, we are saved for obedience, and the person who resists being obedient, over time, cannot be saved.

Our church was given the message that would prepare the final generation for translation without seeing death. This message would reveal to those whose names were written in the Lamb's Book of Life at the end time the necessity of keeping all of the commandments, especially in view of the fact that Christendom had generally lost the significance of the fourth commandment.

It is interesting how the spiritual leaders of other Christian faiths, though they are more and more often preaching the necessity of keeping the Ten Commandments, will negotiate with you a ten percent discount!

Let me say it like it is. Our church has the special mission, and that is to call the world back to obedience to the Creator. By the way, one of the reasons why the devil is so interested in the theory of evolution is that if we were not created by God, we have no reason to feel that we have to obey Him. And to make matters worse, the devil has gotten into the Christian church with the doctrine of evolution. It is not what we might call a pure Darwinian evolution, but rather what is called theistic evolution, which teaches that though God is the creator, He did it through an evolutionary process, and that the first eleven chapters of Genesis never happened. Of course, if that is true then we don't have to obey God either. By the way, the Pope came out in favor of theistic evolution some years ago. As far as the devil's strategy is concerned, it has up to now been a win/win situation.

To make matters worse, the church that God raised up to teach obedience to the last generation has come to the point, in many places, of denouncing the whole concept.

You might say, "But, Pastor O'Ffill, what are you talking about? Are you telling me that our church is teaching that Christians don't have to keep the Ten Commandments?" I don't think that would generally be the case, though I have heard of some exceptions. But what we would be more likely to hear these days is the world, "legalist".

Emphasis out there these days is that we are not saved by works. Therefore, whenever someone begins to talk about living a holy life, abstaining from the things of the world and so forth, there is sure to be someone who will say that that kind of thinking is legalism.

When someone happens to mention that something might not be pleasing to God and may even be a sin, more and more often we are being reminded that we are not saved by works and that such thinking is legalistic.

I suppose the most common thing that we are hearing is that there is absolutely nothing that we can do that will contribute to our salvation. The masses hear that to mean that anything goes. It is also being said that there is absolutely nothing that you can do to make God love you more. Again, the message is, not to worry. Let it all hang out. God loves you the way you are, and the fact that a person may be fooling around with someone else's wife is neither here nor there, because after all, my God wants me to be happy.

For the record, the Bible is clear from Genesis to Revelation that though there is nothing that a person can to do to add to their salvation, there are any number of things that they can do to make it go away.

Though it is important that people know that it is by faith in Jesus that we are saved and that we don't save ourselves, to just preach that may well lead a person into believing that the changed life is a frill of the Christian experience and that obedience is a perk.

It is inconceivable to me that the time would ever come in the church that we believe in and that we love when there would seem to be a systemized effort to spiritualize disobedience.

We were brought into being as a church to show the world from the Word of God why obedience to the will of God, which includes the Ten Commandments, is inseparate from what salvation is all about.

Something terrible has happened when we now go to Sabbath School classes, and even hear sermons preached, whose bottom line is that keeping the commandments and determining by the grace of the indwelling Spirit to live a life in conformance to the will of God has somehow now become legalism. In our church, increasingly, legalism has become a synonym of antinomianism, which means "against law."

How, my friend, could it ever come to this? This is not, as they say, shooting ourselves in the foot. This is shooting ourselves in the head and the heart.

Listen to me. There is no objective verifiable indicator to show if we have, by faith, accepted Jesus as our Savior other than to obey Him. Jesus made it clear that those who love Him do as He says.

Jesus came to this planet to do what man could not do, and that was to perfectly obey the will of God. Did He do this so that we wouldn't need to? Some speak as if the servant were greater than his Master and the disciple above his Lord. Did the Lord Jesus honor the law so that His people could set it aside? Did He keep it, not that we might keep it, but that we might not keep it, but something else in its place? Give the Lord a break!

The plain truth is--we must either keep the law or break it. What do those who accuse those who would be obedient mean to say? Are they suggesting that we can break the law of God at will and go on sinning that grace may abound?

Some would say that the Christian is not under the rule of law but the rule of love. Think with me now. Love is not a rule, but a motive. Love does not tell me what to do; it tells me how to do it. Love constrains me to do the will of the Beloved One, but to know what His will is I must go elsewhere. The law of our God, friend, is His will for our lives. And if the law, which is an expression of His will, was withdrawn, love would be in the dark; it would not know what to do.

We love Jesus and we want to serve Him and do His will, but I have to know the rules of His house so that I may know how to serve Him. Love without law to guide its impulses would lead to anarchy and confusion.

Love then, goes to the law of God to learn what His will is, and, because it is motivated by love, it delights to obey His will. A person who would suggest that being a Christian has nothing to do with obeying the law of God might as well say that the Christian life has nothing to do with the will of God.

The bottom line is, the divine will of God for our lives and the divine law of God are substantially the same thing.

Truth is the utterance of the divine mind. Law is the utterance of the divine will. When a father teaches his child, we see simply mind meeting mind; but when the father commands or gives rules, we see will meeting will.

Conformity to the will of God can only be carried out by observance of His law, for we know His will only through His law.

These days we are hearing that we should obey God because we love Him. Is this saying that if we don't love Him, we don't have to obey Him? Does the Christian obey because he loves God or are there even more compelling reasons? The truth is that we obey him because He demands it, and He has the right to demand it because of who He is.

We are hearing that all that matters is that we have a relationship with Jesus. I don't know exactly what that is trying to say if that is all you say. What do we mean when we say that all that matters is that we have a relationship with Jesus?

I have a sermon entitled, "He Speaks Our Language." In this sermon I point out that if you want to make it impossible for your enemy to convey his ideology, take over his language. The devil has practically taken over the words that we use to preach and teach the gospel. The only thing is that now the same words don't mean the same thing. This is why, when we talk to this generation, we may have to use other words and even then explain what we are trying to say.

In this case I am talking specifically about the word "relationship". To hear people talk these days, a person who is able to say they have a relationship with Jesus can pass go and may collect their $200. Tell me, what does it mean to have a relationship with Jesus?

Someone might answer, "Well, it means that we need to get up an hour early every day and spend the time reading the Bible and praying." Only God knows our hearts, but it seems that it would be safe to say that more and more people say that they are getting up early in the morning and spending a hour in studying the Bible and in prayer, but the conclusions that they are coming to as to how to live the Christian life would make you wonder what Jesus they are spending an hour with.

This should not surprise us, because Jesus Himself warned that in the last days many would come in His name and would even have wonderful answers to prayer. He said that they would recount how they had cast out devils and performed miracles in His name, but He said He would tell them that He never knew them, and would throw them out the door.

I don't believe that we do ourselves a favor in simply saying that the goal of the Christian life is to have a relationship with Jesus. Let me explain further. You may have heard me tell the story of the conversation that I had one time with a young man who was living with a girl without being married.

I asked him what it was like. He told me that they loved each other, they were best friends, they shared expenses, and they were intimate. I told him that that sounded like my wife and me. I asked him why he didn't go ahead and get married. He shook his finger and said, "We don't want to make a commitment."

Friend, this is why I don't think it is safe to simply say that all that matters in the Christian life is that we have a relationship with Jesus. In the first place, this generation doesn't mind having a relationship with anything. Come to think about it, the devil has a relationship with Jesus--he hates Him.

What we must realize is that the Christian life is about making a commitment to Jesus. Making a commitment to Jesus doesn't make obeying Him go away. In fact, it makes it, if anything, now mandatory.

I know I am right when I say this, because when I made a commitment to my wife, Betty, dos and don'ts suddenly appeared where none had existed before. Come on now. Get real. A commitment to someone doesn't make obedience go away; it intensifies it.

Romans 6 tells it like it is:

"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

"Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

"Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.

"Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

"For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

"But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness."

Be honest with me now. Do those verses tell us that we don't have to obey? If sin is the transgression of the law, then these verses are clear that, being crucified and resurrected with Christ, we can do something we couldn't do before, and that is we become obedient.

Let me take a minute and recap what I have been saying:

1. There is an increasing tendency in the church to spiritualize disobedience. That is, we are increasingly hearing sermons and reading articles that provide a scriptural basis for disobedience rather than obedience.
2. The emphasis on not being saved by works is being preached in many places to mean that we don't need to obey, and that if we think we do, we are legalists.
3. To suggest that obedience has nothing to do with our salvation is error and misleading. Though obedience will not give us the gift of salvation, disobedience represents a practical refusal to accept the gift.
4. The issue is not shall we obey, but how shall we obey, because there is none righteous, no not one. The answer is that just as the Holy Spirit makes our hearts beat in a way that we can't understand, so He will engraft the life of Christ into our very lives in such a marvelous way that we will actually delight to do the will of God because He is writing it upon our hearts.
5. Our commitment to Jesus becomes the door through which the Holy Spirit brings obedience into our lives. Remember the text that says, "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock." Commitment to Jesus is represented by us opening the doors of our hearts.
6. We don't obey only to show our love for Jesus. We obey because that is what saved people do.
7. A person who fights the concept of obedience doesn't yet have salvation and has not been born again, because when we are born again, though we may often miss the mark, our desire is to do the will of the Omnipotent.
8. A person who tries to live a Christian life seeing how much they can get away with should go to customer service and return the salvation they think they have for the real thing.
9. Jesus cannot take to heaven a living generation which is disobedient to the will of God.
10. Love is a motive. It doesn't tell me what to do; it tells me how to do it. Without the law, love has no way to express itself.
11. The will of God is not just the Ten Commandments, it is also the Sermon of the Mount, and for that matter, it is every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

If we stay on the track that many have taken, the result will not have been to institute righteousness in the body of Christ but to institutionalize sin.

A person who is hostile to keeping the Ten Commandments must have the problem of some secret sin in their lives. The plan of salvation is to break the power of sin, which is a result of disobedience, and to reestablish righteousness in those who, by the death and resurrection of Jesus, are being conformed to His image.

Listen to the call of Scripture. Do these texts seem to be saying that we don't need to obey or just the opposite?

• "Awake to righteousness and sin not" (1 Corinthians 15:34) is God's message to us.
• "Be ye holy; for I am holy" 1 Peter 1:16.
• "Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God." Romans 12:1.
• "Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump" 1 Corinthians 5:7.
• "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity" 2 Timothy 2:19.
• "Denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" Titus 2:12.
• "Be diligent that ye many be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless" 2 Peter 3:14.
• "Let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ" Philippians 1:27.
• "Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them." Ephesians 5:11
• "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof" Romans 13:14.
• "I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" 1 Peter 2:11.

A storm is breaking upon the world not at all like we are expecting. All of those who are not committed to Christ, and by His grace committed to be faithful to His Word, will be lost. To have thought that the time would come in which to preach obedience to the law of God would be seen as legalism is unthinkable.

I do not know what course others make take. But by God's grace and by the indwelling of the Spirit in my life, I will continue to pray that His will be done each moment of my life, and that He will proceed posthaste to inscribe His law in the new heart that He has given me.