Thank you. The Ten Commandments were not given to us as a way for us to earn our salvation.

Instead, they help us see our need for a Savior.

And today on Truth for Life, we'll find out why the commandments Jesus

gave to love God and love others don't replace the law. They sum it up. And we'll learn what

it really means to love God and our neighbors. Alistair Begg is teaching today from Matthew

22.

So loving God starts, Jesus says, with a cleansing that only God can perform, with a cleansing that is on the inside.

We all know what it is to be able to put on a show, to say the things that need to be

said or to not say them, but God searches our hearts and he knows us, and he knows whether

there's a genuine reality in this, or whether it's just a passing show. They had rules,

they had rituals, they looked the part, and they liked the

fact that they looked the part. But what they loved was something more than their love for God.

We might say that they had actually made an idol of their religion.

We might say that they had made an idol of their reformed satiriology. We might say that they had just

made an idol of that, which in the providence of God,

is an indication of divine blessing.

If you think about this, and I know you do think,

when Jesus says to his followers in such dramatic terminology,

he means what he was saying. We don't do this at the moment. I don't think anybody's got the

courage, really, to give much of a talk on this. The great crowds accompanied him, and he turned

and said to them,

if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and

...