Recently, The Chosen posted an image of the actor who plays Christ with a line from season 3 that is supposedly a “mic drop” moment for the show’s producers. It shows the character responding to one of the Pharisees by saying, “I am the Law of Moses.” While many flocked to the post in support of the “mic drop,” many others expressed how flatly unbiblical this is. They rightly said that Jesus is not the Law, but that the Law instead reveals the righteous standard of our thrice holy Lord. Likewise, they were right to say that Jesus came to fulfill the Law in His perfect, active obedience to it all His earthly life.
Contrary to the expression of infamous pastors like Steven Furtick, the active obedience of Christ means that He in no way “violated the Law” out of love. More importantly, the active obedience of Christ is a vicarious obedience. We think of the vicarious substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, meaning that He died in our place as our Substitute, and paid the wrath that we deserved. In the vicarious obedience of Christ, Jesus lived in perfect obedience, likewise, on our behalf. He fulfilled what we could not do: Jesus obeyed the Law, and due to His active obedience, and His passive obedience on the cross, we actually gain the benefit of being counted righteous before God. This is the doctrine of imputed righteousness, which is an alien righteousness—a righteousness not of our own, but Christ’s. This is important, so hang with me.
As we come back to the “mic drop” moment of season 3 in The Chosen, this becomes all the more nefarious. In fact, nowhere in Scripture does Jesus say to anyone, “I am the Law of Moses.” In the book of Mormon, however, you will find such a statement in 3 Nephi 15:9, “Behold, I am the Law, and the light. Look unto me, and endure to the end, and ye shall live; for unto him that endureth to the end will I give eternal life.” That alone should give people enough pause on the show, owing to the fact that Mormonism is a false religion that teaches a contrary gospel to the gospel of our Lord. In short, Mormon doctrine holds that it is your active obedience that will please God in the end, and earn your salvation.
2 Nephi 25:23 states, “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (emphasis mine). Often this verse from 2 Nephi is used in conjunction with Moroni 10:32 to give clearer meaning, which says, “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God” (emphasis mine). It is quite important to notice the all-important temporal modifiers to these Mormon scriptures, because they explicitly teach that grace is a commodity earned only after one has exhausted their own spiritual muster.
The LDS Bible Dictionary puts it like this:
“This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts. Divine grace is needed by every soul in consequence of the fall of Adam and also because of man’s weaknesses and shortcomings. However, grace cannot suffice without total effort on the part of the recipient. Hence the explanation, ‘It is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do’ (2 Ne. 25:23)” (p. 697).
But what does the Bible say of all of this? It is bupkis. Rubbish. Ultimately, it is damnable doctrine. Romans 3:10-20 lays out the plight of mankind so incredibly clearly that it leaves anyone without a source of comfort in their own ability to earn grace. Likewise, Ephesians 2:1-10 displays not only the hopelessness of those born under the dominating power of sin—but it lifts up the reality that we are saved “by grace through faith…and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). The good works which we walk in were prepared beforehand for us by the Father (Eph. 2:10), meaning that even our good works are a production of this grace in us. In other words: even our active obedience to Christ is a display of the riches of God’s grace. They are not what produces salvation, but a production of salvation.
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In 1674, Ken published A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Scholars of Winchester College. In it, he gave instructions for the devotional use of a series of his new compositions of Morning and Evening Hymns, including “Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun” and “Glory to Thee, My God, this Night.” What we now commonly sing as the “Doxology,” was actually the closing stanza of each of these long hymn sequences. Interestingly, according to a long-held tradition, Ken may have first learned the text and the old Genevan tune setting from his adoptive father, Izaak Walton.

A doxology is a short chorus of praise to the Lord, often sung as a standalone piece or as a coda at the conclusion of psalms, hymns, or canticles. The word comes from the Greek doxa, meaning, “appearance” or “glory,” and logia, meaning, “study” or “declaration.” A doxology is thus a declaration of the glory of the Most High God; it is a joyous sung pronouncement of His praise.
Common doxologies include the Gloria in Excelsis Deo and the Gloria Patri. But of course, the most common of all is taken from Psalm 100 and sung to the tune of the Genevan Psalter’s “Old Hundredth.”
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;Praise Him, all creatures here below;Praise Him above, ye heavenly host:Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
This treasured doxology is sung every Sunday all around the globe in untold dozens of languages. It was composed by Thomas Ken, a fellow of Winchester College, a prebend of Winchester Cathedral, and later, the Bishop of Bath and Wells during the reigns of Charles II and James II.
Ken was tragically orphaned in childhood. So, his older sister, Ann, and her husband, Izaak Walton, brought him into their home raised him as their own. Walton was himself orphaned as a boy — his father died when he was just three, and he lost his mother when he was nine. Thanks to the beneficence of some distant relatives, he was able to train as a linen draper in the iron-mongers guild. Eventually, he set up a small shop in the busy neighborhood of Fleet Street near Chancery Lane in the London parish of St. Dunstan’s. It was there that he volunteered as a churchwarden and developed an enduring friendship with the pastor, John Donne — who of course would later gain renown as the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
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Preach in a manner that none of your people can stand before the Lord on the judgment day and complain to the Lord that you did not confront them with their personal need to receive Christ and to consider their standing before the Almighty.

Introduction
And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.—Samuel 12:7
I recently listened to a sermon on the free offer of the gospel on SermonAudio. As the minutes rolled on, I could not help to note that the sermon was rather detached and lecture-like. When the sermon was more than 3/4 of the way through it struck me that it was unlikely this minister was going to press his congregation to see if they had freely received Christ for themselves. He did not preach as if Christ had been crucified among them (Galatians 3:1). The assumption seemed to be that the congregation only needed to understand the Bible’s theology better.
This happens all too often in Reformed pulpits but what made it more jarring was this was done during a sermon on the gospel itself. A sermon with no exhortations to close with Christ (John 1:12). Sadly, I hear the same kind of thing from many students that preach in Presbytery trials, they simply do not do what Bible preaching demands—to search out the hearers. After preaching that salvation is of the Lord, few today will take the next step and ask their hearers the simple question: “have you yourself, seen that you are a sinner, and have you cast yourself entirely upon Jesus for salvation?“
And so, it is the case, sad to say, in addition to a famine of practical preaching, there is a great famine of discriminatory preaching in Reformed Churches. Discriminatory preaching does not discriminate as we use the word today to show bigotry between ethnicities or sexes or something of that sort. Instead, it is a discrimination between sheep and goats—the true Christian and the non-Christian or the “almost Christian” (the same as the non-Christian).
Because such discrimination is not sought in preaching—the outcome is that hypocrites are never confronted with their sinfulness and will hear on that last day, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23). Sadly, many covenant children apostatize because their minister has never preached in a way that exposes their sinfulness and their own need for a Savior.
Confront the Hypocrite
Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?—2 Corinthians 13:5.
This need for searching in preaching is seen in 2 Corinthians 13. The apostle Paul confronts the Corinthians to see if they are in the faith or are reprobates.
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