Abide Above

Okay, today we're going to talk about law versus life. We could spend months on this subject. Okay, now I didn't get too tricky this time. The principle of law, true or false? The principle of law applied to the believer delivers him to Romans 8. True or false? Yeah, the principle of law applied to the believer, dooms him to Romans 7, while the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus delivers him to Romans 8. Now, just maybe as a little set up, the law was, THE law, the Mosaic law, was given to what people?

The nation of Israel. To anybody else? Anybody? You sure about that? Okay, so it's specifically to the nation of Israel. And why was it given? Because these guys just were sort of dumb and didn't know what to do? Why was it given? To show them their sin. To make sin abound. That's why it was given.

I don't know where, Well, I do know where. But it's difficult for me to imagine if you study the Word of God regarding the law principle, it never says that the law is a rule of life, that it is there to help you live. It never says that. It only says that the law is there to do one thing, it's to make sin abound, and it's there to condemn you. That alone would scare me to death. I wouldn't want to mess with it if that's what it was there for.

But we love law so much that we just gravitate to it. Because it makes us fit morally for the world. Well, we think it will. And we love milestones. It's like driving on the freeway. What mile marker have we just gone by? and I got so much more distance to the end. We just love that kind of thing, you know?

I had a call from a lady in Mesa, Colorado last week, and there's some independent fundamental churches of America, little ones, IFCA churches, and they know enough not to put the Mosaic Law on their parishioners, but what they're doing trying to put the moral law on them. And this lady knows better, and her pastor has challenged her to show in the Word of God where the moral law doesn't apply. So I said to her, you can't prove a negative. You need to go back to him and have him prove to you, one, what the moral law is, give me the tenets of it, and where does it say in the Word of God anybody's supposed to keep it?

So, we just love law. We just like it a lot. You know, either mosaic law, moral law, or this little black box right back here behind your ear that tells you what to do and not to do. We love it. You give in a few times, though, and you'll stay away from it. It also gives self a purpose. Yeah, it gives self a purpose. That's a good way to look at it. So the law applied to the believer's life dooms him to Romans 7. And Romans 7, as we know, is the struggle. The struggle that culminates in the cry to the Lord, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? What a cry. Does everybody have to go through it though?

I think so. I think so too. Yeah, I'm convinced we do. Okay, question two. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to block self and its sinful works and to foster the new life and its fruit. True or false? True. You mean He doesn't need your help? Are you sure? Why? What's the principle underneath this? If He says that spiritual growth does not involve the effort on the part of the Christian, which is what a statement, then how is it going to get done? Yeah. Now you think about this. If you were identified with Christ on the cross, you were crucified, buried and resurrected in Him, and now He is your life, how much help does He need from you? None. None. And He's given us His Spirit to implement this life. So that means you get to go to the movies and do nothing, right? So tell me how this works. What do you do? Rest.

That's right. That's exactly right. You rest in the facts, you live by faith. And the implementation of the life is the work of the Holy Spirit. He does it. And you have to trust him to do it. He transmits the life of the Lord Jesus from its source to the servant, which is you and me. He's the manifester.

There's no struggle connected with the daily deliverance from the tyranny of self, for the Spirit transmits, and here's the key word, the finished work of the cross to the sinful element in your life, which is your sin nature. The Holy Spirit is applying the cross to Adam. to put him out of business so he can't function. All right. Any questions there? I'm surprised you didn't challenge me.

Three, true or false, covenant theology is very sound when it comes to their doctrine concerning justification. Yeah, they're really good. They present the gospel that salvation is by faith alone and the person and work of Christ alone. Nothing added. So they're really good that way. The study of covenant theology in four will cause one to grow spiritually.

Two are false. Why is it false? That's right. What do they leave out that is essential for spiritual growth? Grace. But what doctrine? Identification. Yeah, they leave out the identification truths. And so, if the identification truths are left out of the equation, you cannot grow. Why? Try to live it by yourself. Think about what the identification truths teach you.

The old nature is dead. No, you're dead to it. It's not dead, but you're dead to it. And what's the other side? That you're alive in Christ. Spiritual growth is old man or new man. So if you don't know you've been crucified, buried and resurrected, what are you stuck with? Working on the old man, right?

Because you don't know any better. You just don't know any better. You're ignorant of the truth. Especially we Americans, we're working all the time. We want to get better. So if a theology like covenant theology or reformed theology does not teach identification, they have no chance of growing, because they don't have the material to grow with, or the object to grow to, because they're stuck with the old stuff. It's a tragedy, but very few Churches or denominations teach identification. They're all about wanting Christians to grow and act like Christians, but they're not about using the proper information to grow. It's all about morality and saving the world.

Sure. Covenant theology, because it depends on law, here's the problem, there's several problems with it. It is anti-dispensational and is primarily restricted to two covenants, works and grace, Its prophetic scriptures are spiritualized resulting in amillennialism. Those are some big words. What does dispensation mean? What's a dispensation and what does that mean? It's hard to describe a dispensation without putting the element of time in there.

But really the Greek word is oikonomia, which means the management of the household of God. And maybe the best way to describe it, you've got three sons, you treat them all the same, all the time? The older one you treat different than the middle one, than the young one, and there's privileges for the older one, and it depends on who you are in the family. So dispensationalism treats in the household of God that the bride of Christ is different than the nation of Israel, and different than the Gentiles. So God has... and there's no admixture of sliding Judaism into the church.

They're separate. I've noticed most legalists take Jeremiah 31, 31, that's their covenant and they have a new heart. Sure. That's dispensational theology, or that's covenant theology. That's what they do. That's exactly right. Because it sounds wonderful. And they're trying to bring the promises of Israel into the church. They call themselves spiritual Israel. That's what they do. My viewpoint of that is that if you buy that, You qualify for spiritual handicap parking. Because you shortchange yourself from who you really are as a son of God. That's right.

It's interesting that covenant theology has come up with two covenants. The covenant of law works and the covenant of grace. Are there such covenants in the Word of God? They're not there. And when you say the covenant of grace, you're talking about an oxymoron. That's like saying jumbo shrimp. I'm from the government, I'm here to help you. There's no such thing as a covenant of grace. What grace is, is a principle in which and under which we live. Grace is a reigning principle. It's not a covenant. What is a covenant, by the way? Kind of a deal, a contract. It's a contract. Yeah, it's a contract between two people. Well, there's no contract between God and the Church in terms of grace. You know, if there is, where is it? And we've probably fallen down on our side of the deal. Oh, we certainly have. We haven't lived up to our side.

And you know what amillennialism means? Let's see, there's three. There's premillennial, postmillennial and amillennial. What does it mean? Millennial would mean what? A thousand? A thousand years. So if it's premillennial, it means that the church is out of here before the millennium. If it's postmillennial, it means the church has to go through the millennium and then gets out of here. If it's amillennial, it means that what the covenants say is that we're in the millennium right now. Isn't that kingdom now?

So they're amillennial. The church is considered to include saints of all ages, the distinctive body of Christ not being discerned, that we're not separate. So they merge Israel with born-again believers. The law is brought right past Calvary and fastened upon the Christian. That's covenant theology. And, of course, I'm sending my son to a covenant school. Absolutely. That's what they teach him.

Only by loving, fearing, and obeying the law shall we be kept from sinning. True or false? This is our friend Arthur Pink. These three guys, or four guys, Arthur Pink and Bonar and Riley and Finney are the four pillar writers along with a guy named Martin Lloyd Jones.

So if you see those names, these guys are covenant or reformed. From what we understand, when you read these guys from covenant theology, it's very clear to most dispensational believers that this covenant business doesn't fit. But let me tell you, if you sit down with a covenant guy or a reformed guy, this is where he or she is going to come from. And they're sold on this. I've told you, I've sat with a guy from the Third Reformed Church over here, and he came to me with an issue of sin in his life that he couldn't deal with, that Covenant Theology couldn't handle.

Either he came to me for that reason, or he came to me because he didn't want anybody inside their loop to know what was going on, which is entirely possible. Now, where does Bob George come from? Bob George is dispensational, but he's one nature. Yeah.

Yeah, I listened to him. I just caught the end of it, and they were discussing these weirdos that don't believe in the New Covenant. And he said, you can't talk to them because they're a closed mind. You know, but I never heard him say anything about the Bride of Christ. Yeah. Yeah. So, they completely missed Yeah, they do.

So, just to give you an example, what I did with this guy is that we started in Romans chapter 5, and we started going through it a line at a time. And when we got to 5.12, we talked about two distinct men, Adam and Christ. Then we got to Romans 6 and started talking about what God is doing is moving you from Adam to Christ, and he does it by identifying you with Christ on the cross.

He never saw that before. I mean, his eyes were this big. But when we got to the verse that said that he to the dead is freed from the law, he couldn't, I mean, he choked. Because he said, well, my goodness, that can't be right. There's got to be an explanation for that. I said, yeah, it's simple. If you died, you're done with the law. Nah. He said, well, you know, how about the moral law and how about the law of Christ? And on he went, you know. I said, no, doesn't it say, he that is dead is freed from law. And it's the law of spirit of life. But we hadn't gotten that far yet. See, the thing is, is that if, about 614, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under law, but under grace." And I said, now, you came to me six months ago with problem X in your life that you couldn't deal with.

Well, if you've been crucified with Christ and the old man has been, you've been separated from him, which man's got the problem? Old man or new man? Old man. Okay. And the other issue is that if you try to rectify your sinful situation by the use of the law, where do you end up? Back under it again. It just inflames it. So he said, but I'm stuck here, what am I going to do? I said, well, you know, you might have to trust God and what He tells you. Come down to that, you know. So I'm not sure he's bought this separation from the law yet.

And I think it's very hard. And you'll find as you counsel people in your life, when you start talking about grace and law and freedom from law under grace, that is a huge pill for people to swallow. Because it leaves them defenseless, they think. There's nothing for them to do. That was amazing.

The more I thought about it with Pete. He's basically saying he's stuck in, you know, I'm proud of it in Romans 7. For over 25 years I've been there. And I've got to think about that. and he's becoming a brother in church. I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking back, it's almost comfort when you read 7. Because you identify and you go, that's where I'm at. That's me baby. And that's Paul, and look I'm the same as Paul. And you stick there.

Because you think, you identify with Paul. more than Christ. I thought when I read this, how sad is that? They are almost proud that over 25 years stuck in Romans 7. But then I thought there are a lot that do that and feel very comfortable and almost proud to be the same as Paul. Look, even Paul said So when I fail, just like Paul, I'm wrestling with doing the things I don't. That's a great point. And you kind of mark yourself with that and you feel comfortable with it. Yeah. At least you can identify where you are in the word of God. That's something. And that's it.

Well, I never could. Well, you're a worse sinner than the rest of us. I'm in deep trouble now. The vast majority don't, Bill. They'll look at it and say, boy, I identify with Paul. Look, he's doing the same thing I am and boy, he's got a life struggle in that. Boy, that's almost a market. you're more Christian than I am. Because you at least know that struggle and Paul's struggled with it.

Like I said, I'm kind of horrified by the thing. He's proud that he's 25 years in it, but I see more and more people who doesn't chew a mum. Yeah, I'm somewhere. Sure. I have to share this with you. I've got one of these and I study Bibles in the study notes. You see right through to the theology.

Obviously, the covenant guy wrote these notes because on 614 it says, the meaning is not that the Christian has been freed from all moral authority. I'm trying to explain this before the guys get too far off the bridge, right? We can't have those guys being too gracious. They put the church on the earth and it's not there. That's right. All right, our friend Bonar, he's fairly subtle in 6.

He said, Christ's death redeemed us from the curse of the law, but certainly not from the law itself. That's pretty subtle, isn't it? He says, redemption forms a new obligation to law-keeping as well as puts us in a position for it. Yes, and I think I misspelled, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, but certainly not from the law itself. For that would be to redeem us from a divine rule and guide. It would be to redeem us from that which is holy and just and good.

It's pretty subtle, isn't it? Sounds good. Yes. No, I misspelled it. It should have. It should say. It was a typo on my part. It was in the book that way. Yeah, well I cut and pasted it and that's the way it pasted. Oh, that's the way it pasted. Yeah, I should have proofread it.

The hardest thing for a young believer to learn is faith. Yeah, to live by faith. And to receive and go through things. Let me give you another viewpoint of the law. The law is an external system imposed upon the person. Do you see that? It comes from the outside and it's an imposition on the person in order to get them to function a certain way. The principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus is internal and it's life itself that does not need any external pressure to function the way he does. And that's what people need to see because they look at you and, well, you can't have that attitude.

I know, it's dangerous. Riley, the Holy Spirit will always lead believers to a spiritual use of the law in the pursuit of sanctification. That's pretty subtle. Here's what he says, There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a Christian has nothing to do with the law and the Ten Commandments, because he cannot be justified by keeping them. The Holy Spirit, who convinces the believer of sin by the law, leads him to Christ for justification, will always lead him to a spiritual use of the law in the pursuit of sanctification.

Isn't that something? such a contradictory message, that we're saved by grace, and we're given a guarantee of eternal life, and then as soon as we're in the door, no, it's dependent on your performance, and hard to describe what the consequences are, because, I mean, they kind of want to say you could lose here. But they won't dare. They won't dare, right? But they've got to explain that contradiction. One, step one, step two, step three, this is how you pray. All these steps, you know. How about this little statement? Here then, it is plain that all the law demands is the exercise of whatever strength we have in the service of God. That's pretty slick, isn't it? I studied it, apparently, for a long time. Yeah. Oh, well, and if the whole thing hangs on whatever strength we have, well, I can cruise because I'm weak. I'm just going anyway, you know. And that's so hard to support.

I mean, when you look at Christ saying, I tell you that if you've ever even looked at a woman and lusted, right? Or he says, how about this one? He says, here's the deal, boys. You are to be holy as I am holy. Really? And no, oh, do the best you can and we'll work it out in the end. No, no. No, no. You're to be holy as I am holy. But identification with truth says we are holy.

That's exactly the point. So you find out that what God demands of you has already been accomplished positionally. And that's how faith works. And you enter into it by believing Him. and it's the work of the Spirit to implement what's already true of you positionally into your life and condition. That's really cool, I think.

The law, instead of being the rule of life, is necessarily the rule of death to one who has a sin nature. True or false? Absolutely true. The law only deals with a man as long as he lives. Never after he's dead. As an example, here's a great example.

Timothy McVeigh, everybody knows who he is, right? He gets convicted and sentenced to die, right? On the way to the gallows, he has a heart attack and falls over dead. Are they still going to put the Jews to him? Why not? He's already dead. Why? So you're going to execute him? You're going to carry out the demands of the law on him even though he's dead?

No. Same way with us. The law has nothing to do with a man who's dead. Nothing. Do you see that? It makes no sense. If I really did die with Christ, and was buried and resurrected, and the law was to the man in the flesh, that's who it was given to, then the reason it should not have any effect on me is because I'm dead. I'm dead. You can't get a dead person to react legally. You can't get Richard Locke to obey the law today. Why not? He isn't here.

And what's so significant about that is not just that it's logically true, It's spelled out in Romans 7 exactly to bring that point across. So the law only applies to if you're alive, you're freed from it when you're dead, and oh, by the way, you died. I mean, it says it, right? So it's not just us being logical and figuring things out in our own mind. Yeah, it's really plain, I think.

So then you get the guy who comes to you and says, yeah, but aren't we supposed to yield? Yield? Aren't we to present ourselves to God? What are you yielding to? Again, the plainness of it is that we're to reckon ourselves indeed dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. Now watch this next part. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies that ye should obey it in his lust. Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield or present yourself unto God.

Here's the key phrase. as those that are alive from the dead. God never asked the old man to do anything. The new man, resurrected, is the one who presents himself to God. It isn't the old man. But if you miss that little phrase, and you miss the identification, then you're going to spend all your time getting the old guy to act like the new guy. Well, aren't they trying to get back into paradise? Well, wherever, you know. God kicked man out of paradise. Because he sinned. And man kicked God out of the world in Christ. And it was lied. I mean, how would these reformed theologians explain the new creation? What do you think? Well, they think that the new creation exists now.

And they don't know that there's going to be a brand new, or they don't believe, maybe is a better way to put it, What would they make of the first, like, Galatians 2.20?

I mean, it's not Christ. It's not me, but Christ. Yeah. You know, and what you find in most of their writings is that they stay away from Paul. And if they go to Paul, they always go to the last half of his epistles where the imperatives are, the logical imperatives.

Do this, do this, do this, do this. They won't deal with identification. They won't do it. Either they don't understand it or they know if they go there, they're in trouble. A logical imperative to them becomes a moral imperative. Law. Because once you take identification off the table, it becomes moral. It has to.

See that? I think the other thing, at least one I've discussed with a friend of mine who's a reformed guy, He came back, he admitted he hadn't really studied that pattern in the Bible, you know, that mentions of old man, new man. And he came back and said, you know, it just isn't mentioned enough. And he allegorized it, you know, he just kind of thought it was a sort of a spiritualized analogy, but didn't take it literally, but would rather jump to those logical imperatives and take them morally.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's fascinating. On seven, they justify it by calling it the Holy Spirit, meaning it's spiritual use. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that subtle? The Holy Spirit's been given to you to keep the law. Yeah, that's why he's there. Well, and that goes back to Ezekiel 31, where I will put the law in your heart and I will give you the spirit so that you can keep my commandments.

That's where they get it. That's where they get it. The problem is that they don't read the first phrase. I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. Wait a minute. So in order to make that work, they got to get Israel and the church in the same boat. And once they get them in the same boat, then they can say, well, that's for you, the church people. That's how they do it.

Pretty slick, huh? For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. True or false? True. Hallelujah. Okay, fill in. Let me see here. How are we doing? Protestant theology is for the most part thoroughly... Emotional? Yeah.

When you see that term Galatianized, do you understand what that means? To be Galatianized means that you're stuck under law. In that neither the law nor grace is given proper place in the councils of God, but they're mingled together in one incoherent system.

This is how they do it. They get that... I bought my wife one of those mixer things for Christmas, you know, that you make bread with and all that kind of... That's what they do. They just keep throwing elements in there and it's doing this, and they come out with a theology.

So it seems like he's setting up the word Galatianized to mean, not just under law, but it means this mixing of grace and law, such that you kind of disguise law with a Christianized... That's exactly right. What's the subtlety? If I'm a preacher of the law and I'm trying to tell my class, well, you don't have to exactly obey the Ten Commandments or the 617 other commandments, but you've got to love your neighbor as yourself. And it says in Galatians that this fulfills the whole law. And that's what we Christians are supposed to do. Is that what it says there? Let's go to that. I think it's Galatians 6.

Galatians 5.14 5.13 says, For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

So the reformed guy says, there it is. There it is. How do you answer that? See, we're under the law. We've got to do this, love our neighbor as ourself. And if we don't, the law isn't fulfilled. So how do you answer that? Yeah, you've been called to liberty. Right. There's a supposition here that it's the responsibility of the believer to fulfill the law. Do you see that?

He says that all the law is fulfilled by this, that you love your neighbor as yourself. He doesn't say you have to fulfill the law by this, that you have to love your neighbor. He just says the law is fulfilled this way, but you've been called to liberty, right? So, I'm not spiritualizing this, am I? I'm not letting you off the hook, am I?

The life that you have and the life that you're identified with now is the resurrected life of Christ. Is this the way He functions? Or does He function in a manner of... Well, maybe I'll put it this way. Which is more obligatory on the believer? To love your neighbor as yourself? or to love your neighbor sacrificially, that you give yourself for him. Which one is it? Did I say that right? Number two. That's even harder. Oh, absolutely. So the life that we have, the resurrected life we have in Christ, is a sacrificial life. and last week we talked about that, that the new life is delivered to the cross to, because we're sacrificial servants, we're suffering servants. The Lord Jesus Christ didn't, when he was here, love his neighbor as himself, did he? What did he do? He gave his life. He gave himself.

So this new life we have is willing not to go beyond loving you as me, I'm willing to give me for you. See the difference? So it's beyond the law. The requirements of the life in Christ supersedes any sort of legal requirement on you at all. When they asked what the most important commandment was, Christ said, to love your God with all your heart and to own the man as yourself. That's right. Why didn't you say that the greatest gift is sacrifice? The reason was that the cross hadn't happened yet, the church wasn't in existence yet, and he was the Jewish Messiah talking to Jews. And this is a Jewish requirement, that the fulfillment of the whole law is to love God with your whole heart and to love your neighbor as yourself. The Christian's requirement in terms of love is to give your life. But when Moses brought the laws back on the Mount, wasn't that sort of implied?

Yeah. To those who were under it. That's exactly right. The difference is... Let me see if I can think of another way to approach it. Maybe put it this way. The Word of God in Corinthians says to me, husband, that I'm to love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. See, Christ loving the church and giving himself for it is a much greater example of love than loving your neighbor as yourself. If Corinthians would have said, you're to love your wife as you love yourself, it wouldn't have been as much of a burden on me as to love her as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. It meant that Christ gave his life for the church.

Under the law, I'm not required to give my life. I'm not required to do that. I'm required to love you as much as I love me. And if you're really subtle about that, that means you've got to spend all your time in loving yourself. Right? But under the economy of the requirement of the life of Christ, self is totally sacrificed. I'm to love my wife as Christ loved the church. And what was his demonstration of the love he had for the church? He gave himself for it. He gave himself his life up.

See the difference? Okay. Let's see. We're running out of time. What I wanted to maybe, we've got a few minutes left. I asked you to, in your own words, describe why those four guys mentioned were not correct. But rather than do that, we spent enough time talking about them. Let's talk a little bit about what Kelly and Schofield have to say. about law, and again there was a cut and paste that didn't come.

Every believer is regarded by God as alive from the dead. And the reason that they're there is to bring forth fruit, not works, to God. The law only deals with a man as long as he lives, never after he's dead. And he quotes, for you died in your life as hid with Christ and God from Colossians. And that is not at all what is said of us after a second blessing or any other step of imaginary perfection. We begin with, I'm identified with Christ dead and risen. It's no longer the law dealing with me to try, if it can, get any good out of me.

Maybe I can ask it this way. When you think about it though, how do you manage in your life, living in an environment like we do, where we have lots of laws, civil laws and that kind of thing, yet you live under grace? How do you manage to do that? How do you manage to go 55 and be gracious? Is that the first buzzer or the second one? So how do you balance those? How do you balance the fact that you live under grace, You're free from law, but you live in a country, in a society that's ruled by law.

But that's spiritual, what we have, and this is worldly, and we have to obey the rules that our government makes for us. And the reason is that God put those people in place. He's the one that has Not everyone understands grace. That's true. Even us, to live it.

Especially the world, to live it to the point that we don't need laws. If you live under grace, maybe ask it this way, if you were living under grace, would you ever violate a law? No. Think about that. You mean a civil law? I mean they probably would because they're not necessarily aligned with.

It's critical take. I was talking with the guy at work the other day about abortion and he said abortion is OK as long as the woman was raped. I said, no. Abortion's abortion. Murder's murder. But he didn't see that it was the man that raped her. Sin produces sin. There are consequences. And you can't get rid of them by just aborting. Maybe ask it this way. If you're living under grace, Would you ever violate the personal rights of your neighbor? Would you ever go to your neighbor and demand your rights? No, you wouldn't. Why not? Yeah, because the life doesn't... That's right. That's the right answer. The life doesn't function that way. Now, are you going to protect your family? Absolutely. You know? Are you going to... Maybe I'll put it in a biblical context. On Thursday night we're studying the Gospel of John and I'm really having a great time with it.

What I'm finding is that Christ functions as a man on the earth solely on the will of the Father. That what He does in any given circumstance is what the Father's will is in that circumstance. And the circumstances don't drive what He does. the Father's will drives what he does. So here we are, and in John 17 he prays, I mean, go read John 17 again, it's wonderful in terms of the inclusion that we as believers have been brought into while we're living on the earth to have the same intimacy with the Father that he had, to walk the same way he did. So we have the privilege to behold the glory of the Lord to such a degree that in any given circumstances we can refer to God in a sense.

And this isn't what would Jesus do. That's not what I'm talking about. The life that we have is obedient to the Father in every circumstance. So you will not find yourself in a position where you would harm your neighbor. You wouldn't demand your own rights in the sense that it would be harmful to anybody else.

But you may stand and say, you know, this is the line and I'm not going any... and you're not coming over here either, kind of thing, you know. Because the Lord said that to him. He said, you know, like when they kept trying to take him. He said, no, you're not taking me until the Father says. Because he knew what was in all men. Sure he did. And you know what? So do we. So do we. We know. And we may not be able to view the circumstances as clearly as the Lord Jesus could, but we do have the same life. And so, if we find ourselves in a position... It's like the Lord Jesus, when He was taken in the garden, what did He do? The first thing He did was He protected His disciples.

He said, let these guys go. I'm the one you want. We would do that. We would sacrifice ourselves for them. So I think the circumstances that we encounter, there isn't any circumstance that we're going to encounter or run into in our life that isn't covered under the umbrella of grace. The problem we have as Americans is that we still have this little bag of rights over here that the Constitution gave us, and we're going to demand them. Civil rights. Maybe. Maybe not. You know? Okay. Let's close.

Our dear Father, how we thank You. We thank You for the fact that we do, in our life and Your Son, live under grace. And we thank You for the work of Your Spirit that is teaching us and causing us to grow in the knowledge of Him and in the grace of Him, so that we might be conformed to His very image. We thank You, Father. We pray in His precious name. Amen.