Principal & Principals of Grace

Those of you haven't been here before the way I like to run the class just so you kind of stay on speed with me. I handed out questions last week. Not that you have to diligently sit and do homework. Actually, what they're designed to do is to cause us to points of discussion for this week and weeks coming up. So that's kind of what it is. There isn't a textbook per se. But there are verses that I ask you to look up and read the verses. And then I ask the questions based on the verses and based on the content that we want to get out of those verses, which is in this class, it's obviously understanding and knowing what grace is. So the. Actually, what we should do is open up the door because of the cold air will come. The swamp cooler sends out the air and it'll come this way if I leave those open. I think if not, if you don't cool off, we'll open up the door.

So the the the flagship verse for this class is Romans 614. And hopefully by the time we end the class, you'll know when I say Romans 614, you'll know what it is. Who knows it off the top of their head? For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. So that's what we're studying. What does it mean to be under the principle of grace? So my first question for this week is why aren't we under any law system now? Why can this statement that we are not under law be factual? Why aren't we under law?

It is because Paul said, we died to it. How did we die to it? How did that happen? We were crucified with Christ. And when a death plate, the word, the definition of death is separation. And so when you died with Christ, you were separated from several things, the sin nature, the world system, the law, Satan, am I missing one? I think I got them all. So co-crucifixion with Christ separates us from the old creation in which law and condemnation are the operating principles. See that? The operating principle of the old system is sin, death, and the law. And the verse says, sin shall not have dominion over you.

Nice thing to know, right? But why? Maybe it's just the way I think. I'm always asking the question, why? When you make a statement to me, my mind automatically clicks to, well, okay, why? And he gives the answer. For you are not under law, but under grace.

Under what operating system then does God function only Emphasis on the only way he functions. Remember, we talked last week about operating systems and I use the analogy or the example of if you have a IBM computer, it runs probably on a Windows operating system can run on something else. But primarily, if you have an Apple, it runs on a Mac. It runs on an Apple system. Right. That's the operating system. That's the way it functions. And for a long time, if you had an Apple, you couldn't run IBM stuff. You couldn't run Microsoft stuff. Well, on the earth, there are two operating systems. One's law, sin, condemnation, and the other is what?

It's grace. Now, what system do you think God operates on? Grace. Only grace, you think? or grace as long as things are going well and a little off, you sort of get off the rails. It's always grace. And I think that's a difficult thing for us sometimes to recognize, especially when the straits are on us or there's an issue that God is dealing with us only on a grace basis.

And it isn't going to be. until next week where we really get going on a definition of grace. So this is all kind of preliminary. Now, some of the verses that I put in there were from Romans 4. I didn't write down. Let's see. I think it's Romans 4.4. Tell me if I'm right or not. But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we... No, that isn't Romans. Maybe it's Galatians.

Anyway, listen to the verses and you'll see the point that I'm after here. But God who is rich in mercy, quote, mercy, for his great love when he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has he quickened us together with Christ By grace are you saved and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Purpose, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding, listen to this, he's going to show the exceeding riches of his grace. That's what he wants to do. in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, but as a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast." It's got to be Ephesians, right?

So, the word mercy and grace and riches of his grace and grace are mentioned four times in those verses. That's the way God operates. He operates solely on the basis of grace And maybe you could say it's say it this way, which kind of puts an exclamation point on its grace only. It's this or nothing else. There is no option. He only operates on grace. Right. Any arguments there, Steve? That's exactly, that's good. Just to get the question on the tape, see if I can repeat it correctly.

Before the cross or because of the cross, God is totally satisfied with the work of Christ. So therefore, he can act graciously. When we get to a comprehensive definition of grace, one of the things we're going to find is that the unlimited and unmerited blessings towards us has a cause, and the cause is the total work of Christ on the cross.

Without that, God isn't going to act graciously because sin is still an issue. Do you see that? Does that make sense to you? If the sin issue isn't satisfied, God can't act graciously. And the reason He can't is because He's holy and He's righteous. Now the cross itself is a gracious act from our standpoint, but it isn't from God's standpoint. It costs Him plenty.

Does that answer your question? Okay, that's a good question. When Adam sinned and when I sinned, you sinned, everybody sins, who do you sin against? Sin against God. So it's an offense against God, and because God is holy, righteous, and good, and He is God, there is an insult to Him by my sinning. The problem is that within the confines of the creation, I am not of a character worthy enough to atone for what I've done. I can't fix the offense to God.

So God has to do it himself. He doesn't have to, but that's what he did. So the second person of the Trinity becomes a man, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the parameters were set out by God when he said to Adam, the soul that sins, it will surely die. That's the consequence. There's always a consequence for sin. We like to think that, you know, gee, if we sin, we can make amends, we can atone, we can do penance, we can, I don't know, push-ups, whatever.

But none of that ever satisfied the holiness of God. So the Lord Jesus Christ, who is 100% God and 100% man, dies on the cross to satisfy the holiness of God. The 25 cent Christian word is propitiation. What propitiation means is that God was satisfied with what Christ had done. In other words, his holiness was satisfied. No other creature, no other being could satisfy God about the insult for sin or the insult that sin caused God than God himself.

Does that make sense? Let me give you maybe another example. If you come over to my house and my dog bites you in the ankle, what can my dog do about it? atone for his behavior. He can't, but I can, because you and I are on the same level of creation. I could do something that would satisfy the injustice and the insult done to you by the action of my dog, but my dog can't do anything about it because he's a lower level of creation than you and I are. Well, when you sin against God, He's here, I'm here, but he's got to be satisfied up here.

And so Christ was the only one who could. So once he's satisfied about sin, then he can act towards mankind in a gracious manner. Because sin's not in the way anymore. He was totally satisfied about it. That make sense? Not only were the penalty of the sins paid for, but sin was put away. So he deals with mankind now based on the adequacy of this man, Jesus Christ, who totally satisfied him.

No, I agree. I misspoke then. He did have to. What he didn't have to do is accrue the benefits to you and me. Sure. Christ could have rose from the dead. God could have said, OK, I'm done. You're out of here. He could have done that. He could have said, you know, I'm totally satisfied. I'm propitiated. But I'm, you know, I'm done with you, creation. Goodbye. But he didn't do that.

He extended the grace because he is gracious. His grace, his love doesn't outweigh his righteousness and his holiness. It's interesting. We like to look at God that some of his attributes are greater than others. But when you're God and everything is full on all the time, nothing's greater than anything else. It's perfect, full to the fullest extent in every category.

So his righteousness and his holiness has to be satisfied before he can be gracious to us. Now, as we talked last week, he certainly was gracious in the Old Testament. You know, in the Jewish economy, all the Jews brought was sin and failure and defeat to the table, and God, Jehovah, brought grace. And we'll talk a little bit more about that today in some verses that we've got.

That's what he did. But he did it on credit. You know what I mean by that? He did it looking forward to what was going to happen on the cross of Christ. He used his grace credit card. Now, though, the prices and the penalty have been paid and the money's in the bank, so to speak. then he was doing it looking forward.

It's like if I go out and use my credit card and charge something, what I'm doing is, or what the bank is doing is betting that I'm going to pay for it at the end of the month. Well, God knew what Christ was going to do at the end of the month, so to speak, and so he could act graciously to men and cover their sins in the Old Testament.

And one of the questions we'll be dealing with, what's the difference between the grace extended in the Old Testament and the grace that we live under? Any other questions? Now, this next question, what does it mean that we are under a controlling system? Now, I want you to look at two verses. One is Romans 3, 9. And then the others obviously are verse Romans 6, 14. Romans 3, 9 says, what then? Are we better than they? No, and no wise, for we before laid to the charge of both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin.

So every human being that shows up on this planet is under a controlling system. I know the Constitution of the United States says you've got free will. Trust me, you don't have it. You're under sin. And the greatest freedom you have is to pick between one sin and another. That's a lot of freedom, isn't it? You're in such bondage to sin that you get to pick which sin you're going to commit. You cannot pick righteousness, holiness.

So all mankind is under sin, or Romans 6.14 makes this astounding statement, for you are not under law, you are under grace. Statement. Not you're going to be, we hope you are, maybe next week. Right now, every believer is no longer under the sin principle. He or she is under the grace principle. Really important thing to sort of pack away in your psyche. I am under grace and it's a controlling system. We're going to talk a lot about the fact that grace is a controlling system over the next few weeks. But most people think, what do most people think grace is when it comes to conduct and behavior? How does you view it? Don't you? What's that?

License. Most people view it as I can do what I want. Right. I live under grace, so I'm free to do whatever I want. One of the one of the goals of this class is to demonstrate clearly and persuasively that grace is a controlling principle, that it will control the behavior of the believer. And not only will it control it, but it is the strongest motivator ever. It's way stronger than a law system. It's way stronger than do this. And so it does control human behavior.

And that's a really important point because there are so many Christians who think How many of you have heard of the word antinomianism? You know what it means? It means lawless. So if you're a grace person, somebody in the crowd is going to raise their hand and accuse you of being antinomial, which means they're going to say you're lawless. You're not under any sort of controlling system. But you know better because you're controlled by the grace of God. controls your conduct.

And again, as we go forward, hopefully we'll make that as clear as we can. Question four, why must we be told about grace? How come we've got to learn it? You can't conceive grace. What do you think about that? I mean, if you think about it, Paul is the one, he's the grace guy. And he's got to tell us about grace, because we would never conceive it. You think about it.

You're pretty gracious in the way you do things. Not between each other. Certainly, you don't even act graciously towards yourself. You might excuse your behavior, but that's not what grace is. So, concept. We don't come from an environment being under sin that has anything to do with grace. Because if you're born in sin, what's the whole focus of your life? Me, me, me. And what do I got to do?

It's interesting. I don't know how many years it's been now. Ten, fifteen years ago, there was this incredible display that came from Mexico City to Denver. about the Aztec culture. And we were one of the only cities in the country that got it. And we went down to it, and what amazed me about that culture was that they knew that God was mad. And so they also knew that they needed to sacrifice to God to appease Him. And they even got it as far as they sacrificed human beings. to God or a God to atone or appease him. Nobody shipped them a copy of the Old Testament. How'd they know that?

How come all the cultures sort of have this in one form or another built into their society? There is a deity. He isn't happy. We got to do something to keep him from condemning us. All societies are like that. It's our conscience. So what does that tell us? We are under a cloud. There's no freedom in any society. There's no grace. There is no grace. Because what's the system? I have to do something, me, me, me, to keep God from condemning me. I have to do something in order for God to bless me. The crops are going to grow. The cat's not going to die. Whatever.

That's an entire law system that comes built in with all of us. So when Paul comes along and he's the guy, he's got to teach us grace from the ground up. If we are not taught grace, we don't know it. We don't know anything about it. We know the Word. We might say a prayer before we eat dinner and say, that's what grace is. But we don't know anything about grace.

So if we're not taught it, we're not going to get it. Because you don't just sort of side up to it and figure it out. Grace isn't natural thinking for us. It's not natural for us to think like that. We won't understand grace until we get into the Word of God and we study it, because that's the only place it is. And it's in Paul's epistles primarily.

If all of us, if we had a big conference at Holly Hills Bible Church and we were the Save the World Conference and none of us were believers and we were going to come up with a plan, we knew that God was unhappy and we were going to come up with a plan and all of you were delegates to this conference of how to fix it so that God would be happy. We would never come up with a plan based on grace. Never. We'd come up with a law plan.

We'd come up with something that we or society had to do to keep God out here so that he didn't slam me when I'm bad and maybe he'll do some blessing if I'm good to hold dependencies on me. That's not grace. Grace doesn't depend on you. Is it possible then to operate under grace and be ignorant of grace?

What do you think? Is it possible to do that? I've got a no up here. How many say no, you can't do that? It's not possible to operate under grace and be ignorant of grace. How many think, oh yeah, that's possible? And how many of you are too chicken to raise your hand?

The problem is that there's no middle ground. Either a believer understands what grace is and that he's under grace, or he doesn't understand that. And if he doesn't understand it, He can't operate under grace because he misses the whole system. Now let me ask you something. Primarily, in contemporary Christianity, does Christianity operate under a grace system? What do you think? Everybody's going like this. You know better, don't you? You know it doesn't operate that way, and why wouldn't it? Why doesn't it operate that way?

You've got to learn it. You've got to learn what grace is. You've got to learn how it operates. You're going to find that it's very appealing to you in order to live under it. Yes, he does. He's still operating in grace. That's right. OK, that's a great point. And that's right.

Just because we're ignorant of it. and don't operate under it, it doesn't change the way God operates towards us. He's always coming at us from a grace standpoint. The problem is, it's like He's broadcasting on channel 7 and we're listening on 9. We're on the law channel, He's on the grace channel, and we're trying to do something to please God when He's already been pleased by the work of His Son. And as we go forward, we'll talk about how you respond to grace. We talked some about that last week.

You know, we were talking about the Greek word for grace is charis. And we went through the different ways the Greeks used the word charis in terms of how they used it. It meant that the basic word means to give pleasure. They used it in terms of Doing an unmerited favor for somebody, Aristotle's definition could almost be a Christian definition.

It's unmerited favor, not expecting anything in return. And the other thing that was fascinating to me, how do you respond to grace? When grace is extended to you, what do you do with it? You say, thank you. Guess what the Greek word for thank you is? Charis. It's grace for grace. Isn't that interesting? The Greeks weren't dumb, they knew.

So what we're going to learn in learning to live under this operating system, the thank you is going to become a big deal in your life. Because the grace gets to be so overwhelming, there's nothing else you can respond to other than say thank you. Because you can search up and down the dam looking for a hole in it where you can plug it and there won't be any. So you just have to thank God you're just left with that I guess is maybe a way to say it.

So who is the person that we can see grace in? Christ only. That's right. He's the grace man. When we study the Word of God, what you discover is that Christ has done and continues to do everything. There's nothing that needs to be done in terms of a man's relationship to God that Christ hasn't done and doesn't continue to do. In this day and age, when it comes to salvation, What does man bring to the table? Oh, yes, he does. He brings sin, self, and one other thing. There's nothing positive in this. A man brings sin, self, need, weakness. That's what you bring. Those are all really highly desirable attributes, right?

Romans 5.6, for when we were yet without strength, that's what we bring. In due time, Christ died for us.

Romans 5.8, for God commended his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5.10, for if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more being reconciled shall we be saved by his life. Enemies there is enmity, it's not a couple of guys fighting and then they reconcile. They're irreconcilable enemies.

2 Corinthians 12, 9, and he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in your weakness. So, when it comes to salvation, a man comes to the table with his sin and his weakness. Here I am the evangelist, and I'm giving you that. And I want you to come down and make a commitment to Christ. Is that weakness on your part? No, because I'm asking you to get up and do something. It's interesting that salvation is by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves. It's by grace alone.

And faith is a very interesting commodity. God requires Christians to function and live by faith, right? What's the cool thing about faith under the umbrella of grace? What is the really cool thing about grace or faith? It's the one thing a man can do he can't take any credit for. You can't go to God and say, I believe now you owe me.

Because what have you believed? That He did it all. In Him. Right? There's no sense in which your faith puts God in an obligatory position. The issue is that the grace comes towards you and the obligation for you to believe is there. You don't get rewarded in terms of merit by believing. What you do is you enter into the grace that's there. Make sense? So faith is a non-meritorious act. But boy, do you get benefits. But you didn't merit them.

Or like in the Galatians, you must be circumcised. You must keep the law. You must come forward. I've got a list on my refrigerator. I've got to keep up with that. You know? Whatever. You know, we around here, we all drive Chevrolets. If you want to be spiritual, you need to drive a Chevrolet. You know? Or you need to wear the best clothes you can to church on Sunday. And oh, by the way, you better be on time. You know? That kind of stuff.

So, in the context of salvation, is God's grace apparent? And this is a question we're going to talk about in two weeks more fully than that. In the context of salvation, we're not talking about the walk or sanctification, is God's grace apparent? Grace operates primarily in salvation. But what I want to talk about, probably to make this as clear as I can, I'm going to read a little bit something to you from Lewis Barry Chafer. And this is a difficult point, but I think once you see it, it'll help you understand. The Lamb of God has already taken away the sin of the world. True?

Already done it. So if you're sitting in the back row because you're afraid to come up front, because you're a non-believer, The first thing you understand is that God has already taken away, the Lamb of God has already taken away the sins of the world. That's a done deal. The fact that Christ as substitute has already borne the undiminished righteous judgments of God against sin is the sole ground upon which divine forgiveness is now exercised.

Is that right? Forgiveness of your sins by God towards sinners, therefore, is not an immediate act of grace. You know what I mean by that? It is rather a judicial pardon of a debt in view of the fact that the debt has been fully paid by another. Maybe you say it this way.

The cross of Christ was a transaction between who? Who were the parties? It's a covenant. I'm a realtor. It was a deal, right? There were parties in the transaction. Who were the parties? God, the Father and Christ, right? Where were you? You're nowhere in the deal, are you? The only thing you contributed was the necessity for there to be a deal because you're the sinner, okay?

So here's a transaction that takes place between the Father and the Son. Was that a gracious act on either one of their parts? Between them? No, it wasn't. It was a judicial act where Christ pays the penalty for the sins and the offenses against God the Father.

There's no grace in that. Do you see that? In and of itself, we're not talking about any of it accruing to any of us. We're just talking about the transaction between those two. No grace there. The Father and God was insulted by sin, His righteousness and His holiness. needed to be satisfied, the Lord Jesus, by dying on the cross, satisfies that righteousness and holiness. That's not a gracious act. It's a judicial act. You see that? So, when it comes to the sins of the world being paid, it's not a gracious act. You with me so far? Okay.

We could not know how much he paid, yet though unable to measure the redemption, We may rejoice in the fact that all, even to the measure of the righteous reckoning of God, is absolutely and eternally paid by Christ. It's not a question of the relevant benefits which might possibly accrue to the sinner under one form of forgiveness or another.

Were he forgiven graciously or in strict justice? It is a question on the basis upon which any divine forgiveness can be extended righteously. when we first started today, we talked about that. God could not extend his grace to you in forgiveness if it didn't cost him the most precious thing he had, which was his son.

So it was great price to God so that it might be gracious to you and me. Does that make sense? It's tremendous cost to God so that he could be gracious to me. So that when I go and respond, to the exhortation of salvation, I go on the basis of, it costs God everything so it might be free to me. See? So if you start on that basis in your salvation, then you have had course 101 in what grace is. That God pays everything and it's totally free to you.

All you've got to do is say thank you. You just got to take it. It's unthinkable that God would do such a thing. And we require nothing of payment to you. There's no 90-10, you know, 70-30, I'll forgive you and save you if you do A, B, C and D. No, no. And so, to enter into the grace, faith is the only way in. It's the only non-meritorious thing you can do. Isn't that cool how that fits together?

So, God saves sinners by grace. He keeps believers by grace who are saved. And God teaches us grace for those who are saved and kept and teaches them how they should live under grace. to His eternal glory. Now, we talked a minute ago about grace not really being the operating system under which most churches function. I think it goes back to the way the salvation message is presented. If a human being comes to Christ on a grace basis, then it's really tough to sell him law later.

You know? I got saved on a grace basis. I am, to this day, eternally grateful for that. And I was saved a week, and a guy comes up to me and hands me a book. And the book says, now that you're saved, here's what you do. I didn't have to read the book. I knew that I didn't want to read it. You understand that?

Because I knew that I was saved by grace. I didn't understand very much, but I didn't need somebody giving me a list of rules of what I needed to do once I'm saved by grace. What I wanted to know was, how do you continue in this grace thing? How does that work? I was raised a Catholic. I had enough rules up to here, or way up to here.

So the best understanding of grace is comprehended by whom? Who understands grace the best? Okay, about what human being understands grace the best? Anybody else? Paul understood it the best. Why did Paul understand it so well? He dealt with law all his life. What's that? Showed it to him. Here's what I'm after. The man that knows he's unworthy is the guy who understands grace the best. That's right. That's right. So when you spend time in the Word of God and you find out how gracious God is, you don't have to be real smart to come up with a conclusion. Boy, God is really acting graciously here and I don't deserve any of this. As a matter of fact, I don't see anywhere where He wants me to be deserving. That's not the point. The point is that he has convinced me I'm not worthy.

The secret to a growing believer is he recognizes his increased unworthiness, yet at the same time he expects to be blessed by God more and more because he understands the grace principle. me included, sometimes saying, I'm a moral sinner, but look what I've done.

It's kind of a false humility that I couldn't think how worth it was, and yet, look at what I've done for Christ, and the focus is still on us. And I think it was Chester McCauley talking about, how do you help with yourself? He told the story of a guy who you know, pray every day for four hours and all this stuff, try to humble himself, and at the end of the day, he thought, I bet I'm the only guy in town that did that. We have that inherent pride, that line between humility and saying, I'm the chief of sinners, and looking at what Christ has done, and saying, I'm the chief of sinners, yet what would I have accomplished?

It's kind of fine, but we need to be in the lab. We need to say, I'm a sinner, and our focus is totally I'm not a sinner, but what would I have been able to do for God? And to have that humility coupled with that understanding of how sinful and how unable we are, I think the focus is totally on Christ. And by very need, has to be.

It's interesting too that when Paul talked about him being the chief of sinners, it wasn't early in his Christian life, it was after he'd been around a few decades. So there's this increased awareness of unworthiness at the same time this increased awareness of blessing that's over the top all the time. wasn't worthy yet, couldn't do enough. Isn't that interesting? That's going to be part of, as we talk about and discuss motivation, that's going to be one of the reasons why grace is such a great motivator.

Here we are, arrived at the definition. Use your best efforts to define grace, and I put in parentheses, something more than we get what we don't deserve. So let's talk about a definition. And I encourage you last week, if you have web access, to go to wordoftruth.org and listen to Chester McCauley's four tapes on grace because they're really good. And most of my definition, the whole definition, is the best one I've ever heard. So let's talk about a definition of grace.

What is it? The essence of a definition. Granted, we get what we don't deserve, but let's go beyond that. Unlimited. Unlimited is one of the key words of the definition. Unlimited. And we're going to spend some time in the weeks to come expanding on this unlimited element. And unwarranted. Two key words. It's unwarranted or unmerited and it's unlimited. Isn't that something? Unwarranted or unmerited and unlimited what? favor or blessings from God. So they're unlimited. They're unmerited blessings from God.

Can we add to that? Christ. That's exactly right. Based on the totally adequate work of Christ. That's the definition I really like, that it's unlimited blessings towards us that are totally unmerited. And it's based, not on me, it's based solely and totally on what Christ has done. Can we add to that? Cool. You want to say that again so I can get it on the tape? Their grace represents the uncompromised, unrestricted, unrecognized, loving favor of God for sinners. Cool. That's very cool.

So, the two big things that we need to keep in mind as we go forward is one is that grace is always totally unmerited. Hopefully if we learn nothing else in 14 weeks we will stop trying to please God based on merit. We'll get rid of this merit mentality that we have. And two, we'll start to enter into the fact that it's unlimited. It is totally unlimited. God's grace has no bounds. Where sin did abound, what did grace do? It superabounded. And it's based solely and totally on what Christ has done.

Can the one distributing grace be put under obligation by those receiving grace? Understand the question? Can those distributing grace ever be put under an obligation by those who are receiving the grace? Never. Who doesn't understand that question? Because it's a key question. You cannot in any sense ever put God in an obligatory form. You can never go to him and say, you owe me.

Because I did one, two, three, four. All right. When salvation, when the salvation message comes to you and you believe him, do you turn around and say, OK, I believe it's your turn. Do your thing. Is that how it goes? OK. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

So keep in mind, as best you can, that if it's God's unmerited favor, it never puts the giver of the favor under any obligation. So you can stop trying to put God in a position where he owes you. That's what legalists do. They try to put God in a position where God owes them.

The giver just did it because he wanted to do it. And you know what? It's part of God's character. If you think you can out-give God, boy, I want to sit around and watch that happen. You just can't do it. It's interesting. I read a long time ago that it's Christ's job to give and to bless It's my job to receive. If I do anything other than receive, I'm trying to act like God.

Explain the difference between grace in the Old Testament and grace in the New Testament. We probably won't have enough time, but what do you think? God did extend grace in the Old Testament. You can go to a lot of places, but you can go to Exodus 33 and God being the author of showing favor to man in the Old Testament, where man didn't deserve it.

In Exodus 34-1, after these wonderful Jews, Moses had come down out of the mountain with the tablets of stone. And the Jews were worshiping a calf and he threw the stones at him and broke them and that kind of thing. When you get to 34, 1, And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tablets of stone like unto the first ones. And I will write upon these tablets the words that were in the first tablets which you broke. He's saying to them, I'm going to act graciously. I'm going to still come back and give you the law even though you didn't abide by it.

Is that the second buzzer? So think about this. Two questions left on this one. Contrast Old Testament, New Testament grace. And then the question I like the most, is it dangerous to teach grace? Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you. And how we thank you, one, that your grace is abounding towards us all the time. It's unmerited and it's unlimited. And that we might live more and more in it and rest. And two, that through all of this we get to behold the glory of your son. And we pray in his precious name.