Salutation

OK, this morning, after Bob introduced us last week to Galatians, we're going to dive into the first five verses. I was wondering if I could get somebody to read them from the overhead, or you can read them from your Bible. It's up to you, whatever you like. Paul and Apostles, not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, so that he might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father. To him be the glory forever. Amen. Thanks, Randy.

So we're going to kind of go through and look at This kind of divides verses one and two are sort of a section, and then three through five are a section. So I'm going to go through each of the five verses, but just kind of as a... And something to observe, and let's go on to the next chart here. In these first two verses, you'll see that Paul is, it says Paul, and I highlight it in blue, Paul, and then he kind of says an apostle, and he kind of defines his apostolic authority.

And then the rest down in verse two it says, and all the brethren who are with me to the churches of Galatia. So I thought this is sort of like a letter that you might see. A letter where you'd start off and it says to, so it's to the churches of Galatia. And then it's from Paul and all the brethren who are with me.

And so It's to a group of churches. And as we noticed, I think Bob, he went through and looked at the northern part of Galatia and the southern part of Galatia. And there are quite a few churches there. And actually, I found a listing of some of the churches, Lystra, Derby, Iconium. These are churches in those places. And Antioch of Pisidia. So those are at least four of the ones that it seems to be to. And then one question I had, which I'm not sure I have an answer.

It's interesting, Paul's writing this letter, and you think, well, this letter's from Paul. But in the from statement, he says, and all the brethren. So this is not a huge doctrinal point or a huge point, but just kind of interesting that you notice all the little. So who do you think, anything come to mind? Who would he be including as, Tom? Right, that's a good point. And I found I couldn't really find an exact place where he defined. who are the remaining brethren, but he does include them.

He does say, this is just not me speaking to you. This is from the rest of the, I might say, Roger and the body at Holly Hills. You know, if I was addressing somebody, I'd say, this is what the body at Holly Hills is about, and this is what we believe. So he includes the other brethren with him when he writes this letter. Which I thought was kind of neat, kind of interesting. Roger. Yes, go ahead.

Does that also include all the people that he evangelized through the course of time? Sure, if they became believers, sure, absolutely. Actually, it could be quite a large number. Because, you know, brethren are believers, basically, so it could be quite a large number of people. And actually, if you look at this, in the original language it says, and all the brethren, and there's really no, there's kind of an implied verb here, and he says, Paul and all the brethren are writing to the churches who are at Galatia.

There's sort of, our writing is kind of an implied verb in this little phraseology in the blue there, which I thought was interesting. Okay, so let's kind of move on here. So now let's look at the the portion that I kind of excluded before. So now we're going to look at the part that he defines himself as an apostle, and he gives his pedigree. So he tells us why he's an apostle. He's just an apostle because I'm going to be an apostle today. Today's a good day. I guess I'll be an apostle. Well, it doesn't exactly work that way. And he's very specific. He excludes some very interesting things. So one of the questions is, what is an apostle? So what are your thoughts on apostleship? What's an apostle? Is it just the twelve? Do you have to be one of the twelve to be an apostle?

Go ahead. It's a church builder. Okay. Does anyone know what the word itself is? Say again? Yeah, okay. It's that or actually to send forth. No. It's a sent one. Some have it sent on a mission or a purpose. Sent with a message. Sent with a message. All those are good. All those are good. By the direct command of Christ. Right.

And I'm trying to think. I didn't look at every... I looked at a few. I'm not sure if it's ever used in the sense of just I might send I might send Roy to get me a new microphone. I mean, I don't think it might. It could be, you know, he could be a set one to get a microphone. I mean, I don't I don't think it's used in that way, but I'm actually not sure, to be honest.

The primary usage of it, I think, as we know, are the apostles and then apostles, and ones who are sent with God for a mission or purpose. And actually there are some, like Barnabas was called a sent one. That phraseology is used for Barnabas. And he's not necessarily one of the twelve, or he's not Paul obviously. So there are other occasions where other people in the ministry were called sent ones.

Okay, so let's go on. So now he starts out, he says, not sent from men. And you notice he's going to do two parts. almost just repetitively, not sent from men. And actually, if you look, this is plural. And it's this Greek word, apo, not sent from. So he wasn't sent by a group of men. There wasn't a religious council that said, hey, we need an action guy here. We need a guy to really shake up the people out there. I'm going to send this guy, Paul. And he has our stamp. And he can show, hey, here I am. He said, no, it's not that case.

It's also not through the agency of a man. And notice that's singular. And this is the idea that a dea through no one man had the power or authority to commission Paul. So there really was no human aspect that entered into Paul's directing Paul in his ministry. He said, men didn't ordain me, and there wasn't one man, like a pope, for example. I didn't come from one man.

And he's going to tell us where his authority came from. And what this alludes to, I think we'll maybe see it later on as we get into Galatians, it seems like Paul's authority was being questioned. They were saying, well, who are you? Who gives you the right to come into our synagogues and tell us about Christ? We've heard about him, but who gives you the right? And he was defending his authority.

OK, so now we're going to see, in the next one, we're going to see, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father. So in contrast to being sent from a group of men, or by one man, it was through Jesus Christ and God the Father. And again, it's dia, and basically, If you look at the scripture, and let's look at this verse, it's probably well known. Could I get someone to read Matthew 28, verse 18? So basically, Christ had the authority from God the Father So Jesus Christ, and actually if you look at the accounts in Acts, we see that Christ appeared to Paul, and he says, hey, you're my man, you're my man to the Gentiles.

In fact, actually, I was interested, he said he was, he said, to bear my name, in Acts 9, he says, to bear my name to Gentiles, kings, and to the sons of Israel. And actually I was a little surprised, I kept thinking, well, he's the apostle to the Gentiles, which he is. But he also was to bear Christ's name to kings, which he certainly did. He was before many kings, and he proclaimed Christ. And he also was to his brethren, the sons of Israel. So Paul says, hey, these are my credentials. I didn't come from men or from a man. I came through Dia, through Jesus Christ.

And then actually the last part of that is, Well, who is Jesus Christ? Who was raised from the dead. And if you think about it, God the Father had the power to raise Jesus Christ from the dead. So it just kind of defines who Christ is and what he's accomplished. Alright, so that's that part of it. Any questions about these first two verses here? We're going to move into verse three. Sure. Comments are good too. Comments are good too.

One of the things I think is important as you read through Galatians, you see that he's rebuking them and it's from hearing other teachers and letting other teachers in who are violating the message that he got through the authority of God. So he said, it's just not a man-made doctrine that I've given you. It's not just a man-made system. It's through Jesus Christ and God the Father. So pick your authority if you're going to try to slander one of them. I've got it. I have the authority, and it's divine authority, and it's from the Father to the Son.

You're right, absolutely. He had an airtight case. They might have believed it, but he I can't put a finger on it, but isn't there some doctrine in there in regard to after Paul's conversion along the Damascus River that he went out into the wilderness with Jesus Christ for personal education? Oh yeah, absolutely, right.

And that happened there, that's right down to where it comes from. Right, well he personally, he qualified as an apostle on many levels, he personally saw the Lord, I mean and personally saw the Lord. That was one of the requirements for an apostle. He had to personally see the Lord. So some people maybe doubted that. And he was commissioned by Christ. As were the twelve disciples. I really didn't go down the path. You're kind of tempted to say, And here's the thing is, where does Paul fit with the 12 disciples? Does he replace one of them, or is he an additional one?

And I've seen people on both sides of that fence. I decide not to go down that rabbit trail. And if you're interested, we can at some point do that, but I just didn't, you know. Other thoughts? You guys are smiling. Hopefully I was wise in doing that. Go ahead.

Paul, specifically by his admission that he was an apostle chosen out of due time, would sit in to bury that whole argument. Right. Okay, maybe there were 13 apostles. Right. And I know what, that certainly seems very attractive, but also I've seen other people that say, hey, he's the replacement for the, you know, I don't know. Anyway, there's no doubt that Paul was an apostle sent from God.

I mean, there's absolutely, so that's the main issue we want to make sure we understand. Okay, so let's go on. So verse 3. So now we get to the point, this is Paul making his greeting. Literally, grace and peace, once again we have an implied verb here, be to you. And actually the implied verb is really kind of important here.

Because this verb is If you think about it, it says, grace and peace be to you. So is he going to say, hey, times are going to be good. It's going to be really wonderful. I mean, it's going to be no wars. Is he promising that? What kind of grace and peace?

Is this a positional statement or a conditional statement, do you think? Or both? actually grace is what Jesus was and peace is what he gained because that's the propitiation so he gave us grace and he gave us peace from the father so basically this is the gospel that Paul is taking again This is the message, as I see it. Right, well, and he repeats this message, you know, many, many times.

In fact, almost, I think I saw a count, almost every, each one of his writings, maybe except one or two. Tom? It seems like this particular instance seems to be very blunt and brief, and especially to the relations who are lacking Right. All right. All right. All right. Well, he is right.

If you compare one, we'll do that in a second. If you compare. this state move with other places, and other places, the first part of the book, he'll commend them. You've done this and done that. Well, this one, he says, grace and peace, right on the starting blocks.

Now we're going to get down to the important stuff. Here's what I have to tell you. As I've seen in a couple of them, I saw Jay Verbenky said, a cool introduction, not meaning Cool, cool, but meaning not warm. He said, hey, grace and peace, which is the message that I have to give you, but I have some things to tell you.

So I believe this is a positional statement, because basically that implied verb there, be, grace and peace be to you. And that's the state of being verb. which is something that continuously exists. So through Christ, as a believer, grace and peace are available to you 24-7. You may choose not to avail yourself of that, but they're there. Grace and peace. As our brother Mike Doyle says, we live in the sphere of grace. It's there. we can choose to go the other direction in peace. We might think that, well wait, peace, boy in this world, how would you ever say that we could have peace? Bud, did you want to say something?

It's a little bit more emphasized in that direction than the old 14th century King's English. Here's what it says, Grace and Peace. It says, Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Right, right. We're going to get there. Oh yeah, oh yeah. The peace is coming once again from deity. This is not me saying, you know, Roger saying, hey, grace and peace to you out there. And you think, well, okay, well, from a human's point of view, I can say that, but can I carry that out? Can I accomplish that? I really cannot. Only God can do that. Sure. Just a thought here.

When we say, greetings, or they write a letter, greetings from, you know, globe, whatever. Sort of, this is the way they talk, to make it better. Exactly. You know, grace is coming to you from God, and peace is from the Father. It's like an introduction that, hey, this is a gracious thing from God. And especially in this letter, the contrast to the law is so great that he's prefacing everything he says with saying, hey, grace and peace is coming to you. Right, and don't get caught up in the legal systems and all that kind of stuff.

It just impresses me. It does. Since we just got out of revelations class, to me it reminds me of the letters to the churches that were written there because it starts off by saying I am the one that. In other words, this is the position that you are in if you believe in me. If you have grace and peace. And that's what he's telling these people.

You already have this. And it's going to come clear later on that it's actually a comparison. Because he's going to compare it to legalism later on. This is where they are. They've already been here because they're believers. Just like the letter of revelation. And then later on he said, but I have this against you. Right. So he's kind of doing the same thing. Right.

I think like Roy, this is a very common, in fact, actually, let's look at some other examples here just real quickly. Let's look at Romans. We'll see the same phraseology. We'll see a little bit different in the fact that he's going to, he actually puts a few more words in front of his greeting, which is interesting. He starts off with, It might be like you pray somebody before you ever greet them. And he kind of does that in Romans. So, can I get someone to read Romans? Actually, let's start back in Romans. Yes, exactly. Let's just start back a little ways.

Was somebody willing to read the first seven verses, starting from the beginning there, Romans 1 through 7? Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ, called the impossible, separated him from the gospel of God, which he had promised before by his prophets in the Holy Scripture, concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God, with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name, among whom are ye also the callant of Jesus Christ. To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you, peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Right. So as was mentioned, verse 7 is virtually the same phraseology. But it's interesting that he gives all the other part before that. This he kind of starts off right in there, he gives a greeting, and then he's going to go on. Actually verse 4 is going to be a key verse when we get to it here.

One thing to notice is it's not just from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. It's our Father. You could actually render it from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. It could apply to both that are there. He's talking to people that know the Savior, that know the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not anyone, it's ones who know him. So that's what's very important. So let's go on here.

Basically, the only true source of grace and peace is Jesus Christ and the Father. There's no other source of grace and peace. Men may think they can offer that, but that's foolishness. Okay, so now, verses four and five. So I'm going to go through it piece by piece, especially verse four. I just want to go through it piece by piece. So the first part is, Who gave himself for our sins?

Pun intended, right? Sure. Say again. Pun intended. Who gave himself for our sins? This is talking about peace in the heart. Okay, and you're saying that's kind of a stark contrast, and what if we start banging up with sins? Okay, I had not thought of it that way.

Okay, so this is interesting here. He's going to start off here, and basically the who here obviously is Jesus Christ, and the gave is this word didomi, And it's literally have given. It's in the eras, which means it's a past point in time. So a past point in time Christ gave himself. So let's look at a couple of those verses here. This is a very, very common theme in the New Testament about Christ giving himself.

And dittomai occurs in both these other two cases here. I find it's always good to look at those to make sure I'm on the same page. So 1 Timothy 2, 6. I'll go ahead and read that. 1 Timothy 2.6. Let me go back to 5. It says, For there is one God and one mediator, also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony born at the proper time. And then in Titus, just a couple books over.

Titus 2.14, I'll just go back to 13, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for good works. So basically Christ gave himself at a point in time and it's for, for on behalf of, And this is sometimes called the preposition hupere, of substitution. He was our substitute.

You know, it's really neat. As you go through and you get a chance to look at some of the original language, you can see why some of the phraseologies believers use, they may use it and not realize, well, where did that come from? And many times it comes just from the simple original language, just from looking at, well, what does that mean? On behalf of. Well, that's in place of, or in substitution for. So I think it's kind of always neat to kind of pick up on that. And then literally it's, I think this is always important here.

You notice it's plural, sins plural of us. So I want to just take a minute here and this is one of my favorite charts. This actually is from Major Bible Themes and I had a chance to do this with Hal and it was great. So we, this is, I've forgotten, this is a section on God the Son in Major Bible Themes. So it's like seven chapters. So the first part of this is, we look at the fruit in this tree. And the fruit represents here personal sins.

So in Colossians 15.3, it says, Christ died for our sins, plural. But also, if you're a good Bible student, you also go over to Romans, and you'll see that he died unto sin, the root. So he not only died for the fruit, he died for the root. And the root produces a fruit. This is critical. If you miss that he died for the root, you only get part of the story.

So it's basically the comparison between sins, which are personal failures or transgressions, versus sin, which is a nature. So here he's addressing sins. He's not addressing the sin nature, he's addressing sins. So that's kind of something to keep in your thought here as we go through the rest of this verse. It's sins, so let's go on here and look back at the verse.

Who gave himself for our sins, and we're going to see that, and there's a purpose, so that, and the so that, many times if you look carefully at scripture you'll see that the word that, or sometimes so that, It's kind of like a little red flag. Whenever you see that or so that, you think, well, wait a minute. Something's going to follow that that's going to tell me the purpose for what happened prior to that.

And this is the case right there. He gave himself for our sins so that, and the so that is coming, he might rescue us. We were in dire need of being rescued. And this is really cool. Literally, that word is to take out. Actually it's even cooler than that. It's what they call the middle voice in the Greek. It's to take out for oneself. So the picture here is that that Christ loved us so much that he took us out for himself. And I want to show you that.

First, let's look at the Acts passage. The Acts passage is just showing the typical use. I'll just read that. The Acts 23. It's just being removed or rescued. So the word without some of the Greek tenses and voices just means literally to take out. And that's Acts 23, verse 27.

And this is speaking about Paul. And it kind of breaks it in the middle of the thought here. And when this man, Paul, was arrested by the Jews and was about to be slain by them, I came upon him then with the troops and rescued him. This is our word. Rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman. So it simply means to rescue.

But it actually has so much more because it's to rescue for a purpose, to bring it to yourself. I think John 17 is just a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful picture of that. Can I get someone to read? There's actually a lot in John 17 you can read, but 5 and 6 and 24 are some of the really beautiful parts.

Our Father, glorify me together with Yourself with the glory which I had with You before the world was. I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory which you have given me. For you loved me before the foundation of the world.

So if you look in here, it's really interesting that in verse 6, I manifested your name to the men whom you gave me. So the transaction between the Father and the Son is the believer has a unique, special place. He is a gift in a sense from God the Father to the Son. And then you look through the rest of 6, and then you get down to 24, and this is Christ's desire.

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, the idea of the gift again, be with me where I am. You know, I believe that really speaks of right now. I mean, there's an aspect of in the future, but there's an aspect of that that's just right now. He wants us to be beholding Him, abiding with Him, learning about Him, seeing Him through His Word. So He wants us to be with Him through His Word, so they may see my glory which you have given me. for you love me before the foundation of the world. So this personal rescue would be taken out of this present evil age as we're going to see in a second. Taken out to be in fellowship with him and have a relationship with him.

That's why verse 4 is just so neat, so marvelous. So now, as I mentioned, from this present evil age. I was pondering how to ask this when I was looking at the notes this morning. I actually may have two questions. Question one is, how has he taken us out of this evil age? And question two, why is it an evil age? So I have two questions. How has he taken us out of this evil age?

Have we been transported? Like Star Wars? Beam me up, Scotty. Has that happened? And the other question is, how is it an evil age? Roger. Yes, go ahead. So does this evil age begin all the way back in Genesis 1? Well, that's a good... I'm asking you. I can answer that. What do you think? Okay, I like that answer. Keep going. Any more thoughts on that? I mean, why is it evil then? Why is it evil? Is it evil because, you know... Give me some ideas why it's evil. Well, it's inundated with evil spirits and with Satan and with demons and all kinds of things, which is a testing ground.

Okay. Okay, is there more than that? I mean, that's bad enough. No, there are. On the personal, is there a personal aspect to that, Tom? It's also filtered down to false teachers. They're there in the way that weren't there in human form. Okay. Okay.

And don't you think there's an aspect to think on a personal level that before you knew Christ, how are you described? You're described as Thoughts are only evil continually. There's none righteous. Man is not... I talk to people sometimes, well man is really good. No, he's really not. He's pretty rotten. He's really pretty rotten.

So not only do we have an evil one, In control of this world system, we have a nature that has fallen and does evil things. So I think there's a two-part aspect of the evil age. And the evil age was in Paul's time, and we certainly have an evil age now. And it's not going to change until Christ returns. I don't know if it applies here or not, but my thought on evil is not just the fruit of doing bad things. by finding joy in meeting others and doing bad things. Exactly. When you use the word evil, that's what comes to mind. Yeah, it's bad enough when you just do bad things yourself, but when you encourage others to do bad things. Oh yeah, absolutely. And don't we see that? We just see that. I think today's world is just like neon lights going off. we know this world is exactly exactly exactly right exact very good very good where you're transferred Exactly, exactly. So what he's saying is, who gave himself for our sins so that he might rescue us, take us out from this present evil age.

So there's a very practical part, verse 4 is a very practical thing. It's talking about position, but it's a very practical thing. Very practical, because unfortunately, I think there are believers that may have heard this, but they think, well, I've just got to do my best until the Lord comes. I'm just going to muddle along.

Well, the Lord wants us to be looking to Him and seeing ourselves in Him, rescued, taken out, positionally, and see with Christ in the heavenlies. That's how He wants us to view where we are. So I think Paul is showing us right here at the very beginning that that we have been rescued from this present evil age.

And the next part is here, actually the fact here is that the word present is standing in, I'm trying to think why that was. I've forgotten that there was a significance here and I lost it here. That word literally means to stand in. So if you think about it, every person outside of Christ is present whether he wants it or not in this present evil age with all its implications. So I think that might have been it. Well, actually it just talks about present age. I did that. The Titus passage just kind of talks about this present age isn't good. It's bad. Go ahead. Age is... I own... Say again. Is it more generational?

Because I know that it's in different ways. Sometimes people will translate it world. It's sometimes translated that way. But present evil age, and I didn't really do a lot with that. Actually, I know another thing is that present, I know why and I just can't, it's not my note, here it is.

It's in the perfect tense. So what it means is that it was in the past with continuing result up in the present and on into the future. We're always going to have a present evil age until the Lord comes. So that was the significance of that word present. It's in the perfect tense.

So that's kind of an interesting thing. As was mentioned before, the present evil age has been here since the fall. Doug, did you have something? Yeah, I have a note from previous class here. Also, that could refer to the rapture. OK. OK. OK. That being taken out. OK. OK. I guess it could.

I guess I saw it more applying, you know, the application of positional truth being as we trust in Christ positionally. But I guess you could look at that in that aspect. But I think in this context, we're going to see that his desire is that they not be taken up by the evilness of these people who are distorting the gospel. So I think there's an immediate context here which says, I want you to be taken out spiritually, if you will, and look to me so you won't be taken in by these evil men who are perverting the gospel. It could be future. I mean, obviously, he's not going to take us out.

That's true. Donna? I absolutely agree. I think that's exactly what's in view here. I think it's a positional truth that you're to realize that, hey, this terra firma here is no longer, this evil age is no longer your home. And it may, with all the corruptness, you're not to be influenced by that. You're not to be taken in by that. No, I think that's really good.

And it implies we need to be rescued, absolutely. I just had a couple of other notes here. That I have been taken out for oneself, for God's pleasure, so that the Lord wants to have fellowship with us. He can't have fellowship with us unless we're on the same level, unless we know him. And just like the John passage, it's a closeness. So I really like the aspect in this context here about taking us out to have fellowship with him, to commune with him.

Yes. Since you talked about that, you couldn't have fellowship unless you had grace and peace, could you? Right, exactly. Exactly. The other thing I see in this is that he's telling them that this evil age is present now and it's going to continue. Exactly.

But because of the actions of Jesus Christ, we have been We have to live here, but we have hope, because we've been rescued. It won't be forever and ever and ever, but while we're here, it's going to be here. He's not going to take us out and put us in a safe place on this earth. We still have to contend with the evil forces that, but we have a lifeline. Well, I think it's even stronger than that. I like everything you said, but it's even stronger than that, that we have a place with him.

He wants us to view things from, as we say in Ephesians, we're seated with Christ in the heavenlies. And we obviously realize that we're not physically seated with Christ in the heavenlies, but that's a truth that he wants us to put into shoe leather, so to speak, to realize that we're to view things Well, I don't have to, I'm not a citizen of this world anymore. I mean, our system has changed. We're now a citizen of heaven.

So he wants us to view it from that perspective. That rescuing out has that aspect of taking us to be with him, positionally, to trust in what he's done and all the wonderful things he's done for us. He wants us to see that as we relate to this world and say, well, wait a minute, I know my future. I know my destiny. I don't have to worry.

We had a Christmas party at work. This lady across the table was talking and she was concerned that we have to get busy on colonization of Mars. because she was concerned the Earth wasn't going to last that long. Because of all the craziness that's going on. And so I said, and you're really concerned about it? I didn't know what to say. It was kind of a large gathering. It's just kind of interesting how people have very big concerns. She was concerned that we're going to run out of space here. And we've got to colonize Mars. I would like to have told her a lot more. I just said, I'm very concerned about that.

I thought it was sad. There's a case, a biblical understanding of what you have in Christ. Things like that, am I worried about them colonizing Mars? I mean, you know. What's that? Yeah, right. They're not going to be a new breed of men going to Mars. It's going to be the same one that fell here on Earth. Tom, go ahead. Once you are saved, you are colonized. Exactly.

I want to tell her about my heaven. I should have said, well, wait a minute. She would have gone, not so. I would have said, yeah, I'm not a citizen of heaven. I'm not a citizen of Earth here. She would have looked at me like, OK, fella. So let's get on here.

So obviously this was not man's will. This was according, again, to this personal God that we have. Our God and Father. And it was according to His will. There's a lot of passages about the will of God. in terms of his will being, and basically his will is that we see ourselves taken out of this present evil age.

We don't see ourselves, well I have to stay here and just deal with all these issues. Every day open the paper and there's some other new issue or some other new catastrophe is going to happen. No, I can look at it from the the perspective of being in Christ, and that's his will.

And this idea, to whom be glory, this is another very similar phraseology, and actually, forevermore, I just kind of, this is kind of just a real neat thing you come across, and maybe you guys have seen this before, but the forevermore is literally in the original, it's into the ages of ages. I know, just kind of a little, you've got to go there. So this is not a... It's more poetic. It is, it sounds more, you know, forevermore sounds kind of meh. Into the ages of age, and once again your word is the same word, ages, in terms of...

And that next shows up in Revelation. Okay. So what I'd like to do now is that I've had the privilege of looking through Hal's notes from the nineties and it's been great. And so actually I came across this one, this one thing I wanted that came from Hal. This actually came in December 5th, 1993. And actually, this is kind of my paraphrasing of it a little bit, so bear with me.

But basically, he tried to summarize verse four, which I think is kind of the key verse there. So basically, the first point is that Christ's work was to give himself. With the aspects, giving here is giving of one's own accord. Giving here with no external pressure. Giving here is voluntary. Giving here is a sacrificial giving of himself.

So that's his first point, that Christ's work was to give himself. Secondly, on whose behalf did Christ give himself? It was for us, for our sins. Christ took our place, the penalty of our sins. That word, that preposition of substitution, on behalf of us, huper, and three, the purpose of his work. that he might rescue us from this present evil age.

The issue here is our practice. It's interesting. Here's a positional truth that's to affect our practice. It seems almost, you know, you think, well, wait a minute, Roger, you're mixing apples and oranges here. No, that's what the Lord desires. He wants our positional truth of who we are in Christ to affect our practice as we walk the Christian life. How are we living the Christian life? Are we living in bondage to the law? And we're going to see this in spades, as they say. We're going to see this over and over again as we go through here. Are we living in liberty, grace?

And so what was Christ's motivation? And this is this wonderful thing we've been talking about. Christ's motivation that he might rescue us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father. He is our God and Father. He cares for us. His will is that Christ take us up and out of this present evil age. That's a wonderful thing to keep in your mind. He does not want us to be sucked in by this present evil age. It's so tempting.

I listen to the talk radio show, I read all the stuff, and after a while you think, why am I doing that? I want things just to be quiet. No more people talking. No more discussions about any subject except the Lord. I get so sick of that stuff. But I still listen to it, but I want to remember He's taken us out of this present evil age. Any last thoughts, sir, before we close? It's interesting. I was just thinking about the old ceremonial system and how they used bulls and goats and lambs and all that sort of thing. There was no taking up or taking out. It was all taking place here. Right.

And so the New Testament, which began with the New Covenant and Christ dying and then coming to life and leaving and going to heaven, there's a whole new I don't even know how to say it. It's so profound. I mean, the Old Testament takes place here. The New Testament takes place there. It takes place in heaven. Because of the sacrifice. Right. So we're to live our Christian life from our heavenly perspective. I mean, that's the bottom line. That's the bottom line. Okay, let's close then.

We thank you, Father. We thank you for this time. Lord, thank you for the marvelous grace that we live in. Lord, thank you that you've taken us out of this present evil age to rest in you, to trust you for all that happens here, all that we see. And we thank you that our Savior accomplished that on our behalf. We ask it in his name. Amen.