The Law is Our Schoolmaster: Part 1
Galatians 3:19-24 · Randy Peterman · Jun 6, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 23
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49262676744

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're going to continue on in Galatians chapter 3. I'd like to go ahead and read verses 15 through 24 for the greater context and then we'll start looking at 19 through 21. Paul says, Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations, even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it.

Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, He does not say, and deceit is referring to many, but rather to one, and to your seed, singular, that is Christ. What I am saying is this, the law which came 430 years later does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. Why the law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Now a mediator is not for one party only, whereas God is only one. Is the law then contrary to the promise of God?

May it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith, which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.

All right. That's a lot of words there and a bigger passage. But when you are trying to teach through a smaller section of a larger thought, you need to make sure that you keep things in context. I really like verse 18 which is before where we're going to start verse 19 and that's of course where we left off last week. I have it underlined and I think it's a tremendous thing to just reread and then go into 19.

For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. So then Paul asks, so why the law? And so, let's take just a moment and ask what are the three reasons that the law was given?

Does anybody? We'll brainstorm. What was the law for? I'll even rhyme the word. Okay. Okay, so the law was for Israel. What else? What was the purpose of the law? to show man's condition. Okay. So the negative side of it is for revealing sin or transgression. Condemnation would be in there too, right? Yeah. Okay. But what are some positives? Because there are some. To show God's character. Okay, I've got another one. Anybody think of anything else? Schoolmaster? It's a schoolmaster. That's there. There's even more. So we'll just keep going.

Basically, I just want to make sure that we keep this in mind because if you're a, we'll call him a fundamentalist Jew, but if you're a conservative Jew at the point that Paul is writing to the Galatians, You're going to see this, but you're going to downplay the transgression. Paul's going to play it up. You're going to see God's character, and you're going to play that up. Paul plays that up.

So they have some areas of agreement there. It's a schoolmaster, and they would agree with you on that, although they might play it down. The other thing, and I'm going to tie this into Israel, is that it's going to set them apart. It's going to be, for them, a very serious thing. They've been commissioned to be God's people. So the law sets them apart and that's important for them to understand that distinction. That being said, I have a few questions here that I want to discuss.

Why is it critical to keep the principles of salvation apart from the principles of sanctification? Why shouldn't we mix those two things when we think about the doctrines and the passages that discuss those things? Any thoughts on that or guesses? They're different principles. is a continual form of salvation.

Part of the way to look at it is a past event, a present event, and then a future event, all salvation. Yeah, this thing is going to be highly distracting. I'm going to do the whole lesson like this and I apologize. The thing that is important to recognize is that Anytime you mix sanctification and salvation and those doctrines and you don't understand what's being written by the author, you get works-based salvation. That's what happens.

Because sanctification often has to do with your condition, right? We know positionally sanctified, done, it's passed. But sanctification in a conditional sense has to do with your life and what you're doing. And so when you start mixing what you're doing with salvation, suddenly you get works-based salvation every time.

And so Paul, as he's trying to go through this clarification of the doctrine of the law and the doctrine of promise, what's the doctrine of promise tied to? Or which doctrine is promise tied to? Sanctification or salvation? Is Abraham's response to the promise purely for his daily walk, or does it have salvation-oriented impact?

The promised seed was Christ. But Abraham believed, and it was counted to him as righteousness. He was sanctified. and he was set aside. But the sanctification was not by works and the salvation is not by works. But those things, when we muddle those lines, that's when we get works-based salvation. It's important to keep those separate.

Why were the promises given to Abraham? Were the promises given to Abraham because he merited them? God chose Abraham and selected him and said, okay, here. So God sovereignly did that. Now, why were the laws given to Moses? Moses earned them, right? Moses was good enough. He was special enough. God chose him and it was God's doing. Moses didn't merit it. So either way, those things are unmerited and need to be taken in that context.

So Paul asks, why the law then? And then he says it was added because of transgression. Now why would he say it was added? What was the law added to? What did they have before the law? This is actually a really important doctrine to understand. So what did they have before the law? It's in bold letters there, added to. I'll find out. In Abraham's case, I mean, responded by faith. It's interesting that faith was an operation. Salvation has always been by faith. It was an operation.

Then all of a sudden this law thing comes along. That really wasn't helpful. It just condemned them. It did condemn. What's interesting is that if we start back with Adam and Eve and we look, God gave them conscience. He created them in his image so that they would have this sense of awe, the sense of right and wrong, but they violated that. And then as we go through Genesis and we hit Genesis chapter 6, right before the the Lord commissions Noah to build the ark, how does it describe the lives and the minds of the people that were living at that point in time? Yeah, not good.

It says in the King James, God repented of having made man. He wished that he had changed his mind and wished he hadn't have done it, is what the implication is. That's a whole theological rabbit trail, so we're going to avoid that. Yeah, we're going to curb that. That's in the question and answer class.

But the thing is that in Judges it says over and over they did what was good in their own minds. God had given them a sense of right and wrong and they violated that sense of right and wrong and they did what was good to me, what feels good now. And of course, man being evolved from primordial sludge has moved past that, right? We stopped doing what felt good to us so that society has just gotten better and better. No. So this problem of conscience is that man violated. So God gave the law and he codified, this is righteousness.

In God's covenant that he made with Noah, he explicitly sets in place capital punishment. And he guesses as to why God specifically codified capital punishment and not the rest of the 613 laws when he gave Noah the covenant? What significant event took place prior to Noah that devalued human life?

One of the first brothers, Cain and Abel. God didn't punish Cain with death. Cain killed Abel and God came to him and he says the blood cries out from the ground but God didn't punish him because it wasn't codified. But after that point in time it was codified. You were already separated from me and that was the root of some of the problems. So anyways, the law was added to conscience. We won't beat that to death here.

Romans 1.18 tells us that mankind suppressed his knowledge of God. That conscience is part of that, and so mankind suppresses that. Judges tell us, and Genesis tells us, that man suppressed his knowledge of God.

God added the law, and of course we have the Ten Commandments plus 603 more Now, would somebody please turn to Romans 5.13 and read that out loud? It's part of a really great longer passage, but for the sake of time, we'll not read the whole thing.

Romans 5.13. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. So now that it's very explicit, you know you sinned. The standard is there.

I have a friend who is a teacher at a high school in Nevada and she caught one of her students cheating. All of his cheat notes he left taped to the bottom of the desk. And she was really wrestling with how to deal with that. because she had some kind of sense of appreciation for the student. I like the student. I was like, this is the point where you've got to bring down its codified.

Don't cheat. That's the rule at school. Don't cheat. There's a code there. There's not a, well, geez, how do we deal with that? Because the law makes it easy to identify. This is the right and this is the wrong. And you fall on either side of that. And it's that simple. So, as Romans tells us, it imputes that sin.

You earned it. When my dad was teaching through this very passage in the main service, he said something that I thought was pretty good. He goes, you can't earn life, but death you had to earn. You didn't have to work very hard, but you earned it. But it was earned and we all got the inheritance of that too.

Can conscious bring about morality? This is a philosophical question. The scripture tells us some specific things. The atheist has worked really hard because they can't rely on the scripture to reveal truth. They have to build it up from nothing. and build it up. And the atheist has some very strong moral systems that they have developed just to counter the argument that Christians might have that atheism doesn't breed morality.

I've got a conscience. I do what's right. You're right to swing your arm ends where my face begins, and witty, clever statements like that. I had a college professor use that once, and I was a little chapped because it's not actually a very good argument. But we won't get into that. Conscience doesn't bring morality in a suppressed human mind, or a human mind that's suppressing the knowledge of God. And that's the problem.

One thing, Randy, my conscience will be different from your conscience. without the standard, you know, my conscience, your conscience won't agree and who's right? Whose conscience is right? Well, television shows like Star Trek, I mean, how many episodes of Star Trek are based on, we found an alien planet with a different moral system and the prime directive is don't disagree with their moral system.

Okay, but conscience isn't enough, but God codified things and put it in an explicit way. The conscience can't bring about sanctification or salvation. So the conscience was important because God made us in his image. But in the end, God codified things so that we would respond to it.

And as we continue through this passage, we'll see why we needed to respond to it. The next section we've got here is the purpose of the law, because he asked, well, why the law? And as we said earlier, it's to expose transgression. If we don't use the word transgression, we can use the word sin. We're more familiar with that word, sin. But the idea is that it would reveal to us our shortcomings. If it reveals God's holiness, then we can see when we put the standard next to our own lives that we fall short of it.

Going back to Romans again, just because Galatians and Romans have similar passages, go ahead and turn to Romans 3.20. It's funny that Paul had to write so many of the same things to different churches, and we have books about sanctification, we have books about salvation and legalism, and he repeats himself, and yet we still, two thousand years later, seem to need to revisit some of these same principles.

Romans 3.20, he says, Because by the works of the law no flesh will be justified, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. So we have the same concept revealed in Romans, same concept here in Galatians, that we have this problem that sin is revealed.

How many of you, and this is a confession of my own, how many of you have ever sinned in the privacy of your own mind and it never actually had any evidence in the immediate surroundings, like the kid leaving the cheating documentation behind at his desk? The problem with sin is that sometimes we think we've outsmarted God and the flesh wants to outsmart God and figure out a sin outside of His sight. But God puts the law there and we know. Then our conscience bears witness against us and bears testimony to the accuracy of the law. How do we merit justification in our secular culture today? We can't merit justification through the law because we know that just reveals our shortcomings. How does the secular culture try to merit justification?

Just think back to the latest political campaign. We say things like, I'm only human. They're only human. It's above my pay grade. We come up with a whole number of reasons why it's not my fault. It still goes back to the Garden of Eden. Lord, it's this woman you gave me. It was the snake. The serpent had no one else to point to. But we try to shift the blame and we try to move things out of the way.

But we don't actually deal with the problem of the sin. The secular culture doesn't do it other than to redefine that sin is just what you think of it. You only think there's sin, that's why you sin. But if you didn't think there was sin, you wouldn't sin anymore. I've heard that argument on multiple occasions. They try to share the gospel and they try to avoid the need for salvation.

What is the hope of the law? What is the law bring hope for a Jew back in Old Testament context. What did the law bring? What was their hope? Because they had hope from the law. They did. It was earthly blessing. Which, let's face it, if you're on a subsistence living and you're farming and then every season you go out and have your clan or your tribe or your family goes out and fights for space with other people from other clans and tribes and you're farming, God blessing you is a big deal.

This last Monday we were in Indiana at a historical reenactment amusement park. Amusement is probably the wrong word, but it was an interesting thing. We were in a place called Connor Prairie, Indiana. It's one of the first settlements in Indiana. And they had a farmhouse there and you had to be pretty much self-sufficient on this farmhouse. And I realized how spoiled rotten I am as a 2010 American citizen because they were making rugs for the floor out of flax. I don't know if you've ever seen flax turned into fibers, but it's a grain.

They cut to get the seeds out of it because you've got to plant that or make food with it. and then they rot the stock and then the rotten stock they draw through this thing called a hackle which shreds it and then that they have to spin and then that they have to weave into rugs and if the rotting stock gets eaten by a cow, it will kill it instantly because the bacteria that rots the stock is hyperpoisonous. So, I'm not saying that so that we can have a little history lesson other than to say that when you talk about God's blessing for Israel, that's a big deal. If that's what you're living day-to-day with, God's blessing is a tremendous deal because that's going to mean that you and your life can actually focus on something besides, where's my next meal? Am I going to survive the next growing season?

So those things are there. The law exposed transgression, but it also offered some hope in certain contexts. What was the hope of the promise? Because Abraham got this promise, what was the hope? for a nation of Israel to land the seed of the blessing. For the nation of Israel, and for us, and for all the nations, it was the hope of the seed, Jesus.

So that's a big deal. One has eternal value and one of them is temple and earthly. So there's a substantial difference. Paul was offering the Bible message of eternal hope and these people were fighting about earthly consequences. When you put it in that context, it looks a little silly, but for them that was everything. And then Paul says something which for me was actually good to study this because it was an exposure to a doctrine that I was less familiar with.

And he says about the law, because the transgressions having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, ordained by angels. Did the law come from God? Yes. But it came through, as the scripture tells us in Deuteronomy 3.3.2, God was surrounded by a witness of 10,000 angels. And so Paul says, hey, it came through the angels to a mediator. Who was the mediator of the law? It was Moses.

So who was the promise through? Who was in charge of the administration of the promise? God was in charge of the administration. Who made the promise? God. Who gets to keep the promise? God. Who does all the work? God. Who benefits from the promise? All the nations of the world.

If you look at the law, the law has a whole bunch more complexity and I've got a chart here that we'll look at in just a minute to take that into just a broader view. Moses was the mediator of the law between God and Israel which kept the children of Israel separated from God.

How many of you in your reading of the Old Testament kind of notice that the Israelites kind of liked God being separate? They wanted God to bless them But they wanted to do what was the minimum requirement to keep God happy so that they could go about having fun and being blessed. How many of us as babes in Christ had that same mindset? What's the minimum amount I have to do to make God happy? Oh, he wants a tithe. I can give 10% before or after taxes. That was a big question I had personally when I was under the tithe law in my mind.

But all these things are put in place. The Israelites wanted God to be separate. They wanted Him involved because that meant blessing. But when Moses came down off the mountain, how did they respond? They were pretty weirded out. Oh man, you saw God and you didn't die. And there was a lot of fear. That's the righteousness of God being shown, the Shekinah glory, and they were overwhelmed by that.

So the Israelites, to a certain degree, wanted just a bit of a gap. Why would they want a bit of a gap if the law reveals transgression? They would want a bit of a gap because that's a constant reminder of how holy God is. And so that gap, that buffer, if you will, is a big deal. What happened to the 613 laws when they got to receive the 613 laws and then we run a thousand years or two thousand or three thousand years later? Did they still have 613 laws? Yeah. What did they do to the 613 laws? They took them to the plastic surgeon and had them augmented.

They created buffer laws and they made more laws over the other laws so that if you go to the right apartment complexes and hotels on the Sabbath, what do the elevators do? They either go to random floors or every floor. That way you don't push the elevator button and do work. So God can be blessing you and His glory can still be there but you have created just enough buffer so that you know you won't upset Him.

So this concept of having a mediator and concept of wanting just a little bit of separation for safety is a big deal. C.S. Lewis in his book with Narnia, I think it's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, one of the children asks the beavers, is Aslan safe? And I think that's got to be one of the coolest things ever. Is Aslan safe? What is the beaver's response? Does anybody remember? Anybody familiar with those stories? He's good. He's not safe, but he's good.

And the reason that we can say that is God is just. He is who he is and with that comes consequences and we want a pansy God. The flesh wants a pansy God who isn't just and righteous because we know we won't face up to it. and the Israelites had that same mindset. How many of you have talked to somebody who's been through more recently the AA program where they don't actually believe in God, they believe in a higher power? Then you need to go to your higher power and hope that your higher power will fix you from your alcoholism. It's not the God of the scriptures that could actually do something about the flesh. You just need to hope that this entity, whomever they are, keeps you separate. So anyways, that is yet another rabbit trail I could pursue.

The seed to whom the promise was made, and of course that seed is Christ, and Paul went over that earlier in verse 16. Paul continues to keep things in context. The legalistic attackers that were coming after him we're going to look for any chink in his logical argument. And so Paul keeps showing the complexity of the relationships and he intertwines these topics between the different verses so that at no point in time can they forget how clear and how specific he's being. So he brings in the seed to whom the promise was made.

Now what's the problem with the seed to whom the promise is made for these legalistic people? is that the seed does something to the need for the law. And that's where all this argument started in the first place. The seed comes and Christ fulfills the law, and then if we believe in Him, we die to the law. And so here is this problem.

But Paul uses the word until so that he can draw a chronological distinction. We have the promise, and how long does the promise go? Does the promise to Abraham go beyond the seed or the first incarnation of the seed? Does the promise keep going? We're actually, as we study through the rest of this chapter, we're under the blessing of the promise of Abraham. Paul calls us the children of Abraham because of faith, not because we're Jews or grafted in as a new Israel.

But this until problem was a big deal because what did that mean for the law if there was going to be this seed that was going to cause a chronological marker? What does it mean for the law? It means that it's going to be over. The law was going to cease being the way that things operated.

And so Paul has brought a very consistent logical argument. He's talked about the promise, which is important. He's talked about the law, which is important. And then he's saying, and now the law is going to end until the seed comes. And so this is that's fighting words. If you're if you're trying to keep the law, how do people try to keep the law in the church today. What are some of the techniques and tactics that carnal or fleshly-minded believers, who don't want to exposit the word carefully, do to bring in the law?

Well, first of all, they'll line it up and say, well, there are certain parts we don't have to worry about, because that is what we're implying now. So they already go in there and they kind of pick and choose. So they bring out the filter or the sieve and they figure out.

So we can have lobster now. Praise the Lord for that. We got permission for lobster and bacon. And we don't have to sacrifice animals in the sanctuary. Yeah, because Jesus was the sacrifice so we got that covered. But the stuff that didn't get superseded, they've we still have to do that. And definitely keep the tithe. The tithe is really important.

In fact, if you could give us your weekly pay stuff, that would be good. That way we know you're fulfilling the law. One that I've seen used over and over again, people don't understand the sinfulness of sin. You just need to know how wretched you are. Then you would appreciate the law. The purpose of the law is to show you how wretched you are so you need salvation.

That's it. It's so that now I have to respond to this gospel message. I've got an ultimatum. The law has shown me that I'm not righteous. But after that, then what? Then I've been crucified with Christ. Not under the law anymore. Well, no, no, don't go that far.

So you have this problem where people look at the text, they see until, and they go, he didn't mean until. Surely he couldn't mean that the law is over because the law is righteous. So, we've got some problems there. But they're not our problems, it's problems of other people choosing to ignore the text and augmenting it, if you will, creating some new buffer laws.

God does not need a mediator. The next verse 20 tells us that God doesn't need a mediator. The promise didn't come with a mediator. When God authenticated the promise with Abraham in Genesis, what is Abraham doing? when God makes the oath. Abraham's taking a nap. The Lord put him to sleep and the Lord walked through the animals with himself. The two parties of the oath, the way that they would do the oaths in the Old Testament time is that you would actually part multiple animals or at least one animal and cut them in half and walk through it together and say, may we be ourselves cut in half if we violate this covenant. And God said, Abraham, you're not good enough. you're not perfect but I am so I'll go through on your behalf you go to sleep that way you can't even try and I will reveal this to you as a vision and you go through and God goes through and authenticates it and makes the covenant oath between himself and himself and then gives the blessing of that oath the consequence of that oath to Abraham and his descendants and to us in certain contexts.

So we have this lack of mediator. There's a chart here which I found in Ron Merriman's commentary which I just thought was so clear that I put it in here because it makes it really easy to see left and right, the law versus the promise. The purpose of the law was to reveal transgressions. The purpose of the covenant was to save men by the grace provision. The longevity of the law was that it was temporary and could not nullify the promise. If you were to draw a layer, a side diagram, the promise is underneath and is still continuing chronologically, but the law was given temporarily on top of that and they don't intersect. The administration or agency of it, the agency was by angels, for the Law Covenant and the promises were administered by God himself. There's a big difference if you think about angels as messengers versus God as God.

The mediator of the Law Covenant was received by Moses, but the Promise Covenant is received directly by the individual. There's no need for human mediation. How many mediators go between you and God? It says that Christ is an intercessor, it says the Holy Spirit is an intercessor, but the relationship is purely and simply between you and God as a believer. That's it. There's no one else. How many priests have to sacrifice animals? None. It's just simple.

The requirements. The law covenant required fulfillment by both parties. God had to fulfill promises if the Israelites had fulfilled other parts of the condition of the covenant. That's why it would be a covenant of blessing if they obeyed. But what was it of covenant if they disobeyed? It was a covenant that promised some curses.

They would be cast out of the land. How many times did they get ejected from the promised land? Is it three times? Well, twice, and then there's a third. In the end, God fulfilled his side of the covenant. Unfortunately, that meant separation. But God has a literal fulfillment, which is why we have the resurrection as a promised doctrine. Abraham will take possession of the land.

Galatians 3.21, we'll go through this. We're almost out of time.

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be, for if the law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. So the promises of God, the law did not negate the promises to Abraham and was given, as has been said before, for different purposes. The promise was given for one reason, the covenant with the law was given for another reason.

We're going to skip that question I've got there just for the sake of time. The law cannot impart life, and that one right there is a really, really big deal. That could almost be a lesson in and of itself. No system of law could impart life and bring about righteousness. Paul says law broadly in this verse and doesn't just say the law. So not only could the law not bring life, but all law is incapable of bringing life.

When we take a look at the, I think I have a grammar error in one of my sentences here, so I'm definitely going to skip that. Not the grammar, I'm not sure, I have to double check one of these, sorry. It says salvation is inseparable from the principles of death, separation from God and being united, oh that's right, separation from God and being united with God unto life. The principle of death from the law reigns. but the principle of life through salvation is there, but the law could not bring that, because the law brings death.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3.7, he calls the law the ministry of death. Here it is, this is the holiness of God, the awesomeness of God, ministry of death. It's a big deal. Now here's a question since we're talking about salvation.

Is the method of salvation any different since Adam? Was Adam saved different than you were saved? Did he have to do something else? How many animals did he have to kill? It was none. He was saved by faith. The content is what changed. God had revealed less than 66 books at the time of Adam. So the content changed. But the means of salvation is still the same.

The law cannot impart life. God didn't have more than don't eat from the tree of good and evil. That was the whole law that Adam had to keep. That's the rule, if you can call it a law at all. And he disobeyed that. Because what does law do? It makes us want to transgress. And he blew that and then God was going to have to save him by faith. The principle to Abraham was still by faith all the way through the chronology of the history of mankind. It's always by faith.

Man's righteousness cannot be based on the law. When you see that then righteousness would indeed have been based on law, Paul is making the logical conclusion that if it were even possible, then God could have done it. But it wasn't. We can't do it. So that means that when we start to look for righteousness in our own lives, where do we have to go? We have to go to God. We have to come and seek His grace, His gift. Again, the unmerited blessings, the unlimited unmerited blessings of God. No, you can't. It's not a lie.

The last question I've got here that's related to that is how could we use the concepts of law and promise in evangelism? If you tell someone that God gave this standard of righteousness, you can't live up to it, But he also made a promise so that you'd have this eternal life. You can't live up to it. If you've clearly delivered the gospel, then their response by faith, if they believe, is going to lead to salvation.

But it also is probably not going to lead, probably, if you've delivered it clearly, the logical conclusion that Roger just said. That you don't walk away going, alright, I'm saved. Now I can be good enough. Now I will do it. You know, Bertha, I don't want to point out how old you are, but you've been around for a while, I hear. Rumor. Have you ever been able to do it in the flesh? Have you ever been able to be righteous in the flesh? You've lived long enough by now, surely. No? Still not? I've got no hope, huh?

Actually, my hope is in Christ, and that's the logical conclusion to this. As we continue on next week, we're going to see that the scripture has shut us up, every single person in sin. At the Doyle's Bible study, we went over Romans chapter 3, and the logical conclusion going from Romans 1 all the way through 3, Paul presents a masterful argument. It's impressive to see how clearly he narrows things down to where at the end of Romans chapter 3, you have no argument to say that you're bringing your own righteousness to the table. So we'll continue on next week and take a look at how the law shuts us up, everyone under sin, so that we would respond by faith in Christ. I haven't heard the bells, but we're done with my lesson, so we'll call that good. Any other questions or thoughts before we close? Sure.

When you said Adam was saved the same way we are saved, you say, when did that occur? Was it when God sacrificed the animal? And he responded, yeah. And his responding it and taking it and trusting God to cover them, that was response by faith. That's the way I've heard it taught, and it makes sense to me. It doesn't explicitly say that, which is one of those things where some people will get critical of that. But Adam responded in faith.

Unfortunately, his sons did not take that. His sons didn't do that. God says, that's a war. It's here waiting for you. He doesn't take it. So you have an example. I'm going to have a son who doesn't take it by faith. He says, no. I want to do it my way. I brought you the best carrots I have.

And God said, no, it's over here. And God wasn't pleased by it, even though the standard was so simple and presented so clearly. And his parents, I mean, it wasn't like there were six generations between Cain and Abel and Adam and Eve. They just ignored it already.

But salvation, the acronym that I have always remembered salvation by is C.O.M.E. and I'll just write it down just in case it's handy. But C.O.M.E. is content, object, means, and basis. And the object is always God. The means is always faith. The basis is always grace.

And the content is the only thing that changes, and it changes simply because Revelation is progressive. Because Genesis contains only so much compared to Revelation and the Gospel. But even in Genesis, you see, it's looking forward to it. It's looking forward to it. So you're still believing in God and trusting Him to provide the Redeemer. So the Redeemer is still an element to what they're believing in.

So the content might change because revelation becomes more specific. I imagine being one of the first people to be exposed to the Psalms. And here you get the psalm of this person who is suffering and reading it and going, man, that's really big. And then that's around for a while and then you hit Isaiah chapter 53 where we've got this suffering Messiah who's going to take the sins and the burdens of Israel. That would be a big deal.

But you're still believing God, by faith, for his grace, up to what's been revealed at that point in time. So the content changes. At this point in time, because there's no new revelation, it's static. But as you're looking through scripture, it's important to keep that in mind as you're studying.

Let's close in prayer and I can take off this silly thing that's been fiddling with my ear. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just draw to our hearts and minds this week times of being thankful for your provision through the promise and through saving us by faith and not of our own works and our own merit. And thank you that you put the law there to remind us of your righteousness, but not that we may dwell on it and contemplate the weight of our failures, but instead set our minds on things above where we're seated with you. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.