Law – Weak and Beggarly

Turn to Galatians 4. Remember, we covered the allegory that Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael was brought about by the energy of the flesh – God never told Abraham to have a child by the Egyptian slave girl, Hagar. But Isaac was the child of promise. As I’ve pointed out many times before, everything in the Old Testament was set up for our learning, and this is a prime example. Even as Ishmael was a child of the flesh, as opposed to Isaac, who was the child of promise. In the Book of Galatians Paul uses the allegory that Ishmael represented the "Law" which was fleshly (and here I’m expecting some flack!). Whereas Isaac, the child of promise, is indicative of the Age of Grace; the very Grace of God, based upon all the promises that He would form a plan of redemption. To refresh your memory, go back to the Book of Galatians. Here Paul quotes from Genesis:

Paul was writing to Gentile believers in the province of Galatia, who were being besieged by Judaizers. These Judaizers taught that Gentiles could not be saved unless they also kept the Law. Paul, however, was adamant that legalism could not be brought into Grace. This, then, is the reason for this allegory – that just as surely as Ishmael had to leave the whole area (God didn’t tell Abraham to build Ishmael a little tent next door so he could remain in close proximity), but rather, Abraham was to "cast him out" into the wilderness so there could be no contact between the two boys. The lesson is; that this is what we have to do with the Law and legalism in all its insidious forms. We have to be totally separated from it – we have to "cast it out." Remember, the Law was carnal; it was fleshly; it was weak (I know that will not go down easy with a lot of people because we know that the Law was spiritual, it was perfect and holy – from God’s point of view. But from man’s side, the Law was what we said above – carnal, fleshly, and weak!). Look back now at Galatians 4:9, and I’ll show you what I’m talking about. Paul wrote to the Galatian Gentile believers who had been saved by Grace, but who were being tempted to go back under the Law.

Paul was referring to the Law. Look at Romans 8:2,3 where he says practically the same thing. Remember, Paul was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when he said, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." "The Law of sin and death" – does that sound like something very beautiful? The "Law of sin and death" was the Mosaic system!

The Scripture tells us that when it came to the Law from man's dire need and point of view, it was weak and beggarly! Now, because there are many people who don’t like the writings of Paul, even though the epistles of Paul are the very bedrock of our Christian faith, (I’ve even heard some say the letters of Paul shouldn’t be in our Bible!), let me show you another scripture where the apostle Peter referred to the Law in the same way. Turn to Acts 15:1. The setting for this passage is that Paul had been in Antioch, north of present day Beirut, on the corner of the Mediterranean Sea, ministering to Gentile believers. It was in Antioch where believers were first called "Christians" (Acts 11:26). When the Jewish believers in Jerusalem got wind that Gentiles were being brought into a relationship with "their" God, they got "all shook up!" So they sent men from Jerusalem all the way to Antioch to see if this was true! Was Paul, a Jew, really permitting Gentiles to claim they were saved without becoming proselytes of Judaism?

This wasn’t just a suggestion from the Jewish believers saying, "Maybe it will help the Gentile believers if they keep the Law." No! They wanted it to be a commandment! They were adamant about this as they came up against Paul, and instructed him to "command" them to keep the Law of Moses. There was a great controversy in the Jerusalem church over this. Though it doesn’t say so specifically in Scripture, I believe it went on for the better part of the day. There was a tremendous argument between Paul and the Jewish believers in Jerusalem. (Read Galatians 2 in your spare time, where Paul continues to say that the Gentile believers could not be forced to stay under the Law, for they were under Grace!) In Acts 15, Peter enters the controversy. I believe he’d been sitting back listening to everything being said (as opposed to the times in the Gospel accounts where he had been the primary spokesman). Finally, I believe the Spirit of God woke him up to speak out.

The very wording in this verse "Peter rose up" indicates that Peter had been sitting back listening, taking in the whole scene nonchalantly, while the others had been actively engaged in animated conversation and debate. But, he finally spoke out. He reminded them of the events recorded in Acts 10, events that had taken place nearly twelve years earlier, when Peter had been sent to the house of Cornelius. I believe that this was providential – this was the Sovereign God at work! God reminded Peter (and the others through him) of those special events when the first Gentiles were saved through Peter’s preaching. This is another good example of the situation we discussed a couple of lessons ago, when Hagar was sent back to the tent of Abraham and Sarah, before Ishmael was born, just to have to go through the same thing fifteen years later. Why? So we would have a New Testament lesson. This is the same kind of situation. God certainly wanted the house of Cornelius saved, but in the bigger picture, this was a preparation for Peter in Acts 15 to come to Paul’s defense by reminding the brethren that God had saved Gentiles by Peter’s preaching years before. Verse 9:

This was a tough thing for Peter to say! He was like every other Jew. He thought that Jews were God’s own people and that Gentiles were just "dogs," who could maybe get the "crumbs" like the Canaanite woman was able to do (Matt. 15:22-28). But here, Peter had to admit that there was now no difference between Jew and Gentile (as Paul had been teaching for years).

We are continuing here to see that the Law was weak and beggarly. Peter calls the Law a "yoke," a "burden." It’s amazing how many people still believe that they can get to Heaven by keeping the Commandments – doing the best they can. This is why I feel I need to "raise my voice" to say that the Law was never given to save anybody. The Law was never intended to save even the Jew who was under it. We’ll see this in this lesson or the next. Turn to Galatians 5 where Paul uses exactly the same word to describe the Law.

Just as soon as someone says that they are trying to keep the Commandments, they are placing themselves under this yoke of bondage. Another scripture says that if you are going to keep part of the Law, you have to keep all of it (James 2:10 !) If you are going to keep all of the Law, you’d better have a temple, a priesthood, an altar and a flock of sheep; because they are all involved in the sacrifices required by the Law. Just as soon as the Age of Grace came on the scene, what did God sovereignly have happen to the Temple in Jerusalem? It was torn down stone-by-stone by the Roman army; totally destroyed because the Age of Law had faded off the scene and the Age of Grace had commenced. But people are still trying to somehow go back to the Temple worship, even though it is a poor facsimile! They are trying to resurrect that legal system. But it is gone – the Temple is destroyed.

It will come back someday, but not until the Age of Grace has ended. Even now, Israel is all excited about rebuilding their Temple. They’ve got all the clothing for the priesthood made and hanging on mannequins. They’ve got all the utensils ready for the sacrificial worship. They’ve got young men trained and ready for the priesthood. The Jerusalem Post reported a few months ago that the red heifer was on some isolated farm in the countryside of Israel, ready to be sacrificed, so the ashes could be sprinkled in the new Temple when it is built, purifying it. It’s all ready! But the Church is going to have to go first! For now, we are not under Law, we are under Grace! Let’s pursue a few more verses about the Law. Turn to Romans 3. Paul makes the statement for the first time that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. If you know your Bible, you realize that the mentality of the Jew, all the way through Paul’s ministry and even up to our day, claims that they are the only ones with access to God. To put the Gentile in the same position with them is an anathema! They couldn’t stomach that idea.

I like to point to verses in Acts (21:27-22:30) where Paul was addressing the huge Jewish crowd in Jerusalem that only a few moments before had tried to kill him. The Roman authorities had rushed in to rescue him, and then from a secure position on a stairway, they allowed him to speak to that audience. He spoke to them in Hebrew to get their attention, telling them of his qualifications as a Jew; of his persecution of the Church; of his conversion on the road to Damascus; and in Acts 22:21, of Jesus’ instruction to him to "'Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.'"

At that, the Jewish crowd went into an uproar and had it not been for the Roman authorities, the crowd would have torn Paul into pieces. At the word, "Gentiles," they went berserk. That was the thinking of the Jews, and when Saul of Tarsus (Paul) said that there was no difference between the Jews and the Gentiles, the Jews were ready to tear him limb from limb! Can you now see why Peter had so many problems with reaching out to the Gentiles. I’ll point out later how Peter in his little Epistle (near the back of your Bible, just shortly before his life is ended in martyrdom), wrote, as Paul did in all his Epistles (II Peter 3:16) "...things hard to be understood...." If Peter thought they were hard to understand at the end of his life, you can imagine how he must have felt earlier.

"But" always shows us the "flip-side." Whereas the Law condemns and proves everyone is a sinner, unfit for God’s Heaven, but now, the righteousness of God is manifested without the Law! Most people don’t like that, but that’s what The Book says! As I was driving up this morning in preparation for this program teaching, I was thinking how many people there are who somehow say, "I’m doing what my church teaches," or "I’m doing what my parents and grandparents taught." But think, how many of these people are going to stand before Christ, the Righteous Judge, someday and will say, "Lord, didn’t I agree with what my denomination taught," or "Didn’t I agree with what so-and-so said?" But the Word says in Romans 2:16 that every person is going to be judged "...according to my (Paul’s) Gospel." Don’t ever forget that!

We’re not going to be judged on the basis of "what I’ve been taught" or "I did the best I could" – we’re going to be judged on the basis of what we did with the Gospel!

Lesson One • Part II

Law – Weak and Beggarly

Go to Genesis 21 where we left off the lesson before last (the allegory of Ishmael and Isaac that we explored further in Galatians).

The language here would seem to indicate that Ishmael was only a two or three-year old child. But we must remember that he actually was thirteen or better, so he was a pretty good sized lad. Most likely, Hagar said something to him such as, "Go sit in the shade of one of those shrubs," and she went a little way away from him.

Hagar, Ishmael’s mother, had originally come from Egypt? And notice where she went to get him a wife – back home. So there is a double connection for the offspring of Ishmael, who became the Arab nations to the nation of Egypt. We’ve pointed out, as we’ve reviewed the genealogies recorded in Genesis so far, that Egyptians are not true Arabs. But they are so closely related, that in political situations they usually work pretty well together. Let’s skip some intervening verses here where Abraham deals with Abimelech.

A few weeks ago we explained these names of God or Jehovah, God the Son. Abraham, from Beersheba called on the name of the LORD, or the name of Jehovah, the everlasting God. Although the English kind of leaves us "hanging" here, in the Hebrew, the "everlasting God" is "Elohim Olam." Here’s where things get a little bit more interesting if you dig below the surface. Abraham called on Jehovah (and remember, Jehovah is God The Son, The Christ of the New Testament!) Who is, to clarify, "the everlasting God." This fits beautifully with what we’ve studied in these last two lessons concerning the fact we’re not under Law, but under Grace. We see that God can do this from His very Name of Deity. He is "everlasting God." I’ve already mentioned the word "Elohim," which is the plural form of the word for "God," and this now states that He is the "Elohim Olam." This word "Olam" is translated out of the Hebrew, with three different meanings (yet are all pretty closely related). In Leviticus "Olam" is used to speak of "a specific time." The verse says that if the people want to redeem a piece of land, at that time, they have to do such and such. So it speaks of a specific time. In another place, "Olam" is translated as "hid" or "hidden." To see this, turn to Psalms 10:1:

The everlasting God, then, as used in Genesis, is speaking of more than the God who exists from eternity past (before Genesis 1:1) through the end of the timeline to eternity future.

This is the God of Creation, the everlasting God. But, as the word "Olam" is used in these other Scriptures, it points out that God is not only from everlasting to everlasting, but also is a God Who is associated with time, and that within time, in His everlasting role as Sovereign God, He can hide things at His pleasure. This may sound at this point like a bit of "gobbledy-gook," but I’m trying to build my case. The God Who is from everlasting to everlasting is also the God of intrinsic time. Also, since He is Sovereign, He is fully able to either reveal everything within time or keep it secret. I know this is getting deeper than you may like to go, but I think it’s imperative to understand this premise, so that we can go to the timeline and show how there were times when God did not reveal, and there were times when He did reveal. Go back to Genesis and come up through our timeline as we did when we started our study.

Initially, Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, and we don’t know for how long. While they were in the Garden, God gave them no hint as to what would happen in the future. There were no prophetic statements that, by-and-by, something like this was going to happen. He simply chose to put them in time, and that was all. Then Adam and Eve sinned, and were driven from the Garden, and the next period of time runs from their expulsion from the Garden all the way down to the Flood. I like to point out that when Adam and Eve went out of the Garden, they entered a totally different situation than the one they had experienced in the Garden. In the Garden, they had no responsibilities but to enjoy their paradise. But when they came out, they had to labor for their livelihood under the curse. Everything was different! They had to work by the sweat of their brows; they had to work with sin around them; they had to deal with God regarding redemption; they had to bring blood sacrifices – everything was totally different. Then, because mankind went down, down, down, we come to the time when God decided He’d have to start all over, and so came the Flood.

Again, I need to point out that when Noah and his three sons came out of the Ark, the situation they found was totally different! All of the earth was different, from the atmospheric conditions on. Noah and his sons were then given permission to kill animals and eat the flesh thereof, which had not been allowed by God before. So it’s important to see that each time we come to the various breaks in time, entirely new sets of circumstances arise. So, after Noah and his family came out of the ark, they were instructed by God to set up a human government to maintain law and order (which had not previously existed). Then, about 175 years following the flood (because the people had been disobedient and had not scattered across the earth as God had instructed, but had congregated in the valley of Shinar at the tower of Babel), God confused their languages and caused them to scatter. And about 150 years following the dispersion from the Tower of Babel, God did something else which was totally different. He called out the man we have come to know as Abraham, through whose descendants He chose to work a different plan, while the rest of the world would go on in its own pagan ways.

Beginning with the Nation of Israel, Abraham’s descendants, God began to work in a totally different manner with regard to things being hidden or being revealed. From Genesis 12 forward, He began to reveal things to the Nation of Israel in great detail before they happened, and we call that prophecy. Everything that was to happen to Israel, God began to reveal beforehand – even to naming some of the people who would be involved such as Cyrus hundreds of years before they were born! He foretold the Cross, the Resurrection and the Ascension; He foretold the final seven years of Israel’s tribulation called "Daniel’s 70th week." So, in contrast to the past in which He had kept things secret, God began to reveal the things that were to happen ahead of time to the Nation of Israel. In the New Testament, Jesus foretold the destruction of the City of Jerusalem; and the dispersion of the Jews which was to follow His Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension; and the establishment of the Church in the first part of the Book of Acts (see Luke 21). Then the Scriptures look forward to the seven years of tribulation (Jacob’s trouble referred to in Jeremiah), and reveals much about the end-times in the Book of Revelation.

But through this prophetic time, when God is dealing with Israel, there is one thing that’s never mentioned – the Age of Grace. Not a word about His going to the Gentiles to call out a multitude of people for His Name. About that He was totally silent. This period of time which I’m calling the "Age of Grace" is an undetermined period. Back in Israel’s history, God would lay out his plan on a time-table. He told Abraham that 430 years following his call, Israel would come out of Egypt, and they did! He told them there would be 490 years from one Temple to the next. He told them that there would be 490 years from Daniel’s prophecy to the appearance of Jesus on Palm Sunday. All the way through Israel’s history there was a distinct time-table, and it was right to the letter. But, when it comes to the "Church Age" or the "Age of Grace" there’s not a single time element mentioned. This was to be an undetermined period of time, about which God chose not to reveal details according to His sovereign decree. Look at Romans. This is a passage that I fear few people know is in their Bibles.

This is Paul writing to the Gentiles. And this period of time to which he refers (as well as everything that God is going to bring about during it), has been kept a secret from the beginning of the age! This is within the scope of the God Who is from Everlasting to Everlasting. He can do anything He wants! This is the God Who is from "Olam" to "Olam." He is not only the God of everlasting time, but He is also the God of time; He Who can hide things in time. This is exactly what The Bible said He did concerning this Age of Grace. Turn to Ephesians 3. I’m going slowly because these are concepts not easily absorbed, and we need to read the Scriptures carefully. Start at verse 1. This concerns the fact we are not under Law, we are under Grace, and only the Sovereign God has the right to make that distinction. But He chose through the ages to keep secret the fact that there would be a time when men and women would be saved by Grace through faith plus nothing!

Earlier we showed that when God gave the Law to Israel through Moses on the mountain. Moses then came down to the people and gave it to them – so it came from God to Moses to the people of Israel. We have a similar analogy here. Paul had gone into the wilderness of Arabia (and I believe he was in Sinai), and as Moses received the Law, Paul received revelation of Grace, which had been kept secret since the age began.

The world can’t understand it! The unbeliever can’t comprehend it! But child of God, tonight you can!

Lesson One • Part III

Law – Weak and Beggarly

Turn with me to Exodus 19. In this lesson we are going to pursue the difference between Law and Grace. I have found that if there ever was any area of confusion among Christian people, it’s in this area. When they are able to recognize this difference, they become so excited about it that they admonish me to be sure to teach this difference between Law and Grace to others. In Exodus 19 we find that the Nation of Israel has come out of Egypt where they have been in bondage, and by virtue of the miraculous power of God they are able to cross the Red Sea and come to Mount Sinai. In Chapter 20, Moses went up onto the Mountain and received the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law from God. When I refer to "the rest of the Law" there may be some confusion so we need to understand that "the Law" consisted of three parts:

It is important that when we come across the word "Law" in The Bible, we need to determine whether or not the term is being used to cover all of the above aspects of the Law, or just a portion of it, such as the Ten Commandments. The text normally reveals the use clearly. In Exodus 19, we find Israel had not yet received the Law.

That’s legalism! You cannot have legalism without the flesh doing something. So Israel said, "Lord, tell us what you want us to do and we’ll do it!" Another Scripture passage we need to review is in Deuteronomy. I believe this is more or less a recapitulation of what was said in Exodus, since Deuteronomy is generally an analysis of what has gone on before. In this passage, the leaders of Israel are speaking to Moses and tell him:

Turn to Hebrews 11. Some of these things are just so basic we dare not skip over them! This is The Bible definition of faith, as it is laid out in the opening verses of this chapter.

Faith is the very substance, the very core, of things hoped for; faith is the evidence of things not seen. When we get into areas of faith, we’re dealing in areas where you cannot use your five senses. You cannot touch them, you can’t put them in a test tube in the laboratory; faith is the area of the invisible; the spirit world.

There’s no way to prove that the world was made in this way scientifically. We must believe that God made it this way, because God said that He did, and He expects us to believe Him. He spoke the word, and the universe came together.

We cannot please God unless we believe what He has said! I hope no one ever accuses me of promoting an "easy-believeism." In other words, "believe in the Lord Jesus, and you’re all right." I never teach that. When I talk about "believing" or "faith plus nothing," I’m talking about a belief and a faith that is so rock solid you can honestly say, "With all my spirit, I know that Christ died for me. I know that my sins have been forgiven because His Blood has taken care of them. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt He has risen from the dead. I have no doubt of these things. I know He did them for me!" When someone believes like that, and it has become "a power of God experience," it’s going to change his life! It is going to have such an effect that you don’t have to have a set of rules and regulations to guide your behavior. Right action will come from that power God has placed within you. But it has to start with faith! We have to believe it because God has said it.

The Law included the Ten Commandments which were set in stone. God didn’t see fit to put the Ten Commandments on a teddy bear that someone could cuddle up to. They were, instead, cut into cold, hard tables of stone, and were immovable. The Law could do nothing but condemn. It had no power whatsoever to help a man keep from stealing or from committing adultery. All the Law could do was say, "Don’t you do that!" or, "Do this!" Even the first commandment about love said:

Can you force anyone to love you? It’s impossible. Love has to spring from within. So it is with the Ten Commandments. They did nothing but stand in stark reality to convict and condemn. See how foolish it is when people say something like, "I’m doing the best I can. I’m keeping the Ten Commandments." That’s impossible! The "good" Jew, under the Law, as soon as he realized that he had broken one of the Laws, had to reach down into the second part of the Law to practice what God had said to do with regard to approaching God, and regarding worship. He had to do everything according to the instructions provided by God, according to the letter of the Law. For example, until Israel got into the Promised Land they had the Tabernacle as their place of worship. When they camped, the Tabernacle was at the center of the community, with three of the tribes camped on each side of it.

You’ll remember that the group that came out of Egypt, and camped at Sinai, was made up of from three to six million people. Consequently, the people who were on the outer fringes of the camp were a long way from the altar contained in the Tabernacle. Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. Suppose someone from the outer perimeters of the camp had broken the Law. Maybe he stole something from his neighbor. He knows that he’s broken the Law. He knows that the Law said, "Thou shalt not steal", and because of that he has to do something to make the situation right. But, he might think, it’s a long way from here to the priest and altar, so I’m going to admit to God that I’ve sinned, and I don’t think that I’ll have to make that sacrifice. So that’s what he does. He says, "God, I’ve broken your commandment. I’ve stolen from my neighbor, but I don’t want to go all the way up to the Tabernacle to make a sacrifice." According to the Law, was that man accepted? NO! Why? Because he did not do what God said to do! He didn’t take the sacrifice to the priest. That was works.

A second example. Let’s say that this same fellow commits the same sin, recognizes it, and says, "My neighbor down the road had this same problem a few weeks ago. He took a sacrifice to the priest and everything was all right. I think that’s what I’ll do." So he does that. Now, was he accepted? NO! Why? Because he didn’t do it by faith in what God had said to do. Do you see the difference? So either way, he could go through some of the motions by faith, but if he didn’t do it exactly according to God’s explicit instructions, he wouldn’t be accepted. But on the other hand, even if he carried out God’s instructions to the letter, but didn’t do it in faith, he still wouldn’t be accepted. That’s legalism. That was the Law! Let’s look at the timeline we used in the last lesson.

We saw that God began to deal with the Nation of Israel through Abraham and all the prophetic promises, and that Messiah came and was crucified. Now, we need to look at the Book of Acts. This is where a lot of people end up in confusion. Many churches teach that, somehow, the "Age of Grace" started somewhere back during Jesus' ministry on earth as recorded in the Gospels; not that Jesus lived out His life and worked His ministry under the auspices of the Law. Everything that took place in the Gospels did so under the Law. The Temple was still going strong. Sacrifices were being brought by the thousands. Whenever people would come to Jesus, He would tell them to go to the priests and make the proper sacrifices. Remember the ten lepers who were healed? Jesus told them to go show themselves to the priest (Luke17:12).

When the rich, young ruler came to Jesus asking how to be saved, Jesus told him to keep the Commandments. (Luke 18:18-23) Jesus meant that he should keep the whole Law. If he broke a Commandment, he had to come by the prescribed way to approach God. These things all happened under the Law, and Jesus labored under that Law for the entire period of His ministry.

Let’s look at Acts 10. According to all the chronologists that I’ve studied (the men who have put a time element on Biblical events), Peter went to the house of Cornelius about eight to ten years after Pentecost. That’s a long time! God knew the heart and mind of Peter (which was correct under the Law), and when God wanted Peter to go the home of this Gentile, He knew He’d have to do something special to get him there. So, while the men were coming from Caesarea to Joppa to get Peter, God gave Peter a vision to prepare him to go with them. Otherwise, Peter never would have gone! Peter would never have gone to that Gentile home unless God had taken drastic measures. God showed Peter the vision of the sheet which contained all manner living things.

Peter was a Law-keeping Jew. He wasn’t going to eat anything that was not legally acceptable under the Law. Now, if that’s not enough to convince you, let’s look at verse 25. The men have reached Peter and have taken him back to their master’s house.

That should give you a good indication of how far from the truth this man Cornelius was. The passage had said earlier that he was a good man, he gave alms, and he prayed to God, but yet he was so ignorant of the true God that he fell down to worship a mere human being. Verses 26 and 27:

Try putting yourself in Peter’s shoes. He was a Law-keeping Jew, going into a strange area, and even worse, into the home of a Gentile. He was very uncomfortable, even though God had made it clear to him that this is what he was to do. Look what Peter said as he went in:

Peter said in effect, "I’m not supposed to be here. But God . . ." Peter would have never gone there if God had not forced the issue! What I’m trying to show here is that even at this late date, these Jewish believers, such as Peter and the eleven, and all those who had come to believe in Christ, were all Law-keepers. This is hard for people to comprehend. Everything was still in the prophetic program. Christ had been crucified, buried and had ascended, but when we get into Chapter 3 of Acts, Peter was still expecting that Christ would come to set up His Kingdom in Israel with the believers. We’re now coming to a place of change. God was going to usher in something totally different than had ever been available to the human race before. He was about to initiate the "Age of Grace." Let’s look at some of the basic tenets or doctrines of this Age of Grace. Turn to I Corinthians 15. Remember in the last lesson we looked at the passages in Romans and Ephesians, where Paul referred to the "mystery", that secret that had been hidden in the mind of God? Now it has been revealed!

Do you see what that says? It is by this Gospel that we Gentiles are saved. Now verse 3:

If you study Paul’s letters, you’ll see that he constantly refers to the revelations that he got from the ascended Lord. How the Lord revealed the new truths to him that were never before revealed in the Scriptures. These truths were prophesied, but it was never revealed that Salvation would be for Jews and Gentiles alike.

Now, let’s see what Paul says about this very premise of Christ’s death, burial and Resurrection. Turn back to I Corinthians where Paul writes:

We see that all around us, don’t we. People just don’t comprehend how someone who lived 2,000 years ago could have any effect on us today.

Now, let’s take the same couple that love each other, what are they going to do? They’ll do the same things that they would have written down, but it won’t be by command, it will be from hearts of love. This is exactly the difference between Law and Grace. Everything that God said "Thou shalt" does not now become permissive. It now becomes that which comes from within. In other words, the believer is automatically going to adhere to the things written in the Law. The believer is not going to steal; he’s not going to commit adultery; he’s not going to worship a pagan idol; and on through the Commandments. There is only one commandment that Paul does not reiterate as he does all the others.

Paul never says that we can now break the Commandments, or that they are no longer any earthly good. It’s just that we are not under their demands in worship and their condemnation. Once we recognize that, "Yes, we were Law-breakers, we have broken the Law; but now in Christ we have become everything that the Law demands of us, but from an inward working power. Look at:

Now, all you have to do is read the following verses in Romans 13. The Commandments are all listed there.

We’ve spent enough time on Law and Grace for now. These subjects will come up again from time to time. Turn to Genesis 22. Years had gone by and Isaac was probably a late teenager, maybe even twenty years old. God put Abraham to a tremendous test. Whenever I deal with new believers, I warn them that God is going to test their faith. We see it all through Scripture. Abraham was no exception. How do you think Abraham felt after years of waiting for a child. Ishmael finally came on the scene, grew into a teenager, and God told Abraham to send him away? Abraham loved Ishmael. This had to be excruciating for the old man. Then Abraham had his son of promise, Isaac. For nearly twenty years, he was deeply attached to him. What did God tell Abraham to do with him? Kill him! Imagine what Abraham must have gone through!

The reason I emphasize the word "only" in verse 2 is because as far as God is concerned, Isaac is Abraham’s only son. Ishmael didn’t count as Abraham’s son. The reason is that it is through the line of Isaac that the Nation of Israel and The Messiah were to come. So I want you to make special note of God’s reference to Isaac as Abraham’s only son whom He loved.

The mountain to which God directed Abraham we know today as Mount Moriah, in the heart of Jerusalem. On Mount Moriah stands the Mosque of Omar (I read recently the structure there is actually a shrine). When one enters the shrine, coming up out of what we would call the basement, is a huge rock around which the shrine was built. Supposedly, this is the rock upon which Abraham was to offer Isaac. The point I’m making is that Mount Moriah is the very same place in Scripture where Solomon’s Temple rested. So, everything in Israel is specific in time, in prophecy, in everything. And here we see that before the Nation of Israel was a reality, Mount Moriah had become a place of tremendous importance.

Underline "and come again to you(!)." What did Abraham know in his heart? He knew that even if Isaac's life had to be taken, God would raise him from the dead so that he could come back with his father. That much Abraham knew and believed. This again, is the total picture now of what Christ would accomplish on the Cross. I believe we are perfectly correct to say that in this situation, Isaac is a type of Christ and Abraham is a type of God the Father. They exhibit the same love relationship, the same sacrifice situation that Jesus and God shared.

For the ordinary, strapping eighteen or twenty-year-old, what would we expect his reaction to be? This was one situation in which the son could have easily whipped his father. But what do we see in Isaac? Complete obedience! Again, take this example 2,000 years into the future. When it came time for those Romans to begin scourging Jesus, and whipping Him, and pulling out His beard and crushing that crown of thorns onto His head, what could He have done? He could have rebelled. He could have thrown it all aside. Scriptures say He could have called down ten legions of angels. He didn’t have to go through all that! But what did He do? In complete obedience to His Father, He suffered at the hands of all those infidels and the raging religionists of His day, and He went to the Cross. So it was with Isaac. He obediently let Abraham bind him and lay him upon the altar.

And here we have that term again... "The Angel of the Lord," God the Son. (I don’t want to call Him Jesus in the Old Testament, because the Scriptures don’t), but it is God The Son, Jehovah, the same Person, but in His Old Testament character.

Now, let’s relate this to the life of a believer. Do believers suffer? Some of them have gone through tremendous suffering, yet they have maintained the best attitudes and happiest dispositions that you can witness. Their suffering has allowed them to prove to God just how much they love Him. The reason God brings times of testing and tribulation is to test our mettle. What do a lot of people do? They get bitter and angry and rebellious.

But to the truly believing heart, when hard times come, God becomes all the more precious. This is a lesson we all have to learn. God is not going to let us escape problems, He is simply going to be our hope as we go through them. This same thing was happening to Abraham. God said to Abraham, "I know now that you love me, because you were willing to sacrifice your beloved son." It’s the same way with God the Father, we know that He loves us completely because He sent Christ to the Cross. The only things that put Jesus on that Cross were the love of God and the sins of mankind.

You almost have to wonder whether Abraham was expecting something like this, when in verse 8 he said, "God will provide." It seems he must have known. God has never changed! So go back with me to Genesis 4. In the timeline we’ve shown in the last few lessons, we’ve seen that over and over again. The situations changed from man’s point of view; man’s responsibilities changed. But did God ever change? No! Never!

I believe in the dispensational approach to Bible study, because it’s the easiest way to understand Scripture. The best illustration I’ve run across is our own presidential administrations. I’m going to use Carter and Reagan because they’re probably the best two for comparison that I can think of. First, we had four years of President Carter. His administration reflected his own political ideology. Then came President Reagan, who was almost totally opposite in his approach to politics and so forth, which we experienced during his administration. But they were both laboring under the same Constitution. The Constitution didn’t change, even though the administrations did. Every time we get a new president, we get a new administration and things are going to change to some degree but the Constitution never does. It was the same way here in Scripture. Things changed drastically when Adam and Eve came out of the Garden; again they changed drastically coming out of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and going under the Law; it was far different coming out from under the Law and entering into the Age of Grace. But God never changed!

Back to Genesis 4. Here God was dealing with Cain. Remember that they didn’t yet have the Law, but God had told them that when their conscience convicted them of having committed a wrong, they were to bring a blood sacrifice to God and He would accept them. Abel did, and the Book of Hebrews, the faith chapter (11) tells us that "by faith, Abel brought the more excellent sacrifice." But Cain rationalized, saying to himself, "Why should I go some place to barter for a lamb, when I can make a sacrifice of the things that I have grown. If I make it beautiful and make the effort to go to God with it, I will be accepted." But he wasn’t:

Of course he would be! But Cain was evidently a farmer and had no access to sacrificial animals unless he’d barter with his brother Abel. Pride entered the picture, and Cain wasn’t about to do that. So God went one step further. Knowing Cain didn’t want to go through that kind of trouble, God told him, "Cain, I’ve provided a sacrifice for you," just like God did for Abraham in Chapter 22.

*I’m putting this translation in there, because in the Hebrew, the word used is identical for "sin" and "sin-offering." I think it was unfortunate that the translators did not make that clear. God is saying? "Cain, if you won’t or can’t bring a lamb sacrifice on your own, I’ve put one at your front door for you to use. It’s not going to fight with you. He’s going to be perfectly willing to have you pick him up and bring him to me for a sacrificial offering. All you’ve got to do is pick him up and bring him." God hasn’t changed! So now, let’s go back to Genesis 22. God providentially provided the ram, caught in the thicket; and Abraham apparently had no difficulty in getting the ram from the thicket to the altar. He had no help except, possibly, that of Isaac. Several lessons ago we went through some names of Jehovah, and made mention of this?

Though Abraham had the Middle East deeded to him in Chapter 15 by God, he still bought a tract of land to have a place to bury his wife. Verse 11, where Ephron the Hittite said to Abraham:

I think it’s interesting that Abraham is not satisfied with accepting a certain amount of acres free for nothing, even though he could have. He insisted on paying for it. I don’t know how much we can connect with this, but even in present day Jewry, when it comes to the burial of their dead, they are very particular. A few years ago they made a big furor about the things being built near, or over a Jewish Holocaust cemetery. In an article in the Jerusalem Post recently, a rabbi pointed out this same thing. He said, "Even today, we Jews are particular about where we bury our loved ones." I thought it was interesting that so much of the Old Testament record of the ancients remains true today. So they bartered; which they were both very good at – Arabs and Jews .

In our next lesson, we will be going for a bride for Isaac. Abraham is going to send his servant back into the land of his relatives to get a bride for his son, Isaac. But why go all that way when there are lots of eligible girls right at home? Abraham instructed his servant not to take a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanite women. But later on, when Esau came on the scene, he married two Canaanite women who were a grief to Isaac and Rebekah. So, keep all these things in the perspective of Scripture, because God is preparing everything for the Covenant people of Israel. This is the way I like to look at the Nation of Israel today. They are in their land in unbelief, and, contrary to everything we think, they should be. But they are still under the sovereign will of their God, because God is watching out for Israel. They are still the Covenant people, and even back here, God had to watch who they would marry.

In the Book of Romans, the Apostle Paul, writes to the Gentiles:

When Paul refers to things "written aforetime", he was referring to the Old Testament. The reason we study the Old Testament is to pick up a background for all the doctrines that are going to come, especially those from the pen of the Apostle Paul. I like to bring out the intrinsic quality of Scripture; of how miraculously it all fits, so that we will have no doubts that we can trust it as the eternal, supernatural, miraculously written Word of God. Let’s go back to Genesis 24. In the last few lessons we were dealing with Isaac and Ishmael, and how Isaac was, in type, a picture of Grace; the son of promise. Whereas Ishmael was a son of the flesh, and was depicted by Paul in his letter to the Galatians as a picture of Law.

In Genesis 24 we have a study I’m reluctant to call a "type" because there is one part of the account that would break down with regard to a perfect type. Most of you know what a "type" is in the Old Testament – a perfect illustration of a New Testament truth. For example, we know that Abraham is so typical of the man of faith, that we can call him a faith "type." Joseph, in so many ways experienced the same things that were experienced in the life of Christ, so we can consider Joseph as a "type" of Christ in that Old Testament setting. The same applies here in Chapter 24. It comes close to being a "type," but because of one little detail, I will only call it a "good illustration." As Abraham is going to send out his servant to bring back a bride for his son Isaac, it is a perfect parallel of what the Holy Spirit is doing today to call out the Bride for Christ. So, this is the lesson I like to pull out of this chapter.

The only small part that breaks down is that the Gentiles, as such had not really been isolated as yet in Scripture, because Abraham was the father of the Hebrew race; and he was sending his servant back to his own kinfolk for a bride for Isaac. So, it isn’t like he was actually going to the Gentiles, as we know the Lord is doing today with regard to the Bride of Christ, the Body of Christ which is, for the most part today, Gentiles. Nevertheless, we'll look at this chapter with this parallel, using this illustration:

The role of the servant in this situation is totally in line with the role of the Holy Spirit today, and it’s important that you see this. We won’t take the entire chapter verse by verse because so much of it is repetitious, but we will hit the highlights.

Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born, and Isaac was now well up in years, so Abraham was indeed old. In Verse 2, Abraham addressed his servant, and although that servant is not named here, earlier in Genesis 15:2 we found that Abraham had a servant named Eliezer of Damascus – no doubt this is the same man.

This language throws a curve at us, and we think, "What in the world?" But all they were doing was practicing ancient customs written out by Hammurabi. This man was more or less a philosopher and law-giver in ancient Babylon. Until God called out the Nation of Israel, and began dealing with them, and gave them His special instructions in the form of the Law, most of the then-known world operated under the laws of Hammurabi. They were good, moral laws for the most part, but they certainly were not God-inspired, as we now find here in the Scriptures. So these things we think of as "odd," were just customs of those ancient days.

If you recall, back in Genesis when God first talked to Abram (Abraham), that he and his father Terah made their way up along the Euphrates River into the area known as Syria today. Terah and his three sons had made their way from Ur, down on the Gulf of Arabia, into Syria, to a place later known as Haran. Then, from Haran, after Terah died, Abraham came down into the land of Canaan where the Canaanites lived.

The whole Middle East is in the news nearly every day. If more people could understand that setting according to Biblical history, I think we’d have a lot less confusion even among our men in high places. Remember, that Noah had three sons, Ham, Shem and Japheth. We’ll take care of Japheth first, because he became the progenitor of what The Bible refers to as the "Goyim" and we have now put the term "Gentile" on that.

Later in history, the Goyim became the Caucasian people, or the Indo-European peoples as they are often referred to now. As we come down through Biblical history, we have come to use the term Gentile to mean any non-Jewish peoples. In order to get a good picture of this setting, we’re going to have to go way back to the three sons of Noah as illustrated in the family tree below:

Ham was the son upon whom Noah placed the curse, and he became the father of the Canaanites. We normally think of the Canaanites, as referred to in Scripture, as the peoples living along the shores of the Mediterranean in the land of Palestine (or Israel), and they were already in the land when Abraham came.

Shem is the son we are predominately interested in. From this line came the man Terah who had three sons, Haran, Abram (Abraham) and Nahor. These names are not all that important except that I want you to see how, in our own present day with all the troubles in the Middle East, it all goes back to these families. Haran was the father of Lot. Lot, in turn, had two sons by his own daughters, back at the time of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. His offspring from the two daughters were Moabites and the Ammonites. Now, just in case you wonder what I’m talking about, what’s the present day capital of Trans-Jordan? Amman. It all comes back to these same roots. They are still all part and parcel of this family line.

Nahor had a son named Bethuel, and he had a daughter named Rebekah. She’s the one we’re going to come to now in Genesis 24. He also had a son named Laban. Laban in turn had two daughters named Leah and Rachel. Now, is it starting to fall into place?

Let’s look at Abraham’s family. First, he had a son by the Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, named Ishmael. Then he had a son by his legal wife, Sarah, named Isaac. Then after Sarah died, he took a wife named Keturah, and she had a son, among others, from whom came the Midianite nation. If you’ll remember your Biblical history, the Midianites were the people to the east. When Moses fled to the desert after leaving Egypt the first time, he married the daughter of the priest of Midian. I’m only pointing all this out to show how all these families are intertwined with the exception, of course, of the Canaanites, because God specifically said that they were not to marry Canaanites. Let’s move on down. His mother being an Egyptian, Ishmael in turn married an Egyptian woman. The Egyptians, of course, came from Ham, so we have a connection between this line of the offspring of Ishmael to the Canaanites and the Egyptians. That’s why I mentioned several lessons ago that even though the Egyptians are not true Arabs, the Egyptians and the Arabs are always acting like next-of-kin.

We know that Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Esau, in turn went right back and married two Canaanite women, which the Scriptures say were "a grief of mind" to Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob, on the other hand, went back to his father’s family, marrying Leah and Rachel. From those two marriages, we have the twelve sons which become the twelve tribes of Israel. From the tribe of Judah came King David, then King Solomon. From Solomon the genealogy splits and on one side we have the genealogy of Mary, which is the bloodline that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. On the other side, we have the line that led to Joseph, who, of course, was not the blood father, but he was the legal father of the Lord Jesus. So, you see, everything just fits perfectly all the way down through these lines, and God is in complete sovereign control. Let’s move on now in Genesis 24. Remember, that all of these families in the Middle East except for Japheth’s, are all inter-related. That’s why they have such a hatred for each other – they are all blood relatives. There’s just no denying it.

I believe this is will be a picture, illustration, or parallel of God’s calling out the Body of Christ from among the Gentiles. God the Father has sent the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is moving among the human race, wooing them, presenting them with the plan of Salvation. Even though God is sovereign, one of the things that is hard to reconcile is the question, "Is God absolute in whom He chooses? Does everyone else not have a chance? How does it all work?" I think what you have to do, is put the questions into an awareness that it’s not either one or the other. What I’m talking about, of course, is whether it is totally the sovereign choosing of God ("the chosen" is used, or "the elect" is used, "predestinated" is used); or, over against that is the free will of man. Way back in the time of the reformers, Calvin was of the persuasion that we are chosen. Then those who abused Calvin’s teaching went so far as to go overboard and say, "If you’re chosen, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you’re chosen, no one has to do anything to win you, you’re in. If you’re not chosen, you’re out." I maintain this approach is rather ridiculous. But, you see, at the time of Luther and Calvin with that approach, along came a man by the name of Armenius, and I’m sure you’ve all heard about the Armenian view. This expressed the opposite persuasion, that God had nothing to do with choosing. It’s all up to the free will of the individual. That’s the other extreme.

What we have to see is what verse 5 indicates – there has to be a willingness, but on the other hand, as you go through this chapter you can see that God definitely had His hands on the whole situation. Everything fell into place, and the servant was amazed. When he got up to Syria, he asked God, "the girl who is to be the one, let her, when I ask for water, say, ‘not only can you drink, but I’ll water the camels also.’" And that’s the way it happened. The very first girl that came along was the one! Now, how are we to reconcile this. Keep your place in Genesis and let’s turn all the way back to I Peter, because this thing about the sovereignty of God and the free will of man are with us all the way from Genesis to Revelation. So, we might as well reconcile it early on.

"...Elect according to the foreknowledge of God..." that’s the secret to understanding this whole doctrine. Why can God chose some and not others? Because it is foreknowledge! Because He knows what an individual will do with His particular offer of Salvation. Way back in Genesis, why did Rebekah come to water the livestock and meet Abraham’s servant at just the appropriate time. Obviously, it was the sovereign working of God, there’s no doubt about it! But, she was also willing. And why was she chosen? Because God knew she would be willing.

Why are some of us saved, and our friends and loved ones not saved? Not because we were special or better, but God in His foreknowledge could see what we would do with the offer of Salvation, as Paul said in Ephesians 1:4. I know this verse has thrown a curve at a lot of people, but, hopefully, this will satisfy some of your questions. It isn’t that some are left without a chance, and God has put His finger on certain ones; but, rather, God in His foreknowledge knew what every individual would do in the exercise of his or her free will and then He could pick.

We’re not going to be able to finish Chapter 24 in this lesson, but let’s go back to it and get as far as we can.

I think the key word in these verses, to understand what the servant was talking about, is the word 'again.' Since this is, as I believe, a picture of the calling out of the Body of Christ. All through the Book of Hebrews we find the word "once." This Christ died once;" "This He did once;" over and over again! What is being implied here? Christ is not going to come back a second time to go to the Cross. That was accomplished one time. Nothing can ever cross that over, so the emphasis here is, "Beware that you don’t take my Son back there again!" We’re not going to repeat something that’s been done once before.

We come back to this again! As the Holy Spirit moves through the human race, particularly among the Gentiles in this Age of Grace, He is calling out a people for His Name, (and we’ll be discussing this more thoroughly in our next lesson). No one is ever forced! It is all based on the free will of the individual. But never forget, God has foreknowledge of who will respond.

Lesson Two • Part II

Law and Grace: Time Line: Isaac

Turn to Genesis 24. We were drawing a comparison of the sending out of the servant for a bride for the son, Isaac, as a parallel of the work of the Holy Spirit today in calling out the Body of Christ. We will finish this chapter and then go to the Book of Psalms, Chapter 2. So look now at Genesis 24:10. As we saw in our last lesson, the servant made a covenant or oath with his master, Abraham:

Let’s look at the map of this area on page 36 again.

Abraham was a wealthy man with tons of silver and gold and flocks and servants. No doubt this servant, which I assume was Eliezer, took a pretty good sampling of all that wealth, making his way into Mesopotamia. As this map shows, it wasn’t that far, as we Americans think of, in miles. Everything in the Middle East is very compact; but for that day, and going by camel, it was still a good long journey. Eliezer went up to Haran, the area from which Abraham had come earlier, and where his old father, Terah, had died.

It’s interesting that we in America can’t quite comprehend women coming more and more into the work force. It’s kind of against our ethics. But it’s the way it’s always been. I can remember way back when I was a kid and missionaries would come back from Africa with their old 8mm movies. They showed the African men sitting outside their huts drinking their homemade brew and getting drunk, while the women were out in the fields doing all the work, the grinding, and the cooking. So I have known that women have been more or less the slaves of the men for many, many centuries. And that was so in Haran as well. It was the women who drew the water, took care of the flocks. I suppose the men just sort of sat back and acted as overlords. That was the situation the servant found when he brought his camels to the well of water, and he made a prayer in verses 12-14.

The servant laid out a fleece before God. He basically said, "Lord, when a girl answers in that way, then I’ll know she’s the right one." I always think of the Book of Ruth. Remember when Naomi had lost her sons and ended up with two daughters-in-law? One stayed in Moab, but Ruth came back with her to Israel. The word is used that Ruth "happened" to end up in the right field – one belonging to the next of kin to Naomi – when she went to labor in the harvest field. That word "hap" or "happened" means more than that.

I was talking to a man not too long ago, and said to him, "I wish you luck." He answered, "Les, in the life of a believer there is no such thing as luck." He was absolutely correct. God is in such complete control that we can honestly say that everything that happens is in His hands. This next verse makes it so plain:

It was the same way here. It just "happened", but not really, that Rebekah was the girl to make the first approach. When the servant asked for water, she responded exactly as he had asked God for her to do. She came on the scene in verse 15.

What did the servant know? She was the right girl! She was eligible and had all the physical attributes that caught his attention. After all, these people were just as human as we are. So she hastily drew the water and he knew that she was the one! Now verses 26-29a.

This young man, Laban, came running out, and I like verse 30 because all these people were so human. I think a lot of times people get the idea that these Bible characters were somehow a cut above the human. But they were not! They were just as human as we are. So when her brother came running out:

I always have to remind the people I teach that when these pagans speak of the Lord and of God, it isn’t that they themselves were actual believers, or that they knew Jehovah. You must remember that all the people who lived in this Middle Eastern environment were saturated with paganism. Even these relatives of Abraham, the children of Terah, were idolaters.

Soon we’ll come to the episode where Jacob, his wives and children had left for Canaan (long after this particular time), and, suddenly, Laban came running after them looking for his family gods – the idols which Rachel had secretly brought with her. So because all these people were idolaters, take it with a grain of salt when they use the name of Jehovah. They were using that Name, not because they knew Him, but just as another name of another god, and they realized that He was the God of Abraham. Then word passed to the girl’s father that this servant of their relative, Abraham, was looking for a bride for Isaac, and Rebekah seemed to be the one. We won’t go through all these verses, but if you’ll read it later, you’ll find that even though the servant does all he can to win this beautiful girl, she had to make the final decision. After they’ve had their feasting, and getting acquainted in the house of Rebekah and her family, it all boils down to her making the choice.

She made the final decision. It’s the same way with Salvation today. The Holy Spirit can woo; the Holy Spirit can convict; but God will never take someone by the nape of the neck and force the issue. I often say I am certainly not against evangelism, but I am against arm twisting, because that falls down into the energy of the flesh. Salvation has to be totally the work of the Holy Spirit. Too many times other things enter in, and people are almost forced to make a false decision. Then, years later, people wonder what happened that that Christian is bankrupt spiritually. I’m afraid they’ve never had a true experience, because it was approached in the wrong way. But here, Rebekah was given the choice and she said, "I will go."

So they took off from way up in Syria, heading back down to the land of Canaan. Now we’ll pick up the husband-to-be. The man who is representative of Christ, Himself; who is allowing the Holy Spirit to do the wooing and the winning of those who come into the Body of Christ.

Now, there are a lot of commentaries that have differing opinions regarding this word "meditate." Some think he just went out to think things through, while others think that he was thinking about the servant bringing him a bride. But I think that the crux of the matter was found back in Chapter 23, when a very important person in his life, his mother, died. I think what happened here was that Isaac was mourning the loss of his mother, and had gone out in the field to contemplate that loss.

Now, all of a sudden his grief and his loneliness had turned to joy; to expectation. His bride had come. What I want you to understand, is that Isaac, who had been living down south of Jerusalem in the desert, had left his home and the tents of Abraham. And somewhere between "the far country" from which his bride was coming, and his home, there was a meeting. What was the lesson? It will be the same way when Christ calls His Bride home. He’s not going to immediately call her to Heaven, but He’s going to leave Heaven and meet her part way. We’ll look at that probably in our next lesson. Anyway, Isaac had left home going part way toward Mesopotamia, and suddenly saw his ride coming.

I’m sure she had a pretty good idea who the man was, but Scripture does that so often! How many times have I pointed out to you that Jesus, when He wanted to get somebody’s attention, would ask them a question. He knew the answer! And way back in the Garden of Eden, God didn’t have to ask, but He said, "Adam, what have you done?" I think the Scripture does that just to give us time to think, so she said, "who is this?" She knew! Oh, this was her husband-to-be, her fiance as we call it today.

I want you to picture these things. Isaac and Rebekah had just met, and the servant explains to Isaac how miraculously this whole thing had come together. "There’s no doubt Isaac, that this girl is God’s choice for you." So Isaac had no doubt that this was, indeed, God’s choice of a wife for him.

As I’ve pointed out before, The Bible never tells a wife to love her husband, but it does say, "Husband, love your wife." And here it is: It doesn’t say that Rebekah loved him (although we know that she did), but it began with Isaac loving his wife. Now, this is why I think he had been meditating over his mother’s death. He was comforted by the whole new experience that came into his life. That vacuum that his mother had left was suddenly filled by his new bride. Now let’s go to Psalm 2. We won’t be able to finish all that I’d like to do concerning this Psalm in this lesson, but perhaps we can be prepared for the next part of our study, and that is "how is the present day Age of Grace pictured as the calling out of a Gentile bride for God the Son, for The Christ?"

The only way we can understand the language of the Apostle Paul regarding the calling out of the Bride, is to get an even better understanding of the Old Testament program. Here is where we have had so much confusion over the years throughout all Christendom. There is so much difference between the Old Testament program and the Age of Grace, that nobody really knows what to believe, or why, or how. So, we’re going to take some time now to outline the Old Testament program. The reason I’m emphasizing this is because nowhere in the Old Testament, or well into the New Testament, is there a single hint that there would be a Gentile wife of Christ. Everything was Israel. Israel was to be the bride of Jehovah.

In the Book of Hosea, Hosea was actually instructed by God to go out and marry a "woman of the street", and take her home to be his wife. But it wasn’t very long until she was back out on the street with all of her multitudes of lovers; and by the end of the book, she had been restored and was back in fellowship with her husband. That was the beautiful picture of Israel. Even though she had been an idolatrous nation, always chasing after other gods all the way through the Old Testament, we know that the day is coming when Israel is going to be restored, and all her adulterous past will be put behind her and forgotten. But we have another analogy, and that is "The Bride of Christ." Let me show you the verse in II Corinthians. There are probably some who don’t agree with me that the Church is the Bride of Christ, but you don’t have to. I just teach it as I see it and the way that I am most comfortable. Turn to II Corinthians 11:1, where Paul begins:

That’s how I feel sometimes, when I begin to teach some of these things that I know the average believer has never heard. I have to say, "Bear with me, because sooner or later I’ll show you that this is actually what the Scriptures say." Paul was writing to the Corinthian church, a Gentile church.