Here's what we're doing. Last week we started a review of the whole Old Testament framework. The series is known as a framework. Basically what it does is it takes the major pillars, historical events of Scripture, and we go through those. There's 22 in all. You might be able to come up with a little bit different list, but the bottom line is these are the major things that are mentioned over and over in the Bible. So I take those events, and then what we do is we connect doctrines with those events. In other words, what does the event of creation naturally teach us? What's a byproduct of that event? Well, it teaches us who God is, right? Because He's the Creator. It tells us what He's like, and His power, and His brilliance, and His gorgeousness, His beauty, and all that He creates. It also tells us about man, because man is crafted in His image, right? And then it teaches us about nature, because that's everything that's non-man. So at that event, it's very obvious that these are the doctrines that are taught. And so those are the doctrines that we connect. I try to do this with every event of the scriptures. And so since we have spent 110 weeks or so working through the whole Old Testament in quite a bit more detail, what we're doing over a period of about three or four weeks, probably four weeks, is just reviewing that material, giving the highlights. So if you've never been through the whole Old Testament, to do that. So it's a wonderful thing, and it gives you the flow of biblical history, the flow of what God was teaching, and I think it's a helpful tool. So since we covered the creation, the fall, the flood, and the Noahic covenant last week, which is the foundation of everything, Genesis 1 through 11, what we're going to do now is move into the portion of the Bible that starts to deal specifically with the people of Israel. And that starts in Genesis 12 with the call of Abraham. Then we'll go to the Exodus, obviously heavily related to Israel. And then, of course, we'll move to Mount Sinai, where God met with Israel and gave the law. And then we'll look at the conquest, where God began to take them into the promised land that he had covenanted to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob. So we'll cover these four events, hopefully, today. And hopefully, it will be as fun as it was last week. And I know Genesis 1 through 11 is super fun. Everybody loves it because that stuff is just so fascinating and so wonderful. But hopefully it'll be just as fun today. So let's start with Genesis 12 and the call of Abraham. And I'll try to use the PowerPoint that way. I'm not going into too much detail what I do when I go to these events So you can you can teach this to your children. You can teach this at a home Bible study You can teach this to a men's group. You can teach this to Sunday school. Okay, so if you if you get my emails if you sign one of these little welcome cards and i can have contact with you and i can say i will send you all these materials in your email inbox and and then and if you don't want that they say i don't want i'll be like okay i love you uh... so it's not gonna hurt my feelings i'd i'd just wanted to be available if you want okay And so what I'm doing in the handouts that I've sent you this week, and if you don't have these, let me know if you want them. It's just one single page on each event. So it talks about the event. It gives the scripture passages. It gives the story in a very summarized, just one paragraph. Call of Abraham. What's all that about? One paragraph. Literally four or five sentences. Then a doctrinal summary. So go through all the doctrines. Doctrine of faith. Doctrine of justification. So justification by faith. And so that's all on there, and there's sub-points for each one. You can take this, and it's all there, and you can have a whole Bible study with one of these. And you can tell people, hey, I can take you through the whole Old Testament in 14 weeks. Would you like to do that? You can see what God said. You don't have to believe it. Just take it or leave it, but I can explain it to you what it's teaching. How would you like to do that? And you'd be surprised. People might go, hmm, that's interesting. 14 weeks, that's all I'm committing? OK, I don't have to believe it. And maybe through the course of it, they will be convinced. Okay. So, that's what these little summaries are for. If you want them, sign the card and let me know. Alright. So, the call of Abraham. Fourth great event in scripture. Basically, I tell kids or people the story like this. Abraham was a pagan. He lived in the city of Ur, which is in modern-day Iraq, near where they had built the Tower of Babel, where a future Babylon will be built. His family worshiped the moon god. And God sought him out, and he made certain promises to Abraham, and Abraham responded to God by believing in God and in his promises, and God credited his faith as righteousness. God then enters into a contract with Abraham, promising to give him and his descendants an eternal land, an eternal sea, and an eternal blessing to the world. These promises were repeated to Isaac, Jacob, of course, the 12 sons, and who become the nation Israel. So through them, the blessing would come to the world. Okay, so that's the story in a nutshell, right? And the two doctrines that we learn here are the doctrine of justification and the doctrine of faith. We always say in Protestantism, justification by faith, right? So let's look at these two doctrines, the doctrine of faith and the doctrine of justification. We'll make a few points about each one. Faith, by the way, is just confidence in someone or something. It's not even a religious word. I used to go to the bank and it would say, there's a little FDIC sticker where if you're going to go through the drive-thru and you've got to put that canister in there and it sucks it up. And it would say, full faith and assurance. This is backed. I'm not sure it's really backed very firmly. But, you know, full faith and assurance, you know, and that means this confidence. You can have confidence in the value of these assets. So whenever you have faith, you're just putting your confidence in someone or something because that object or person is reliable. I will take a child, of course, my own children, none of your children, I won't take them. I won't use your children for this. But I would stand them on their bed or something and I would, you know, tell them to close their eyes or we'd blindfold them and just stand on the bed and I would say, okay, now fall back in my arms. I have big, strong arms. You know I'm your daddy. You're just five years old. and I will catch you. And they would always fall back, just take the plunge, because they knew I was a reliable object, that I could catch them. That's what we're doing when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that he is reliable, so we put our trust in him. So it's not really a blind faith. This is very important, because each of my children know me. They know my voice. They know my strength. So they know things about me. It's not a blind faith. A blind faith would be asking them to fall into some foreigner, some alien's arms who they don't know anything about. They don't know their size. They could be another four-year-old for all they know. They don't know. That's a blind faith. The Bible never says have blind faith. It says have faith or trust in someone who is reliable, that you have confidence in. We are not leaping out into the unknown. We are listening to the voice of God in scripture and we become convinced that he is able to save us. And that's why we put our trust in Jesus Christ. Abraham is the first one to teach us that, because when God called out to Abraham, God convinced Abraham that he was a reliable object. He could keep his promises. So let's look at faith. Six points about faith. First of all, faith depends upon God doing the initiating. Nobody is going to come to faith without God somehow initiating. It always relates to his word in some way. Think of Adam in the garden. When Adam sinned, what did he do? What were the first few things he did? First of all, he knew he was naked, and so he took fig leaves and he sewed those up. And then when he heard the sound of the Lord God in the garden, where did he go? He hid. See, he did not initiate with God. God initiated with him. That's the very first point of faith, is faith depends upon God doing the initiating. He always initiates with us. Second thing is that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So faith is a response then. It's a response to hearing the word of God. If you don't hear, how can you believe? Romans 10, 14. So why do we need to send missionaries? So people will hear. So people can believe. Because they have to hear before they can believe. And Abraham heard the word of God. Abraham believed the promises God made to him of a land, seed, and blessing. And that's what he believed. And he was justified. What do we hear? We hear that Christ died on the cross for our sins. He rose again on the third day. What do we do? We believe in him. Because we've heard this message, we've become convinced that it's true, that it solves our most basic problem, which is the sin problem we learned about at the fall. Third point of faith, faith is not a work. This is a very important point. Romans chapter 4, verse 3 speaks about Abraham. It says he believed. It's not a work. He says, if you work, then you earn a wage. But it says, but Abraham believed, and it was credited to him as righteousness. He didn't work. Because faith isn't a work. Faith isn't doing something that merits God's pleasure. Faith is just receiving or accepting what God has done for us in Christ. So having faith does not add anything to salvation. Sometimes people say, well, you know, God's got to give you faith. That kind of stuff. And if God doesn't give you faith, then you can't be saved. Well, except for it says Abraham believed. It doesn't say God gave Abraham faith and then Abraham gave it back. It just says that Abraham believed. When the Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas in Acts 16, what must I do to be saved? Paul didn't say, now you have to wait till God gives you faith and then believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He just said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's your responsibility. It's a human responsibility. It's always faith. He who believes, it doesn't say God has to give it to you first. uh... it says no god does the initiating you've heard now what is your response to that that's not going to anything salvation is just really receiving something i would say i was my kids you know christmas you know if they get a gift for my wife gets a gift that's not because of anything they've done it's just a gap this year's will you receive it they could reject it i want to present Okay, but usually they accept it. That is what it is to have faith, is to receive salvation. Just accepting it. Your acceptance of it does not add anything to the gift itself, does it? Whatever's in the package, your faith doesn't change what's in the package. Nor does your faith change salvation or add anything to it. Faith is just the means of accepting the gift. So faith is not a word. Fourth point, faith requires content that's understood. I mean, people have to understand the gospel. And the gospel has certain terms in it that we have to understand a bit about. You know, 1 Corinthians 15, one through four talks about the gospel. So we have to know something about who Jesus is, right? We have to know he's not just another person like us, a sinner. That's not who he is. He is God, come in the flesh as man. And he was tempted in all things as we, but he had no sin. So we have to know a little bit about who he is as a person. We also have to know what he did. We have to know about his work on the cross, that he died for sin, that he rose again, the Lord raised him from the dead. So we have to know some of these ideas. If we don't understand, how can we believe? We wouldn't know what we were putting our trust in. So faith requires content that is understood. Maybe the easiest way to understand this for people is if I read you the gospel in Spanish, and you don't speak Spanish. Well, I just gave you the gospel. What's wrong with you? Well, you don't understand it. Why? Because it's in a foreign language. And I think a lot of times when we go and we speak about Jesus Christ to people in our culture, they come back with that song. You know that, you know, Jesus is a she, you know, and stuff like that. You know, some of these pop culture songs. You know, what if God is a she? What if Jesus was? Just a slob like one of us and stuff like that. All just pop culture ideas of who Jesus and God is, but not who they really are. So you have to understand the categories of Jesus, God, man, sin, the cross, death, resurrection. You have to understand these words in order to believe and be justified. Abraham understood he understood the promise. Hey, this is a land. This is what you're gonna get seed blessing Okay, I understand and when he believed that content God justified Fifth point it's the object of faith that saves not faith. Okay. This is very important. A lot of people think that they're saved by faith No Nobody's ever been saved by faith. Nobody ever will be saved faith doesn't say God saves through faith Faith is just the manner or the vehicle through which God saves. God is a savior. He saves us. So what's the significance of this? Well, if my faith doesn't save me, what happens if I lose my faith? Well, it doesn't change that I'm already saved because it didn't save me to begin with. God saved me when I had faith initially. If I lose that faith, I doubt, I have questions, He still saved me. It's an overdone deal. I'm part of the family of God. So that's the significance, because some people say, well, if you stop believing, then you'll lose your salvation. But the presupposition is that your faith saved you to begin with, and that's not true. Faith never saved you to begin with. God saves you through faith. So that's an important distinction. And lastly, the gospel must be believed. I mean, a person can hear the gospel and understand the gospel, but If they don't believe it, well, they're not really safe. Just like me. I grew up, I learned all about evolution at Texas Tech University, took all the courses, became an adjunct professor, all that stuff. Taught evolution to people and all this stuff, right? But I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I don't have confidence or reliability in that description of origins or development of why. So a person can hear and understand the gospel, but that doesn't mean they necessarily believe it. It must be personally appropriated. They must personally believe it. Now, all this doctrine of faith is taught by Abraham, right? He's the model of faith throughout the New Testament. What happened when he believed? A fancy word called justification. Now this word, by the way, does not mean just as if I never sinned. Some people say that. Justification, just as if I never sinned. It's kind of like a little wordplay. That's not what it means. Justification means just as if I perfectly obeyed. See, it's not enough to just have never sinned. If you never sinned, it's not enough. You cannot be in the presence of God. You know why? Because you do not have perfect righteousness. You do not have perfect holiness. It's the absence of sin. But the absence of sin does not mean the presence of righteousness. It's just more of a neutral statement. You're in a neutral ground. So it's not enough to have never sinned. You have to have the perfect righteousness added to your account. That's the only thing that pleases God. So how do you get that? Well, like Abraham. Abraham believed. How are you going to access that? By believing, God will credit you with this righteousness. So let's look a little bit at this idea of justification. First of all, justification occurs in a moment in time. It's not a process. It is not the process of you becoming righteous. Okay. It is a crediting to you of Christ's righteousness so that he looks upon you and he treats you as righteous. The analogy I use is one that's credited off in the Martin Luther. If you live outside of Spokane and you have cattle, you have a lot of cow patties, and you can look out the window and you can see these cow patties. But come December or January or February, you look out some mornings, and there's a fresh blanket of snow covering all, and you don't see the cow packs, right? But they're there. Now, this is the way God looks upon us as justified people. Yes, we still are cow patties. We still sin. Whatever. A little steamy and stuff. A little too graphic. But he sees us like the blanket of snow. That's how he sees it, like a blanket of snow. What does it say in Isaiah? I will wash you white as snow. It's the concept of justification, that he credits us with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. We're clothed in it. We're clothed in his righteousness. So that he looks upon us, and he treats us as righteous, even though we are still sinners. That was the great cry of Martin Luther at the Reformation. He used a little Latin phrase to explain this. He said, simul justus et peccator. same time Righteous in the sin That seems like a legal incongruity, how can God look upon me and call me righteous when I'm still a sin Well because he's imputed that to our crown he is credited to us One day we actually will be as white as snow no more manure Okay under the snow, but that's in the resurrection in the meantime. He looks upon us and treats us as perfectly righteous And that is a wonderful truth, right? Justification is so powerful. If you realize that you are justified, that means, first of all, no matter what you've done, you are totally accepted with God. You believe in Jesus Christ. He is not holding anything over you. Like, oh, yes, but I know about what you did five years ago, last week, last night. He is not doing that. He is looking upon you and He is treating you as He would treat His own Son, Jesus Christ. That is an awesome, awesome idea. It is so powerful. It is the reason you can get up every day and you can keep going ahead. Because you know you are accepted in the Beloved One, Jesus Christ. So second point of justification, the righteousness of justification is sourced in Jesus Christ. What do I mean by that? Well, obviously it's not. I mean, it's not sourced in your works. Our works are nothing but filthy rags. OK, even our good works, our best stuff. is nothing more than filthy rags to him. So the righteousness has to come from somewhere else, and that righteousness comes from Jesus Christ. He generated it in space and time. Remember, first of all, he has to be born of a virgin so that he doesn't have any sinful disposition or nature. Then he has to be tempted in everything as we are so he can identify with us, and yet he can't commit any personal sin, right? And so we have this only one person in history who's ever come into the world and lived a perfectly sinless life. And it wasn't Joseph Smith. It wasn't Muhammad. These people died, okay, and the evidence that they were not sinless is they did not rise again. They are dead. They are dead. And they cannot save you. Keeping a rule book cannot save you. Nothing like that can do anything. The only one who can save you is the only person who's ever risen from the dead in space and time. And his name is Jesus Christ. He's the only one. And that is why we are so insistent to say what Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. People don't like that. They say, oh, you're such a bigot. It's just one way. You insist on your way. No, I didn't insist on it. First of all, Jesus Christ did. So if you don't like what he said, take it up with him. Secondly, aren't you glad that there is a way that we can get right with God? I am. And he's told us, and it's very clear. So that's good news. So the righteousness had to be generated by Jesus Christ in his life on earth as he lived perfectly obedient to the Father. And when we believe in him, that righteousness is given to us. We are clothed in it like a blanket of snow. And lastly, Christ's righteousness is imputed to us. It's not infused into us over time. In other words, that kind of repeats point one, but it happens at a moment in time. There's an imputation. The reason that we use this word imputation rather than infuse is because imputation has the idea of something being credited at a moment in time. so the moment you had faith in jesus christ given a four years old nine years old seventy years old where doesn't matter at that moment you are justified They imputed righteousness. Now, the Roman Catholics said no. They said it is infused in you over time. Gradually, starting with your infant baptism and moving on, and when concupiscence, when your original sin is removed, they have all this theology and stuff, OK? But the point is, in their idea, is that the righteousness is infused gradually over time as you keep the sacraments. But at the end of your life in Roman Catholicism, nobody is really perfect unless you're classified as a saint and you meet their criteria. So in order to have the last of your sin burned away and righteousness to replace it, you have to go to purgatory. That's what their idea of justification is. It's a process that takes place through the Roman Catholic's life under the sacramental system that extends through purgatory. So Protestants said, no, that's not the way it is. The moment Abraham believed, it was imputed to him as righteousness at the moment in time. No infusion in a long process. See the difference? That's why in Roman Catholicism, you cannot say, I know that I'm saved. Because you really don't know that. Because you're not righteous enough yet. See? But in Protestantism, you can say, yes, I know I'm saved, because the moment I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, he says he imputed his righteousness to me. At that moment. So I know. I have confidence, 100%. OK, that's the difference. And it's a big difference, right? It's a big difference. OK, all that comes through the call of Abraham. OK, the second great event. Oh, well, let's go past Abraham. Well, I should do this, but notice just there's four parts to every covenant in the Bible. Whether it's the Noahic Covenant we covered last week, or the Abrahamic, or any of the others, they always have parties, you know, like who's involved, promises that are made, some kind of sign, just like you sign a contract. When you sign a contract, you've got to put your name on the dotted line and sign over your life, or whatever. But in the Bible, there's always a founding sacrifice, like a blood sacrifice. So the Abrahamic covenant starts with Abraham. It's repeated to Isaac and Jacob in the nation Israel, and God is the other party. But only those who believe like Abraham will enjoy the promises. So under the Jewish people, that's the remnant, right? That's the remnant. They're the ones who will enjoy the promises. Those who don't believe, they may be Jews, but they're not going to be enjoying the promises. Later, we believe too, and we become children of Abraham. We get to enjoy the spiritual promises that come from this covenant. Okay, but there's the four parts of a covenant. That all starts in Genesis 12 and 15. Exodus. Let's move to this one. Exodus. Again, tell the story. You should be able to tell the story. You can read it, but you should be able to tell it. God's people were in slavery for 400 years. And God heard their groaning as they were slaving under Pharaoh, building his empire. And he had compassion on them, and he raised up Moses to deliver them, right? And as Moses goes to Pharaoh, he will offer Pharaoh an opportunity to let the people go. Pharaoh will harden his heart and not let the people go. This happens 10 times. Finally, Pharaoh says, get out of Egypt. All Egypt is ruined. And that night, they took the blood of a lamb, and they put it over the door among the lentils. And that night, the angel of death came through. And if it saw the blood, as the Lord had said, then the angel of death would pass over. That's where Passover comes from, right? The Feast of Passover. And so they would be saved inside the house. And then they were delivered. They went out of Egypt. They crossed the Red Sea. The Egyptian armies were destroyed in the Red Sea. God delivered his people. And the nation praised the Lord. So this is a unique, what we might call a revolution. I mean, there's been wars fought, revolutionary war and so forth. But this was an interesting revolution because one side in the revolution didn't raise any arms, or let's say swords, the Israelites. They didn't have to raise a sword at all to fight the Egyptians off. In fact, the Egyptians gave them all the gold and silver and stuff just to get out of here. So it's a unique thing because the Lord really was fighting for them. He's the one who delivered them. Okay, what do we learn through, what are the doctrines we learn? Well, one doctrine mainly, the doctrine of judgment and salvation. You can see that in every one of the plates, right? There's judgment on Egypt, there's salvation for the Jews who lived in Goshen. So, when we talk about judgment and salvation, we have five little truths underneath that, and these were all the same things that we taught at what prior event? The flood. The flood is another picture of judgment salvation. So do you see how God works? At the flood, he taught us judgment salvation and these five truths. At the exodus, he teaches it again because he's a good teacher. He reinforces. He comes along and he teaches the same thing again. But look what he did this time. He added three things down here. redemption, propitiation, and reconciliation. Because at the exodus, you see the blood over the door. So this introduces something he did not teach at the flood, and that is the idea of substitutionary blood atonement, which has redemption involved, propitiation involved, and reconciliation. So, he teaches the same thing that he taught at the Noahic flood, but then he adds a little bit more. And that's just exactly what we do when we go to school, right? We learn algebra, and we do that before we take geometry. or whatever, because you have to have the building blocks. So God is a great teacher. He's a pedagogue. He knows how to teach us and what comes next in the curriculum. So at the Exodus, again, we see these same truths and then some more. So first of all, the first point, and you can see I've got an acronym going there, GOMAP. You can change it to GOPAM. I don't know. You can come up with acronyms, but the bottom line is have these memorized. Grace before judgment, whenever Moses went before Pharaoh, he basically gave him an option to let the people go, right? That's grace. All that Pharaoh had to do was let the people go and the plague wouldn't come, right? There'd be no judgment. But he never would. But there was always grace and opportunity before judgment, right? Second one, one way of salvation. On the night of the 10th plague, which was the death of the firstborn son and the firstborn of that cattle line, that breed line, how many ways could you be saved from the angel of death? Just one. What was it? Put the blood of a giraffe over the door? A lion? But a lamb, right? Or actually, they also had a one-year-old. It had to be less than one year old or one year old. One year old, it had to be a goat or a lamb on that night. And it had to be a male. And it had to be unblemished. And all these things were pointing to who, by the way? OK, pointing to the Lamb of God. who takes away the sin of the world, John the Baptist. Because he becomes, in 2 Corinthians 5, our Passover. He is our Passover. There's only one way, though. One way of salvation. And everyone in that household would be saved if they applied the blood to the door. Substitutionary blood atonement. The lamb or goat was being substituted for the oldest son, right? It was a substitution. Third truth, man and nature were judged and saved. Very important, because a lot of people think that your faith is just in your head. It's just a psychological thing that you use to help yourself get through life. You pray and do all these things. There's no real God out there, they say. This is all in your head, but if it helps you, good enough for you. But see, just like the flood, that wasn't just in people's heads, because the rocks tell us, with all the fossils in them, that it was not just in people's heads, that things die, because judgment and salvation is real. It's not just in our heads. It takes place in the physical world. So what happened at the exodus? The plagues, were those just in people's head? I don't think you can make that argument with the Egyptians at the time. I think they would beg to differ that it was in your heads. It was something that affected their cattle, it affected their crops, it affected all of Egypt. The sorcerers come to Pharaoh and they say, can you not see that all Egypt is destroyed? What are you doing? Let these people go. It's a judgment on man, yes, the Egyptians, but also nature. It's very real. And then fourth, appropriation by faith. Again, you had to appropriate the promise of deliverance or salvation that night by faith as you put the blood on the door. And then perfect discrimination. Whenever God judged in the plagues and in Egypt, it's all on Egypt and none on Goshen. Remember, Goshen is where the Jews hung out. That's where they lived. It was the Jewish ghetto at the time. And there was no death of cattle there. There was no darkness there when these plagues came. But there was all darkness in Egypt. See, it was completely separate or perfect discrimination in the judgment. No firstborn of Israel accidentally got caught up and just died that night. The angel of death slipped in there accidentally and killed him. No, it's a perfect discrimination. And you read that over and over, it'll say something like, not one of all the cattle of Israel die. It's being very specific about that truth. OK, so all that is the Exodus. It's the greatest event in Jewish thinking, Passover and all that, redemption. And so we introduce these last three terms here that are introduced with the lamb and the blood being put over the door. And that's the three aspects of substitutionary blood atonement. I always say, I teach kids substitution. It's a very important concept, right? Because Jesus is our substitute. So we have to understand why he came and why he died on the cross. Because he did it as a substitute, so we didn't have to die for our own sins, right? So substitution, easy concept. Because, I mean, if you know anything about basketball or soccer or football, they have these things called substitutes, right? And every kid understands, one guy goes out of the game, another guy goes in the game for that guy. Okay, so who came into the game and died for your sin? And that means you don't have to pay for it because you put your faith in Him. So that's substitution and it's a blood atonement which introduces these three words. Redemption, propitiation, reconciliation. Redemption is an economic term. If you have a ticket, it's worth some money, you can redeem it. You can get the value out of it. He paid our spiritual debt. He paid it 100%. Remember he said, it is finished? What's finished? The sin debt was paid. You don't have to pay it. This is good news again. I mean, look, the sin debt for the entire world, all sins, past, present, and future, were paid for in one act, by one person, on one day, and that is by Jesus Christ. You mean everything that would happen after the cross he already paid for? Yes. He paid for it all in those three hours of darkness in the cross. He took all the sin and it was imputed to him in the way that his righteousness is imputed to us. So he didn't become a sinner, okay? But he took our sin, it was credited to him. And he paid the penalty for it all. Over and out, period. So that's done. Propitiation. This is the idea of satisfaction. God was satisfied with his payment. He accepted the payment. That's the idea of propitiation is satisfaction. And then lastly, reconciliation. Reconciliation is what happens when two people have a problem in a relationship and then it gets fixed. You reconcile with the person. And that means the friendship is restored. And this is what happened, or is pictured in the Exodus, and this is what happened by the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. He paid the debt, he satisfied God, and he provided friendship for all who believe in him, right? So, it's good news. Really, really good news. That is all taught through the historic event of the Exodus. Cleared, judgment, salvation, five truths, and add the new three related to substitution and blood atonement. Teach this to anybody, just need this slide. Mount Sinai, they march through the wilderness, right? Basically takes 50 days, same time period between the cross and Pentecost, by the way. 50 days, and they go to Mount Sinai as a people, and they're all in the valley, and again, you'll tell the story. This event teaches us about the communication doctrines. Communication doctrines are anything where God is speaking into history from outside of history. The liberals throughout history thought God can't do this. How could God speak to man? He's so utterly other, beyond, blah, blah, blah. Well, if they just knew about the event of Mount Sinai, they wouldn't have any trouble with it. By the way, he is the creator. I mean, he can do anything he wants. It's not that hard for him to condescend to us and speak to us in human language that's understandable. He made us in his image to receive his language. You know, he made us, first of all, to speak and be able to interpret language and understand it. First of all, to have communication with him. Not with one another. One another second. With him is first. That's the main reason he created us. To be able to speak in words and to hear and compute language. And you can't teach this to, I mean, you can teach animals some words and stuff like that, some signs and symbols and signals and communication in that form, but you can't teach animals propositional speech, propositional language. You know what that is? The idea that you teach your kid some nouns, okay, dog, cat, tree, bird, door, okay, and they hear some verbs, you know, mostly commands like no, Whet it, whatever. Okay, and then all of a sudden, because they're just listening to you, they'll listen to you, mom and dad talk, you know, this is a good dinner, why did you like that? Yeah, I like this, can you do it this way next time? You know, buy me some honeycombs, whatever. Then all of a sudden the kids start saying, buy me a dog. You're like, I never said that sentence. How did they get buy and dog together into the same sentence when I've never used them in the same sentence? Something happened. Noam Chomsky, MIT, he was involved in speech and so forth. He's not a believer, but what's interesting, he studied speech and language and those functions in the human brain. And he concluded that we have a syntax machine in us. Like, who built that? I don't think that's stuff to surprise, by the way. That's a silly idea. I don't care how much time you give it. I heard the other day someone say, oh, if you give a monkey a typewriter, eventually it'll type the Bible. Really? I'm not sure you could type the Bible if you were reading it off the page, but much less a monkey. Propositional speech is this idea that we are somehow able to rearrange words and put them into coherent thoughts that we've never thought before or spoken before. Animals can't do that. No animal can do that. You can get them to go according to a program that you teach them, a very rigorous, strict program. But you can't get them to do that and start rearranging everything and starting coming up with new ideas. That's because they're not made in God's image. But at this event is where God speaks to man into history from outside of history. So the picture of Mount Sinai is two million Israelites or so down in a valley, and God shows up on the top of Mount Sinai in a storm, what we call a storm theophany, or a storm appearance. You'll see this at places in the Old Testament when God appears. Like in the burning bush, He appeared in a fire, right? So here we have thunder, lightning, thick cloud, darkness, and these thunderbolts of lightning coming out. And Moses is up there in it. And the people are down in the valley. And He speaks. He speaks the ten words, the Debar, the ten commandments. And the people, Moses comes down and the people say, Moses, you go back and you, we are afraid. That's what it's like when you hear God's voice. I've heard people talking about God told them. Would you read the Mount Sinai event? Because I think if God talked to you, you'd be kind of shaking in your boots. You know, not like, oh, I have this lovely little feeling. You know, whatever. No, but when God speaks, it's scary. Because he's the God of the universe. I don't think people put enough weight on that. He is immense. He is infinite. And when he speaks, you will know it. You will have no question. Nobody in that valley thought, maybe you're just hearing. No, when your creator speaks, you will know. That's why people, when they read the Bible, this is the most studied and read and published book in the history of the world. And you know why? Because it has the marks of divine authenticity on it. You know it's his voice. You know it when you read it. Because nobody composes things like this. And you're like, there's something unique about this. That's why liberal scholars, people who don't even believe it, they study it. Because they're like, this is an amazing book. We want to know how this came together. They don't believe, but they know there's something unique about this book. So God spoke. OK, that's the word revelation. It just means, first of all, God speaks. The second word is inspiration. It means God speaks through men, prophets, apostles. The Lord Jesus Christ. So God speaks through men, and canonicity means in the Bible. That's the quick overview of what this event is all about. God speaking into history from outside of history through men. He used human authors. But he protected their personality. He protected their intellect. He protected their vocabulary. But he made sure that it was his word that was written through them. And then it was captured in the canon of the Bible. Canon means a standard. What is a standard for judging right and wrong? What's true and what's error? So the scriptures come to us in 66 books, right? 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament for a total of 66. And this is the divine library right here. This is the divine library. These are the most important 66 books in your life. They should be. I know other stuff is interesting. It's not this. This is what you need. It's sufficient, we say. In other words, you don't need anything else to be successful. Because success is measured relative to God, not what other people think. Success is measured relative to what God thinks, not what other people think. Success is measured by what God thinks, not what other people think. That is very important. It is the only thing that really matters. You're not going to answer to me. I'm not going to answer to you. You and I are going to answer to him and him alone. So that means that success only relates to him, not to what other people think. You can't worry about that. You cannot worry about that. People are going to do what people do. They're weird. I'm one of them. Okay. So, God speaks through men. That's captured in the Bible. What is there is totally sufficient. Okay, I want to spend our time on the conquest and settlement as our last event because... Lots of points here, but that's okay. Because this is an important event that I want to get through today so we don't spend forever in review. Okay, the conquest. Joshua, right? Joshua leads the nation Israel after Moses eyes into the land Well in the promised land that God promised to Abraham in the covenant, right? Now what you want to picture is a rugged terrain, because it is. I've been there enough to know it's a very rugged terrain. And it's an uphill battle, because they're working from Jordan up to the high land, the high ground, Jerusalem. And it's a good picture of your sanctification, your experiential sanctification, as an uphill battle. You're already a believer. Assume you're already a believer. Now it's the uphill battle. Some people present the gospel like Jesus is aspirin or something. Believe in Jesus, and your life will be perfect. It's quite the opposite way around. Don't give people that. That's a sham. Believe in Jesus and then get ready because all sorts of trials and tribulations are going to happen. Why? Because if you don't go through trials and tribulations, you will never grow. We are stagnant. We're stagnant people. We want to just be comfortable. We just want to be happy. We just want everything to fall in place, everything to happen for us. God knows that's not the way we grow and advance. So the conquest is a great picture because it's a fight uphill. It's an uphill fight. It's an uphill battle against numerous enemies. And so the conquest is teaching us about this process. They had to fight into the land. Now, the land already belongs to them positionally, right? God promised them the land, so it's theirs by position. But if they're going to enjoy the land experientially, they had to listen, trust, and obey his word given at the law in Mount Sinai. The aim of the whole Mosaic covenant was for the nation to learn loyalty to God. And this required what? Concentration. Concentration on what? On the Mosaic law. So that night and day, they could learn it, they could trust him, and they would obey him, and then the Lord would defeat their enemies, and they'd get to enjoy the land. If they didn't listen to him, trust him and his word, and obey, they'd be defeated, and they wouldn't enjoy the land. They'd actually get kicked out. So the nation, and if they were in rebellion, they need to learn to confess, get restored fellowship, right? And that generation totally failed. Joshua, well, they didn't totally fail. They took a lot of the land, but they never drove their enemies out. And as a consequence, the Lord pronounced doom and judges too. And he said, OK, I'm not going to drive them out. I'm going to leave these people there. They're going to be like thorns in your side. And you're going to have to learn how to fight spiritual warfare. And it's going to be difficult. And it was. So let's look at the doctrine. It's sanctification. That's a fancy word. It just means set apart. Something being set apart. And the same root word for holy, which means set apart. So there are phases. Phases of sanctification, there's three. There's the aim of sanctification, which is to learn loyalty to God. There's the means, which are law and grace. We'll explain why. There's the dimensions, fellowship and maturity. And there are enemies, the royal flesh and the devil. Here are the three phases, OK? By the way, again, here's another acronym. Padme. You can de-map. People come up with all different ones and use this. So there's other people in the world, by the way, go through this. So other people are trying to do the same things we're trying to do here and learn these things, just like we're learning. We're not alone. Here are the three phases, past, present, and future. Past. You were set apart in your position at a moment in time. Israel's Abrahamic covenant. You, justification. The moment you believe, you're justified. Remember, covered white as snow. God sees you that way. Perfectly just in his sight. Perfectly righteous. That's phase one. Phase two is present. Now, this is an ongoing process. For Israel, it was the Mosaic covenant. They needed to learn to listen, trust, and obey, right? For us, we just call it sanctification. But it's the same thing. Listening to his word, learning to trust, and obey. It's a process, right? That doesn't happen overnight. Some of us have rough background. Some of us are raised under Bible teaching. And there's a difference when you come into the Christian life. By the way, both have pros and both have cons. Right? I mean, if you come from a rough background, you get saved in Christ. A lot of times, these people, their life is totally turned around. Like, it changes everything, right? Whereas people have grown up and, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard this, I've been through this a million times, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it wasn't a life-shattering event, right? Because they were already around that all the time. So there's pros and cons to both, right? Future sanctification. happens again well it's all called ultimate is what it's uh... but it'll happen in a moment of time for israel's the new covenant that's when they get a new heart they're never gonna send again for you and i a school of occasion that's when you get a resurrection but When you get your resurrection body, I mean, you're never going to sin again, right? All these struggles that you have with your flesh? No more. No more. All gone. All that frustration? No. All gone. All that suffering? Nope. No more suffering. Tears? Nope. All gone. All gone. Okay, so there's the three phases. Justification, sanctification as present, and in the future, glorification. Now the aim, what's the aim? A lot of people think the aim is to stop sinning. That's not the aim. If you aim the target, your sights, on sin and you say, I'm going to attack this sin in my life, I'm going to stop this sin, blah, blah, blah, you're going to do it. You're going to do the sin because you're so focused on the sin. So when I do used to hunt, you know, like put my target, put my crosshairs right on the deer. I'm really focusing on the deer. Why am I focusing on the deer right behind his shoulder? About third of the way up the body. Because I want to hit the heart. That's why. So I'm very focused on the heart of that animal. Now, if I transfer that over and I look at sin like that, I'm looking right at sin. You cannot defeat sin by trying to defeat sin like that. That's not how you do it. You defeat sin by learning to love God with your whole person. How do you do that? Well, you've got to be in the word of God, I'll tell you that much. Because that's where he's revealed himself. That's where we come to know who he is and what he's like and what he asks of us. And how to do it, how to achieve it. So the aim is to learn loyalty to God. As a byproduct, what happens? You stop sinning. Or let's just say you sin less. You sin less. Because you're not going to stop sinning. Those are the Wesleyan perfectionism people who say, I'm not. I'm telling you, I'm not sinning. I'm like, you're sinning right now. You just lied. So you move on. I use the word loyalty. A lot of times, learn loyalty to God. But it's the same thing as loving God, because the word means loyalty in these contexts. Who is the one who loves me, Jesus asked? The he who keeps my commandments. So it's a loyalty concept. That's the aim of sanctification. Learn loyalty to God. Aim for that, and guess what? As a byproduct, you'll sin less. You'll be more successful in your Christian life. Two dimensions of sanctification, okay? Fellowship and maturity. We have a diagram for both of these. Fellowship, okay, now fellowship, this is important, super important, right? I think a lot of you picked up on this in the last year and seen how important this is. You have a relationship. That happens the moment you believe in Jesus Christ. That's why it says in John 112, to him, he who believes in me, that is to those who receive me, they have the right to be called children of God. You're a child, you have a relationship. A child and a father have a relationship. Once you believe in Jesus Christ, that's it, you have the relationship. That's why it is a solid circle on the outside. Because once you're in the relationship, you can't get out no matter how bad you try. It's like you're born into a family, right? Wherever that will be your mom and dad, no matter what, you cannot change that. Nothing you can do can change that. You can't get out of the family in that sense, right? In the same way you can't get out of God's family. Once you believed in Christ, you're in the family. Now it's just like, deal with it, okay? This is your family. Now, inside the family, you can get in and out of fellowship. That's why you have the dashed circle there in the red. Circle. You can go in and out of that. Fellowship means you're on good terms with your father. You're in good terms with him. You're walking with him. When we walk in the light, when we walk in fellowship, we're walking with him. That's closeness, intimacy. When we sin, we step out of that red circle, but we're still in the blue circle, which is why he disciplines us to get us to confess, so we move back into the red circle. So this is a daily thing, because most people sin every day. And so when we do sin, what do we do? We confess, which means acknowledge it, admit it to God. You don't have to go to a confessional booth. You're all high priests. You're all priests. You take and confess your sin privately unto the Lord, and he puts you back in fellowship. Okay, and then you keep walking and and most of the time you carry all this guilt with you And you need to quit that as much as you can okay, because that's just that's just gonna wear you down and eat you a lot Okay, you can't go back and change the past Once you send you can't obviously you shouldn't sin I get it so you shouldn't just send just to sin and say well I'm gonna do it anyway that you don't raise the flag. You know the white flag before Okay, that's not the way you live the Krishna. I weigh the white flag. I'm gonna fit in anyway Okay. You know, what does Hebrews 12 say? You don't strive to the shedding of blood, he says. You should strive not to, of course. But the way you strive is more about sanctification and how to live the Christian life. It goes back to the diagram of learning loyalty to God, see? You strive by learning to love Him with all your whole being. So, once you get out of fellowship, you confess 1 John 1, 9, and he restores you to fellowship, and you keep walking. But the important thing about this diagram you understand is, look, no sin you do can ever take you outside of that blue circle. Almost weekly, well, probably monthly, someone will say, what about suicide? I had to deal with this directly in congregation before I came here. They think that if their son or daughter committed suicide, that they're lost forever. No. Jesus Christ, on the cross, paid for every single sin, past, present, and future, without exception, including suicide. Does that mean we should commit suicide? Obviously not. It should mean we have gratitude, thankfulness for this awesome thing that he's done for us. So that's one dimension of sanctification. The other dimension is maturity. So this one here, this is a diagram of like your moment-by-moment life. I'm either in fellowship or I'm out of fellowship. In or out, in or out, in or out. By the way, you can't measure whether you're really saved by all your works. That's why people, they love to pull this. Well, I'm just not sure so-and-so's a believer. I mean, they committed adultery. Well, so did David Dimwit. He was saved the whole time. Solomon, oh, my gosh. You know, 700 wives, 300 concubines. I mean, give me a break. Is the guy saved? Yes. That's not a good indicator. I always just ask people, well, how do you think you get to heaven? And if they say, well, I mean, you've got to go to church or, you know, I mean, I went to Sunday school. Stuff like that. I mean, at that point, if they don't say no, they don't understand the gospel. So you need to explain the gospel. What's the gospel? Jesus Christ came, died, rose again. And what is what do you need to do? You need to believe him. If you believe in him, you have everlasting life. If you haven't believed in him, you don't have everlasting life. This is the truth. It's all over the Bible, 198 times. In the New Testament, well, in the Bible, it's in the Bible, it says 198 times. Let me say that again, 198 times, the only condition that we have to meet is faith, period. Let me ask you, I thought of this last night. Have you ever heard this phrase, justification by repentance? Why have you never heard that? Why is it always justification by faith? Because it is. That's why. But then what people will do is they say, well, you have to repent of your sins. You have to turn. Did you ever read Justification by Turning? No. It is justification by faith, OK? And that's the only thing. Well, what's repentance? Why do people bring this stuff in? Well, because they're confused about what the passages that talk about repentance are talking about. There is repentance inside the Christian life, of course. We need to have a change of mind. Repentance just means change of mind. You need to have a change of mind about the course or direction we may be going in life. But that has nothing to do with eternal life and all that. Jesus didn't say, for God so loved the world that whoever repents has everlasting life and shall not pass into death. He didn't say that. He just says believe. Over and over. The Gospel of John is a great place to read that, right? By the way, repentance is never used once in the whole Gospel of John. Not even once. Read it this afternoon if you don't believe. I bet it says believe a lot. Believe. Okay, so once you're in that relationship, once you believe, then it's the issues only fellowship. You can't do any sin that's going to get you out of the relationship. Here's a healthy way of looking at your Christian life, because sometimes you get really down. Your life is kind of like the stock market. Growth on the vertical axis, time on the horizontal. So the moment you become a believer is when you move into the phase where you can grow in maturity. Growth. So let's just say this is your life, this white line here. So there's some ups and downs in your Christian life. Join the club. We've all been up. We've all been down. When you're down, it doesn't mean you're not saved, it just means that you're down. Maybe out of fellowship and all that kind of stuff. But you get restored and you keep moving, okay? Look at that gradual trend over time. It's like an upward trend, okay? This is the idea of maturity. So sometimes you're way down here and you're like, my life sucks, everything's horrible, I'm depressed, blah, blah, blah, and you have no motivation, you have no hope, okay? Here's what you gotta do in that moment, you gotta save. If I'm here now, where was I when I began the Christian life? Down here. In other words, I was lower then than I am now. Has God been at work in my life? Yes, he has. Get moving. Get moving. Keep going. Don't give up. Remember the quote I read, I think it was by, it basically said this, it said, when God decided to grow you, when he planted you, he was a new believer, and decided to grow you, he didn't plant a squash. You're planting an oak tree. And it takes 100 years for an oak to mature. Relax. God's at work. It takes time for us to mature. It's a lifetime achievement. It is not, I got it today, and I knocked it out, and I'm done with spiritual maturity. As long as you're here, you're not done yet. He's still working. So those are the two dimensions. Fellowship, that's any moment. Maturity, that's the long term. The means, law and grace. Law, you have to have a standard to obey. I mean, there's all sorts of commands through the scriptures that are for us, right? And if we don't know what those are, we don't know what to expect. So there has to be some standard, but guess what? We can't do it on our own. We have to have grace. We have to have His enabling grace. And so He's given us Holy Spirit, right? He's given us His Word. These are tools. He's given us prayer. These are tools that we use from His grace that enable us to meet the standards. Because you read the standards, you say, I can never do that. Right! You nailed it! You just knocked that one out of the park. The moment you realize you can't do it. Remember John 15? Apart from me, you can do Absolutely zero. That is critical to understand. I'm in the branches, right? We need to abide. We abide in him, him, and us. But apart from him, you can do nothing. But with him, you can meet that standard that he has given us in the scriptures. So those are the two means. Skip that. We'll go to the enemies. The enemy. There are three we all know about. The world, the flesh, and the devil. The world is the cosmic system that is out there that is opposed to God. The flesh is what dwells within us, right? We all have a sin nature or flesh, which is like an inclination or disposition to do evil. It dwells in the members of our body and wants to satisfy the members of our body. That's an enemy of sanctification. And lastly, of course, the devil, right? The devil. He's not in us, but he does roam about prowling, seeking to devour us, to make us impotent as believers. He doesn't want us to advance. He wants us to fail, right? So he's still there, and he's still pretty active in the world. That's pretty obvious. Okay, that's it. If you want to ask questions about these things or anything, you can always write them down and put them in those little offering boxes over there. You don't have to put an offering with it, but if you want to, you can. It doesn't matter. The point is to learn the word, right? To learn loyalty to God, okay? To figure out what this world is about, why we're here, These are the big issues of life. How to please the Lord. All these things. Learn these events. So quick review. Creation, Fall, Flood, Noahic Covenant, Call of Abraham, Exodus, Mount Sinai, Conquest. We're two-thirds away, or about half way through the Old Testament. The next two weeks we'll finish the last six events of the Old Testament. And we'll dwell on some of these things with sanctification because I think they're so important. And they're taught through King David, they're taught through Solomon, they're taught through the kingdom divided. So all these things will be taught in a little bit more detail in the next couple of weeks. But don't forget to put a question in if you have a question or want some clarification on something. I don't mind at all that everybody likes to be questioned. All right, let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Help us learn the Old Testament. Help us learn what you're doing with Israel so that we can learn the lessons that you were teaching them. As 1 Corinthians 10 says, they went through all these things. These were teaching tools. 1 Corinthians 15 also says that these things happened for our benefit so that we might learn the lessons. From them and take these lessons with us so instill them in our hearts and our minds So we don't forget them on monday on tuesday on wednesday when we need to call these up in the midst of a business situation Uh, wherever we work a relationship we have whatever we can use these truths to fortify ourselves and stand with integrity before you When we ask all these things in jesus precious name