The Grace Message with Dr. Andrew Farley - "Paul didn't mean freedom from Old Testament law?"

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All right, as I said, we're going to Texas

for our first call.

Let's talk with Samuel.

Hi, Samuel.

Hello, Andrew.

First, I just wanted to mention,

you know, get on that bandwagon, you know, you hear it daily.

We're so grateful that, you know,

you've helped us come to understand that it's not us.

We don't have to major up.

And being good enough is just not good enough, you know,

and at price.

When he paid the ultimate sacrifice

with death burial and resurrection,

if it depended on us, then he did it for nothing.

And if it depended on me majoring up

or it depended on my extra credit, again,

did it for nothing and he helped us realize

that it's Jesus, yes, like you say, plus nothing.

It's great, great and liberating.

So my question, I had read an article

about Paul's use of the word law in the Romans

and that the majority of the time,

or a great portion of the time, he omits

and doesn't have the definite article D in front of law.

So he says works of law.

And the author was making the illusion

or they making a stretch that when Paul says law works of law,

he's not referring to an English A clause

he's referring to works of law in general.

So I just kind of threw me and I know you said

that a number of occasions on life cast that, you know,

the scribes would add maybe a phrase or something

or they wanted to maybe bolster a theological view.

So they put in an extra line where they sometimes,

I guess, even omit something and insert another word

to chase the meeting.

So your comments on false use of the word law.

Yeah, okay, yeah, I hear you, Samuel.

Well, first of all, hey, thank you for joining the bandwagon,

as you said, that's a bandwagon of encouragement,

which I need.

I need every day, every week, I'm a human being.

So thanks for that encouragement.

I really appreciate you taking the time.

As far as this claim that you heard,

that is not going to be a reliable indicator

of what Paul is talking about.

The presence or absence of a definite article,

the is not going to be reliable.

The bottom line is we have this word nomos in the Greek

and Paul uses it a whole lot to refer to the mosaic law.

You know, sometimes those arguments,

they stem from people that are trying to look for anything

to wiggle out of our freedom from the law,

to wiggle away from us being not under the law.

And so I've heard various arguments over the years,

but here's the problem with that.

You can argue to your blue in the face

about a definite article or an indefinite article

or no article, you can try to get as grammatical as you want.

But look, I love language.

I've got a PhD in linguistics.

This is my thing.

I gotta tell you, there's no wiggle room

when you go to second Corinthians three

and he defines law.

He says it was written on stone.

And then he says it's a ministry of condemnation and death

and that Jesus brought a greater ministry,

a ministry of the spirit, a ministry of grace,

the new covenant.

So he compares the old covenant with the new covenant

and he says the ministry of the old covenant was engraved.

Now notice that word and talk about words.

Let's notice those words in second Corinthians three,

ministry that is engraved in letters on stone.

Well, that can only refer to the 10 commandments.

So Paul literally with loads of evidence

in second Corinthians three calls the 10 commandments

a ministry of condemnation and death

and then he says there's a greater ministry

which is basically trusting Jesus.

Trusting Jesus with your lying problem.

And you got a coveting problem, trust Jesus.

You got a stealing problem, don't trust Moses.

Trust Jesus.

So this whole thing, you know, this whole idea

that there's gonna be this gotcha moment

with some argument about a definite article

and that all the scales will fall off your eyes.

The curtain will be drawn back

and suddenly we'll see, aha, Paul didn't mean freedom

from the Old Testament law.

He meant something out now, now, now.

In fact, even in Romans, right?

Romans is the book you're asking about

and even in Romans chapter seven.

Paul shows us very clearly what he's talking about.

He says that I experienced coveting of every kind.

Now what could he be referring to?

We don't have to wonder because he tells us.

He says I would not have known what sin was

if the law had not said thou shalt not covet, okay?

Well, where do you get thou shalt not covet from

from the Ten Commandments written on stone?

That's the law he's talking about.

And in that exact paragraph, in that exact context,

the Apostle Paul says, you want the solution here it is.

Apart from the law, sin is dead.

You want to stop coveting?

Get away from now, shall not covet.

You want to stop stealing?

Get away from now, shall not steal

because under the law, sin is excited.

Apart from the law, sin is dead.

What law is he talking about?

The covet law?

Where do you find thou shalt not covet

in the Ten Commandments?

So we just blew the roof off of this whole thing.

I mean, everybody can sound real scholarly

and they can sound real convincing

about a definite article, its presence, its absence

and how suddenly that changes Paul's meaning nonsense.

There's more to understanding language

than a definite article.

You got to look at the phrase level

and the sentence level and the paragraph, basically,

the context because there's going to be lexical clues

that is vocabulary clues in that context

that show you exactly what law Paul is talking about.

So it's almost like we got to stop looking at one tree

and we got to look at the forest.

And when we look at the forest of God's grace

in the Book of Romans, we see that Paul wants us

to trust Christ Jesus when we have a coveting problem.

He doesn't want us to run to tablets of stone.

He doesn't want us to run to rule keeping.

He wants us to let Christ rule in our hearts by faith.

That's what it's really about.

So Samuel, I'll put you back on and see,

does that make sense, my friend?

Well, it makes total sense.

I will add this that author had mentioned that he said,

I think his exact words were, we may sin

and it doesn't please God, but it's still incumbent

on us to obey God.

It throws in that thought of who I better obey too

because if I don't obey, if I don't obey,

then I may be put out.

Yeah, I hear you.

Well, there's no being put out.

I mean, it doesn't matter whether you me

or that guy or anybody else has an opinion on it.

It really comes back to those promises of God

that we seem to so often emphasize on this broadcast.

I'll never leave you.

I'll never forsake you.

Nobody can snatch you out of my hand.

Even when you're faithless, I remained faithful.

Nothing separates you from the love of Christ.

So there's no putting out.

Obedience is awesome.

I mean, here's the thing.

We're not anti-obedience.

I hope you're not.

I know you're not.

I know your heart.

You got a new heart.

And speaking of that new heart of yours,

Romans chapter six says, you became obedient from the heart.

And now you don't want pressure

and you don't want a guilt trip

and you don't want condemnation.

Who does?

Nobody wants to be beat over the head with condemnation.

But I'll tell you what, that beautiful new heart of yours

where Jesus lives, nothing else is

going to satisfy except obedience.

I know that word obedience for a lot of people is tough.

Oh, it sounds legalistic.

Oh, it sounds like it could get abusive or something.

That's because we've had bad human experiences

with that word.

And yet, those don't define the heart of our God.

And he has given us, get this, our new nature

is to be obedient.

He's given us an obedient heart.

You are the righteousness of God.

That means he changed your desires.

So obedience is not really just like a blind submission

to something you don't want.

No, that's not true Christian obedience.

The obedience that I'm speaking of in the book of Romans

is something that flows from the heart.

It's want to's.

And you know, we're so used to obedience

and fall down well, thou shalt witness enough.

Thou shalt read your Bible enough.

Thou shalt go to church enough.

We got all these rules.

We invented and you say the word obedience

and people freak out and they feel guilty.

But the truth is, look at the fruit of the spirit.

I mean, that's what God is doing in us.

The fruit of the spirit is not church attendance

with a star chart.

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,

kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control,

faithfulness.

That's the fruit of the spirit.

So if that's what God's agenda is,

you know what my attitude toward that is, bring it on.

Let's do it.

Go ahead and do in and through me

what only you can do, Lord.

And I present my body to you today.

That's obedience from the heart.

It's a desire that God gave you.

He began a good work in you.

He carries it on to completion.

So nothing wrong with obedience when we understand it

properly.

In fact, it's the very desire of our heart.

Yeah, you know, you could scour the Book of Romans

and you could see Paul using the word law creatively.

He talks about the law of sin, which

is referring to the power of sin.

He talks about the law of God, which

is referring to the power of God.

But most of the stuff that you and I are talking about

on a daily basis in the Book of Romans

is about the Old Testament law.

And how we died to the law.

How can we live in it any longer?

We died to sin.

How can we live under its power any longer?

He's talking about being under the Old Testament law

and the bondage that that brought.

But now we're free.

We're free to bear fruit.

So thanks for your call tonight.

Reach out to us again any time.

Great to hear from you.

Hey, everyone.

Andrew Farley here.

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All right, let's go now to California.

We'll talk with Michael.

Hey, Michael, what you got for us tonight.

Hey, Andrew, how are you?

Good.

I had called up for the monastery last week

when we talked to somebody about giving to the church.

Yeah.

And I've heard from the past that the grace message

started thinking in and it does take a while.

Was the fact that you're given to the not just to the church

but you give them to the message.

Now the message is either set you free or not.

And the sense that we're in particular

when he heard behind the pulpit

where they call you while we're all sinners

and it goes here's things.

They don't hear the fact that our identity is in Christ

and the grace is not there.

So a lump is all in together

and I kind of cringe every time it.

Yeah, he says it's a pulpit.

Yeah.

But as far as the grace giving is concerned

and freely giving, I don't resent my life

or given what she does,

I just look at it for the fact that

I guess we're just getting locally.

I guess that's what I'm looking at.

I see.

Yeah, I hear you.

Well, here's what happens.

Okay, so people love face-to-face fellowship

and they tend to give, you know, a lot of people

tend to give right in your local environment

which is what you're describing.

And your wife is looking at things like,

well, they've got a great children's program.

They've got a program for our youth.

There's a 25-year-old young man

who's spending time with our teens

and teaching them about the Lord

or there's a whole team of Sunday school teachers

that are spending time with our kids

and investing in their lives

and they're coming home every Sunday

with a craft that they did

and a memory verse.

And so they're investing in our family

and we want to give back.

Well, I mean, you got to understand that.

That's a natural desire

to want to give back to folks

that are investing in your life.

Now, what you're encountering

is that, oh my goodness,

you could have a very well-organized church

with great programs

and lots of stuff going on

and a huge staff

and yet that 32 minutes

that you're sitting in the message

you might hear some things

that you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You know, that doesn't quite line up

with the truth of the gospel.

Whoa, I've seen different than that.

The light bulb has gone on for me.

So then you hit a crossroads.

You're like, what do I do?

Do I say something to my wife?

She loves the youth program?

Do I say something to my wife?

She loves the children's program

and she's got her eyes

on certain things

that involve mentoring

and helping children, for example.

Maybe she hasn't noticed

the discrepancies you're talking about.

It's a decent conversation

to have, it can't hurt.

But maybe the two of you

need to come to some sort of compromise

where you split it down the middle

or decide to do this and that

with different portions

of the money you want to give.

I mean, Michael, there's a joy in giving

and you need to experience that joy too

if you're a married couple.

It's not just your wife

that makes the full decision.

So I would encourage you

to just consider all of that.

Have a good, healthy conversation

with her, not something

that goes negative,

but something that expresses your desire

to support a healthy message,

whether that's a church down the street

that you got some buddies at

or any other organization,

you need to be able to give freely

from your heart

just as she's giving freely

from her heart.

That's the bottom line

and I get it.

I mean, some people have decided

you know, a message that's telling me

I still need to get more forgiveness.

I still need to get more cleansing.

I still need to get closer to God.

I still need to try to die every day.

A message that has gone that morbid root.

I just can't, I just can't abide it.

And so they decide not to give there.

Well, again, every Christian

on the planet is free.

We are free to decide

what we want to support.

It's like a scripture passage

that says it's got to be local.

There's no scripture passage.

It says it's got to be one place.

I think the average Christian gives

to somewhere between five

and eight different charities.

And that's just how generous

the believers are in the United States of America.

So take that to heart.

You've got a diversity

of a variety of decisions you can make.

You all can have a healthy conversation

about that between the two of you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Good night, Michael.

And reach out again anytime

there in California.

All right.

Well, we're almost out of time,

but we're going to make a little bit of time

for Indianapolis where Josh is.

Hi, Josh.

Hey, good.

Go for it.

Good.

Well, I was hoping that you might

be able to share a couple of passages

with me that would support the idea

that we're on a spinning ball

and I'm finding a lot of verses

that support the opposite of it.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I can share some of those.

So the earth is not flat.

And you're going to lose all your reputation.

I mean, imagine you got pictures

and I know you might have heard their fake,

but you got pictures

from dozens and dozens of astronauts.

You got pictures from space.

You got pictures from satellites.

You got the horizon.

When a ship goes over the horizon

and disappears,

the crazy radical truth

that airline trips

are not to secretly hiding the edge

of the earth.

I mean, come on, Josh.

You're smarter than this.

You're better than this.

I know what you've heard.

The four corners of the earth,

Isaiah 11, so what?

That's an ancient idiom

for the whole world,

north, southeast, west.

It's an ancient idiom

and an expression.

The ends of the earth,

that's another idiom used

in Deuteronomy and the Psalms.

And that just means

the farthest reaches of the planet.

You know, so I think

you can do better than that.

When you end up believing something

that literally millions of photographs

have disproven,

it hurts your credibility.

So the earth is not flat.

If it is, I'll meet you at the edge

and you can point to it.

Let's have a meeting at the edge.

Well, you know,

the flat earthers

just need to hold a convention

at the end of the earth.

And slam dunk, evidence,

evidence, exhibit A

is all they would need.

Just one photograph of the tip.

All right?

So see how ludicrous that is.

You need to stop it.

Get away from it.

It hurts your reputation.

Put your eyes on Jesus.

Believe the truth.

And recognize that,

oh my goodness.

I mean, when it comes to the earth,

you got Isaiah 40.

He sits above the circle of the earth.

Job 26, he has inscribed a circle

on the surface of the waters.

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