Sunday School | Election, Wilderness, and Wine Skins

Okay. So my hope is to get through three of your questions this week that you had asked. We're going to cover a question about election, about Jesus' time in the wilderness, and about the new wineskins. We're just going to try to burn through those and see what we get. If we don't get through all of them, that's okay. It's not a race.

So there was a question about John 6:43 and John 5:8, but I'm not sure if those are the passages that you actually meant. I'll show you why in a second. The question asked is: Can we obey or have faith unless Jesus first gives us faith?

Sometimes the question is phrased like this: Which comes first—new birth and then faith, or faith and then new birth?

Election and the Order of Faith and Regeneration

When a person becomes a Christian, a couple of things are going on. One is that they believe in Jesus. They abandon their unrighteousness and their self-righteousness, and they trust in the finished work of Christ on their behalf. That's one thing. The other thing that happens is that they're born again. They come alive, and they're capable of walking in newness of life.

So the question behind this is: Which one comes first? Does regeneration precede faith, or does faith precede regeneration? It's a tricky question because they're essentially simultaneous. But is there a difference? And what's going on in at least one of these passages that was referenced in the question—it seems like Jesus is leaning us in one way. So let me go to John 6, and we'll start here.

At this, the Jews began to grumble about Jesus because he said, 'I am the bread that came down from heaven.' And they said, 'Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I came down from heaven?' Jesus answers, 'Stop grumbling among yourselves.' — John 6:41-43

Listen to verse 44:

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. — John 6:44

Jesus is saying that no one can come to Him unless the Father who sent Him draws him, and He will raise him up at the last day. As the conversation goes on, He's having a pretty contentious discussion with the Pharisees. Later on in verse 64, still of John 6, Jesus says:

Yet there are some of you who do not believe, for Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him. — John 6:64-65

We're trying to stick to the words of Christ and see what he had to say. But if we were to double click on this concept, the theological topic here is something known as total depravity. The idea of total depravity is that the Bible seems to teach that when sin entered the world, it had such an absolutely catastrophic impact on us that we would never, of our own accord, choose him.

Our nature is broken in us. We are so turned inward towards ourselves, and our favorite thing is so heightened in being us, ourselves, that we will never voluntarily lay down our own preferences to choose him. Until God intervenes and fixes this particular brokenness in us, we're going to continue to swirl around ourselves over and over again.

Jesus says things to this effect in a number of places. He says things like this:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. — John 5:39

There's this orientation that says, "I'm not doing it. I won't. No. I refuse."

He said this earlier in John 3:19:

This is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. — John 3:19

There's a sense that we refuse. There's a sense that we will not. There's the sense in John 6 that we cannot unless God enables us. John 8 is another version of this. In John 8:34, Jesus says:

I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. — John 8:34

The reason I go to this—there are a lot of passages like this—but the reason I choose John 8 is that we're trying to see what does Jesus say about this topic. In John 8, how does Jesus characterize humanity?

How does Jesus characterize sinners? Let me be more specific. As what? As slaves.

Okay. And the reason I think it's weighty is that there is a position that disagrees with the direction I'm trying to take you. I think that human beings cannot, will not, do not, have not turn to God apart from his intervening influence to waken us from our stupor. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says that we're blind. We cannot see the light of the Gospel unless God opens our eyes. Paul will say in Ephesians that we're dead until God makes us alive. That overwhelmingly, the language of Scripture describes lost people in a state of inability, of refusal, and whatnot.

And the opposite of that—the way that this tends to get characterized—is that we are actually free agents. That we're free to choose Him, or we're free to not choose Him, and that God would not intervene in our freedom. So it's often characterized—my view is sometimes characterized as if God is limiting our freedom, that He's a puppeteer pulling strings, and that the opposite of what I'm saying is that human beings are free to choose this or that. And I would suggest to you that that framing of the debate misses the way the Scriptures talk about it.

I'm not advocating that God constrains our choices. I'm saying that God actually sets us free and that our basic nature, according to Jesus in John 8, is that we're slaves. So the question is not, "Are we free to choose Him or not choose Him, but then God overrides our will?" I think that's a false paradigm. The reality is: does the Scripture say that men are slaves to sin and unable therefore to do things until God sets us free?

Jesus says, "If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed." — John 8:36

Right? And so I do think that what Jesus is teaching here, and in other places too, is that God mercifully and graciously moves towards lost sinners who, in the very midst of their slavery to sin, their blindness, their refusal, their cannot, their will not—and he says, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, look at me. Ray, look at me." And he wakes us up. That, I think, is what Jesus is saying there in John 6.

There's a great hymn by one of the Wesley brothers—either Charles or John, I forget which one it is. But he says:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night.

Right? Fast bound, slavery wrapped up.

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray.

The idea of a quickening ray is that to quicken is to make alive, to bring out of death.

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray. I woke the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off. My slavery was ended. My heart was free for the first time ever. I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

And that seems to me to be what Jesus teaches: that we cannot, we will not, we have not, we refuse to, because we're slaves, until in His love and His mercy and His kindness He intervenes and breaks that slavery, and then we can actually and do freely choose to follow Him.

That could be a seminary class, and we just did it in ten minutes. So we'll give a few more minutes. If you want to have some questions, interact with that, but I think that's what's going on in John 6 with Jesus' teaching.

Let me just say one more thing, and then you guys can respond. The other verse that was quoted there or that was cited was John 5:8. And I'm not sure the pertinence of John 5:8. So to give you just a little bit of context, John 5:7 says:

"Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me get into the pool when the water is stirred. While I'm trying to get in, someone goes down ahead of me."

And then Jesus said to him:

"Get up, pick up your mat, and walk." — John 5:8

At once the man was cured, he picked up his mat and walked. So I'm not sure what we're meant to draw from that regarding this question. Maybe simply that Jesus does tell him to get up, but in so doing, he's enabling him to get up, perhaps. Or maybe that was a typo. I'm not sure. But I'm not clear on the pertinence of John 5:7. I think what's going down is what's going on in John 6.

So questions about that or pushback or clarification needed for what Jesus is saying there?

Yeah, Bill?

Even faith is a gift.

Yes. So you're probably thinking about Ephesians 2. So you asked the question, is faith first or what? But the gift of faith—it's a gift, so it's from God all the way. Yeah. So I do believe that faith itself is a gift, and probably the case that people would make for that is Ephesians 2 says:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not a result, so that no one should boast." — Ephesians 2:8-9

Now there is admittedly some ambiguity. What's the antecedent to the pronoun "it"?

I think it's faith, but it's absolutely necessary. It could be: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that salvation is a gift of God." That's grammatically possible, but I think—and there's no question in other places that this is what Paul thinks. Paul's teaching on this is pretty clear.

And of course, it's so fascinating. We're trying to stay in Jesus, but just for a second to go to Paul. Paul is literally the dude who wrote the book on salvation. If you want to ask anybody in the world, "How does salvation work?" Paul is your guy, right? Whether you're looking at Ephesians or Galatians or Romans, of all places, Paul is the one guy who explains how it worked.

And when Paul wrote about it, what was he necessarily drawing on to instruct him how salvation works? There are chiefly two sources. Do you know what they are? What would Paul be drawing on?

Jesus' teaching. Yeah, okay. So I would say he's going to draw on the Scriptures, which are going to be like the Old Testament and then what was extant of what people had said about Jesus, and his own experience. How did Paul become a Christian? I mean, God reached in and said, "You, enough, believe." And he's like, "Okay." Right?

And so it is noteworthy that the guy that writes the book on how it works, if nobody else in all of human history has ever been saved by the overwhelming intervention of God into their slavery to sin, Paul was. Just read it. I mean, it was so God—it was a monergistic act whereby God said, "You, come here," and he came. And then that's the guy that writes how it works. So I think that leans the tree in that direction.

God Hardening Hearts

Does God also shut people's hearts off to not believe in him? My answer to that is no, because number one, he doesn't need to. Our nature is already in this state of rebellion. The Bible does describe God as hardening hearts, which is where some folks would take that and run with it in the direction that question suggests. But I don't think God hardens soft hearts. Rather, the Biblical language for this is usually that he gives them over—so we're running in this direction away from him and he's like, "Alright, have at it. Let's see how that works out for you." And he gives over and he gives over. That's primarily what's happening in Romans one and two—the giving over.

So he's not taking righteous people and saying, "I'm bewitching them to do evil." He's allowing us in our selfishness and rebellion—it's like he just gives us more rope. It's like, "Alright, let's see where this goes." Right? And sometimes that giving over ends in condemnation. And sometimes that giving over ends in people coming to their senses.

It's a little bit like what you see in Luke 15, the story of the prodigal son. When this son comes to the father and says, "Give me my share of the inheritance. I'm out of here." The father could say, "Absolutely not. You're going to spend all your money on prostitutes and gambling. No." But he doesn't. He says, "Okay," and he gives him over. And then he watches the horizon for the day that his son would come back, and he runs towards him.

So I think that when God gives sinners over, when he hardens them, the ultimate goal, the thing that we love and long for, is restoration. It is probably the case that those of you in this room right now that have already come to Christ and bent the knee had seasons in your life of having been given over. And God, in his mercy, gave you some rope until you came to the end of yourself. And then you're like—just like the prodigal son—you're like, "You know what? My father's slaves are not eating out of a pig trough. Maybe I can go and work for him." He uses pain and brokenness to bring us to repentance, which is the goal, right?

Would that giving over be the same as when Paul talked about turning a person over to Satan? Yes, very good. So when Paul—this is the essence of church, this is how church discipline works, right? When Paul explains it in Corinthians and when Jesus explains it in Matthew 18, you have a procedure like, "Hey, Zack's doing something stupid. Come and talk to Zack. This is unacceptable." And then he doesn't listen. Then I'm like, "Christian, you've got to come with me. You've got to have a conversation with Zack." There's some point where we keep raising it. We call in the elders of the church like, "Hey, Zack, what's going on with you?" And then eventually the final step in that process is we say, "Alright, we treat you like an unbeliever. We say, 'Dude, you're not a Christian.'" But think about this—how do we treat non-Christians? With kindness and with grace. We just say, "Dude, we just don't see it. Don't think you're a believer."

So we're giving you over, but the goal of the giving over is always restoration. But sometimes—and some of you know this even just as parents—sometimes the only path to your children's restoration is you've got to be like, "All right, we'll see how this works out." And I think we'll see the Lord do that. Good enough? Can we keep going?

Okay, let's go to the next one. If you guys are good with that. If we can get out of a conversation on election that fast, praise the name.

Why Did Jesus Go Into the Desert to Be Tempted?

Here's the second one: Why did Jesus go into the desert to be tempted by Satan? Okay, that's a good question. So did He first of all, did He go into the desert? Is that true? Did He go into the desert specifically to be tempted by Satan? No, He did actually. Take a look. I know, tricky, right? Look it up. Go to Matthew four. I know that was a complete setup. I know it was unkind of me, but it's kind of fun.

It's explicitly the way Matthew describes it. Look at Matthew chapter four:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. — Matthew 4:1

That's pretty direct, right? So the premise of the question is true. The question is why would he? What was going on with that?

So you guys—I talked a lot for the last one. I'll give you guys a little bit of space. Why did he? Given that he did, for that purpose, to that end, what was the deal with that?

Evan says he's supposed to be the man in every way, so he's tempted in every way because we are. This is such a good answer. This is true in general, and it's true in particular. What Jesus has come to do—this is so you can't miss this—Jesus came to live our life. He came to live your life. He came to live your life. And so he came to, in an incredibly intense way, experience what we experience. He is not like the God who has come to Earth to become a man but live in a palace and separate from it all. He entered into the heart of the misery and the suffering and the pain.

And because our life is marked by temptation—do you have somebody at work every day, and you're like, "Right, okay"? Your children, your coworkers, your in-laws, your spouse, your neighbors—are you tempted? Let's say there's no neighbors, there's no in-laws, there's no coworkers, there's just you. Do you tempt you? Like, do you not even need any help to just go off the deep end? This is the experience.

So number one, he's come to live what we live. But in particular, here's the thing: he could be tempted in any number of ways. Why does he go into the wilderness to be tempted? Why there? The wilderness is a lonely and isolating place. And this is a theme throughout the scriptures. You guys have wilderness experiences in your life, where there are places, there are seasons where you're like, "Man, I'm the only one. They've all deserted me and I'm left alone." So he's experiencing the hunger, the privation, the loneliness that marks our life.

Fetz says he could be a better Moses. Okay, let's think about this. When you see Jesus go for forty days into the wilderness, does that remind you of anything else in the Bible? What is it? Forty years in the wilderness.

So this is a peculiar little thing which, once known, starts to unlock a whole bunch of stuff. When Jesus came, he wasn't just living our life in general, marked by the things that mark us—although he certainly did that in all these ways we've just said. But he was in particular walking through the history of Israel and doing what they did badly, he did well.

So his forty days in the wilderness being tempted by Satan was, in some regard, in a real regard, a reenactment of Israel's forty years in the wilderness. Only what they did badly in the wilderness—to grumble and to complain and to disobey, and in particular to moan that there wasn't any food. Right? Remember that? They were like always grumpy about there's not any food. There's no water. We detest the food. But there's no food. But we hate the food. Right? That whole thing going on in basically the book of Numbers.

Jesus goes into the wilderness where there ain't any food. He is living their life—forty days emblematic of their forty years. Only when they grumbled and complained, He crushed it. Every temptation that was brought to Him, He faced. He responded with Scripture. He responded with faith. He honored the Lord. He got everything right. And because not only is he living their life, but he's living their life perfectly, right?

And his life, Jesus' life, is marked by all of these strange little conspicuous similarities. And Matthew in particular, which is where we're seeing this, Matthew chapter four, he was fond of pointing those out. That phenomena explains one of the strangest prophecies that Matthew gives. Go back to Matthew one or two. I'll show you this. This is something that always puzzles people because it's so weird.

If you go to Matthew two fourteen, in Matthew's birth narrative of Jesus, he loves to quote the Old Testament. He loves to say, "You know what Jesus did here when he was being born? Well, that's prophesied in the Old Testament." I teach about this all the time, but maybe it'll be a review for some of you. But the prophecies in Matthew, if you think that they are predictions of what will someday happen, they're going to baffle and confuse because they're not really that. They're not predictions.

So what he says, look at this. In Matthew two fourteen, Joseph got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. Now listen to this line because this is the confusing thing:

"And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'" — Matthew 2:14

Matthew is observing that Jesus, the Messiah, got called out of Egypt. That's what he's saying. And he says that's just like what happens in Hosea chapter 11. And if you go back and look at Hosea chapter 11, if you think you're going to find something that says, "When the Messiah comes, Herod will try to kill him, he'll flee into Egypt and then come out of Egypt," you're going to be grossly disappointed. It is nothing like that. Instead, what you're going to find is not a description at all about the Messiah, but a description entirely about Israel and Israel in her disobedience.

Go back to Hosea 11. Hosea is in the minor prophets. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, and Habakkuk. Hosea is the first one. Go to Hosea chapter 11 and listen to this:

"When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals, they burned incense to images. It was I who taught them to walk, taking them by the arms, but they didn't realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love, and now I'm going to kill them because they're wicked and disobedient." — Hosea 11:1-7

That's what's happening in Hosea 11. Hosea 11 is not a prediction that the Messiah will go into Egypt. It is a description that Israel did. And then what Matthew is doing is saying, "Hey, did you notice that Israel got called out of Egypt? Well, that is being relived in the life of our Messiah, who also went to Egypt and got called out. Only when the Israelites got called out of Egypt and used it as an opportunity to sin and rebel, when Jesus comes, he's going to come out of Egypt and walk perfectly and faithfully with the Lord."

Jesus as the True and Better Israel

So all of this to say, why did Jesus go into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil? It was part of his own dramatic reenactment of the life of Israel. Everything they did badly, he did well. Everything. And he crushed it all. He didn't just live our life, but he lived their life in particular.

And there's one other character. In the New Testament, Jesus is not just the new Israel, he is the true and better Moses. He is the true and better Abel whose blood speaks a better language. He is the true and better Moses who leads his people. He is the true and better Joshua who brings them in. He is the true and better rock in the wilderness. Jesus is fulfilling simultaneously all these things, but he's doing what everybody else did badly or partially or incompletely.

He comes and he does absolutely—including one other character that the New Testament makes very explicit that he recapitulated. Do you know who it is? Adam. That's the one that I was thinking of, where Paul is very explicit that the first Adam did this, but the second Adam did this.

"As in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive." — 1 Corinthians 15:22

So Jesus is fulfilling so many things all at once. He is the true and better Israel. If Israel is God's disobedient son, Jesus is God's obedient son. He is the new Adam. He is the fulfillment of David. He is the true and better Esther who said, "If I perish, I perish," but didn't die. He is the one who goes before the king to intervene for his people, not only at the risk of his life, but at the cost of his life. He fulfills all of it.

Right? Okay. There's a hand over here. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. He is the true and better Noah, and for that matter, he is the true and better Ark. For to be hidden in him is to be safe when the drains of judgment fall. I'm telling you, he got a lot done. He simultaneously dancing to 50 different songs, a 100 different songs, and he fulfills it all.

A little sideways question maybe here. Good. From Jesus' perspective, same question. Why did he go to the wilderness? Did he know he was facing temptation, or did he go into the wilderness because the Holy Spirit led him there? From Matthew's point of view, after the fact, it's clear maybe the better question is, how prescient was Jesus about stuff like this, about his ministry, how aware of the need to fulfill prophecy? It's clear there were some awareness there. How much was he working that out versus how much was he simply responding to the leading of the Holy Spirit and doing what the Holy Spirit wanted him to do?

This is one of a thousand reasons that I love Dan Felton Petrie. This is a really, really good question. Our default assumption tends to be because Jesus is God, he's omniscient, he was basically cheating all the time. He was just living in his Godness all the time. He is fully God. Nothing I'm about to say denies the fullness of his deity.

For in him the fullness of deity dwells. He's the exact representation of his being.

He's all of these things. And yet, it seems overwhelmingly that he lived his life dependent on the Spirit like I am dependent on the Spirit. Matthew is careful to point out why did he go in? He doesn't say he went in because he recognized and he knew and he understood and he had to go do this, but rather led by the Spirit. It seems to me that Jesus lived dependent on the Spirit.

I think we want to look at Jesus' life and just say, "Well, sure, it's not really a fair fight. He's God. He was cheating. He had a different level of access to resources I don't have access to, so no wonder he was so great." But I don't think that's right. He did have access to those resources because he is God. But he was intentionally, consciously—what Philippians two says is he emptied himself. It's called the kenosis, the emptying of God. He emptied himself and lived a life of profound dependence. Even though he did not need to be dependent, he chose to be dependent and was led by the spirit.

I think it's much more that he was not functioning out of his own wisdom; he was yielding to the spirit of God. He was listening to his father and obeying them, which is kind of nuts, but I think it's true.

Jesus' Dependence and Our Pattern

And John, in particular, loves this theme: Jesus only says what he hears the father say, does what the father tells him to do, goes where the father wants him to go. Of all the people in the world that could function independently, it would be Jesus. And of all the people in the world that chose to live a life of radical humility and dependence, it was Jesus. He is the ultimate both-and.

I think it's important too because it talks about Jesus going away to spend time with the father. If he was able to do all that just on his own, he may not have needed time to go and pray and be like, "Father, what are my next steps in my ministry?" Things like that. So he was modeling that for us. I think that is indicative of his dependence on prayer and taking time to commune with the father.

He is pleased to depend on the father. He is pleased to commune with the father. It is his joy. He's like the dog—forgive this—but he's like that dog that looks to its master to be like, "What do you want me to do?" You know, like a good dog that's always waiting. What do you want me to do? Jesus is not a dog. He's the lord of all. But his head is always turned to see his father's pleasure.

And all of that is suggestive for us who feel rather independent, rather sufficient, rather "I don't need to have a quiet time. I don't need to spend time in prayer because I'm pretty smart. I can get this done." To those of us in our arrogance that would think that's like, "Well, you really think that you are less dependent than Jesus is?" And yet we're like, "Well, kind of a little bit." It's nuts. So yes, I think he's doing this fueled out of an overflow of the ministry of the spirit.

Alright. We're going to one more, and then we'll see if we can finish this, and then it'll be a great night, and then go back to church. Okay. Here's the last one. I've already lost it. We'll see if we have time to unpack this. Matthew 9:17, New Wineskins. It doesn't seem like he's saying one is bad or another. A look at the new wineskins story. Go to Matthew 9 and look at verse 17.

I'm gonna read you the story that Jesus tells. Matthew 9, we'll start actually in verse 16.

No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined. No, no, no. They pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. — Matthew 9:16-17

Now the question for us here is what is he talking about? Why is he saying that we don't pour new wine? I mean, I've never really wanted to pour new wine into old wineskins. It's never even crossed my mind to do that. What is he talking about?

And if we're going to understand what the story is about, we have to recognize that this is actually an answer to a question. Something happened prior to the whole wineskins thing. Don't look, you cheaters. Something happened to which Jesus said, "Well, let me tell you a story about wine and wineskins, about sewing patches on your jeans." And it's not common that we remember what the question was, I think, because it's not obvious how the answer actually corresponds to the question.

So what was the question? Okay, so here's the deal. You've got Jesus and his 12. They're the varsity team. These are the big leagues. And then you've got John the Baptist and his guys, and they're like junior varsity. And the JV guys, they notice, "Hey, what is the deal? We're like running wind sprints over here, and you guys are sipping lemonade in the shade. We are fasting. We are suffering. And you guys—we're suffering more than you are. We're JV, you're varsity, we're working harder than you are. What's the deal?"

That's the question. They're not happy. So the JV team is basically suffering. They're laboring. And they're like, "Yo, we want credit. We're working harder than you guys are. What's the deal?" Makes sense?

And so to these people who are the forerunners of grace—their job is to prepare the world for a message of grace and forgiveness. And the forerunners of grace want credit. So Jesus says, "You know, that's a funny set of things you're trying to combine. You're trying to combine the gospel of grace with scorekeeping. And that's gonna work about as well as sewing an unshrunk patch on preshrunk jeans. That's gonna work about as well as pouring new wine into an old wineskin."

The old container of credit and scorekeeping and points cannot hold the grace, the wine of grace. What you're here to deliver is grace—is pointlessness. It is free credit. Undeserved credit is mercy. And you're trying to hybridize these two things. You want to live in a world where grace and credit—I want to smash them together. He's like, "Dude, it's not going to work. What we are offering cannot be held by your old systems. So drop the old systems and enter fully into grace."

Does that make sense? That's what it's doing. And it's clear once you understand what the heck he's talking about, but it's hard when you don't.

But don't you do this? Does your life reflect a desperate attempt to hybridize grace and credit? Is that not spot on? How does it work? It does not work. That's what Jesus is saying there—that the gospel of grace cannot be contained in the old system of scorekeeping. So stop it and enter into grace. Pour your wine into new wineskins.

Is it fair to think that he's also referring to the difference between the old and new covenants? Yes, absolutely. So if we understand an immature and incomplete understanding of the old covenant—if you didn't understand what the old covenant was preparing us for, and you're stuck in this old way of externalism and scorekeeping, and you don't understand that God's law itself was a tutor meant to lead us to Christ. God had people keep score so they would recognize that they're never gonna win the game. The whole point of all the scorekeeping was to help you despair, surrender, and cry out for grace.

And now that grace has come, you still wanna go back to the whole scorekeeping thing. That's so dumb. Don't. Live in grace. That's where he's going.

The gospel is that it's for undeserving, undeserved people that could never win on their own, and they need another way. They need someone who is so magnificent, so righteous, so perfect, so absolute, so generous that he would live a perfect life and then give you credit for all of it. That he would allow whatever mess of a life that you would live, he would take the blame for all of it, and we would make that trade and then stop saying, "Oh, can I get points for that?" No. No. Stop. Stop. And live in grace. That's what he's doing.

Alright, there's three questions, three answers.

I hope that's been helpful to you, but continue the work. I will check and see if you guys added anything else to the list, and we'll continue just to see what Jesus said next week. Thank you for coming.