All right, well, let's take our catechisms. We are going to consider tonight questions 45 through 48. And what I want to do right off the bat is go ahead and ask and answer those, and then we'll get to the lesson. So let's start with question 45. Catechist says or asks, what is the duty which God requires of man? And we say, The duty which God requires of man is obedience to his revealed will. 46. What did God at first reveal to man for the rule of his obedience? The rule which God at first revealed to man for his obedience was the moral law. Where is the moral law summarily comprehended? The moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments. What is the sum of the Ten Commandments? The sum of the Ten Commandments is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength and with all our mind and our neighbor as ourselves. Okay, pop quiz. I mentioned a law in the Pentateuch this morning. I probably should have unpacked it a little bit more. Do not boil a kid in its mother's milk. That's not talking about a human kid. What's that talking about? A goat, okay. A goat, a baby goat is called a kid. So, do not boil a goat, a baby goat, in its mother's milk, and the Jews have traditionally understood that to mean that you do not, you are prohibited from mixing dairy products with meat products, okay? Here's the pop quiz. Are Christians obligated to follow that command? Anybody? No? Okay, are there any yeses out there? Okay. All right, here's another pop quiz. If there's a command in the Bible, it's kind of easy. If there's a command in the Bible, does that mean that we must follow it? Okay, good, that's fine, you can qualify. I'm all about qualification, probably too much. Not necessarily, right? So living in a different country is pretty eye-opening. Has anybody lived in a different country, or even a time, even traveled to another country? Okay, it's pretty eye-opening, okay? Many of you know I lived in Mexico for three years, and I remember seeing a lot of things there that could never be done over here. But one time, I saw a pickup barreling down the road at 70 miles an hour, and there's like 14 people in the back of the pickup. Now you just, maybe in the 70s here in the States you could get away with that. In California, definitely not now. It's illegal. But isn't it interesting that when you cross a border, magically, certain things are no longer legal and other things are legal. And things you can't do according to US law are magically acceptable once you cross over the border. And that's because, and this is very important, Law is only binding when there is a contractual agreement between two parties. To live in the States as a citizen, you submit yourself to the laws in the US. If you're a citizen of Mexico, you submit yourself to the laws in Mexico, okay? Now, in the Bible, this is true, but at the divine level. It's not limited to geographical boundaries, but it is demarcated by redemptive historical periods. And so you see in your introduction in your notes, and this is a very important comment, there's no such thing in the Bible as law apart from a covenantal relationship. And our confession following the Westminster Confession of Faith makes this very clear. Not only is there no such thing as law apart from a covenantal relationship, there's no such thing as revelation apart from a covenantal relationship. In other words, God condescends and reveals himself to us via covenant. And so understanding the nature of covenant is to understand how or what our relationship to the law is, okay? So once again, there's no such thing in the Bible as law apart from a covenant relationship. In both the Old and New Testament, law is always conceived of within the framework of a covenant, and therefore to understand what is expected of you, and here's the key, I'm foreshadowing here, you must determine which covenant you are attached to. If you can answer that question, it will help you answer the subsequent question, which laws am I expected to keep? And then there's gonna be a subsequent question which is keep for what purpose, okay? And there's two options, justification or sanctification, okay? So that's why in our four catechism questions tonight, question 44 lays the foundation for understanding our relationship to the law by declaring, and this is very important, The duty which God requires of man is obedience to his revealed will. Now that adjective before will, revealed will, is very important. Because if you understand anything about the Bible, you understand that different things were revealed at different times to different peoples. And very simply, there is some differences between how Adam understood the law and how Israel understood the law and how the New Covenant Church understands the law. Now, There's a lot of overlap. In fact, there's probably more overlap than there is what we call discontinuity. But there is discontinuity between how they understood and applied and fleshed out the law. And so it's important to understand that. So I'm going to use a word tonight in talking about the different epochs of God's revelation to man, revelation of the law to man. I'm going to use the word administration, okay? So I'm going to talk about the revelation of the law in the Adamic administration, so the time of Adam, in the Mosaic administration, and then later in the New Covenant administration. Now, I decided not to use another word called dispensation because of the negative connotations that it has. But but keep in mind, dispensation is a biblical word and basically it means the exact same thing as administration. So administration very simply is. Administering a rule or law. So parents, you are, by the way, the word dispensation or administration or stewardship comes from the Greek word, oikounomia, oikounonia, which means a stewardship. Okay, so you administer rule, you administer law and justice. So there are different administrations and strata, right? So if you're a parent, you are the head of your household, and you administer justice and law, and there's blessings and cursings according to this law, to your children. If you're a boss at work, you do the same thing with your inferiors, I guess you could say, okay? So I'm gonna be using the word administration. So I wanna consider God's law this evening under five headings, and you have them there in your notes. First off, God's eternal moral law or will, and then it's expression under Adam. Thirdly, it's expression under Moses. It's expression under Christ, number four. And then conclude with the practical questions of what the law is and how we as Christians do or do not relate to it, okay? So are there any questions? That's the roadmap. Any questions? You've got notes, okay? All right, so first off, and a lot of this is gonna be review until we get this train going, okay? Number one, God's eternal moral law. So we read in question 45 that the duty which God requires of man is obedience to his revealed will. Now the eternal moral law of God, which distinguishes between right and wrong, it discriminates between right and wrong, listen very carefully, exists eternally in the mind of God. Why is that important? Because we don't want to say that law Morality is something separate from God, okay? We wanna say that it's something that exists in the mind of God, and that's why, so it's rooted in his unchanging nature, and that's why that when God stamps or impresses his image upon man, by virtue of the moral law being a part of the nature of God, it is now part of the nature of man, you see. So man intuitively and instinctively can discriminate between right and wrong because Genesis says God made man in his likeness and his image. Those are synonyms for the same thing, okay? So who can tell me where probably the most the clearest expression in the didactic genre of the New Testament that talks about the conscience of man in the heart of man. Who can tell me where it is? It is there. Romans 2, 14, and 15. So it is in Romans 1, 2, but I'm gonna go to Romans 2, because everything's there. So Paul talks about this, again, this intuitive, built-in kind of hard drive within man's heart and mind that allows him or her to distinguish between right and wrong in Romans 2, 14, and 15. Now watch this, the progression of Paul's thought here. For when the Gentiles who do not have the law..." Stop. What law is he talking about? He's talking about the Mosaic law, okay? The law that was given to the Jews. Now that's gonna be important. When the Gentiles do not have the law, do instinctively the things of the law, more specifically here the Ten Commandments of the Mosaic law, these, the Gentiles, not having a law, not having been given the Mosaic law as God gave them to the Jews, are a law to themselves in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts, listen, alternatively accusing or else defending them. So conscience is different than the law written in your heart. Conscience is the barometer that says right, wrong. But law is the instinctive awareness that something is right or wrong. So you have a gauge that reads it, and then the law that's written on your heart that tells you what it is. So as I said, the Gentiles do not have the Mosaic law, but they have this law written in their heart. And again, this is the idea of the moral law of God not connected to any. Not connected to the Mosaic covenant being built into their conscience, yes. Yeah. They're actually right. The mosaic law came after the Code of Hammurabi. Yeah. You're making a good, so here's the thing, what's interesting is, very simply, when you look at the Code of Hammurabi, when you look at the Mosaic Law, when you look at the Babylonians Law, the Assyrians Law, what is striking is how similar they are. And we would say they're similar because there's a common stock, a common awareness, no matter where you go in the world, that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. Now, we recognize that there's differences. So Hammurabi has some pretty interesting punishments for infractions or crimes that you don't see in the Mosaic law. OK, there are some differences, but that's not the point. The point is their common stock shows what Paul is getting at in Romans 2. So Thomas Paine wrote, you know, a book called Common Sense and very simply said it's common sense because it's common to every man, woman and child. And the reason why we as Christians think that it's common sense to every man, woman and child is because the image of God stamped on the heart and mind of every man, woman and child. So I actually love when people like to compare and contrast the Code of Hammurabi and Mosaic Law, because I'm like, look at the continuity. Like, what do you do with that? And I think it shows that they all have the same creator, okay? So here's this moral law of God, eternal moral law of God. Remember, part of the nature of God. Now let's look secondly to how that law is revealed through a covenant. Now I've talked a lot about the, Adamic covenant also referred to as the covenant of life or more appropriately the covenant of works So God created man in this sense and this sense of law And he revealed it to him in the garden now This is where the covenant comes into play remember when I said there's no such thing as law apart from a covenantal relationship so What God does is he, the covenant through which God revealed the law to Adam was that he was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and on the day he did, he would surely die, Genesis 2.17. The law was very simple and yet profound. Submit to me, love me, value me, and not yourself or any other. In the breaking of that one command, he broke 100% of God's law. One out of one, last time I checked, I'm not a mathematician, is 100%. So this is called the creation ethic. The creation ethic given to Adam was not given in the form of a list of commands like written on tablets, apart from the one command, the prohibition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but in the form of the imitation of God principle grounded in his created nature as God's image. Now, Adam was sinless with the ability to sin, okay? Remember that, he was sinless, he was perfect, but with the ability to sin. And he was put in a probation period, okay? Don't eat of this tree, Adam, and I'm giving you a test. What was he supposed to do when the serpent came along? Pull out his sword and lop its head off. That's what he should have done. He was an imposter to the holy temple of the garden. Now, if he would have done that, he would have been raised to a higher plane of existence, sinless, without the ability to sin, which that's how we now perceive of resurrection life. In other words, we would have jumped over this whole stage of sinful humanity and gone right to the eschaton, the new heavens and the new earth, okay? But here's the covenant. If you obey me, if you do work, Your works, nobody else's. Give me perfect, precise, and personal, and exact obedience, then you will get life. If you don't, you will get death, Genesis 2.17. That is the covenant of works principle. There is no grace in this covenant. I repeat, there is no grace. What is grace? Giving you something that you don't deserve, right? It was all on Adam. There was no supplement of grace like we experience as Christians, okay? So this covenant now forms the foundation for all humanity. And this is why in Romans 5, Paul conceives of all humanity in two different groups. What are those two different groups? In Adam or in Christ. There's no in between. You're either in Adam or you're in Christ. Law, covenant of works, or gospel, Christ has done it for you. Do you see? So unless somebody is in Christ, then on the day of judgment, how will they be judged according to how Adam was judged? Well, you've got to stand on your own. Where are your works, man? You don't have any works because you're still in Adam, you see. So this covenant with Adam, it's not like, oh, man, that was a long time ago. It doesn't exist anymore. It exists for every single person who has not placed their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And this law that was revealed to them is a law that is now imprinted on their nature, you see, okay? So this law was not written on tablets in this covenant, it was written on the heart, but now here's the transition. Because human reason often forgets and corrupts the natural law, that's what we call the law within our hearts, the natural law, it had to be given in written form. In other words, it had to be codified. and that brings us to the mosaic covenant. These moral precepts written on the heart are now codified or put into stone in the Decalogue and now they are enshrined in this covenant. Now I've given you a little diagram on the very first page and it's going to be helpful for you to follow that diagram Because what you see up at the top is the moral will of God, the moral law of God, okay, as it exists in his mind, and then it is enshrined in different covenants. First, the covenant with Adam, and then now you're gonna see it is republished, typologically republished under Moses. Now I need to explain this, okay? Now God has formed a specific national geopolitical race of men, the Jews, to whom he reveals a written form of the law. Now, while the law itself has 613 laws, it's the Decalogue that serves as the crystallization of the law. Now, here's something really important that you need to note down. Look at Exodus 34, 28. Exodus 34, 28. And we're gonna need to remember this as we move forward. Exodus 34, 28. So talking about Moses. It says, so he was there with the Lord 40 days and 40 nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant. That is the Ten Commandments. This is a literary device called apposition. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant. put an equal sign, the Ten Commandments. What you need to see here, and this happens all throughout Exodus, the Ten Commandments represent the Mosaic Covenant. They're not something abstract that's like attached to it. They are the formal representation of the Mosaic Covenant. Now that's gonna become very important when we talk about how the Ten Commandments relate to us as Christians. Because just to give you a hint, Remember the question I asked in the beginning? To figure out what laws you must follow, you must figure out what covenant you are attached to. So if the Ten Commandments are an emblem of the Mosaic Covenant, and you're not part of the Mosaic Covenant, that leaves the question, what relationship do I have to them? Yes? So, very simply, the Ten Commandments The Ten Commandments are the heart and command center of God's law. There are many case laws in the Mosaic Covenant, and those case laws are extrapolations of the principles contained in the Ten Commandments. Does that make sense? Now, that's with a lot of the case laws. When you get into the ceremonial laws, which we'll talk about in just a moment, that gets a little more complicated, and I'm not gonna touch that right now. If you still have questions, you can ask me in a second, okay? So now, what does it mean that the Mosaic Law was a republication of the law given to Adam, okay? Well, very simply, I'm gonna do shorthand here, okay? Here's the Adamic Covenant, okay? And remember, it was a covenant of works. It was a cow, okay? Now, it is republished in the Mosaic Covenant, and the Mosaic Covenant is also a covenant of works. Now, what do we mean by it's a covenant of works? God says, Israel, if you are obedient as a nation, I will bring you into the land and give you tenure. I give you peace from all your enemies and you will be firmly established in the land. Okay? The condition was a little less strict than Adam. Adam had to have perfect, precise, and exact obedience. It was loosened a little bit in the Mosaic Covenant, okay? You had the sacrificial system to kind of make up for their failures. But still, it was obedience that was expected of them. In other words, God isn't gonna say, well, even if you fail, I'll just give it to you anyway. I'll just sweep it under the rug. No. He said, if you fell, then there's this long list of curses at the end of Deuteronomy that's gonna come upon you and your children, plague, drought, famine, captivity, which we saw both in the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. So it also is a covenant of works. Now, if you don't believe me, Paul says in Romans 3, 10 through 12, speaking of the law, Romans 3, verses 10 through 12, for as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them. Now that no one is justified by the law before God is evident, for the righteous man shall live by faith. Now watch this, verse 12, however, the law is not of faith. What's the opposite of faith? works. So fill out the picture. The law is of works. On the contrary, he who practices them shall live by them. Now, I've said that the condition is obedience, but what is the prize? It's tenure in the land. Okay, so I said it is typologically republished. What I mean by republished is just as Adam had to be obedient to get the blessing, so now Israel, who's the second Adam, well, they are a representation of Adam, they must be obedient, but whereas the blessing was life, eternal life with Adam, it's the land for Israel. But the land now becomes a type or a picture of what in the new covenant? heaven, the new heavens and the new earth. Okay, so that's why I say it is typologically republished. The principle works, the blessing land, but the land is a type of heaven and that's why in Galatians 3, when it speaks of Jesus, it says that he was born of a woman, born under the what? The law. So now he is the latest representation of Israel. He is the second Adam, the true Israel, and he comes under the expectations of the law in the covenant of works, and he fulfills it and the land serves as a type of heaven, okay? Now, I won't spend time, if you want, Hosea 6, 7 says very clearly that the Mosaic Covenant is a republication of the covenant of works because it says, but like Adam, they, Israel, have transgressed the covenant, okay? All right, now, the Abrahamic, excuse me, the Mosaic Covenant was a subservient covenant, which means that It does not put out of function the Abrahamic covenant that was given before. So God gave the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15, and it was a unilateral covenant, which means that God took the oath upon himself. Remember that beautiful passage? He puts Abraham to sleep, and God takes the oath himself. In the ancient Near East, there are two types of covenants. One is a guaranteed blessing. It's totally contingent on the person who takes the oath. And the other one is a covenant of works, which means that man takes the oath. So I'll give you two examples. Genesis 15 is the example of that unilateral promise blessing that God takes upon himself. He's gonna do all the work. But in the Mosaic Covenant in Exodus 19 through 24, it is Israel who takes the oath upon their lips. We will fulfill the law. No, we can do it. Give it to us. Okay. within if you do it you'll get the blessing and if you don't you'll get the curses so it shows that it is a covenant of works but this is a subservient covenant which means that it doesn't put the abrahamic covenant out of the way as paul says the law came to increase in to show Israel her sinfulness, and to show us our sinfulness. And that's why he calls it in Galatians 3, a tutor, a tutor to lead us by the hand to Christ. Now, notice in question 47. Yeah, yeah. So remember in, yes, remember in Romans 2, 14 and 15, when the Gentiles who don't have the law do instinctively the things of the law. So what they're doing is they're acting according to the conscience that God has given them, but it happens to relate to laws in the mosaic covenant. So it's not like they're following the mosaic covenant. They're called, they're following the eternal moral law of God. that represents itself in the conscience of Gentiles and then gets codified in the Mosaic Covenant. So the same laws coming through different revelation, if that makes sense. Does that help? Okay. So now notice in question 47, that the moral law is summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments. Now, what it means is that it is summed up but not precisely the same as the eternal moral law of God. Rather, the administration of the law under Moses has attached to it blessings and curses peculiar to Israel and Israel alone. Now let me give you two examples of that, okay? I know we have the Ten Commandments as a memorial on the front of some courthouses, that's fine. In the Old Covenant, if you did not keep the Sabbath, okay, what would happen to people who were Sabbath desecrators? Stone to death, okay, do we do that today? So notice, this is what I want you to see. I want you to notice that it's not just the fourth commandment, keep the seventh day holy. It's the blessing that is attached to it and the curse that's attached to it that is all under the heading of the Mosaic covenant. It's all taken as a package, okay? But also the Sabbath throughout the Pentateuch is described as a sign of the covenant. It's a sign of the covenant. Now watch this. In the Adamic Covenant, the Sabbath was on the seventh day, okay? In the Mosaic Covenant, it's on the seventh day. Adamic Covenant was a covenant of works. Mosaic Covenant, covenant of works. Watch this. Work, six, rest, Seventh, same here, work, six, rest, seven. The very structure of the week suggests that rest or grace follows work. Adam, you must work in order to enter into rest. Israel, you must work in order to enter into rest. But under the new covenant, what happens? It gets swapped to the first day. So now we rest in Christ and then out of that, as a result, we work six days. The very nature or the very differences of these covenants of works when compared to the new covenant comes up in the configuration of the day of rest. We rest in Christ and then work forward. Now, the second example I'm going to give you is the fifth commandment. This is very interesting. In Exodus 20, fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord God gives you. What land is that? Canaan, it's Canaan, it's Palestine. That promise was only applicable to Israel. It didn't apply to Assyrians, it didn't apply to Babylon, and I don't mean the commandment to honor your father and mother, that's common natural law. What I'm talking about is the blessing that's attached to it. So what's interesting is when you get into the New Covenant, Paul quotes that commandment in Ephesians chapter six, but does anybody notice what he does with it? He says it's the first commandment with a promise. He says, honor your father and your mother. It's the first commandment with a promise so that your days will be prolonged on the earth. What's the change there? Right, and in Romans 4, I believe 10 or 11, it says, by virtue of being a child of Abraham, you have inherited the whole earth. So it's no longer confined to Canaan. Under the new covenant, you inherit the new heavens and the new earth, you see. So again, notice how the fifth commandment under the new covenant has a different referent for blessing because it's a completely different covenantal configuration. OK, so I'm going to go ahead and skip your hardest bosses triangle. Yeah. In the Lord. For this is right, that's right, yeah. So it's certainly natural law, but then what he adds to it is the blessing of the new covenant. So the Mosaic Law was given to Israel, and it typologically promised heaven. It promised a Messiah who would come, and like Adam, like Adam, to fulfill the covenant. And then an Israelite named Jesus was born under the law to redeem us, and that leads us to Christ's fulfillment. So we see he was born under the law to keep it. What law was Christ under? He was under the covenant of works by virtue of being a descendant of Adam, and more specifically, he was under the Mosaic law, which typologically set forth heaven as a covenant of works. He was a son of Adam and an Israelite, so he was under both. What's similar to both of them is that they're a covenant of works. So now Christians in the new covenant are no longer under a covenant of works, but are under grace. So if you look at Romans 6.14, for sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Now what he's saying there very specifically, especially coming off the tales of Romans chapter 5, is you're not under law as a covenant of works. That's what he's getting at. Because in chapter 5 he spent all that time talking about Adam, who was expected to keep the law and be obedient to get life, but he failed. And Christ, who was expected to keep the law and get the benefit of life for him and his posterity, and he was victorious. It's all about obedience. And now, he says in Romans 6, 14, you're not under law, but you're under grace. So we're dead to the law so that we can marry another. Paul says this in Romans 7, 4 and 6. He says, Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for God. Verse 6. But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter." So, our covenant standing is not in Adam or in Moses, but in Christ. And this is why two times, Paul in his letters, Galatians, I think 6.2 and 1 Corinthians 9.21, refers to the law of Christ. He never refers to the Mosaic Law as that law that Christians are bound to. He always refers to the law of Christ, okay? So does this mean that we don't follow the law as Christians? Well, no. And right after Romans 6.14 where he says, we're not under the law, we're under grace, Paul says, shall we go on sinning? And he says, absolutely not. We are not under any law as a covenant of works, but we do have God's moral law as a gracious guide for sanctification. Our obedience is not prompted by law. but it's prompted by grace. So in the new dynamic of grace, obedience is not the condition of blessing, but guaranteed blessing by virtue of the oath that Christ took is the basis of our obedience. So we do things not because by doing them we will gain life, we do things because we've been given life in Christ by his obedience, and now out of gratitude we obey. So the law of Moses required Israelites to love their neighbors, but the law of Christ exhorts Christians to go beyond that and to love their enemies. And love itself is now definitely known and seen in the cross where God manifested the depth of his love towards sinners. So, when we talk about following the law, we must conceive of the moral law of God as it comes to us in Christ. A simple way to state this is a quote by Edward Fisher, beware that you receive not the Ten Commandments at the hand of God out of Christ, nor yet at the hands of Moses, but only at the hands of Christ. So now you'll say, what does that mean? Are the Ten Commandments the same in the New Covenant as they were in the Old Covenant? And the answer is no. And I've already shown you through the example of Sabbath and the Fifth Commandment that they're construed differently. So let me conclude with a few practical things here. So does the Christian have a law to which he is to order his or her life? The answer is yes. What is the law? It is the eternal moral law of God in the hand of Christ. So here's a very simple way to understand it. If a law is not repeated in the new covenant, you are not bound to it. If a law is not repeated in the New Covenant, you're not bound to it. If a law is in the Old Covenant, but it comes out a little differently in the New Covenant, then you follow the New Covenant's rendering of it and not the Old Covenant's rendering of it. Where that is going to be most clear, the most clear example of that is going to be the Fourth Commandment. Because I guarantee none of you keep the Sabbath like the Old Testament Israel did. And guess what? You're not expected to. You're not expected to. Because the New Covenant gives a different configuration of the Lord's Day than the Old Covenant. So how do I apply this understanding of God's moral will enshrined in different covenant relationships? I put this quote from Lee Irons in there, and it's probably the most important quote. If you are reading the Bible and you come across a commandment, you have to ask yourself, which covenant is this command functioning in? If you are not a party to that covenant, the stipulation does not bind you directly. For example, if you are a Christian, you're not bound to any of the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant as the Mosaic covenant. However, a particular commandment in a covenant that you are not a party to may be grounded in God's eternal moral will, and thus you should expect to find that commandment republished in the covenant you are a party to. So the whole law is summed up in two words. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and with your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. This law is now written on our hearts by virtue of being born again into the new covenant, and we have the spirit to help us. So I think all questions of law keeping can be summed up in one simple statement on the lips of our Lord, the one who loves us enough to shed his own blood for our sins. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. So may the Lord give us strength to do this for his honor and glory. All right, questions, yes. If you need to go, go ahead. We're convening here, so it's Q&A time now. Would you say they were born that way? Sure, right. Yeah. So what does Romans 1 say? Romans 1 says that people callous their consciences, right? They sear their consciences. For some people, that happens over a long period of time. For some people, it happens like right out of the gate, right? But either way, it's not the case that they didn't have that. It's the case that they did have it, and maybe they were so evil that they just seared it right away. So remember, we believe in total depravity, which means we believe everyone's sinful. That doesn't mean we believe that everybody's Hitler. But there are Hitler's, you see, and those people are going to be more depraved than than others. OK. OK. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Were you here when I preached on that sermon? Okay, go listen to my sermon, and that's my answer to it. Yeah. This is hypothetical. He could have redeemed her because sin did not enter into the world until he ate the fruit. This is that this is just the doctrine of headship. She's not the head. He was the head. So it's it's it's it's it's speculation. And Augustine talks about what you know, God has created hell for speculators. But anyways, if the doctrine of headship is true, which Romans five says that it is, he could have in some sense redeemed her. I don't know what that would look like. And that's where I just stopped speculating. But Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. Right, right. I'm so glad you brought that up because I my uncle, who's an atheist, he's all, well, Josh, if you believe in the Bible, then you believe in burning witches and drowning. And I'm like, well, I and what I told him is, you know, with all due respect, like you just don't understand the Bible. That's why I gave the pop quiz in the morning at the beginning. Because there's a command in the Bible, does that necessarily mean that we follow it? And the answer is no. You have to understand the flow of redemptive history, which puts some out of commission, it abrogates them, and only leaves some. That's why, no, we don't follow. I mean, we're all wearing clothes that are made of more than one fabric. and that has ramifications for diet and everything else. So that's why, and by the way, you have stapled to that page paragraph six of chapter 19 of the London Baptist Confession that sums up everything that I just taught you. That's why you have to understand what our obligations are under the new covenant and not the old covenant. And this is where, with all due respect, theonomy has just gone off the reservation. because they, I'll put it very simply. If you understand in the Bible the concept of a type or the shadow and the anti-type, the fulfillment, okay, so the lamb is a type of whom? Christ. Is it ludicrous to say the lamb is Christ? Yeah, because it's blending, it's mixing what? Type and fulfillment. Israel was a type of what? The church. Theonomy says Israel is the church, not in the way that you think. They're saying, just as Israel had laws for society, kill homosexuals, kill kids if they don't obey the fifth commandment, so because we're Israel, we need to have the same thing. Well, they're misunderstanding that Israel in that sense was a type of the church, but wasn't the church, you see. We are not Israel in the geopolitical Jewish sense. We are Israel in the spiritual sense. That's why Paul in Galatians 6.16 says, anybody who walks according to this doctrine that I put down, the gospel, is the Israel of God. Peace be upon them, even the Israel of God. The Israel of God, Paul says in Romans chapter two, the true Jew, he's speaking metaphorically, is not those who have been circumcised and have Jewish blood running through their veins. The true Jew is the one who has been circumcised of the heart, okay? The true child of Abraham is the one who has faith, okay? So yes, they don't know how to read their Bible, and how to communicate that in a loving way is something that we do need to try to do, but they're just being inconsistent. And by the way, Yeah, the Old Testament says homosexuality's wrong, but guess what? The New Testament does too. So there's the repetition that we continue to cling to. Yeah. Mm-hmm? So I've been told that the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, or the Mosaic Law, definitely had ways, the way that it was built, it was there for like, there was ways it had grace about it. Like if your child disrespects you, it didn't mean just stone them. It gave you the option to nurture your child and bring him up. That's like a repetitive rebellious game. Yeah, it's talking about the drunkard. Yeah. My question is, was Israel, was the priest wrong not to stone David when he did what he did? Should he have died for that? I've asked people that and no one can really give me an answer. He murdered somebody and he stole his wife. That's a very, that's a very good question. And I mean, we got to remember a few things. Number one, he, you know, from his, you know, from his posterity or his loins came the Lord. So obviously there's a reason why you probably shouldn't kill David. Second thing, he was a king. And, you know, as idyllic of a community and theocracy that we see Israel to be, we need to understand that even as we see today, there are some people who get, get out of jail cards because of who they are. You know? And if you're a king, you're probably going to get a few of those. You know what I'm saying? I don't know that it's that simple. I'm okay with an ambiguous answer. I really am. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. All right. All right. Yeah, Phil. They didn't. And that was that was actually that actually points up how unfaithful Israel was. So all right. Father God, thank you for this time. Give us grace for this week. We ask these things in your son's name. Amen.