Faith Lesson 22

I sent out lesson 23, everybody who's on the list get it. It's the last one. There's more back there if you need them. Next week's the last class. Cool. I was thinking we'd just go on and on, but I guess not. So we're on lesson 22 today, and we've been talking about spiritual gifts. So the first question is, are believers given spiritual gifts by God? Yes, they are. And I refer to you to 1 Corinthians 12, 1-11. We don't have to read the whole thing. But it gives a list of spiritual gifts given to believers. And a couple of the important verses in there would be 6, which says, And there are various effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.

7. But to such one is given the manifestation of the Spirit. for the common good. So we talked about this last week. Why does God give every believer a spiritual gift? Why do you have it? So you can put it up on a bulletin board and everybody can see it. Here's my boy Russ, he's got the spiritual gift of X. Why do you have them?

They're not for you, they're for the body. Which is really a cool thing when you think about it. Our charismatic brethren always look at spiritual gifts as for them, personally. It's not. It's for you. If I have a spiritual gift, it's to be manifested and used for your edification only.

It's an important point to know because otherwise we get a little self-centered about it. Makes total sense, because we already personally get the Holy Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit, but then the gifts would be like over-gifting. You know what I mean? If it was for ourselves, why would we even need more just for ourselves? It's almost like it's a re-gifting deal, right? Yeah. Lay hands on yourself.

So it's important to understand that all believers have spiritual gifts and what they're designed to do is they're designed to edify, build up the body of Christ. Now you may not know what it is to start with, but over time the Spirit of God will begin to manifest that gift through you. for the benefit of others. And you may or may not know, at least initially, what it is. And you may have more than one.

So, question two. 1 Corinthians 12, 9, there's a question of who is given the gift of faith. Who is it? 9 says, In another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the same Spirit. Who gets spiritual gifts? Only believers. And the reason that this, in the context of what we're studying, the reason this is important, because we talked about it a little bit last week, is the fact that you do not get the spiritual gift of faith in order to believe. Are you with me on what I just said? No. There's a comma there, I need the rest of the sentence. Read it. You ended with a comma. Well, that's because I stopped printing right here. Think about it.

The point that I'm trying to make is that there's a school of theology that says you must be regenerated in order to believe. Right? And the point is that I don't think that's true, and I think that this proves that it isn't true, because spiritual gifts are regeneration. Regeneration is an act of God, and you don't need to be regenerated to believe the gospel. But once you are saved, then some have the spiritual gift of faith.

You have to look at 1 Corinthians 12.9 in the same context that we looked at Romans 12 last week. Spiritual gifts are only given to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Only. Okay? You all sit there like... You know, I could see that because before you believe, your spirit is like separated. Your spirit is sort of dead to God. And then, you know, just the fact that it's a spiritual gift kind of precludes the idea that it could be given to someone who doesn't have the spirit that's so separated and dead. Sure. So you have a soul, right?

Why doesn't he mention tongues? Yeah. Why does he mention tongues? Well, he mentions other things too in the next question. Well, he does, but I mean, not just you, People say that that's from God. Okay, let's talk about that. What are tongues for? I have no idea. What were they for in Acts 2? It was so that the apostles or people could communicate with each other even though they didn't know the same language. That's right. Yeah, but that was a different language. What about people that speak in tongues now? That is not as far as any I've ever heard, a language. Yeah, I agree.

If you start with the premise of what are spiritual gifts for, what are they for? Others. For the body of Christ. So if I say, well, I've got the gift of tongues, how does that help you? Nothing. Okay? You'll find, and Paul talks about the fact that if you do have the gift of tongues, you can't use it unless you have an interpreter. Now, tongues and healing and miracles and wisdom are known as the sign gifts. Sign gifts. What is a sign gift? Why would there be such a thing as a sign gift?

Why in Acts 2, when Peter stands up to give the first sermon at Pentecost, who is he talking to? Who? Jews? Only Jews. Pretty much. And so what is basically the context of the sermon that he tells them? You guys have them read Acts 2? What does he tell them? He tells them he killed Jesus and he tells them who Jesus is.

He said Jesus of Nazareth. You know, that's like saying Russ of Karma City. That's kind of what Jesus meant. It's not a compliment. So Jesus of Nazareth, who God put here to be the savior of the world, you took him and you crucified him. And you need to repent. He uses the word repent. You need to change your mind about who he is. So if you're a Jew, who do you think he is? If you buy what Peter's saying. Who do you think he is?

Now, also if you're a Jew, when God comes to you or your nation and he wants to verify the veracity of the message given, what does he usually do alongside the message? He gives some sort of a sign. The Jews always demanded a sign. the gift of healing and of tongues and that kind of thing were sign gifts primarily targeted towards Jewish people to verify the message that the apostles were giving on whoever the person was. The second part about that is that could you at an axe to run down to your local store and get a Schofield reference Bible? King James only? No, you couldn't.

So what was going on then in terms of the revelation from God about this new thing called the church? They didn't have it. And so how was it being presented? How was God introducing the message? He was doing it through people, right? The apostles. And to introduce the message to the Jews, there were these accompanying signs. You know, it's like Pentecost, what was the reason for the tongues of fire and all of that? So that the Jews would think, gee, this is real. And Paul said later, you know, 25 years later, he said, if you demand a sign, the Gentiles, all they care about is wisdom.

See? So, do you think that the sign gifts over time faded out? Yes. Why would they? Because there's faith. There wasn't a need for them. Because the primary body of believers now starts to become Gentile. And two is, things start to get written. In 49 AD, Galatians is written and books start to get written. At the time when the New Testament is complete, why do you need a sign? Why do you need a word of wisdom? A special gift of faith, why do you need any of that? When you've got it, when this is now available. Everything you need is in there. Yeah, it's all there. So that's the short answer, I think, to question three.

Would the signed gifts go against faith? That's a great question. What do you think about that? Would the signed gifts go against a person's faith, personal faith? What do you think? No. How about later on? It would depend on the motivation again, I would think. If you're like, like miracles or something like that, if you're like, using it, like God can do miracles, you know, if he wants, but if you're using it for yourself... Well, you know what's interesting about that? To God, they're not a miracle. Yeah, yeah. To us, they're a miracle, but I mean, it's like, if you're using it, like, oh, look, a miracle! I'm so cool!

Donna comes home on Friday and says, hey, did you read about Mother Teresa? No, she's not a fan of mine. Well, they've verified she did another miracle, so they're going to make her a saint. So that really helps that somebody's going to say, hey, you're a saint. You know, she's dead. So it's not for Mother Teresa. That is looks like it's for like the Catholic Church. Yeah. We got somebody who did a miracle. It's the passage, we walk by faith and not by sight. There you go.

And the definition in Hebrews 11. Sure. So here, the issue being, as we've studied now for a whole year, when we study Hebrews 11.1, the essence of faith, and without faith it's impossible to please God.

And Hebrews 11.2, by it, the fathers received evidence or confirmation. So what's the essence of faith?

What does it basically have to do with in Hebrews 11.1? It's the substance of things hoped for, and it's evidence of things not seen. And as we messed around with that, we discovered that really the essence of faith is the revelation of the things of God. So as I believe Him, I come in and enter into His thing. I know what they are. And I settle down, huh? It's fine. Because I know what they are. See that? So I can rest.

And we'll get to next week. I found a couple of really good definitions of personal faith. I was just thinking about people on street corners that are yelling through their megaphone, repent, repent. It would be nicer if they said like, hey, change your mind. You know? You can change your mind. That's what repentance means. Right. That's what I mean by repent.

It sounds like such an old word that people don't understand. Yeah, it's true. What's interesting is that for 2,000 plus years now, God has been extremely diligent and aggressive to his creation in trying to reveal himself to them. And the issue is they reject him. That's really the issue. It isn't that he hasn't been doing his job, he certainly has, but we reject him.

And it's true with believers also, because the Spirit of God is always trying to show us more and more and more and we just don't buy it. Our experience, well I don't feel it, or my experience doesn't verify it, rather than just taking God at his word, just say okay. It's so important within the body of believers that when God shows you something, God forbid you'd be reading the Bible, and he shows you something and you just say okay, I believe you.

I don't need a sign. I don't need spiritual push-ups or doors opening and closing. I don't need any of that. I just take you at your word. You honor God when you do that. He loves that and so he'll be responsive. So in 20 minutes I've done four questions. Pretty good, huh? You're moving.

So in Romans 12.6 and 1 Corinthians 12.9 we're talking about, as given just to the point that only to believers, and again I'm going to keep emphasizing this point because one of the biggest opposing theologies today is a reformed theology that says you must be regenerated in order to believe, which means you get the gift of faith in order to get saved. It's not true. I can't find any evidence because they have to stretch the doctrinal rubber band pretty long to get that to fit.

Isn't the problem with that is it's sort of like that may or may not have happened to you lucky ones are saved, kind of, right? Well, the chosen, you know, the kind of thing. Yeah, chosen. And so, it's just, people are pondering, am I chosen or not? I'm not, yeah, especially if they buy into that, and they do get saved, but then things, you know, as we studied about trials and tribulation, they begin to wonder if they are a called one or not, you know. Wanda?

Well, Joel Osteen, You know, we talked about how he just said, right at the end he'll say, do you believe, blah, blah, blah, whatever he says. Yeah. And then, well, I think those people could go on and they could be encouraged. They could go on. They could get into a church and they could grow. They could. They could.

I think I've told you the story about, I don't know if any of you know, there's a guy in the Springs named Jerry Benjamin. Jerry is a Jewish guy who's a Plymouth Brethren. And he's one of those, the Plymouth Brethren have these teachers that go around to different churches and teach. And that's what his job is. He goes all over the country and Australia and he comes from a Jewish family.

And his father told him, when he became a Christian, he could never mention the name of Jesus ever again in front of him. Well, he disobeyed him a couple of times, and somehow they maintained the relationship. And then his dad was, they lived in Phoenix, his dad was dying. And Jerry thought, you know, I'm going to go down there one more time, say goodbye to my dad, but I'm going to give him the gospel again. So he did.

He goes into the hospital room, wherever he is, and he gives his dad the gospel. And his dad doesn't say a word. And the next day, he's very close to leaving the planet. So Jerry goes in again, and I don't know if I can say this without choking up. All his dad said to him was, is you and I believe in the same Savior. And then he died. So you think God pursued him to the end? No, he did.

Right to the last minute. I remember when he told me that story, I just had to walk away. Okay, streaking on here. Question 5, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. And we're going to spend quite a bit of time on this verse. Somebody else read it. Read Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

It would seem that this passage proves that faith is a gift of God for salvation, wouldn't it? For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is a gift of God. Not as a result of works, lest any man should boast. Now go slow, don't give me the answer too quick. I was going to say the it refers to grace.

How do you know that? By diagramming the sentence. To try to make it as clear as I can, when the Greeks wrote, they did not repeat pronouns and verbs all the time, especially when it is an essence verb. Remember what an essence verb was? The word is. You could say Claire is a Christian, a Christian is Claire. The is, an essence verb, describes who you are back and forth. You know, apples are red. Is that a good example? No. Give me a good example. Give me an example of an essence verb. An animal is red. Red is an animal. Well, not all of them. Some of them are yellow. An elephant is an animal. An animal could be an elephant. Could be. Well, could be, but no, is. Do you understand?

An essence verb describes the noun and you can turn them around and it still describes, you know, it still describes what they are. It points out faith, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. You could say the evidence of things not seen and the substance of things hoped for is faith. You see that? That's an essence verb.

And I could say, Claire is a man, a man is Claire. It describes. You can go either way with it. Okay? Now, the Greeks just didn't repeat them. They're just understood in the Greek language. So, if you put it into text, all the pronouns and verbs that are understood, it looks like this. Now, look at your translation. For by grace are you saved, are is the essence verb, through faith, and this is not of yourself, it is a gift of God, it is not of works, that no man should boast. So I want you to notice that if we added the word this, which we did, faith and this is not of yourself, because if you take a look at the word, it's talking about something that is contextually or physically near.

Now that's the other thing about Greek. They would put the pronouns near to the nouns in the sentence. So if there's a pronoun that's way out here, what's a pronoun do? It babysits a noun. If you put a pronoun way out here and you have the noun way back here, they probably aren't talking about the same thing. But if you put the pronoun close to the noun, you think, okay, probably when the use of the pronoun is probably referring to the closest noun.

So, okay? Have I lost you yet? Mm-hmm. Oh, come on. So are you saying that when it says, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and faith is not of yourselves? Or are you saying, and grace is not of yourselves? I'm not going to tell you yet. I think it's grace. You do? I've never looked at that as either one of those. Oh, you haven't? No. Cool. What have you done?

Well, because if you say, for by grace you have been saved through faith, when I say it, when it says it is the gift of God, I interpret that to say that salvation is the gift of God. So he got revelation without even coming to my class. How does that happen? That's what makes it so awesome. So the point is, let's just say that faith is a gift, just for supposition. Then we'd have to translate that faith is the gift of God. You'd have to figure out what it refers to. And if it was faith, we'd have to define the word this is because this is a pronoun. As I said, it babysits a noun. I'm getting kind of into the weeds here. But let's do this. Question eight.

Let's substitute the word faith for it. and this, and see how it reads. Okay, you ready? For by grace you are saved through faith, and this faith is not of yourself, this faith is the gift of God, this faith is not of works that no man should boast. What do you think? I don't think it works, but trust me, there are more people that think that's what that this verse is saying, rather than what it's really saying.

And the only way to figure it out is in a grammatical context. Now for all those who believe that faith is the gift of God, they're going to say, we can stop right there. This proves it. So if we press on, we're going to find something else. Let's substitute the word salvation now and read the verse again.

For by grace you are saved through faith, and this salvation is not of yourselves, this salvation is the gift of God, this salvation is not of works that no man should boast. Do you like that better or not? Some of you like it better, some of you are too chicken to say. Grace is the best. So you would say, by grace you are saved through grace? No, by grace you have been saved by faith. And this grace is not of yourselves. So you would say that by grace you are saved through faith and this grace is not of yourself?

Yeah. This grace is the gift of God? Yeah. This grace is not of works? Possibly. Here's the problem. Back to a little grammar. And you're talking about a guy who's just not a grammatical guy. But there's a rule. This gift from God is the faith of salvation. There's a rule.

Each pronoun must agree with the noun it stands for in both gender and number. What's gender? Masculine or feminine? If you don't know yet, we're not going to tell you. And number is simple. It's either singular or plural. So if that's a rule of grammar, the pronouns stand for some noun and every pronoun must agree with its noun in both gender and number.

If I were to say to you, and I wrote this down and I hope she doesn't get embarrassed, Donna is a marvelous cook. because he fixes delicious meals. What would be wrong with that? The he pronoun doesn't fit gender-wise. See? So if I said, Leibniz is a great carpenter and she builds beautiful houses. What's wrong with that? Not the right gender. So you have to ask yourself, what is the gender of faith? What do you think it is? It's got to be the same gender as the word this and it. Can I ask a question?

This faith, is that personal faith or is that... They're not laughing at me, I hope. No, he's just taking it to a whole other... Just because I said this thing with Laban, so you guys are still laughing? Because. Well, you know where I am is nobody knows. Then does that mean. And I hesitated all the way through this not to bring this up.

But was Clinton being very intellectual when he said it depends on what is his. No, he wasn't. He was being deceptive. He was what? Being deceptive. Well, yeah, I know, but I just, grammatically, I was just wondering if... Is Bill Clinton a sleazeball and is that an essence verb? No, with him it was deception. I don't even understand why we're talking about gender. Because he's going to name it.

Okay, ready? We didn't answer your question. What was my question? Is it the faith or personal faith? Oh yeah, is this personal faith? I'm new. Is there a quick definition of grace and a quick definition of faith? Oh sure. You guys want to give it to her? What's the definition of grace? She wants to know if there's a quick definition of grace and a quick definition of faith. You want to give her the grace one? Grace is God's unlimited, unmerited, undeserved, un...

Blessing. Blessing. Based on what? Christ's work on the cross. Based on Christ's work on the cross. So it's an unlimited, unmerited blessing from God. And Chester McAuley said it's based on the totally adequate work of Christ. That's a really good definition of grace. Unlimited and unmerited blessings. Wow. Get your head around that. Just that part of it.

And it's all based on what Christ did on the cross. What we discovered about faith and talking about biblical faith, there were four aspects of biblical faith. The first one was the essence of faith, which was Hebrews 11.1, which at a later date we can spend a lot of time talking about. The second one was, sometimes in the Bible you will see the word faith with a definite article in front of it, the faith, and that refers to either the whole doctrine or maybe a specific part of it. I could say the faith and be talking only about the gospel message. I could say the faith and be talking about identification truths.

Then the third one was the principle of faith. And we spent a lot of time talking about what a principle is. A principle is a way a thing functions or operates, and it operates that way the same way every time. Like gravity. Yeah, gravity is a principle. And the last one is personal faith. And that's what we're working through now. Personal faith.

Personal faith, probably the easiest definition, is just a rest and a trust in the things of God. my personal rest and trust, although I've got a more expansive. So it kind of seems like in this Ephesians that when it says you've been saved through faith, does that maybe include all four? Four what? Four types of faith? Oh, I see. Because you get the opportunity, you can do it personally, and it's in God. I also think it has a lot to do with the principle of faith.

Yeah, so maybe all? I was going to say, the faith and grace could both be said, be not of ourselves. That's right. The faith and the grace, definite article, not of me. Okay. I guess what I was thinking is that going back, way back to like Lesson 4 where we talked about the things of God. Yeah. And grace being part of the, that's the one thing. His essence. God is part of his essence. Yeah. It's kind of what I was...

The way I look at Grace, and I don't know... I think it was probably because when I was first learning about Grace, we took a trip down to Cape Kennedy. And I went out, you know, I took the bus ride out to pad 39A and 39B, where they launched the shuttle from. And they didn't launch the shuttle while we were there. One of them came back while we were there. But they show you movies when they light that sucker off. And they flood the launch pad with water to keep the shuttle from shaking apart.

Grace is like being on the bottom of that pad 39A when they light the switch. And all of that energy comes flowing out of the back of that thing and you're right underneath it. That's what grace is like. It is so overpowering. You just got to take it in. It overwhelms you. So you begin to function by the principle of grace responsibly because you just can't. If you've ever watched the shuttle go off, when it leaves that launch pad, look at what's going on underneath it. That's like living under grace. I had a kind of a funny dream about Grace.

It was one of those anxiety dreams where you're in school and there's a surprise test. And I turned in my test and it was like crap. It was horrible. I was writing like a little kid. I could tell in my dream. And I got it back from my teacher and it was like A plus on it. And I said, what? That was like junk. And it was a female teacher and she said, I said, why did you do that? She said, I wanted to.

And I was just like, oh my gosh, thank you. I turn in junk, you give me an A+. Grace is an interesting thing because the word for grace is charis, a Greek word, and we've used it in a lot of different senses. But if I'm going to be gracious to you, and you want to respond and say thank you, you know what the Greek word for thank you is? Same word, keres. It's grace to grace, grace to grace. Nothing owed, just grace to grace.

And we as believers live under this umbrella or this launch pad of grace. The problem is that we're too busy trying to figure out what to do so that God would make us more acceptable. How do you get more acceptable than living under the shuttle? You know? It's impossible. So what are we supposed to do with all this grace that comes towards us? Just take it. Believe it. Just rest there. Don't move out. See? Well, we don't deserve it. No kidding.

And it really was in my dream It was really that then I had so much gratitude and love for that teacher that I wanted to get to know the teacher better. I remember that sort of idea of it. And I think that's with God too. It's also then you think, who is giving us all this grace? And then it's like God, and then you get to know God more.

There's a question, what is the gender of faith and what is the gender of the pronouns this and it? If the genders agree, then the answer is that faith is the gift of God. If they don't agree, then it's got to be salvation. So, take a look at the pronouns this and it and you find out that the gender is neuter. If we take a look at the noun faith, the gender is feminine. So they can't agree. Faith is feminine. It and this is neuter. So the genders don't agree.

So it can't be faith. If it's not feminine, it can't stand for faith. Faith is not a gift of God, therefore salvation has to be the gift of God. But salvation is not listed in this sentence, technically. Why isn't it grace? Grace is feminine. Say that again. Grace is feminine as well. Yeah, it is. That's why it's not grace. Grace is also feminine.

Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that faith is not a gift of God. Therefore, salvation is the gift of God in this passage. So, do you find in scripture that personal faith is used in conjunction with the gift of God? Say that again? When we are studying scripture, do you find Do you find that faith is used in conjunction with the gift of God anywhere?

No. No, you don't. You never find it. You never find it. So, to review a little bit, the gift of God can be everlasting life. The gift of God can be the Holy Spirit. The gift of God can be justification of righteousness. It can be Jesus Christ himself. It says that Christ is the unspeakable gift.

Kind of cool, huh? So when you look at passages of scripture, you're not going to find faith as being one of those gifts of God. Why not? Why not? We all have faith, it's just what we put our faith in. So we all have faith. So every person has the capacity and the ability to exercise personal faith, to believe, right? And what gives you that capacity? What did God build into you that allows you to do that? Choice. What? Choice. Choice. You have a will.

So can you tell me if you use your will for anything other than to believe? Think that through. Have you ever exercised your will for anything other than to believe? And to keep believing. I mean more than just for salvation. The actions of your will are kind of governed by where your faith is. As a believer that's true. As a non-believer, every decision a non-believer makes, he makes it based on what? He believes His faith, or whatever he's going to go for, he has to believe it before he goes.

Do you understand that? Let me put it this way. Human beings live by faith all the time. All the time. It just depends on what the object of your faith is. If I think that if I go out and work hard and I'll make a living, I have faith in myself to do it.

Now it may be well placed or misplaced. If I do a good job, I'll get rewarded. But then, here comes the gospel message. When the gospel message shows up, let's say I'm a non-believer, here comes the gospel message right here. What am I going to do with that message? I'm either going to accept it or I'm going to reject it. Have I exercised my will? It forces me to.

The thing that you'll find in studying the Word of God, no matter what element of grace that is revealed to you, it forces you to decide about it right now. Even if you say, like Scarlett O'Hara, I can't think about that today, you made a decision. You used your will, you exercised your will not to believe today.

So personal faith is how we receive the gift of salvation. I was correcting my diagramming of this verse. Could we say then that grace through faith, which is salvation, is the gift? Sure, that's where Romans chapter 4. that it is of faith that it might be of grace. You see that? It is of faith that it might be of grace. If you talk about this big umbrella of grace, this unlimited and unmerited blessings from God, how do you live underneath that thing? By faith.

It's the only way you can do it. I was going to use the word onus, but I don't like the word onus. You were talking about in your dream when you got the A+, what kind of reaction did you have to the A+, you wanted to be more pleasing to the teacher. See, the grace of God is designed to cause you to respond to God in a faithful faith way, that you want to be as pleasing to him as you possibly can, but you recognize that Christ is the only one that's pleasing to him, so I was put into Christ, so what do I do? I just want to do whatever he would have me do. And what does he want you to do? What's the primary thing that God wants you to do?

What's that? I heard it. Believe. That's it. So if you don't read the Bible, You don't spend time finding out what God has done, then you haven't got anything to rest your faith on. It's no wonder you're out on a boat with only one oar. Personal faith is how we receive the gift of salvation.

Ephesians Acts 16.30. Personal faith is how we receive everything from God. So, that's the end of that class.

There's another hint that comes from verse 9 in terms of what are we talking about as the gift. Verse 9 talks about it not being a result of works, so that no one can boast. So you could kind of use the tool of going over and saying, okay, well where else in Paul's writing does he talk about something not being? of the works, so you can't boast. And you see a number of passages all over the place that are always talking about salvation. That's how he uses those terms. And so that's a hint You don't boast about your faith? No. Paul never says that anywhere else. Do you not boast about grace? No. Paul never says that anywhere. Does he say you don't boast and it's not according to verse about salvation? He says that everywhere. So that's a context thing.

I was going through, according to what we taught on grace, one of the things we used for a class was the 33 things that Schaeffer talks about that happened to us at the cross. When you believe, A minimum of 33 things happened to you like that. And I have a list of 212 that happened to you.

But every one of those things is a positional truth that God did that he's going to let me know about as I grow spiritually. How do I react? They're all graces. Every single one of them is a grace. I've been seated in Christ in the heavenlies. I'm an heir, a joint heir with Christ. I'm a son, a fully organic, legitimate, inherited son of God. Not created like Adam, I'm his son, inherited son. I've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Not going to be, already am.

That's why it drives me nuts when you see Christians talking about, oh, God promised this and God promised that. We don't base our faith on promises. We base them on facts, things He's already done. If you don't know the facts, your faith is going to be weak because you don't have the object.

Did God really co-crucify me with Christ? Yeah, He did. He did do that. What do I do with that gracious information? Believe Him. Just trust Him. Was I buried with him? Says I was. Was I risen with him? Says I was. Fact? Fact. What do I do with it? I just trust him. I rest in what he tells me. So it's not complicated. We make it too complicated sometimes. Got the second bell? You can't ask your question without the second bell. It wasn't a question anyways, it was a comment.

I saw something on the Trinity and I was thinking about the Trinity and it's like, you know, God himself, God the Father could not have come down to earth to do what Christ did because God can't die. So it was like God had to That's interesting. So it was like God had to, because this was all planned out, so it had to be another person that would come and do it because God himself couldn't do it. You have to take into consideration that God is three persons. Right, exactly. And they designed the roles for themselves. Right.

And the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, In a counseling with the Father sometime in eternity, the Father said, if you become a man and die for the sins of the world, I'll raise you up. In Jesus' second person of the Trinity, the Word said, OK, I'll do it.

But he could have said it to the Spirit. Yeah, but I mean, God couldn't, it just couldn't be one. It just couldn't be God the Father himself doing it, because he can't die. Because it had to be separated. It has to be a human being who does it, because it's a human being who did the sinning. Yet that sacrifice not only took care of our sins, but sins of every creature that God ever created.

All of them, including those angelic ones. Where is lesson 23? It's right back there. It is. We're blind, too. Well, your sister did. Well, then my sister's in trouble. Let me pray and then I'll go get them. Father, how we thank you for your word and we thank you for the grace that we live under. As we learn to, as we grow in the knowledge and grace of your Son, the Lord Jesus, we learn that it's only by faith that we do that in your word. We thank you and we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.