What the Bible Really Says About Law vs Grace Explained

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, an Oklahoma rancher and farmer. Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for over 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, again, it's good to have everybody back, and we're going to keep right on where we left off in Galatians chapter 3, and I'm always surprised I can get you away from your coffee and refreshments every time to come back for this, but for the benefit of those on television, we're just an informal Bible study, and that's why you see the coffee cups, and we take a break after every 30 minute segment. So I had a phone call again yesterday, and she said, I just feel like I'm right there in the studio. Well that's exactly what we want people to think. And she said, I just feel as though I know most of those people in that class. So you see, you people are making an impression more than I am. And again, I always have to thank those of you who come in to make all this possible. For those of you on television, of course, we like to thank you for inviting us into your home, and we always like to let it be known that all the past programs are available on video, or the little printed books, or the audio now. And if you're interested in any of those materials for a home Bible class, or Sunday school, or whatever, you get a hold of us and we'll send you the information. Right back to what we're here for, and that is to study the Scripture, and hopefully compare Scripture with Scripture. And as I've told my classes over all the years I've been teaching, always remember to look for what is not there, that you think should be there, just as much as it is to see what is there. Because a lot of people have got misconceptions about what is in the Book, and so we have to study it. Not just read it, but study it. And that's of course the main reason we teach, is to help you study on your own. Now we're down to verse 23, and remember I always like to go back a verse or two to give us a run at our new material. Ephesians 2. Verse 21 Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2. would keep it in its entirety, they would be righteous enough to be in God's Heaven, but no man can do it. So consequently, as we saw in our last program, the whole human race is under the condemnation that we are all sinners. Verse 22 says just that, the Scripture hath concluded, all, the whole human race, Jew and Gentile, under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. And remember believing is what? Faith. Faith is believing, and so the two words become synonymous. Now verse 23. Ephesians 2. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, because you've heard me teach it, you've heard others teach it, that all the way back to Adam, what was the one criteria for salvation? For anybody, faith. Faith began just as soon as God dealt with Adam and Eve after they had sinned. He had to take God at His Word. So what does this mean, before faith came? Without doing any violence to Scripture, and I hope it can enhance it, after the word faith, I like to put W-A-Y. Now I think that helps. Before the faith came, we were kept under the law. Now what do I mean by that? Because of what I'm always teaching. We're not under law, we're under grace, and grace says, keep the law? No, grace says by faith, and faith alone, plus nothing. And so I think that clarifies it, that before the faith way, where men and women could be saved by faith, plus nothing, without the law. But before that came in, we were kept under the law. Now don't brush off the meaning of that statement, under the law. I don't know if any of you have ever been under a heavy burden. You know when Iris and I were in Haiti a year or two ago, we were just amazed. They were unloading rice from one of the ships in the harbor, and they would take these huge 100 pound bags of rice, and lay it right on the shoulders of some of these poor little old women that you swore must be 90 years old, and they would just take right off with that huge bag of rice on their shoulder. Now most of us have no idea what that would feel like, but can you imagine it? That was a burden. Now we speak of the donkeys and the so forth of the ancient times as beasts of burden, because they were loaded down with their commodities. And again, most of us don't know what it's like to carry a burden. It's just something that weighs you down. But listen, that's what the Law was. It was a burden that just rested on the shoulders of the people that were under it, and they knew nothing of liberty, and they knew nothing except constant fear of it. Because if they picked up a stick on the Sabbath day, what was the result? Death. Not a slap on the wrist, but death. And that was the Law. So afterwards, or before the Faith Way, Israel was under the burden of the Law constantly. 24 hours a day they were under that burden of the Law. And then they were kept shut up under that, until the Faith which should afterwards be revealed. Now here again we come back to one of my favorite statements concerning Scripture, and that is that it's a progressive revelation. God didn't tell everything up in front. And so when He gave the Law, did He tell Israel and the rest of the world that one day Christ would die, and would all of a sudden send the world grace? No, He didn't. So here they went 1,500 years under the Law, and then progressively He reveals these tremendous doctrines of grace. And so these things, now in fact that's the Word in verse 23, and I want you to see that. Read it again. I think maybe I've confused it, but before the Faith Way came, we were kept under the Law, burdensome as it was, shut up, in other words with no ulterior way out, until the Faith which should afterwards be revealed. There is your releasing now then of something that's been kept secret. Now you know I'm always referring to Paul's use of that word. Come back with me to Ephesians, just a couple pages to the right, Ephesians chapter 3, verse 9. This verse just says it all in a nutshell, and I could give you a whole bunch of verses that all say much the same thing, but not one of them alone is going to say it like verse 9 does. Ephesians 3, verse 9. Ephesians 3. All through his apostleship, and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, or the secret, which from the beginning of the world, or the ages, or Adam, has been what hid where? In God, the same God who created all things by Jesus Christ. Now there is the reason it had to be revealed. It had been kept secret all the way up through the Old Testament. Not a word about God going to Gentiles with the Gospel of the Grace of God. As we saw a month ago in our last tapings, I think in the fourth program last month, we were showing how that now in Galatians 3, verse 14, that salvation now came to the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. You remember we went back and I showed all the verses in the Old Testament that back then it was supposed to be through Israel. Israel was to be the light of the Gentiles. Israel was to be the vehicle. But they dropped the ball. They rejected it in unbelief. And then what did God do? Oh He opened up the windows of heaven of grace through the apostle Paul, and revealed to that man the secrets that had been kept in the mind of God all the way up through the Old Testament economy. So now verse 23 is the last word revealed, and that's where we are. We're in a time that these things are now clearly put in place. I'm back to Galatians chapter 3, and so all these things were afterwards, after that period of Law which was from 1500 B.C. until Paul comes along in about 37 or 38 A.D. And all that time there was nothing of faith plus nothing, it was all under the Law. Now let's move on to verse 24. Looking at the fact that now grace has been revealed, but all these verses are so appropriate, this is exactly where we're coming from. Romans 15 verse 4. Romans 15 verse 4. For whatsoever things were written aforetime, all the things that were written back in the Old Testament, were written for our salvation, no, for our doctrine, no, for our learning. Now I had to explain to somebody the other day, I'm simplistic, I know I am. I said, Now look, would you expect one of your kids to suddenly jump into a university calculus class, and they had never had arithmetic in school? What ridiculous isn't it? Who would ever expect somebody to do calculus if they had never even learned the combinations back in grade school? Well see this is what we do with people. We take them right into the further revelations of Scripture without any concept of what went before. And then we wonder why they have no root, why their faith does not hold. They don't understand anything, ignorance, and we're all guilty of it. We expect people to just all of a sudden latch onto these things without any background. But look what Paul says, all these things in the Old Testament, and you can also include the Gospels now as far as I'm concerned, because they're all hooked to the Old Testament economy. So all these things were written before time for our learning, not for our salvation, not for our doctrine. That we as believers now through patience and comfort, the learning process is what kind of a process? Fast or slow? Well for most of us it�s a slow process. Maybe some can get it faster, but most of us a learning process takes time, repetition, repetition, repetition, and then we move on and get a little deeper, and repetition some more. Well that�s why we have to come through the Scriptures, and all of these things have been building and building, so that we through comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. Now back to Galatians chapter 2. Now then verse 24, wherefore, because of how God is dealing on a progressive revelation, wherefore the Law, now I know you have to be careful when you read your Bible, sometimes the Law speaks of that whole system of Judaism. The Ceremonial Law, the Civil Law, and the Moral Law. Sometimes that�s all lopped into one word, but here I think the Apostle Paul is making reference only to the Moral Law. The Ten Commandments are now referred to here as the Law. Galatians 2.4 Wherefore the Law, the Ten Commandments, was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. For 1,500 years Israel was under the Law, and it was a system by which God was training them, and teaching them, and hopefully bringing them to the place where they would be mature, understanding, believing Jews. That�s what God was hoping for, and it didn�t happen, but that�s what He was striving for. And so that was the purpose of the Law, to prepare the nation of Israel for a great opportunity, to be vessels, to be instruments that He could use to bring in the masses of the Gentile world. So even for themselves as a nation, the Law was a schoolmaster to bring them to the place where they could be justified, now not by law keeping, but by faith. Now you want to remember that all the way up since Exodus chapter 20, Israel was under the Law, and of course it was still the operation of faith that brought an individual Jew into a right relationship with God, but it was law and faith, and there was no such thing as faith plus nothing, as I teach. Until after the Law was totally, totally satisfied at the cross, and when Christ died, He satisfied the demands of the Law in my place and yours. So Israel for 1500 years was under this Law to bring them to the place where they could have believed who Jesus was, because all through the Old Testament the prophecies were looking forward to the coming of their Redeemer, and their King, and their Messiah. They should have, as you�ve heard me say a hundred times, they should have known who He was. They could have known who He was, the Old Testament was full of it. But why didn�t they? They were steeped in unbelief, that�s right, Saturday night we just hammered away at it. Why in the world didn�t Israel go in and take the Promised Land at Kadesh Barnea? God told them, I�ll drive the Canaanites out, everything is ready for you, you can go in and take their vineyards, their fields, their harvests, everything is all waiting for you. I�ll use hornets or whatever to drive the Canaanites out. Now you talk about a bomb that kills people, but it leaves everything intact, is it a neutron bomb? I�m not sure. God was way ahead of them. He had a system where He was literally going to remove the Canaanite population, but leave everything intact, and all they had to do was walk in and take over with God�s blessings. Why didn�t they do it? Unbelief, it�s awful. God said, there it is, and the first step of unbelief was, well at least let us send in some spies, and so God condescended, that wasn�t His first intent, that was never His first instruction, send spies and then I�ll send in spies. No, no. He said, go in and take it. But in their unbelief they said, well at least let us send 12 spies, one for each tribe. So God condescended, and if the spies would have come back, and they would have said, yes we can take it, and they would have gone in, God would have let them go. That�s what He intended. It was a valid offer, the way I always put it. But why didn�t they? Unbelief. Oh the horror of unbelief. Listen every individual that will one day end up in the lake of fire is going to be there for one reason. Unbelief. Unbelief. Oh the determination of their punishment, of course, will be according to the works that they have done, but the cause of their being there is one word, unbelief. And as I mentioned to the class Saturday night, why is even our own beloved nation almost like a flood turning their back upon this Word? Unbelief. Unbelief. The nation refuses to take this as the Word of God, and we�re suffering for it. But nevertheless, the Law was given that it might bring Israel to the place where they could recognize their Messiah, and believe in Him, and trust Him, and they didn�t. Why? Unbelief. Unbelief. And Paul just makes a big deal of it, especially in Hebrews chapter 3, and he over and over says why didn�t they get into the Promised Land? Why was God so provoked with that generation? I always point back a few weeks to Mount Sinai, and they had the golden calf, and that gross immorality that they were involved in. That isn�t what God held against them, but what did He hold against them? Their unbelief. And you go all the way back through Scripture, why was Esau such a grief of mind to his parents, Isaac and Rebekah? His unbelief. Because in his unbelief, what did he do? He went and married Canaanite women. You go back even a little further, Ishmael, what was basically Ishmael�s problem? Unbelief. You go back even ahead a little ways, the difference between Saul and David. Why didn�t Saul become the great king that David did? He was a lot bigger man, he should have been able to kill 100 men to David�s 1, but what was Saul�s problem? Unbelief. He even went so far as to go to the witch of Endor to get some information. And you see this all the way through Scripture, how that mankind refused to believe the Word of God. Now let�s move on. Verse 25, but after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. And again I�m going to ask you at least mentally to put the word W-A -Y after faith. But after the faith way is come, being saved by faith plus nothing in what God has said, once we come to that place in God�s economy in this progressive revelation now, then we are no longer under a schoolmaster. Now I hope I�ve got time enough. The schoolmaster that Paul refers to is not in the Jewish economy, it�s in the Greek and the Roman. And what the Greeks and the Romans would do, is hire a slave, and that�s what he was, he was a servant. And that servant was instructed and was under the demands of the Father to raise that child and tutor that child, teach that child so that at some designated point out in the future, whether he was 16 or 18, or what today we would say is probably 21 or whatever, but at some point in that young boy�s life the tutor would be able to say, �Master, this young man is now ready to come in and work right with you in your business. He�s got everything that he needs to know. He�s been well tutored, and he�s well prepared. Now whenever that father would now agree that the young man was ready to come in right with him in his business, or whatever he may be doing, and he actually went through a rite of passage, I guess we�d call it today, and it was called an adoption. Not like we think of an adoption of taking a kid from some other union, and legally bring them into this one. No, that�s not what the Scripture word adoption meant. It meant to be placed as a full operating son of the Father, on equal basis with Him in responsibility, and function, and everything else. Now that�s the term that Paul is using as a schoolmaster. This servant who had been hired and instructed to bring this child to the place where he could step right in and work with the Father. You get the picture? That�s what the Law was intended to do for Israel. to prepare them, and prepare, and prepare, and bring them to the place where when the Messiah would come, they were ready. And in faith they could have said yes, and a few of them did, but for the most part the nation rejected it. But they could have believed everything that the Christ was, had they been ready for it. But they were not. And so now then it comes over into our Gentile economy for you and I, and it still is a valid concept that the Law was given to prepare everything for the coming of the Messiah, that He could fulfill the work of the Cross. Yes He had to die, and He had to be buried, and He had to be raised from the dead for our justification. But now you see the Law has been satisfied, it has been completely paid in full through the work of the Cross, and now we enter in by faith plus nothing, because the Law has now done its job, it�s done, it�s been crucified, and it�s off the scene. Isn�t that beautiful? And all in the predetermined counsel of God. Now then I think we�ve got time for at least one more verse, and it�s still in Galatians chapter 3. Galatians 3. For you are all the children of God by keeping the Law, no you have become the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Oh listen, how many millions of so-called Christians are flying in the face of this verse and saying, �Yeah but, I�ve got to do this, I�ve got to do such and such, I think I�d better do this.� And you see this verse includes none of that. We become the children of God by one thing and one alone, and that is faith in the finished work of Christ. And that of course is what Paul is implying here. Paul never speaks of just believing that he was the Messiah, that was back in Peter�s domain. When Paul speaks by faith in Christ, he�s talking about that finished work of redemption. The fact that Christ died and was buried and rose again, which reminds me of another phone call I had the other day. The lady was all shook up, and she said, �Let�s get into the place where I just see demons in my home and in my family, and I�m up against the forces of Satan, and it�s just about to drive me up the wall.� And I said, �Lady, you know why? You have got your mind in the wrong places. You put your mind on the power of the resurrection, and all this demonic stuff will flee like chaff in a windstorm. Get your mind on the power of His resurrection, and forget about the demons, because beloved do you know that Paul never once, as far as I know, even uses the word of demons? If he does, I want you to tell me. But I don�t believe he even once uses the word of demons as being active in the life of a believer. But all he can talk about is the power of his resurrection. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma 74552. That�s Route 1, Box 760, Kenta, Oklahoma 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.