Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program. I'm glad
you could join us today. Now, today's message is part
of a series of messages that I've begun on the subject of
how to interpret the Bible. When we read and study the scriptures,
God's Word, what rules do we use in order to understand the
meaning, get out of God's Word what God would have us to understand? And this is the third message
in that series. And I've given eight rules of
interpretation. I won't repeat them all. In the
last two programs, I gave you a listing of them. But last week,
I dealt with the first rule of Bible interpretation, and it's
what I call the rule of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from
the dead. And what I basically wanted to
tell you in that message is that that's the rule of the gospel.
You could call it the rule of grace. But everything in the
Bible from Genesis to Revelation is Christ-centered. And I'll
be talking about that throughout this series. And then the second
rule that I'm going to talk about today is what I call the rule
of first mention. Or what some call the rule of
precedent. which speaks of the fact that
a biblical truth or concept, wherever it is first mentioned,
that holds true throughout the Bible and it doesn't change.
Now the title of today's message is The Unchangeable Standard
of Grace. the unchangeable standard of
grace. We're going to go all the way
back to Genesis. Genesis chapter 3 for our Bible
reading and for the verse. And we're going to deal with
the rule of first mention. Now, I do caution you on the
rule of first mention. There are some who try to Define
words or terms based on the rule of first mentioned and you really
can't do that now there there are some applications of it,
but a Word may mean one thing in the old testament and another
thing in the new or it may mean It may mean one thing in the
book of Genesis, but another thing in the book for example
of Malachi Context determines that that's another rule. We'll
be getting to but the rule of first mention has to do with
biblical truths and concepts, especially in the gospel. But
let me introduce it this way to show you exactly why I'm doing
this. You know, I read quite a bit
and do a lot of research and I read a lot of skeptics, unbelievers,
because the reason I do that is because I want to have my
faith challenged. I don't mind at all. You know,
some people get angry when their faith is challenged. But if you
claim to be a Christian, you should not get angry. You should
welcome that as an opportunity, because what it causes me to
do, it causes me to examine myself. and to go to the scriptures and
every time, in over 30 years of Bible study, I've always found
that my faith is strengthened and my knowledge, I grow in grace
and knowledge of Jesus Christ and it makes me a more able witness.
So don't ever get angry at having your faith challenged. I don't
like people who get angry at me because they disagree. It's
alright to disagree, but to be angry or something, that's not
right. But I read a lot of skeptics, and one skeptic I read, I wrote
this quote down, and he made this statement. He said, the
Bible cannot tell us anything of any real value because everyone
interprets it differently. Well, that's true as far as everyone
interpreting it differently, but it's not true that the Bible
cannot tell us anything of real value. The eternal truths, the
truth of salvation, just like I mentioned last week in the
rule of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, that's the gospel.
The gospel of God's grace, salvation by grace, and that's what I want
to deal with today on the unchangeable standard of God's grace. But
understand that the reason so many people interpret it so differently,
there's so many different interpretations, is because people fail to follow
any real sensible method of interpretation. That's why I want to give you
eight rules of biblical interpretation. But when you don't follow any
set rules of interpretation, that leads to inaccurate interpretations,
inconsistent, even illogical, and even naive interpretations.
Some wild things that come out of people's minds concerning
the Bible. So many different interpretations.
How in the world is anybody supposed to know what's right? The correct
interpretation. There's so much confusion. Bible
tells us that God is not the author of confusion. But you
know, and so many people believe it this way. They say, well,
you go read the Bible and you interpret it your way and I'll
interpret it my way. My friend, that is not any good
way to interpret scripture. All kinds of false doctrine comes
out of that. People's natural understanding,
all false doctrine taught today by so-called Christians can be
traced to a distortion of the meaning of a biblical phrase
or a word. And then people, a lot of times,
they come to the Bible with preconceived notions and they try to jam it
in Scripture, and that's a wrong way to interpret it. I wanna
know, I wanna get out of Scripture what God has put in. Understand
and there are rules. Well the rule that we're going
to deal with today as I said is the rule of first mention
and the title of this message the unchangeable standard of
grace And it goes all the way back to Genesis chapter 3 now
understand that the Bible itself teaches us that that God's plan,
purpose, and way of salvation by Jesus Christ, by His grace,
is older than this earth. It's older than creation. In
fact, Paul wrote to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse
8. Listen to this. He said, be not
thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of
me his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of
the gospel according to the power of God, verse nine, who hath
saved us and called us within holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was
given us, his people now, his elect, in Christ Jesus before
the world began. So this thing about salvation
by grace is older than creation. It is not God's backup plan. It is not God's contingency or
plan B. It was God's purpose, it is God's
purpose from the very beginning. Well, in the Bible, I want to
show you where the first mention of salvation by grace is. And it's after the fall of Adam
in the garden. You remember Adam? He was appointed
to be the representative of the whole human race as he stood
in the garden. God gave him the law and the
law basically was summarized in the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil and God remember God told Adam and Eve in Genesis
chapter 2 He says you can eat of every tree of the garden The
tree of life you could eat of all these trees, but there's
one tree that you can't eat up You can't eat the fruit of this
tree a lot of people say it was an apple. It probably wasn't
doesn't matter and What this is, is Adam going to obey God
or is he going to disobey? And that's the issue. Well, God
said, in the day that you eat thereof, in that day that you
eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that tree of
the knowledge of good and evil represents, symbolizes God's
sovereign right as creator, as ruler to set the standard of
right and wrong. Good and evil. You see, God is
God. And we're the creatures. We're
to be submitted to the Creator. And for man to exalt himself
and lift himself up, to set his own standard, to say, I know
what's best for me, rather than God my Creator, that is sin,
that's unbelief. Every sin. Adam disbelieved God.
Adam rebelled against God. And God said, in the day that
you eat thereof, you shall surely die. Or literally, dying, you
shall die. And we know what happened. Adam,
made of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he disobeyed
God. And the Bible tells us that when that happened, the whole
human race fell in Adam. Now, a lot of people don't know
that. A lot of people ignore that. A lot of people deny it.
But that's what the Bible teaches. Romans chapter 5 verse 12 all
sin when Adam sin as our representative and as a result of that We're
born in sin. We're born dead in trespasses
and sins and The Bible says as a result of that all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God So we fell in Adam Well,
is there a way of salvation? from sin Is there a way of salvation? from death and hell. Eternal
punishment, eternal perishing. Is there a way of salvation?
Well, it's not by the works of man. That was set up before creation,
even before Adam fell. We read that in 2 Timothy 1 and
verse 9. You see how God said that it's
not by works of righteousness, not by the works of man, but
according to his own purpose and grace given us in Christ
Jesus before the world began. So is there a way? Well, over
in Genesis chapter three, after Adam and Eve fell, Adam fell,
what does God do? Well, he pronounces a curse.
He pronounces three curses. Genesis chapter 3 First he pronounces
a curse upon the serpent and that's when he's talking here
in Genesis chapter 3 and In verse 13 he turns to the serpent. That's
Satan and the Lord God said unto the woman what? I mean verse
14 the Lord God said unto the serpent Because thou hast done
this Thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast
of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go.
Thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. You see, a snake
today is a reminder. of the fall of man in Adam. It's
not that there's anything inherently evil about snakes. We may be
afraid of them, may have a phobia of them, but snakes are symbolic
as a reminder of the fall, of our fall in Adam, that we're
sinners, that we're cursed on this earth by nature, and that
we cannot rise above the earth by our own works. And then in
verse 15, here's the first mention Christ Here's the first mention
of the person who is to be the Savior of God's elect his church
those whom God gave him before the foundation of the world and
He says in verse 15 of Genesis 3. I will and I will put enmity
that's friction hatred warfare and between thee and the woman,
and between thy seed, the seed of Satan, and her seed, the seed
of woman. It, that seed of woman, shall
bruise thy head. Satan and his work will be totally
destroyed. That's the head wound. That's
the destruction. And thou shalt bruise his heel. In other words, he's going to
be bruised. But he's not going to be totally destroyed. This
seed of woman. Now physiologically speaking,
the woman has no seed. Man has the seed. But here he
speaks of the seed of woman. What does that tell us? It tells
us that this person is going to be born of woman, not by the
aid of man, but in a miraculous way, And this miraculous way
involved, we see later on, the incarnation of Jesus Christ,
who is God in human flesh. The word made flesh dwelling
among us. Who is Jesus Christ? Well, he's
God in human flesh. He's perfectly God in every attribute
of his nature of deity. He's perfectly man in every attribute
of humanity without sin. He's Emmanuel, God with us. This is the kind of person, the
only kind of person, that could save God's people from their
sins. No, God could not, see there
had to be death. In the day that you eat thereof,
thou shalt surely die. We quote Romans 6, 23, the wages
of sin is death. The soul that sinneth must surely
die. Why? God is a just God. He must
punish sin. And in order for Jesus Christ
to die, he had to take into union with his deity a perfect, sinless
humanity. He had to be man to die. God
can't die, but this person who is God did die. And then as man,
he had to establish perfect righteousness. Man cannot do that, but God can. Man can't do it, but this man
who is God, this person who is man, did do it. That's to be
attributed to his deity. He's God, man. Now, that's the
first mention. It never changes throughout the
scripture. Whoever Jesus Christ is, According to any description
in God's Word from Genesis 3 15 on he is God man That's the salvation
of his people. That's the Savior well The Lord
goes on he pronounces the curse upon Satan and of course that's
by Christ the Messiah you and I can't defeat Satan, but Christ
did and can and then he pronounces the curse on woman and Then he
pronounces the curse on man, and if you look over Genesis
chapter 3 look at verse 20 He says an Adam called his wife's
name Eve Because she was the mother of all living Now before
this her name was not Eve her name was simply woman that was
what she was called she wasn't called Eve until after the fall
and after the first pronouncement of the Messiah who would be the
seed of woman and So now she's called Eve which means the mother
of all living That's what the word meant name means living
now understand this had Christ Jesus Christ the Messiah not
been set up before the foundation of the world and prophesied in
Genesis 3 15 to be the Messiah and who would conquer death and hell
and condemnation and bring about life by establishing righteousness,
Eve, she would not have been called Eve, the mother of all
the living. Without Christ, without God's way of salvation in Christ,
she would have been called woman. She'd have been the mother of
the dead. You see, without Christ, there is no life. That's the
way it is all the way through the Bible. So look at verse 21. Now how is this person, Jesus
Christ, going to do this work, this work of salvation for his
people, this work of redemption? Well, God establishes that by
doing something. And here's what he did. Now you
remember, Adam and Eve, after they fell, they were ashamed
of themselves, they were naked. And that nakedness is a, they
were literally naked and literally ashamed of their nakedness, but
it was also symbolic of the fact that they were now naked before
God. They were exposed to the wrath
of God. And in the Bible throughout,
we see that being naked is a symbol of having no righteousness. You
know, the Bible speaks of the righteousness of God in Christ
being a robe put on us, not literally, that's symbolic language. That's
symbolic of the imputed righteousness of Christ. Our sins, the sins
of His people, were charged to Him. His righteousness is charged
to them. And that's like putting on clothes,
a cloak of righteousness, a robe of righteousness, a wedding garment
of righteousness. All right? So Adam and Eve, they
put fig leaves, something that they got down and worked out
and sewed together themselves, the works of man. It won't cover
your sin, won't cover your nakedness, won't make you righteous. So
what did God do? Well, in verse 21, he says, unto
Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skin
and clothe them. Now how do you make coats of
skin? You slay an animal. What does that teach us? That
this way of salvation has to be through the death of a substitute. And I believe this was a lamb,
it doesn't say it, but we see later on Abel was, he brought
the blood of a lamb. And of course that's symbolic
of the death of Christ, the lamb of God. And out of that came
the coat of skin, which is symbolic of the righteousness of Christ,
the merit of His entire work of obedience unto death, imputed,
charged, accounted to His people. And so what is God doing? He's
setting down here by first mention the way of salvation by His grace
through Jesus Christ and the righteousness that He establishes
for His people. The book of Romans chapter 521
says this It says that as sin hath reigned unto death Even
so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life
by Jesus Christ our Lord. That precedent was set down right
here in Genesis chapter 3 and I believe that God was actually
establishing the sacrificial way of worship here that symbolized
and typified all the way through the scripture salvation by His
grace not conditioned on you or me but conditioned on Christ
who fulfilled those conditions and whose fulfillment of those
conditions equals the righteousness that I must have in order for
God to justify a sinner like me. That's the righteousness
of God in Christ. That's first mentioned here in
Genesis 3. It never changes. Next you see
Abel bringing the blood of a lamb That's the typical salvation
by grace. Cain brings the works of his
hands. Won't work, won't make you righteous, won't wash away
your sins. What can wash away my sins? Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. That's set right down here in
the first mention of it. You remember when God told Cain
in Genesis chapter 4, he said, Cain, don't be angry. If you
do well, you'll be accepted. Well, what is it to do well in
God's sight? Do what Abel did, bring the blood
of the Lamb. How do I know that? The first
mention of it. The Bible later on talks about
Noah in Genesis chapter 6. What's the first thing that is
said about Noah? It talks about in Genesis chapter
6 and verse 5, listen to this. It says, God saw that the wickedness
of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of
the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually. It repented
the Lord that he'd made man on the earth and it grieved him
at his heart. The Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the earth, both man and beast and
the creeping thing, fowls of the air, for it repenteth me
that I have made man. But, verse 8, now look at it,
but Noah was better than the rest of that bunch. Now is that
what it says? No. Doesn't say that at all. You know what it says? It says,
but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. That's the first
thing it said about Noah. Now what does that tell us about
Noah? Tells us that Noah fell in Adam. Tells us that Noah was
born in sin, just like all of us. Dead in trespasses and sins. It tells us that Noah was a sinner.
And you know how I know that? Because grace is for sinners. If you're righteous, and you
can make yourself righteous by your works, you don't need grace. So everything that is said about
Noah, it says there in verse nine, these are the generations
of Noah. Noah was a just man. That means
he was righteous in God's sight. He was perfect in his generations. That means he was upright. That
means he was morally perfect in everything that he did. In
fact, we see later on that Noah sinned. But anyway, it says he's
perfect in his generations and Noah walked with God. Now, how
did all that come about? Was it because Noah was a better
guy than the rest of the generation? Did it mean that Noah was less
rebellious? He exercised his free will and
accepted this? No, because Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. and grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life. How? By my works, by Noah's works. Noah built an ark. Did that make
him righteous? No. He was already there by grace
through Jesus Christ, his Lord, whom he looked into the future
by the promise of God for the Messiah to come. That's how grace
comes to a sinner. It doesn't come by your works.
The first mention of that back here in Genesis chapter 3 set
the precedent all the way through. And you remember when Noah got
off the ark, What was one of the first things he did? He built
an altar and sacrificed. Now, if Noah was righteous or
saved by his works, he wouldn't have needed to build an altar
and sacrifice. You see, sacrifice is for sinners. That's symbolic of Jesus Christ,
the sacrifice for sins, the substitute, the surety. If I'm righteous
already, you know Christ said that to the Pharisees. He said,
I didn't come to call the righteous, I came to call sinners to repentance.
Paul said this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom
I am chief. That precedent was set down right
back here in Genesis chapter 3. That's the law first mentioned.
And it never changes throughout the Bible. Noah found grace. Noah was a just man. How did
Noah, a sinner by nature, a sinner by practice, just like me, just
like you, how did he become just, righteous, not guilty before
God? It was through the blood of the promised Messiah. And
when Jesus Christ came into this world and walked this earth in
perfect obedience to the law and went to his death on the
cross, you know what he was doing? He was dying for old Noah. He
was dying for Abel. He was dying for Adam, those
who come to faith in Christ by the Holy Spirit. He was putting
away their sins just as promised. They were justified in their
generation, saved by the grace of God. But that work had to
be done. That death had to be accomplished
in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of His people.
This message, I hope, will help you in your understanding of
the scripture, and I hope you'll join us next week for another
message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, Write us
at 1-1-0-2 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia 3-1-7-0-7. Contact us
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today and may the Lord be with you.