Becoming the Christian You Are — Major Ian Thomas

To add my word of welcome to that which has already been extended to you. Now we're going to turn away from our hymn books and to our Bibles and continue to explore the real spiritual content of our faith, the Lord Jesus himself.

The Gospel’s Content Is Jesus Christ Himself

We'll go to the third chapter, the Epistles of the Galatians, Galatians chapter 3, and remember as we were continuing to explore the three principles, the form of scripture is the word of God, the character of the word of God is gospel, and the content of that gospel is the Lord Jesus himself.

And gospel both redemptive and regenerative. God's provision not only that we might become Christians, but God's provision that we might be the Christians that we have become. And remember crooked walls hate plumb lines, because where there's a plumb line around, a crooked wall knows that somebody's going to start meddling and try to put crooked walls straight.

And this we saw to be the role of the law. For whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, to what end? That we might be congratulated by God on our performance in satisfying the demands of that law?

No. Whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law that every mouth may be stopped, all the world become guilty before God, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. For a plumb line can never make a crooked wall straight, all that a plumb line can do is prove a crooked wall crooked.

And that's why we saw the better hope was brought in, God's redemptive and regenerative plan fashioned in his heart in the eternal ages of the past. And the law was added because of transgression. Four hundred and thirty years after, God pledged his name, his honor, and his glory, that salvation should come to you and to me exclusively through his son, the Lord Jesus, born of Mary, of the house of David, of the tribe of Judah, and of the seed of Abraham.

Any doubt about that in the record? For what God said in mercy to Abraham, last verse of the seventh chapter of the book of Mike, has become the truth to a silent generation. There is none other name given among men under heaven whereby we may be saved.

Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. So we see that the law is not the means whereby you and I may be justified before God, the law is our cool master.

Do you remember Galatians chapter 3 verse 24? The law is our cool master to bring us to Christ, to expose our need that we may be convicted of our sin, recognize ourselves to be the sinners that we are, and embrace the Lord Jesus for the Savior that he is, and came to be.

Who came? We believe it not because the Bible says he did, but we believe it because the Bible said he would. I remember as a fourth school in London, northwest of London, I attended for several years a school that was called the William Ellis School after it's founded.

It was at a place called Gospel Oak, just a little district to that part of northwest London. And my class teacher was a man called Clark. Now I don't know what your custom is in this country but in England anybody called Clark automatically earns the nickname of Knobby.

It's always Knobby Clark, you see. So of course we called him Knobby. And I remember one morning while he was looking over my shoulder as I was working, he noticed that the pencil that I was using was about five-eighths of an inch long and very chewed, because I had chewed it.

And for some strange reason he didn't consider that that was adequate. I was perfectly happy but he said, Thomas you need a new pencil. Something which I was completely unconvinced. In point of fact I had a very deep sentimental attachment to that pencil.

You don't chew a pencil for that long without developing a deep affection for the object of your endeavor. So he said, you need a new pencil. You come to me in the morning break, quarter of an hour, 20 minutes when we normally would be out in the playground, I'll give you a new pencil.

That was the promise that he made to meet my needs, that he recognized and I didn't. Well when the morning break came I didn't give a thought to that pencil because I wasn't adequately convicted or convinced of the need.

So when I got out of course I played some football, probably had a fight with one of my chums, went down to the tuck shop, bought an ice cream and before I knew the bell was ringing and I was back in school.

No new pencil. So I went to work again with me old stud. But at four o 'clock when it was time to go home, in order to get to the exit we had to go down what we called the library into which various classrooms including mine open.

And as I went down through the library I passed the door of my particular classroom where I hadn't been during the course of the afternoon and standing in the doorway there was Nobby. And the moment I saw Nobby I remembered the pencil.

And of course the moment I remembered the pencil I pretended I hadn't seen Nobby. But the trouble was he had seen me. He said Thomas. Oh yes sir. With that innocent look that you only find on the face of a guilty boy.

What about that pencil? Oh sir. I forgot. Oh you forgot. I see. Then you'd better just come in here. So I went in there and he shut the door. Then he opened the lid of his desk and out of the desk he produced, not the promise, something a little longer, just about three feet.

Not the promise but the law. The law which he very successfully added after he'd given the promise. Why did he add the promise after making, why did he add the law after making the promise? Well because of transgression.

You see the law three feet of it was administered to remind me of the need of which I wasn't previously convinced. And after he had added the law to remind me of my need that he could only satisfy by giving me the promise he gave me a new pencil.

Now I had both. The reminder and the pencil. And I went home with both. The one didn't last forever. In fact neither did. But one kept me standing. Now you see this was God's plan. The promise was given to us in the very chapter in which there is recorded the fall of man into sin.

Genesis 3:15 and the Promise of Redemption

Of this we reminded ourselves yesterday. Genesis 3 15. When God addressing himself to Satan, that old serpent the devil, said I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, between your feet and her feet.

Genesis 3 15. Referring of course to the birth of the Lord Jesus, the seed of the woman. Born at Bethlehem, miraculously conceived, fashioned in the borrowed womb of the virgin girl. And the feet of Satan, the Lord Jesus in the age of John, turning to the scribes and the Pharisees, those who engineered his death, the religious leaders of his day and generation, in all their pride and self-righteousness, said the Lord Jesus to them, you are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.

He was a murderer from the beginning, that's why you, his children, want to kill me. Because your humanity is available to him so that he by character can be incarnate in what you do. He is a liar and the father of lies, that's why you reject me as the truth.

And the feet of the serpent, the scribes and the Pharisees, engineered the death of the seed of the woman. They bruised his heel, but he through death destroyed him that had the power of death, even the devil, and delivered them who through all their lifetime had been subject to fear because of the fear of death, and set them free.

And this this pledge by God recorded for us in Genesis 3 15 was confirmed by God in Abraham, when choosing this Chaldean whose name was Abraham, he said I'm going to change your name to Abraham because I'm going to make you the father of many nations.

He begat, by divine intervention, Isaac who begat Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, who begat the 12 tribes, one of which was Judah, and of the house of David of the tribe of Judah, nearly 1 ,900 years ago, that seed of the woman was born in fulfillment of the promise.

But in spite of all that, in spite of the fact, as we're told in the book of the Revelation chapter 13, that the Lord Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, God had to add the law, because of transgression.

That it might be our schoolmaster, and leaders to Christ, and shockers into an awareness of our deed, our guilt, our bankruptcy, that we're born dead in trespasses and sins, that that law might lead us to Christ.

That we might then be justified, not by the law, or our performance in satisfying it, but through faith, through faith. Christ has redeemed from the curse of the law's condemnation. You glance at that third chapter of the Epistles of the Romans again.

Justification Through Faith, Not Through the Law

Romans chapter 3, verse 19, we know that what things whoever the law saith, except to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, without exception. All the world, without exception, may become guilty before God, exposed, that is to say, and subject to his judgment.

Therefore, verse 20, by the deeds of the law, by your or my performance in seeking to satisfy its demands, there shall no flesh be justified in God's sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. The righteousness of God, God's righteousness, without the law, is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

Even the righteousness of God, which is made available to you and to me, through faith in Jesus Christ. This righteousness, God's gift through faith in Christ, is unto all and upon all them that believe.

For there is no difference. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely, not on the basis of merit, not as a reward, not because of our performance, but freely, God's unmerited gift, grace, g-r-a-c-e, God's, which is at Christ's expense.

All have sinned, come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, on the basis of that redemptive transaction where he was made a curse for us.

For cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. Verse 25, whom Christ, God, hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness, for the remission of sins of the past through the forbearance of God.

To declare, verse 26, I say at this time, his righteousness, not your righteousness, not my righteousness. Declare his righteousness, that he, God, might be just, in that he is condemned sin in the person of another, and the justifier of those for whom he died in their place.

The justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. So God is both just and justifier. He is just in that in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom our sin was sentenced, executed, his righteousness has been satisfied.

Just. He doesn't just blink his eyes and pretend we haven't sinned. God isn't just a sentimental old daddy sitting on a damp cloud looking through thick glasses for his naughty children. Let's forget it.

God is righteous. He's just. And the wages of sin is death. And it was executed in the person of the Lord Jesus, vicariously on your part and mine, exactly what happened to Adam when he fell into sin.

It wasn't just a sentimental gesture. It wasn't the tragic end of a noble life. He wasn't a great idealist who drifted a disaster. It wasn't simply God showing how far he would condescend to try and woo us and win us back.

Nothing like that. Stern business was accomplished in the day that God executed in the person of his own beloved Son, in the sinlessness of his humanity, all his rightful wrath and judgment upon man's wickedness.

He died that we might be forgiven. And now he lives to make us good. God is just. God can only remember our sins no more for his name's sake, because his name is Jesus, who saves his people from their sins in the person of the one who incarnate, incurred deliberately and voluntarily his own person, that death that has already occurred, as we shall discover tonight in Adam.

And now he's the justifier, the justifier of any boy, any girl, any man, any woman who believes, who will come and say, Lord Jesus, I recognize now what happened to you when you died on the cross. There happened to you, when you died on the cross, everything that should have happened to me.

Thank you. And the moment you do that, the Lord Jesus introduces you to the Father and says, Father, please accept this person. For my sake, I have paid their debt. Please reckon that they are totally and finally and eternally acquitted.

They don't deserve it, Father. I know that. We agreed on this before ever I went into the world. But thank you that you're prepared, not for their sake, but for my sake, to accept. And remember that every boy, girl, man or woman who is accepted in the beloved by the Father is redeemed, not out of God's faithfulness to them, but out of God's faithfulness to his son.

For if you and I come to the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus, and he refuses to accept me as a forgiven sinner because he died in my place, he would be betraying his own son, who lay down his life a ransom for me.

That's why, of course, if the Father God in heaven sent his son to die for you and for me, that our sins might be forgiven. There isn't a chance in all eternity that you will ever get into his presence any other way.

If God considered that your lot and mine was such that it demanded the atoning sacrifice of his son upon the cross, what chance is there in eternity that God will accept you and me on any other day? There is none.

Absolutely none. The cross and Christ's death there 2 ,000 years ago was God's final and timeless verdict upon your and my fitness for heaven in ourselves. Acts 13, Acts 13, verse 38. Be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man, through this man, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin.

What man? That man, verse 28, in which the religious leaders in his then generation found no cause of death, yet desired Pilate that he should be slain. That man. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him in the Old Testament, the volume of the book where his atoning death was foreshadowed, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a sepulcher.

That's their part, the seed of the serpent. But, verse 30, God raised him from the dead. That man. We declare, he continues, Paul on this occasion, verse 32, we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second psalm.

And this isn't a Christian message, this isn't a Christian verse, this isn't a Christmas text, this isn't a Christmas verse, this is a resurrection verse, this is an Easter verse. Thou art my son, this day have I forgotten thee.

Forgotten wherefrom? Not forgotten this time in the womb of Mary, forgotten from the dead. God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second psalm.

Thou art my son, this day have I forgotten thee. And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption, he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David, wherefore he saith also in another psalm, thou shalt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption.

David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption, but he whom God raised again saw no corruption. It is this man, and be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man who was crucified, whom God raised from the dead, who ascended to be with his father, who now shares that glory that had always been his in the eternal ages of the past and will be his for the eternal ages of the future.

Christ’s Resurrection and the Forgiveness of Sins

The word who was in the beginning with God, was God, and by whom all things were made, this word that was made flesh and dwelt among us, in whom John says, we beheld the glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and full of truth.

Be it known unto you that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. So Jesus Christ came for sinners. That's why you'll never be a Christian if you're not a sinner. You can't be. But of course a Christian is a forgiven sinner, and if you're not a sinner, you don't need forgiveness, and therefore Christ didn't come for you.

So don't call yourself a Christian. By him, verse 39, by him all that believe are what? Justified. Just as if I'd never sinned. By him all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.

For the law made nothing perfect. What the law could not do through the weakness of the flesh, because there's a principle in you and me that when the Lord says, the law says thou shalt, says I won't.

When the law says thou shalt not, says I will. But the Lord Jesus, when he died upon the cross, there was able to justify you and me from all that the law could not justify. That's the role of the law.

Christ, our Redeemer, whom we neglect and whose salvation we spurn, until the Holy Spirit graciously takes the law, the plumb line, and convicts us of our need, and shows us that we're the sinners that we are, and we need him for the Saviour, then came the Lord.

Are you redeemed? Have you allowed God, through his dear Son, to justify you? Or are you still claiming to be under the law, demanding by your Creator to be judged on the basis of your performance in satisfying its demands?

Then you're lost. Because the issue has already been settled. God himself has settled it. By the deeds of the Lord there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin.

It can only prove you guilty. Now, at this stage in particular, we leave our hymn books and go to our Bible. I'm always very sorry for a brother like this who has to choose hymns from your hymn books.

They're pathetic. They're sweet, they have lovely melodies, they're sentimental, but they're tragically and diametrically opposed all too often in their content from the revelation that God has given us in his Word.

Now, if we could stop here, that would be fine. Lots of our hymn book songs would be okay. But you see, the gospel doesn't stop here. Turn back to Galatians chapter 3. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the Lord, being made a curse for us.

For it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. That, that we might get to heaven. Is that what it says? No. That we might not go to hell. No. That our sins might be forgiven. No. It is absolutely true that our sins can only be forgiven because he has redeemed us from the curse of the Lord.

But that isn't why he died. It was that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles, all unbelievers, through Jesus Christ, on the grounds of the redemptive act that he accomplished. That, further to explain, we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit through faith.

Redemption Leads to Regeneration and the Indwelling Spirit

The purpose for which Christ has redeemed us is that reconciled to God, our sin forgiven, there might actually be restored to us what was forfeited in Adam, the Holy Spirit, the life of God. Now, of course, in the beautiful picture language of the Old Testament, this is exactly what the children of Israel missed when God redeemed them out of Egypt.

How did he redeem them out of Egypt? By his strong hand through Moses. Beneath the shadow of the shed blood of an unblemished lamb, a bone of whose body was not under any circumstances to be broken. Exodus chapter 12.

Because that unblemished lamb whose blood was shed and painted upon the doorpost and the lintel was the Passover lamb, and Christ, our Passover, 1 Corinthians 5 -7, has been sacrificed for us. And when the soldiers came out, because of a Sabbath day that was to follow, the Passover Sabbath, they smashed the legs of one thief, and they smashed the legs of the other, but when they came to the Lord Jesus, they found he was already dead.

Why? Because he gave up the girl. He laid down his life. So not a bone in his body was broken. That's why that Old Testament picture that foreshadowed the one whom John the Baptist described as the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world, not one bone of the body of that little lamb was to be broken.

And beneath the shadow of the shed blood of that little lamb, under the hand of Moses, they were led through the Red Sea, out of Egypt, a picture in the Old Testament always of the unregenerate, unconverted, unsaved, what in the New Testament sometimes called the Gentile, out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, beautiful picture of our identity with Christ in death and resurrection, to be poised upon the threshold of a new life, an onward march that would take them through and in, to heaven?

To heaven? Uh-uh. To Canaan. Which nowhere, anywhere, at any time, ever in the Bible, speaks of heaven. So you see, we don't tread into Jordan's, you know, murky waves, suddenly to wake up the other side in heaven.

Nor does he feed our hungry souls with manna, manna for the wilderness. Did they eat any manna in Canaan? No. That was the land flowing with milk and honey. There were the grapes and the pomegranates.

Here was the golden corn swaying in the breeze. Christ, in all the fullness and power of his resurrection, that is the birthright of every redeemed sinner. Not just in heaven, but here on earth, on the way to heaven.

At Canaan, the fullness of the Holy Ghost, the life of victory in Jesus Christ. I said, what did these people do for 40 years in the wilderness? Did they please God? No, he said, for 40 years you grieved me.

You rebelled and grumbled and fought and disobeyed and were idolatrous. You worshiped golden cards. You ridiculed my servant Moses. You ridiculed my servant Aaron. That's what they did in the wilderness.

So you see, Jordan is the day when we get off earth and into heaven, then the normality of the Christian life must be the kind of life, the quality of life, they enjoyed in the wilderness. It means that we, for 40 years, can grieve God.

That's what he expected on the way to heaven. But one day we'll go through Jordan. Would that be valid? Listen to this. In the book of Deuteronomy and chapter 1 and verse 1, these be the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel, on this side Jordan, in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red Sea.

And verse 2, there are 11 days journey from Horeb, where the journey began, by the way of Mount Seir and the Kadesh Barnea on the frontiers of Canaan. How long? 11 days. How long did it take them? 40 years.

That's worse than British Railway. It took them 40 years to do an 11-day journey. Would God please? No. No. They simply had to relearn at Jordan what they forgot at the Red Sea, that's all. God come unto Moses with this, bring them out that you might bring them in, but he dumped them in the desert and died there with them for 40 years.

Look at chapter 8 in the book of Deuteronomy. Chapter 8 and the third verse, God says through Moses, he humbled thee and he suffered thee to hunger. Where did he suffer them to hunger? In the wilderness.

What was God doing in the wilderness when he suffered them to hunger? He fed them with manna. So while God was feeding them with manna in the wilderness, he was suffering them to hunger. Why? For the simple reason that God refuses to satisfy a people in the wilderness when he's laid the table in Canaan.

Canaan. Canaan is not heaven. We are to be partakers of Christ now. Hebrews chapter 3, we are to be partakers of Christ now as they should have been partakers of Canaan then. And says God, keep the place there in Deuteronomy, but let me quote it to you from the third chapter of the epistles of the Hebrews.

Exhort one another today, daily, verse 13 of Hebrews 3, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the defeatfulness of sin, for we are made partakers of Christ. If we speak, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end, take thee brethren, verse 12, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.

Harden not your hearts, verse 8, as in the provocation of the day of temptation in the wilderness. When your fathers tempted me, proved me, saw my work forty years, I was green with that generation. They said, ye do always err in their hearts.

They have not known my way, so I swear in my wrath, they shall not enter into my way. They'll never know the joy of that for which I brought them out of Egypt. They're a redeemed people. Yes, they're saved out of Egypt, but they'll never take the good things that I intended should be theirs in the day that up by the hands of Moses I brought them through the Red Sea and poised them upon the threshold of that new journey that was to take them on and into the land of promise.

Jesus, in the fullness and power of his indwelling Holy Spirit, who died for us, the unblemished land, that whether we wake or sleep, whether on earth or in heaven, whether in the body or out of it, we should live together with him in all the overwhelming unspeakable plenitude of his divine presence.

That is Canaan. Are you still in Deuteronomy? Look at the twelfth chapter. This is by way of parenthesis. These are the statutes, verse 1 of Deuteronomy 12, and judgments which you shall observe to do in the land which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee to possess it all the days that you live where?

On the earth. The land is for now, not for then. But the tragedy you see is this, that the vast majority of truly converted men and women, boys and girls, who claim redemption through the death of Jesus Christ, are living between the Jesus that was and the Jesus that will be in heaven.

But they don't know the Jesus that is. In all the fullness and power of his indwelling Holy Spirit, through whose presence alone we rely that moral competence once more on earth, in the body, to discharge that office for which, having been created, we now have been redeemed.

So living between the Jesus that was, the historical act of the Redeemer who gets us out of hell and into heaven, and the Jesus who will be one day coming back in eschatological glory to take us to the place that he's gone to prepare for us, the average Christian lives, in the meantime, in a spiritual vacuum.

Setting it out for God down here, doing your best for Jesus, trying to live for Jesus, until at last you crawl into heaven on your hands and knees, covered with dust and blisters, and wait for them to thump you on the back and say, well done my good and faithful servant, you made it.

Now isn't that pathetic? Isn't that pathetic? Why did Christ redeem us? Why did God lead his people by the hand of Moses out of Egypt so that they could enjoy Canaan? When? On earth. On earth. Every step of the way.

If Canaan is heaven, I'll tell you where Moses is. Where? In hell. Did he ever go through Jordan? No. He died with those whom he dumped in the desert. Christ redeemed us that we might receive the Holy Spirit.

Christ redeemed us that the Lord Jesus and the power of his resurrection might come and reinvade our humanity. Christ redeemed us so that you and I might step out into every new day knowing that somebody lives within us, who as God in us, Christ living in our heart, is never ever less than big enough for any situation that can ever arise at any time.

So that we can reign in life through one Christ Jesus. So that we can be more than conquered. So that we can know a peace that passes understanding, staggers the neighbors. So that we can have a joy that passes knowledge.

So that that joy can be unspeakable. Note, unknown to man. Adequate to describe it. A love that passes knowledge. We're not just to get by somehow, but triumphant. Every day is to be the sheer adventure of enjoying that quality of life that the Lord Jesus described as more abundant.

It's life in a new dimension. It's superlative. So is it. The form of Scripture is the Word of God. The character of the Word of God is gospel. And the content of that gospel is what? Christianity? No.

The Beatitudes? No. The Sermon on the Mount? No. The beautiful example that he left behind 2 ,000 years ago? No. The content of the gospel is Jesus Christ himself. The one who gave himself for us, redemption, and the one who gives himself to us, regeneration.

The Christian Life as Christ Living in the Believer

It may be that some of you will pick up the book called The Mystery of Godliness, which is the second of the books that I've written, and I think you would find it quite helpful. But I use a diagram there, and sometimes folk at first glance think it's a little complicated, and put it down and say, now it isn't complicated a bit.

It does look like the nervous system or the blood system of a frog, I realize that, but it isn't. And I thought maybe it would be helpful in the context of what we have been saying, morning and evening, if I just built that diagram, which in itself, like all diagrams, is a little cold and impersonal, but could be helpful.

That line there, XX, represents this planet, this earth that you and I are living on, temporarily. And God, our Creator, in the triunity of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

It may be difficult for you to see that from way back. But some of us last night were discussing how God created us. And you remember, He gave us, in common with all forms of created life, a body. But not only a body that is characteristic of vegetable, animal, and man.

He gave to man, also, a soul. Mind, emotion, and will. That's the human soul. Man, body, and soul. And soul, mind, emotion, and will. Our behavior mechanism. So that we exercise our wills under the influence of mind and emotion.

Whoever controls your mind, whoever controls your emotions, controls your wills, whoever controls your wills, governs your behavior. So what you do, derives from whatever it may be that governs mind and emotion.

Precipitate it into action through will, in terms of this body. Okay? But we saw that God made all animals that way. But, He protected the animal kingdom, in a very unique fashion that some of us explored last evening.

Where the mind, a calculator, just like yours and mine, a memory that can retain your shape, and sound, and size, and smell, so that the dog recognizes when you come home, as we explained last night. When the door in the front is shut, the dog's got enough savvy to go around and sit the door in the back is open.

And having been told not to sleep on the best furniture, it waits till you go out before it does. Haven't you got a dog like that? Mind, emotion, a dog can be angry or friendly, it can be jealous, it can be amused.

Ever seen a dog grin? And it has a will. You take a dog for a walk, and let it off the leash, maybe if you're living somewhere in the country, and it strays, and you say, come here! It stops, but it's seen a cat.

And so it, you know, sort of wobbles a bit. One ear up, one ear down, a mischievous look on its face. What am I going to do, obey, or chase the cat? Much more fun. Come here! Oh, I see. Well, I'd better forget the cat.

And so it comes back with its tail between its legs. Now, all that's going on in the dog, you see. Mind, emotion, and will. But God has protected the animal kingdom, we don't have time now to pause upon this for long, because we've explored this thoroughly last evening, by an instinctive trust, with a rigid interlock between that instinctive trust and the animal soul, that protects it.

Mating seasons, feeding habits, migratory paths, building skills, none of them have to be learned by the animal, or insect, or fish, or bird. They're built in a computerized program, repetitive, year after year, generation after generation, century after century.

So there is a rigid interlock, a rigid interlock, between the instinctive trust and the animal soul, so that the law that operates in the animal kingdom is a law of compulsion. A law of compulsion. It can't behave any other way than that which has been computerized by the Creator, and built into it in the person of an instinctive, impersonal trust.

We call it instinct. And we saw that by virtue of this fact, the animal, when it behaves, is functionally satisfying to God, but not morally satisfying to God. Because by what it does, it's not saying anything to God, any more than your television is saying anything to you, when you switch it on, and it gives you the football match, or presents you with the news.