Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
We're going to put a time line up on
the screen for you to look at. A Biblical timeline.
We're going to come across this number
430 years in this chapter today.
We're going to look at exactly what what means.
This is a little... a lot of information on this
particular slide, but we're just going to look at 3 different things. Where the red arrow
is, that's Abraham, Abraham
lived. He lived about 2,000
BC. So Adam was about 4,000BC,
Abraham was 2,000BC,
Jesus was just 'C', [chuckles from audience]
and now we're AD. D..D
No, umm but Abraham was about 2,000
BC. Now a promise was given to Abraham.
A promise was given to Abraham that through
his seed, the world would be blessed.
430 years later,
the Law was given. The Mosaic Covenant
that came through Moses. So
Abraham lived about 2,000BC,
Moses lived about 1500BC,
and there was a block of time between the
Promise that God gave to Abraham,
and the giving of the Law. That amount of time
was 430 years.
So we're going to talk about that today.
But the whole set up is, what is the relationship
of the Promise to the Law,
we can ask that in reverse, what is the relationship of
the Law to the Promise?
Then we're going to ask this question:
What's our relationship to the Promise,
what's our relationship to the Law?
So Abraham about 2,000 BC, God gave him
a Promise. Isaac was that child
of Promise. 430 years later,
God gives the Law. Which takes
precedence? That's the question. Richard?
[Richard] Remember the fly paper? Anybody not here last week?
Fly paper. This is fly paper.
This is the Galatians trap. This is what we talked about last
week. If you want to put yourself under Law,
as Paul would describe it, if you want to suffer from the evil
eye, [chuckles] I love that phrase, the 'evil eye'.
Somebody staring at you. You're going to be
locked into the fly paper, and it's going to be a lot bigger than that.
Remember last week, I told you I could've brought a much larger piece of
sticky paper? Because they make this stuff to catch
rats. Big. Thankfully
I've never had to pick up one of those.
That was the first part of this 'all people will be blessed'.
conversation. Paul recognized
that people were getting caught up in the Law. The Judaizers
had come to town, and had said, "Oh no, no, no, no,
"Jesus is a nice guy and all. We really believe
"in Him. We really, really do. But in order for you to be saved,
"and Jesus would have meant this, because Jesus was Jewish,
"He would have told you, if He had been here long enough, and had remembered,
"it was one of the bullet points He didn't get to. That you have to become a Jew in order to
"be saved." And Paul says,
"No, no, no, no ,no. Never
"Never, never," That's what was going on last week.
So, this...and..you know... he didn't split the
his letter up into the ways we're splitting up, it was just a letter. He just
continued the argument into the next
verse. Fifteen. The Law and the Promise.
Well, let's go to the Lord before we dive into this.
Jesus, You have done things
that even though You've told us, we still have trouble
getting it. We have Your words,
Your own words, we have the Holy Spirit's words,
through the apostles, we have
this Bible, the Old Testament prophets, we even have
the Law that points to You. And still,
still we get it wrong.
Please help us to start
listening to the Spirit as He changes us from the inside out.
Because if we don't, we are going to live
really miserable lives. We thank You in
advance for doing this; we thank You for being here, for leading us,
and we leave this all in Your hands. In Jesus name, Amen.
Okay. "Brothers and Sisters
"let me take an example from everyday life.
"Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant
"that has been duly established, so it is in
"this case."
You can't see this in English.
The meaning is there, but the strength of it is not.
When he says the phrase,
"set aside" versus the phrase
"duly established," there's only
one word for each of those, and
each of those two words is the exact
opposite of the other word. It's like night
day. Black/white; cold/hot.
The direct opposite.
It's a very strong statement. You're not going to set aside, you're not going to do away
with a human covenant
that has been properly established. Right? Everybody sign
on the dotted line, it's a legal contract, it's going on. Notice
though, that he adds something here. Or add
to. Or
add to. We constantly
try to do that in human covenants, in contracts, right?
Always trying to add an extra clause here, or clause there.
The writers is what they're called in the music industry.
You know, there's the standard contract where, you know, 'we'll pay you
you know... 14 life times of money to come here
and sing," and you say, "yes, I'll do that,"
then there are the writers. "I will have only
"green M & M's and I will
"only have a particular brand of bottled water. And I will.."
we start doing that. We start adding things to the contracts.
And Paul is explicit here, not only
do we not set aside covenants, we don't
add to them. This is just human stuff.
So, if we understand this,
really in the human realm, what is the trouble we're having
in the spiritual realm? What are we constantly doing
we're taking a covenant, we're either applying it where it doesn't belong,
or trying to add to it, we also
try to take away from it. Right?
Remember what Paul said in chapter one? If you
added to any part of the gospel,
it is no longer the gospel. No longer
the gospel. Same thing applies here. We've got the promise,
and the Law. We're going to see that in just a second. If you try to add to the Promise,
or take away from the Promise, it's no longer a Promise. If you try to add to
the Law or take away from the Law, it's no longer the Law. Neither of them
can be what they were created to be. We have to take
God's word for it. Jesus' word for it. Peter's
and Paul's and John's and James' and everyone else's word for it.
This is true, anything else
is false. Okay? So he starts
this off really strong.
You can't set aside or add to
the covenant.
If that's true in the human case, what about the spiritual?
"The Promises were spoken to Abraham and to
"his seed. Scripture does not say, "and to seeds", meaning many people,
"but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ."
How many sons did Abraham have?
Many.
The two we hear about are
Isaac, and Ishmael.
Then he had a whole bunch more. After Sara died, he got remarried.
But the
promise was given to Isaac.
Not to all of his offspring, to Isaac.
And then to Jacob,
and then to Judah, okay?
It was always just one of the offspring. And this eventually got
to where? Jesus.
So the promise was given concerning Jesus.
Only Jesus.
Interesting that this word promise is taken
away from the idea of negotiation.
When you think about dealing with your kids, and you ask
them to promise that they'll do homework?
Usually inherent in the promise,
is a negotiation, 'If I do my homework, or if I practice
the piano or whatever it is, then I'll get to watch TV,
or go outside and play with my friends or whatever. Are we agreed? Okay
I promise.' That's not the kind of promise we're
talking about here. It's not about negotiation. Remember what
we've talked about with Abraham's covenant.
God came to him and said, "I
"will make of you a great nation. All people will be
"blessed through you," and when He finally got around to promising
him the land, He put Abraham to sleep and made
the covenant with Himself. Ring a bell?
When God was looking for someone with whom
to make the Covenant, there was no one else equal with Him, so He made it
with Himself. New Covenant.
Same thing here. These promises were not the result of a negotiation.
between God and Abraham. They were simply the
results of God's saying, "I am going to
"do this,"
How strong was this? Even when Israel
came to be finally crossing the Jordon, and entering
Canaan, what did God tell them? "I'm not
"taking you into the land, the promised land, because you're
"such fine people, you are stiff necked people,
"There is not one day when you do not rebel against
"Me. I'm taking you in here, because I made
"promised to take you in. I told your father
"Abraham that I would bring you back to the land.
"and so I am doing that." That's the kind of promise God makes.
We're just the opposite. We're always, you know, looking for the
quid pro quo. [mocking] What's in it for me? If you'll do this for me, I promise...
to do this for you! This is God stuff, not
human stuff. Okay? So "What I mean is
this: The Law,
"introduced 430 years later, does not
"set aside, cannot negate the covenant previoiusly established
"by God, and thus do away with the promise.
It just can't.
"For if the inheritance depends on the Law, then it
"no longer depenes on the promise; but God in His grace gave it to Abraham
"through a promise."
That little phrase, "in his grace"?
That word is the word
that is usually translated as forgiveness.
between humans. Alright?
I am supposed to forgive you, as God has forgiven
me. Well, the way God forgave me is to cause divorce to occur between
me and my sin. The relationship is broken, never to be
created again. Never to be seen again. So what do I do?
I can't separate you from your sin. But what I can do,
is allow grace to flow from me, to you.
and forgive you. It's the same idea here. God
in His grace, Grace is flowing out of him to Abraham
He gives him this promise; this promise of grace
"Law can never supercede grace,"
Covenant was previously established.
God established it. So if God then brings a Law
and He did--to Moses, He brought a Law,
then there is nothing about the second thing
that can take away the meaning of the first.
The second must be a subset of
the first. If you'll remember, a month or so ago,
I gave a talk here called "Beginnings" it was a whole series
and then the plan was one of those. This graphic is from that
talk, and I added something to it. So remember we had
an Eden. Perfection. Innocense.
God asked Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply.
To fill the earth; and then sin comes.
They rebel. They stopped
walking by faith, and they invent
the trap of the knowledge of good and evil. The fly
paper has been sprung. We now
are born coated with it. Wrapped up in it; trapped in it;
dead in fly paper. Bible calls
it the Law of Sin and Death. So we get this
covenant with Adam, that, you know, through your offspring,
all the world will be blessed, The way God says it is that
this serpent is going to be the most hated thing, and it's going to strike
at this descendant's heel, but the descendant
will crush the serpent's head. That word
translated 'strike at' in one case, and 'crushed'
in the other, is the same word. Its meaning is context
dependent. The lesser thing--the serpent in this case,
can strike at, and even manage to bite the heel
of the Promised One. But the Promised One is so great,
the Promised One will crush its head, will kill it.
okay? But still, it's still a covenant of
Loss. You were perfect, you were innocent,
you had everything, you have chosen to reject me
I have to honor your choice, you have lost the indwelling spirit and that
now you're going to see what loss is all about throughout the history of the world.
Then Noah comes along and finds grace in the eyes of the Lord, and
is saved out of the flood, again, God doing all of this.
God makes a covenant with him that says, 'Never again will I destroy
"the earth by a flood of water,"
Then Abraham comes along, I mean, there's hundreds of years here.
Someways, thousands of years going on
Abraham comes along and receives a promise.
The promise was given to Abraham how many times?
How many times did God tell
Abraham that all families of the earth would be blessed
through your offspring? Three times. Three
times. When God speaks once,
worlds are created. What happens when God speaks three times?
He's pretty serious about this promise.
Then He repeated it again to Isaac, and again to Jacob.
Five times!
This promise is given.
Then Moses comes along, and God says,
to Moses, "I need you to lead these people out,"
Moses was the perfect man at a perfect time for the perfect job.
Moses was
as weak as you and I are. He started off
all the wrong ways. Killing people. "Well, I'm doing it
"for You, Lord," No, you're not, you're doing it for yourself.
Moses the bully.
Right? What did his own people tell him? Wha...why...
Why should we listen to you? I mean if we disagree with you, are you going to kill us, too?
So, Moses has to leave and learn humilty and grace
for 40 years. He needed every bit
of those 40 years to survive the next 40.
Was the promise
given to Moses?
No. To whom did the promise flow?
From Abraham to Isaac,
to Jacob, to Judah.
Then to David.
Moses was of the tribe of Levi. Nothing
in either the Law or the previous promises, that
says that the tribe of Levi is going to birth
the Messiah. The only thing the tribe of
Levi got to do, and it was incrediablly important, was to represent God
to the people. The Law came through them.
So, in terms of bloodline, the Law
given to Moses, could not supercede given to Abraham.
Yes, he was a Jew;
a descendant of Jacob, but that's not what
where the critical promise flows.
The promise flowed through the tribe of Judah, eventually coming
to David. I mean, even when we read this, when Isaac was
giving his last blessing, he told Judah, that the sceptor would
not depart from you.
And then David comes along, and God tells him the same thing; then Jesus comes
along and is demonstrated by both Luke and Matthew to be a descendant
of David. So, when you're
looking at these covenants and these promises and all of that, you must
look at it in the context in which they're given. So the Law could not
supercede the promise. The Law could not do away with the promise.
So,
why then, was the Law given at all? What's the point?
of this?
It was added because of transgressions.
until the Seed
to whom the promise referred had come.
It would be better
to translate, 'it was added because of'.
To say it was added for the sake
of
We'll see why in just a second.
To say it was given
"The Law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator.
That means to be ordained, or put into
effect.
So again, this is God stuff. This is not
human stuff. So we've
got the Law being given for the sake of transgression
and its given, or ordained
through mediators; through angels and mediators. Moses had
himself talked about angels in the context of the Law,
Deuteronomy when he's giving his final blessing to the people. Referring them to the--
actually three mountains, that were involved in the whole Law
giving thing, and he talks about the miriad of heavenly hosts.
that were around at the same that God was giving the Law
so that angels were there to shield the people from God.
In essence, God gave
the Law through those angels, to Moses, who was the mediator. So, a mediator
look at this, implies more than one party.
But God is one.
Another reason why the Law can't supercede the promise.
The Law required a mediator. Moses was that mediator.
God's not talking about mediation when He talks to Abraham.
Is a picture beginning to form?
About how critical this argument is? Why Paul is explaining
what he's explaining? Judiazers were coming
in amongst the believers and saying, "Oh no, no, no, no, no. You gotta be a Jew"
and Paul is saying, "No, you do not need to be a Jew,
"You need to walk by faith".
"Is the Law, therefore, opposed to the promises of God?" Logical question.
This is one of the questions that gets asked
at People to People all the time. They think that we're throwing out the Law;
that we hate the Law! That we're antinomians, to coin the word.
The Law is not opposed to the promises of God.
It had a different purpose. If Law had
been given that could have impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the Law"
The Law was never intended to give life.
It could not give life. It could
represent life. I am God. I am perfect.
Here's what perfect looks like: There are no gods before me.
There are no images that can represent me. Or no words
that you can use that can appropriately define me.
I rest. You don't. I created families,
you destroy family. And on and on through the whole thing.
Representing what holiness means, what a perfect God demands
of us. Of course we
can't keep that. We fail at the first one, because doggone
it, I'm more important than God, just ask me.
Alright? Isn't that our default response? [mocking] Well I shouldn't
have that happen to me! Or, I should have gotten that, I deserve it!
Well, who says?
Well, my contract says; my Law says.
How can your Law supercede
the promise given by God Himself? okay?
But,
"Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin
so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given
"to those who believe."
Law was given for the sake of transgression.
The Law was given for the sake of
transgression. So the word, God's word,
at that point of Law, locked everything
in the world, people, places, things, everything
locked it up together with sin,
that is, with the Law, who
describes what sin is to us;
and in just kind of put it in
a room all by itself.
Do you see what's going on here? Umm,
Life and righteousness
are tied together in the previous verse.
If a Law could give life,
then righteousness would've come. Well, obviously, righteousness can't come through Law
so life isn't coming through Law. Life and righteousness
through Jesus. But the Law is there, and the Law is there because
you and I, and everyone else in the world, everything in the world,
is held captive
to this Law of Sin and Death. And the Law
itself is bound up with us.
Locked away.
Again, the Law couldn't
do what it wasn't design to do. But it did perfectly
what it was designed to do.
This is why Paul is begging these people
not to put themselves under the Law.
Because to do so, means to completely negate everything Jesus has done
for us. So, here we are, held
captive, we're locked up in prison. The Law is in prison with us,
keep that in mind. The Law isn't outside,
the Law is in prison; we're all locked up together.
Until Jesus.
Until Jesus.
So that, what was promised.. what was promised? That all
people of the earth would be blessed. So what was promised
and given through faith in Jesus, might be given to those who believe. Notice the
play on words there? How do you get the promise?
So, how do you do that? So you, well it's given through faith in Jesus.
It's given to those who believe. He's just saying the same thing twice.
He's just emphasizing it. In case you were wondering, the Promise is
received by faith. It can never be received by Law.
So,
we have the complete picture. Jesus at the beginning,
spoke the world into existance.
He's God. Oh my goodness! Everybody turn
around real quick. [applause]
[applause]
[chuckles]
[Speaking to Bob Davis] Looks like one leg's a little longer than the other one, Bob.
[chuckles from the audience] Oh okay!
Nice to see him again! So, we've got at the beginning Jesus, He's the creator
and He speaks everything into existence. He creates a perfect world, Adam and Eve
mess it up, and then over time, God keeps showing us these
little pictures and making promises, and instituting covenants
and He finally gets down to this last covenant, that is so
strange, it's unlike anything else. Cause He says, "you know, I'm going to make
"a covenant with you, and it's not going to be like the one I made with Moses, because you guys just messed up.
"I am going to do something," Then He just leaves
it there. Just leaves it
sitting in Jeremiah.
Jesus shows up. Becomes a man.
Fulfills the Mosaic covenant, in a way that no other man
could possibly do. Fulfilled it.
How did He fulfill it? By behaving well? No! By becoming
sin. He took everything that you and I deserve,
and took the punishment, so that all of us locked up together with
Law, were killed, in Jesus.
Not literally, you know what I mean.
Were killed in Jesus, and by dying, we were separated
from the Law. That's where
the divorce came in. Right? We were tied up, locked up
together with the Law... with sin. With sin and death,
hopeless. Trying our best, and ocassionaly getting a glimpse of God
and going, "Well, Lord, you know, it seems you've got my best interest..
at..at..heart, so I'll trust you" and God says, "That's all I'm asking"
Just trust me! Wait, wait for it. it's coming!
He asks us to do the same thing.
I mean, we've got Jesus, and you see there that, because of Jesus,
this New Covenant was just laying in Jeremiah doing nothing,
is instituted. Now we're not Law anymore.
Now it's grace. All of these things happen in the gospel
goes to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the whole earth!
And what is it's purpose? Jesus is its purpose.
So we're not done, yet.
God asks us to wait. To respond by faith.
Trust me, it's coming.
Trust me, it's coming.
The Law couldn't do that.
The Law could point out what was the problem,
but it couldnt' fix the problem.
Remember, the Law in a real sense, was given in response to the knowledge of Good and Evil.
We've all figured out what good and evil are, and now how in the world are we going to
deal with it? Well, we can't.
Well, we can't, and the Law proved that to us. Then Jesus came;
and He did, and He proved it to us,
dealt with it once and for all.
So,
"Before the coming of this faith," (here it is) "We were held in custody
see? Under the Law. Locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.
What an incredible thing God did for us!
He locked us up in
custody, under Law, until
the faith that was to come would be revealed.
Did this faith come? yes.
Yes. Did the
grace come? Yes. Who was the grace?
Jesus. So Jesus is grace,
Jesus is faith. Right? Author and perfector of our faith.
He's promised to finish what He started.
Philippians 1:6, "He who began this work,
"is going to bring it to completion in Jesus."
So we were held custody
What a wonderful thing God did there.
He didn't just let us run amock. He didn't let Israel
run amuck. Right? The Mosaic Covenant was a covenant of preparation.
Israel has been 400 years in slavery,
and God creates a nation out of them.
Illiterate slaves.
Created a nation out of them by giving them this covenant. Sure
He locked them up with the Law and with sin.
But if they hadn't done that, if God hadn't done that for them,
Israel would have been no different than the Canaanites that they came in to
replace, who were offering their children to sacrifice
and who were killing each other right and left, who had nothing
because they were so lost. God said, "no, I'm not going to let that happen
"to this people, because this people is going to be where Jesus comes.
"So I need them to be special. I'm going to define them in a special way."
And He did. And He gave it to
Jews. He didn't give it to Gentiles.
So why do we Gentiles
you know, looking around, "What should I do today, Lord?"
[mockingly] "oooh! There's a Law! I'll pick that up!"
That's my Law now! What do you think God does?
He just shakes His head and laughs.
"Okay, Richard, have at it! I'm right here with you.
"I haven't left you, you're still my child. But when you're tired
"of ...you know... of ...doing that. Let me know."
and then He doesn't go silent, He says, "Are you tired yet?"
"are you tired yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"
"How much longer, Richard? "
Lord! I'm failing again! "No, you're not
"failing. You're looking at the Law. Stop looking at the Law and look at me."
It doesn't matter what the Law is, remember? It doesn't have to be the Ten Commandments,
The worst legalists I've ever known were New Covenant, New Testament
legalists.
When most people look at the Ten Commandments, most are honest enough
to say, "phhht! I can't do that. But here's what I can
"do" [chuckles] so we create pages and pages of things we think we can do.
We can't do any of it. That's because
it's not the Mosaic Law that we're held captive
with, the Mosaic Law is the instance that is the
best definition of it. We're held captive of the Law of sin and death.
inhereited from Adam, we're held captive. So it
doesn't matter what Law you're looking at, you're held captive by Law.
You're freed by Grace. So,
the Law was our guardian, until Christ
came that we might be justified by faith.
Talk about justified first. We mentioned this a little bit last week. To be justified
means to be declared righteous. I can't
declare myself to be righteous, someone else has to declare me righteous.
That's God's job. Well, to be declared righteous means
to be..declared you're in a correct standing with God.
You're in relationship with God that He makes possible
your conformance to who He is, and who He's making you to be.
This is all of God, and remember righteousness, a couple of verse
back is equated with life. The Law cannot bring righteousness, the Law
cannot bring life. So if you want to be justified, if you want to have
righteousness, then you must
come by faith to the person who has that stuff.
Jesus. The word guardian;
people don't know how to translate this one. Anybody here
a music teacher, ever taught music?
Anybody here a teacher? Okay.
What does the word pedagogy mean?
[chuckles]
Pedagogy has to do with how you teach
someone to do something.
So, my piano teachers had learned
piano pedagogy. They learned how to teach the piano.
That's the work
for guardian. The Law was
our pedagigoes, was the teacher;
the tutor, the person who was responsible for
keeping us safe, until something else happened. It was a word
that was used quite often especially men, who
jobs it was to keep children safe
on the way they...wherever they were going. Eventually
the children came of age, and they were freed
from the guardian, to be an adult. As long as they were
children, they had this guardian, this pedagog.
So now that this faith has come, we are no longer under
a guardian. That was the exact argument
the Jews were making. It's the exact argument you hear time and time
and time again. Are you saying, that if you accept grace
you can just run off and do anything ...are you saying I can cheat
on my wife? You could just kill with the impunity...
Did we ever say that? Ever once? No!
How is it, that the love of Jesus Christ poured into
us, to others, would ever suggest
***? Adultery? Lying? Anything
else in the Law/ It would never do that. But that stuff is
such a tiny subset. That stuff was there to lock us up
and protect us until Jesus could come, and then Jesus came,
He divorced us from that, because He fulfilled it completely, and now
we get to walk in the way of the Spirit.
If you think that walking by
faith in the Spirit is going to free you to run amuck,
you don't know Jesus. You're not even saved.
It's a bold thing to say. But if you're
asking questions about... "what... you mean..?"
You haven't even considered what Jesus did, let alone who He is.
I mean, you've made Him to be some interesting person in history.
But He's not the Lord of the universe, He's not a savior.
Not if you're going with that kind of
argument. We're no
longer under that guardian. That guardian has done its
job, we're done. We have been birthed into New Life.
Thank you, Jesus indeed.
So,
In Christ Jesus you are all children of God
through faith. Not just Jews, but
all of you. Right? All families of
the earth, all peoples of the earth will be blessed through Abraham offspring.
Abraham's seed, Jesus.
For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ. To be
baptized into something is to be made one with it. It's what you did to die
cloth. You took cloth that was probably some yuck cloth,
color of brown or beige or something. You put it in dye
to turn it blue, or red, or yellow. It's no
longer plain cloth. It's not even plain
cloth with color added. This is now gone
from plain cloth to blue cloth. You
have gone from outside of Christ; lost;
to clothed with Christ; identified
with Christ. Made one with Christ.
Christ is everything,
the Law can't speak to that.
Can't even begin to speak to it. It can point you to Jesus and say, 'that's where you
'need to go, That's the guy you need to talk to," Well once it's done that,
it's done. and the poor Galatians,
were getting themselves all tied up in this goo,
and failing to see that having begun
in the spirit, that they had to end in the Spirit.
There's a
mistranslation here, unfortunately. There is neither Jew
nor Greek. Literally, the word is Greek.
Remember last week, the word for people, Gentiles, is ethnos?
From where we get the word ethnic. So that
there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female,
for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Let that sink in.
Everyone of us that has accepted Jesus by faith
is one with Him. Therefore,
we are one with each other.
That's what grace does. Law can only separate us.
Even though we're still locked under Law, locked in a room,
to protect ourselves and others, we still
are separated; we're not one. We're individuals.
What happens when you cram a bunch of prisoners, too many prisoners,
into too small of space?
They try to create more space by killing each other.
Rats do it, prisoners do it; we all do it.
What's the biggest problem with standing in line
at the airport? There's too many people in too small of space.
Doggone it, I deserve better.
If you
belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs
according tot he promise, and we've come a full circle.
If you belong to Christ, you are Abraham's seed;
oh my goodness!
The promise referred to the seed. Jesus!
But if we've come to Him, if we are clothed in Him,
then we are Abraham's seed, just like Jesus
Are we Jesus? No. But He has
clothed us, He has identified us with Himself to the extent
that we are Abraham's seed, and therefore, heirs according to the promise.
All people will be blessed through you. Am I
a member of all people? Yes I am. If I
have accepted Jesus, then I am an heir of that promise. According to
that promise. Everything in that promise belongs to me,
and to you, because it belongs to Jesus.
And you and I didn't do a single thing to earn it.
All we've done, is a whole bunch of things which should
have killed us long ago. Yet, Jesus divorced
us from that. He died once for all. He came back to life
to bring eternal life to all of us, now.
and we have such trouble waiting
waiting, waiting, and waiting, until
the end has come and we're finally glorified.
How weak are we?
The Jews didn't have anything we've got. Other
they had the Law. Something that kinda pointed forward to this Messiah,
you know... these images.... these shadows...
we have the reality. We have Jesus Christ.
We sit around, ohhh
poor me. Why don't I have
what I deserve? Why don't I do better
why don't my kids do what I tell them to do?
[laughingly] why didn't you do what your parents told you to do?
[laughs] you know?
Instead of saying, "I have been baptized
and clothed with Jesus Christ Himself, therefore,
I am Abraham's seed and an heir."
Oh my goodness, folks. This is ...how do we live?
how else COULD we live? By grace!
Jesus has started it, He's going to finish it, He's going to glorify
it, and we're going to spend our... the rest of eternity, whatever
that means. We don't know what it means. But we're going to spend the rest of it worshipping Him.
Going places with Him, and listening to Him
teach us, and listening to angles teach us, and whatever else God
has planned for us; because we're heirs!
Why would we ever go back to the Law?
Well, because that's what people who have indwelling sin in their flesh, do.
So we have a choice to make, every day of our lives, every
moment of our lives: Do I walk by faith in this obvious grace,
or do I walk by sight in something that killed me so many years
ago, and will never bring me to life?
So, a summary. Way too much information.
Again, this chapter, go home and
spend some time with it. It's mind blowing.
The promise given to Abraham supersedes the Law given to Moses. Period.
It's just the way it is, so don't try to make either of them
something they're not. The Law was given because of transgressions
and held us in custody, acting as our guardian until Jesus.
Praise God.
Praise God for that. But now that Jesus
is here, we no longer that guardian. Right?
A guardian is someone who helps you from the outside,
Jesus does it from the inside out.
From the inside out. The promise given
to Abraham has been applied to us, his heirs.
Therefore, all peoples have been blessed.
All peoples have been blessed. So Paul has taken the arguments
of the Judiazers and deconstructed them
point by point, step by step, demonstrating that not only are they
silly arguments, but they're dangerous
arguments. If it was just silliness, you could ignore it.
But because they're so dangerous,
guard every moment of the day. If you're not feeling blessed,
if you think you've missed the blessing of Jesus Christ,
then it's only because you're looking at a Law of some kind.
If you look to Jesus and accept Him by faith,
His grace will take care of the emotions.
Absolutely will take care of it.
I don't think there's anything better than that. Trust me.
I tried it the other way. I know some of you have, too.
The way of Law is the way of death.
The way of Jesus is the way of Life.
Let's pray.
Lord, we
tend to look at Paul's argument here, and we go,
"well, you know, those poor Galatians, they weren't very
smart, the Jews--the Judiazers
had such an easy time fooling them, getting them off track,
and we're so much better.
But when we stop and think about it for a second or two,
we realize, that we're just as bad.
Why it is that you continue to
put up with this, is beyond me.
Why it is, you don't require me to beg and beg and
beg for forgiveness is beyond me.
But you don't require that. All you ask of me
and everyone here, is to accept Jesus.
Keep our eyes fixed on Him,
so He can finish in us, what He started.
What a God. What a Promise!
Amen.