 We're going to cover verses 15 through 22, and we're tracing Paul's argument here with respect to faith and the law, the Christian's relationship to the law, the relationship of law to faith. So we're going to be looking at that further in the night. Faith over law, Galatians 3, 15 through 22. And let's start by reading that together. So in Galatians chapter 3, beginning down in verse 15, the Bible says, brethren, I speak in the manner of men, though it is only a man's covenant, yet if it is confirmed, no one annulls or adds to it. Now to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made, he does not say, and to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, who is Christ. And this I say to the law, which was 430 years later, cannot annull the covenant that was confirmed before by God and Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. Well what purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one. Is that the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not, for if there had been a law given, which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the Scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for your wisdom in Scripture. Again as we pray to you often Lord, we are just so grateful to you for your word, and grateful to you for these truths that you teach us through your word. Thank you for making this clear, making this known to us Lord. Thank you for the opportunity to dig into this passage. I pray that you would just, by your spirit God, just expound to this to us Lord, make it clear in our minds and our hearts, God help us to apply it and live by it, help us to understand it Lord, so that we can walk by faith, live according to the faith, be justified properly, by your grace through faith. Lord we thank you Lord that you've given us this to go by, and that you teach us. Father we praise you and thank you for it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, faith over law, Galatians 3, 15 through 22. As we talked about last time, as a few weeks ago, we started looking at some of these passages in Galatians, and some of these are difficult, like you look at the passage and you start walking through it and you may say to yourself, what exactly is going on here? What is the text really saying? It's like Peter said about Paul. There are some things that Paul has said, which are difficult to understand, that foolish and ignorant people twist to their own destruction. These passages like this, that foolish and ignorant people can easily twist to their own destruction, and it just helps us to understand what these passages mean. And so what I want to do is, by way of introduction, sort of set up a context for this, and if you will, sort of a 30,000 foot view of what this is talking about, and then we'll get into the verses sort of one by one and go through what Paul's argument is here. So far in Galatians, what he has been setting up, and we know this to be true, is that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. Repentant faith in Christ is the means by which we're given salvation. It's by the grace of God. So salvation by faith alone in Christ alone. Here, we're going to be looking at the promises that God gave Abraham in the Abrahamic covenant with respect to the law and the Mosaic covenant. And that's sort of in this position, in this passage, what is at conflict here, so to speak, in the minds of these Judaizers, in the minds of these false prophets. There is no conflict between them in God's word, and no conflict between them in the understanding of Paul as he relates this argument. But for these Judaizers, this is tough, and they're trying to add lawkeeping to salvation, and so Paul is trying to make this clear here. But these promises made to Abraham are made to Abraham and given to Abraham on the basis of faith. And if we are, we'll talk about this, the spiritual seed of Abraham, then they're given to us in the same way, on the same basis. Promises received by faith focuses on what God does for his people in saving them, and we need to understand that. The promises given by faith, those promises given by faith focus on what God does in saving his people, right? The Mosaic covenant, laws, conditions for salvation, lawkeeping, focuses on human obedience, and so I want you to ask yourselves now, and think in terms of your own self, in terms of your own, if you're tonight here and you're a disciple of Christ, you've been walking with the Lord, and you want to follow the Lord, and you're trying to live by faith, look at your own circumstance, look at your own life, your own understanding of law, look at your own understanding of what grace is, what salvation by faith is, and hold you up to that standard. Are you living by faith in Christ such that you are completely focused on what God does for his people in saving them, or in some way have you slipped in, like we talked about last time, have you slipped in a mode of thinking where you're thinking to yourself, looking at your own performance, thinking about a right standing with God based upon your own obedience, based upon lawkeeping. When we say that we're saved by grace, we're saved through faith, we have faith in Christ, and it's our faith in Christ that wins the victory over sin. But like we talked about last time, sometimes as a disciple of Christ, you can fall into a trap or into a rut of looking at your own performance, looking at your own obedience, even looking at your own repentance, and looking at that in a way that is attempting to restore a right relationship with God by keeping the law, by lawkeeping, by works, by your own performance, by your own effort. And in doing that, you take your mind, you take your eyes, you take your heart away from the simplicity that is in Christ in that we have salvation in Christ alone, and it's faith in Christ that provides that for us, not our performance, not our lawkeeping. And it's like we talked about last time, a slippery slope and a difficult line to walk sometimes. It's not always easy. And we looked at how Peter had sort of slipped into that trap himself and had to be rebuked by Paul to snap him out, to snap him back out of that. And sometimes we need to do that ourselves. There's a Bunyan poem, John Bunyan wrote a poem I saw it was just interesting and it sort of illustrates this. When you come to Christ by faith, God gives you everything you need as a result of that faith, on the basis of that faith in order to live the Christian life. You don't come to faith in Christ and then turn around and start trying to live for Christ by your own efforts. When you come to faith in Christ, you live by faith, the just shall live by their faith, right? You come to Christ, you live by faith. John Bunyan wrote this poem, run, John run, the law commands, but gives us neither feet nor hands. Far better news the gospel brings, it bids us fly and gives us wings. That's a great little illustration of how this works. Run, John, run, the law commands. You see the law in scripture and it's do this, don't do that, right? Obey, obey, obey, obey, obey. And if you're not careful, you can look at that in terms of human obedience, human will. You're gonna grit it out and do that thing, right? And you're not thinking about faith in Christ. You get your eyes off of Christ. You start thinking about your own performance, your own law keeping, and no longer are you walking according to the spirit, walking in faith. Now you're walking in you. You're walking in your own efforts. So the law commands it, but then the law does not, we're gonna look at this later, does not give you the enablement that you need to live the Christian life. That doesn't come through the law. That comes through Christ, faith in Christ comes through the spirit of God in dwelling you. But in the gospel, the way that God saves is when you come to Christ on the basis of faith alone and Christ saves you and indwells you with his spirit, then the enablement to live the Christian life, which includes the enablement to overcome your sin, the enablement to live for him, to be pleasing to him, to pray the way that you should, to read the Bible the way that you should, to do anything that is pleasing to God comes through the vehicle of your faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. It doesn't come by your own efforts. And so when it says, the poem says, far better news the gospel brings, listen, this is great news. This is awesome news that when God saves, he takes someone who can't do anything and gives them the power to please him, to overcome sin, to overcome their own sinful nature they once had, God makes them a new creation. Far better news the gospel brings, it bids us fly and gives us wings. I've thought about some of the examples, some of the accounts of this that we see in scripture. You see, the one that comes to mind for me most often is the paralytic man. You have the paralytic man being dropped through the roof right in front of Christ. And Christ says, your sins are forgiven you and the Pharisees, well who is this that can forgive sins, you know? The real mean spirited Pharisees. And so Christ says, so that you may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins, arise, take up your mat and walk. Now, we look at those examples. We see miracles done in scripture. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for our instruction, right? Reprove correction, that's something we're to gain from that. These are examples in real life that have a spiritual reality attached to them. Now, I'm not exegeting this poem here, but this applies, I want you to see this. Far better news the gospel brings, it bids us fly and gives us wings. Can you fly? No, but in essence, when the Bible says repent and believe the gospel, you're being asked to do something you can't do. We have an understanding of total depravity. Total depravity means that every aspect of who we are has been corrupted, is depraved. And so the Bible says there is none who please God. None can please God, no one does good, not one. There is none righteous. There is none who seek after God, and yet you're commanded to seek after God with your whole heart. So in essence, the Bible, the gospel bids us to fly and because of our depravity, we cannot. But in the gospel, through the vehicle of faith, comes the enablement to do just that. It gives us the command to fly and then gives us the wings to fly with. And so when the paralytic man has dropped through the roof, Christ says to him, arise, take up your mat and walk, paralytic man can't do that. He's been paralyzed from birth. He can't get up and walk. But by faith in Christ, he strengthens his ankles. You know, he locks him in. He pops his weight up on his feet. He straightens his leg, locks his knees in, and he stands up and he takes off walking. That's the gospel. That's God's program of salvation. Takes wicked sinners in and of themselves that can't do anything and he transforms them by his grace in his mercy by the power of the Holy Spirit and enables them to live the Christian life. Now, if you're going to live the Christian life, you're going to live the Christian life by that enablement or you are not going to live the Christian life. And here's the difficult aspect to this. We see Peter before getting away from living according to this enablement, according to this faith in Christ that he once professed. Many of you, me, in my own Christian life, I've experienced this myself, where you get away from living according to the enablement of the Holy Spirit in your life, the enablement that comes through faith in Christ to live the Christian life, you get away from that and you start trying to grit it out in your own effort. You start looking at your own performance. You put the microscope in on yourself and there's nothing impressive to see there. There's nothing good there that's going to send you into despair. You're going to walk the Christian life by faith in Christ. And so here, now in Galatians 3, Paul is going to set up this argument for faith as opposed to lawkeeping. As we're going through this, you need to think to yourself also, where am I at with that? Am I going to throw all of my love for Christ, all of my devotion, all of my energy, all of my thought into faith in Christ? Or am I going to say I love Christ, I have faith in Christ, I'm going to live for Christ, but I'm going to put my energy into gritting it out over here to try to, yes, you should be making diligent effort to overcome sin. You should be gouging sin out of your life. You need to be striving even to the point of bloodshed to overcome sin. But all of that is done, every bit of that is done by faith in Christ and not in your own effort. And there's a reason for that. Now, why is all of that important? Why is that important to you? Why is that important to me? One of the reasons, if you're a disciple of Christ, that it's so important, is that Satan wants to discourage you that you can never be right with God because of your failures. We need to understand that. Satan wants to discourage you, wants to render the disciple of Christ ineffective for Christ, and wants to discourage you. That little spiral of despair that people fall into, that morbidity, that introspection is a debilitating depression, is a debilitating state that renders you less effective or ineffective for Christ. It sucks out your Christian joy. The joy of your salvation is gone. You're despairing over your own performance. You have no assurance. You're almost incapacitated to be able to live for him and love your brothers and to love the word of God and to love obeying him. It just sucks all that away, right? And so in this, this morbidity, this introspection, this downward spiral, Satan wants to discourage you that you can never be right with God because of your failures. But now, that's true. Because of our sin, we can't be right with God. But the gospel says that we're right with God on the basis of God's promises to his people, and in this case, we'll see through Abraham to his people, through Christ to his people, that we're right with God based on God's promises of life in Christ given on the basis of repentant faith. And that's the way that you are right with God. Now, that means living according to faith. It means coming to Christ on the basis of faith and then living that out on the basis of faith. If you're not walking by faith in Christ, you're not exercising faith in Christ in your daily Christian walk, then you're gonna be discouraged. You're gonna be discouraged in your own failures and you're gonna have that sound, that voice in your ear. You're not even saved. You're not right with God. You can't be right with God. You can't be a saved person. Look at all your failures over here because you in and of yourself have no enablement to live that life apart from the Spirit, apart from Christ. But as soon as you start living by faith and if you're genuinely living by faith, genuine living by saving faith in Christ, then through Christ, through the gospel, through the power of the Holy Spirit, God gives you enablement to live that life, then you see victory over sin. You see power. You see joy. You see genuine love. I mean, you live a victorious, powerful Christian life because it's based in faith. It's based in the Spirit's work in you. As soon as you're over here living in your own efforts, you quench the work of the Spirit in your life. You're in sin because you're not exercising faith and so the Spirit gives you no enablement. You fall into that downward spiral. Over here, you live by faith in Christ, walk according to the Spirit, putting death into the body. Over here, you're enabled. You're given the power that you need to overcome sin and this back and forth between that is something that we've got to grapple with. You've got to understand. As soon as you start feeling yourself, I've got to, what those situations have taught me in my own Christian walk, is that as soon as I start sliding into something that looks that way, now I spot it right off the bat. Like nope, I will not go down that road. I know where that road leads, right? And you stop it short and you start crying out to God and you cry out to God for victory over the sin. You cry out to God for joy in your Christian life. You cry out to God for that devoted heart, right? But you know where this leads over here? That's the downward spiral and you just don't go there. And a lot of times in the school of hard knocks, we're taught to avoid this over here by being thrown into this over here. And in being thrown into this over here, you learn how to avoid it, okay? And so I wanna give you some context for Paul's argument and then we'll look at this passage of scripture sort of in that context. Why that's so important to understand in a practical way in your Christian life. You have to live by faith in Christ under the power of the Holy Spirit. In Galatians 3 verses one through five, basically Paul sets up the argument, certainly Galatians don't have to keep the law to be saved. They have the spirit and it's the reception of the spirit that proves to them that they are the people of God. They don't have to live by the law to be saved. In verses six through nine, if they are the people of God, then they are the spiritual seed of Abraham, right? And what is required to belong to the family of Abraham? If you're of the seed of Abraham, what's required to belong to the family? You have to have the faith of Abraham. Salvation has always come through faith in Christ, always through faith. So if you wanna be a part of the spiritual seed of Abraham, a part of the family of Abraham, you've gotta have the faith of Abraham. That's verses six through nine. In verses 10 through 14, if you try to get there by works of the law, you are cursed. You can't get there by works of the law. If you try to get there by works of the law, you're cursed. The blessings that were promised to Abraham only come through faith, repentant faith in Christ. That's the only way that you get them. Now, what does that mean in terms of our sermon title tonight? Therefore, because of those arguments, Paul now is going to set up a case in verses 15 through 22 that the Abrahamic covenant and the promises made to Abraham are superior to the Mosaic covenant. Not that it does away with or annulls the Mosaic covenant and certainly not, we're gonna see that the Mosaic covenant annulls or changes the Abrahamic covenant. We're gonna walk through those. But that the Abrahamic covenant, the promises of God, salvation by faith is superior to the conditions set forth in the law, superior to the Mosaic law. Promises are superior to conditions. The Abrahamic covenant, superior to the Mosaic covenant. Therefore, faith is superior to lawkeeping, faith over law, we'll talk about that more. Then Paul asked two obvious questions as a result of that. Paul sets up the case that faith is superior to law and then he asked two questions. The first question that he asks is in verse 19 and that question is this, what purpose then does the law serve? That's a pretty obvious question. If the promises come by faith and don't come by law and if keeping law is a curse, well then why in the world is there a law? Now why did God send his law? We'll talk about that. The next question he asks is down in verse 21. Is the law then, based on this whole argument, is the law then against the promises of God? If salvation comes through the promise of God by faith in Christ and not through lawkeeping, well does that mean, is what you're saying then Paul, does that mean that the law then is against the promises of God or set against or opposed to in contradiction to the promises of God? And Paul answers that question, certainly not, we'll take a look at that. All right, so that's our argument. Salvation, the Christian life comes through faith. We've got those two questions that Paul's gonna very clearly answer and we're gonna go through each of these verses one at a time. But now, much of the time in scripture, it's good to step back and sort of take a look at the broad scope, the lengthier narrative of scripture to get an understanding of the sort of the knot hole that you're looking at in the passage you're studying. You gotta look at the broad scope of how things fit together, how things work together in order to see this more clearly. One of the problems that the Judaizers have here is that they're not doing that. The Judaizers believed in salvation by faith but it was salvation by faith plus keeping the works of the law. And the way that they got there, we don't have time to get into it tonight, the way that they got there was by taking out pieces of scripture and putting them together to sort of support this idea that they've got. They didn't look at the broad scope of how God has sort of operated through time, the long trail of progressive revelation. They just weren't looking at scripture that way. They sort of looked at it as a hodgepodge of little proverbs. Just take a proverb here, a proverb there, a proverb here and you put that together, you've got this theology and that is responsible for a lot of really gross error. Even in the church today, you could look at error that happens in the church today and sort of relate it to that. They're not seeing things from a broad scope. So I wanna give you, before we get into these verses, a little bit of that broad scope. Think about it this way. And maybe this is a helpful understanding of the use of the term law in Galatians and how we view the law. But if you remember in the garden with Adam, Seth and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. In the garden with Adam, God makes an agreement with Adam. God places Adam in the garden. Let's go back there, go to Genesis. I just want you to see this. Let's look at how this starts. Back in Genesis and look at chapter 2, verse 8, chapter 2, verse 8. That the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground, the Lord God made every tree that is pleasant in the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden from there it parted and became four riverbed. So we've got those rivers there and it names the rivers. But then look at verse 15. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. So I want you to think about this in this way. God puts Adam in the garden and he makes an arrangement, makes an agreement in a sense a covenant with Adam. And he says to Adam, here's the arrangements of the covenant. A covenant is made or an agreement is made typically between two people. We're gonna look at the Abrahamic covenant and we're gonna look at the Mosaic covenant in a minute. A covenant's made between two people. In this case you've got God and you've got Adam. Now there are conditions and there is an agreement reached. The conditions of this agreement with Adam are obey me and you live, right? Disobey me and you die. And he makes that arrangement with Adam and it's a covenant between God and Adam. Now, in that sense he gives this arrangement to Adam in this way, he says there's a tree in the garden. Eat, if you eat of the tree, that tree that I've forbidden you to eat of in that day you're gonna die. And the Bible says the soul that sins it shall surely die, right? We don't, this is not a foreign concept to us. So we got this covenant. Now we know that apart from Christ we are in Adam. Adam did not keep this agreement with God. He ate of the fruit and in that day he died. They died physically but they also died spiritually. Look really quick at Romans five. Let's tie this together with you, with me. Romans five and look down at verse 12. This is Romans five, verse 12. Therefore, just as through one man, that's Adam, sin entered the world and death through sin, and here it is, and thus death spread to all men because all sinned for until the law sin was in the world but sin was not imputed when there was no law. We'll go into that in a minute too. But now here you've got us, every person that's born in Adam when Adam sinned, he becomes the head of the human race. He becomes your representative. When Adam sinned, all sinned. Through Adam sinned, death entered the world. So this arrangement that was made in the Garden of Eden when Adam fell, we all fell in Adam. That's what the Bible teaches, okay? So this arrangement with Adam as our representative were doomed from the start. You were born in sin, in sin my mother conceived me, right, David said. So in Adam, we're all sinners. We cannot please God. We all fall short of the glory of God. So now that's the arrangement that God made with Adam. And in that, there is a works-based system or thought to salvation. If you obey me, you live. If you disobey me, you die. When God gives the law in Exodus 20, it sounds very similar. You obey these laws and you'll live. You disobey these laws and you'll die. It's a Mosaic covenant. We'll talk about that. Now, take that covenant that God made with Adam there, that covenant, that arrangement in the Garden of Eden. A system of salvation based on keeping works of the law. And in that system of salvation based on keeping the works of the law, we're all doomed. But now flip over here. We have another covenant, okay? And this arrangement is made between God and if you're in Christ, you're representative Christ. The same kind of thing. The covenant or the arrangements, the conditions of the covenant are the same. If you obey me and you live, disobey me and you die. The Bible says God requires righteousness in order to be right with God. You must have perfect righteousness to have right standing with God. Now Christ came and fulfilled all righteousness. Fulfilled all righteousness. Lived a perfect, sinless, holy life. And so Jesus Christ, fulfilling the covenant, fulfilling the demands for righteousness that God demands that he expects, now fulfills the agreement. So in Christ now, there is righteousness. There's life. He fulfilled the demands for righteousness, fulfilled the law. And so if you're in Christ with Christ as your head, then you have in Christ in essence, fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law yourself. You've done that in Christ. If you're in Adam, you're doomed. If you're in Christ, there's life. There's eternal life. There's the grace of God, the mercy of God. That's eternal life to you. So now here's this relationship then between grace and faith and law. If you look at law in Galatians and in other places, Romans being another example, as a system of salvation. When the Bible says there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. When the Bible says in Romans that we're no longer under law but under grace, it doesn't simply mean that we're no longer under the condemnation of the law anymore. It certainly means that. But it means that you're no longer under Adam as a way to get right with God. You're no longer under law keeping as a way to be right with God. You're no longer under that agreement, if you will. When you're in Christ by faith, you're in Christ over here, you're now under grace. You're not under law anymore. You're under grace. Because you see how looking at it that way, it doesn't do away with the law of God. The Christian is still obligated to keep the law of God. And we must obey God. But we do that by faith in Christ over here. If we have Christ as our head, then here's the reality of that now. Here's the great blessing of that to you, to me. Is that this over here, being in Christ, having Christ as our head, having His righteousness, His fulfilling perfectly of the law, imputed to us, comes completely, totally, utterly on the basis of the promises that God made to Abraham in Christ that are given to us on the basis of repentant faith in Christ. That makes sense. Over here in Christ, you are there by faith because God has made that promise. By God's grace. By God's mercy. By what God does. Over here, if you're over here, trying to make it gritting it out according to your works, you are cursed. You know, curse is the one who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to do them. You can't obey perfectly over here. You're done for. Death is spreads to you because that came through Adam to you. You are spiritually dead. Over here, by faith in Christ, you live. And He enables you to live the Christian life. You're able to live a life that's pleasing to Him. You have the righteousness of Christ credited to you. And it's all based on God and what God does. Not based at all on what you do. You can't do anything to get over here. You didn't have anything to do with your first birth. You're not gonna have anything to do with your second birth, right? You don't, there's no way. You can't move from one family to another. You can't go from one area to another. God does that in His grace and His mercy. And He chooses to do that based on faith in Christ. So, it's always, if you think, from the time of Adam, all right, in the garden, salvation has always been on the basis of faith. If you're in Adam, you're doomed. If you have faith in Christ, you're in Christ, Christ is your head, you live, okay? So now, what are the implications for that? The implication for that is you better put your faith and trust in Christ alone to save you. That's your only hope. And if you're over here, faith in Christ, and you start acting like you're over here, you're in that death spiral again, the doom spiral. You can't live that way. You've gotta live by faith in Christ, okay? So that gives you sort of a 30,000-foot view. Now, go back to Galatians 3 now, and let's look at, in terms of those two covenants, how that fits together, how that looks, how that works, look at Galatians 3, and let's look at some of these. First, in verse 15, brethren, I speak in the manner of men, though it is only a man's covenant yet, if it is confirmed, no one annuls rats to it. Now, what Paul's saying there is this. I speak in the manner of men. I'm gonna give you an example. Just in human terms, right? In human terms, even in a man's covenant, if we make a covenant together, like many of you have made a covenant with the bank for your mortgage, okay? And even in a man's covenant, someone can't come in and change or alter that thing midstream. They can't do it. It's ratified. Once it's ratified, once it's confirmed, no one comes in and annuls that covenant or changes that covenant. Even in human terms, we recognize that, right? Even in human terms, we recognize that. But he's gonna set this up as an example of how powerful this covenant is that God makes, because it's God that doesn't. Verse 16, now to Abraham in a seed where the promise is made, a seed is not say to seeds as of many, but as of one and to your seed who is Christ. God here is going to make a covenant with Abraham. Even in men's terms, we know that covenants can't be an old or changed. But now God himself is going to make a covenant with Abraham. And this has great implication for us, and we're gonna see that. Go back to Genesis 15. Genesis 15, and let's look at this promise that God made, this covenant that he made with Abraham. DFA cave is the word for covenant there. It's a, sometimes it's translated for will or a testament, but a person can change a will or a testament. Here it means covenant. This covenant is only ratified by God. What Paul is gonna do is he's gonna set up the argument that faith is superior to lawkeeping on the basis of some important principles. The first principle that he's gonna argue for is that faith is superior to law because God himself ratified this covenant personally with Abraham. And because God did that, it cannot be altered. It is permanent. Look at Genesis 15 and look down. Let's start at verse one. After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abraham in the vision saying, do not be afraid, Abraham. I'm your shield, you're exceedingly great reward. But Abraham said, Lord God, what will you give me? Seeing I go childless in the air of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. Then Abraham said, look, you have given me no offspring. Indeed, one born in my house is my heir. So he goes on. And now look at verse five. Then he brought him outside and said, God's talking to Abraham, look now toward heaven and count the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, so shall your descendants be. And verse six is pretty pivotal here, look. And he believed in the Lord and he, God, accounted it to him for righteousness. Then he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of earth of the Caldeans to give you this land to inherit it. And he said, Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it? So he said to him, now this is God, he's going to prove his covenant with Abraham. He's gonna attest to this. And in scripture, he's attesting it to us too. God's going to affirm this covenant with Abraham. He's going to give Abraham land, seed and blessing. And now he's going to attest to that. Look at verse nine. So he said to Abraham, bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove and a young pigeon. Then he brought all these to him, cut them in two, down the middle, and he placed each piece opposite the other, but he did not cut the birds in two. I heard it said that when you cut a bird in two, all you get is a handful of feathers. So you don't cut birds in two, you put one on either side, that's what he did. He cut the other animals in two. Then look at verse 11. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abraham drove them away. And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham, and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. Then he, God, said to Abraham, know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs and will serve them and they will afflict them 400 years. And he goes on there and they look down in verse 17. And it came to pass when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces. On the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying to your descendants, I have given you this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, and he goes on. So now, what is this showing? God is making a promise to Abraham. This promise is really important to us because this promise to Abraham applies to us if we are the seed of Abraham. That's gonna be very important. We need to make sure we're in on this promise that we are the seed of Abraham. But here's what he does. He makes the promise to Abraham. Abraham asks the question, well, Lord, how will I know that I'll receive this promise? And God ratifies or confirms or attests to the covenant that God makes with Abraham. Now he does that by taking the animals, splitting them in two, setting them on either side. That was a near Eastern way of validating a covenant. They would split an animal down the middle. They'd put the animal pieces on either side and then the two people making the covenant together would walk through the middle of those pieces, ratifying the covenant, sealing it, if you will. Here, we see God in the form of a smoking oven and a flaming torch walking through the pieces by himself. Abram's over here asleep. God walks through those pieces by himself. And what he's showing there is that this is ratified completely on the basis of God alone. Nothing to do with Abraham. Nothing to do with Abraham. It's completely on the basis of God and God's faithfulness, God's faithfulness to his word, God's faithfulness to his promise, it's based on God alone. There is utterly nothing that Abraham can do or needs to do or is conditioned on. It's unconditional. It's unilateral. It is completely rooted in God alone, this covenant. And so he's making a statement here in verse 15. The reason that faith is over law, that faith is superior to law keeping is because this is an agreement, this is a covenant that God himself ratified. It is only obligation being on God himself. No obligation placed on Abraham. The way that this applies to us today is it's the same way. There is no, if you are in Christ, if you are the spiritual seed of Abraham in this covenant with Abraham, there is utterly, utterly nothing that you can do to obligate God to that covenant, to participate in that. I mean, it is God alone based on the faithfulness of God, based on God's promise, based on who God is, based on his word that obligates, that ratifies that covenant, ratifies that promise. That's gonna be really important to us in a minute. So we'll look at that. This is showing that this covenant here with Abraham is superior because God himself ratified it. Look back in Galatians 3, now at verse 16. The next reason that this is so important is because all of the promises of God are in Christ, who Christ is, the relationship between God and Christ, verse 16. Now to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made. He does not say and to seeds plural as of many, but as of one and to your seed singular, who is Christ. Now really simply put, he's looking at scripture there, that's Genesis 22, he's looking at scripture and he is exegeting, Paul is exegeting an Old Testament scripture. The word seeds, sperm and the Greek can be used either for singular seed or plural seeds. And there's a lot of like debate and writing and back and forth on how Paul, gets the reasoning behind doing this. And there's a lot of commentators that just believe that Paul is doing something arbitrary here and that he's not being a proper exeget. That's a bunch of baloney. Paul here, the same Holy Spirit that is inspiring Paul to write this very verse is the same Holy Spirit that wrote Genesis 22, 18. It's the same Holy Spirit. He gets, the Holy Spirit gets the right to exegete however he wants to. And so he knows that the passage and the word in Genesis 22 is singular and it applies to Christ. And so here we see Paul under the same Holy Spirit drawing from that to make his argument. All of the promises of God are in Christ, for Christ and to Christ, all of the promises, this promise to Abraham, fully and completely in Christ, to Christ, for Christ, for the glory of Christ. All of it is in Christ. The question then becomes is are you in Christ so that you get in on that promise? Are you in Christ? If you're in Christ, the Bible says that you are co-heirs with Christ, right? You're rulers with Christ. But you've got to be in Christ. You've got to be the spiritual seed of Abraham to get in on the promise the covenant made to Abraham. The question is, is how do you get in Christ? You get in Christ on the basis of faith, not lawkeeping. We'll talk about that more. So next, this promise here that is given to Abraham, this covenant is fulfilled in its entirety only in Christ. It can be fulfilled no other way. If you think you're gonna get there by lawkeeping, it's simply not going to happen. Now that happens before and after the cross. Those before the cross are looking forward to the promises fulfillment in Christ. We now look back at the cross and see the promise fulfilled in Christ. But it's all about Christ, all about faith in Christ. It all points to Christ, all given to Christ. Now, because it's ratified by God and because the promise is made in Christ and fulfilled by Christ, there can be nothing that comes in the middle to annul that, look at verse 17. And this I say that the law, which was 430 years later, cannot annul or do away with the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ. See those things put together? Confirmed by God in Christ that it should make the promise of no effect. Now, what's that saying is this? You have the promise given to Abraham. It was 645 years from the time the promise was given to Abraham to the time that the law came. But God gave the promise a few times, didn't he? He gave the promise to Abraham. He gives the promise to Isaac. And then he gives the promise to Jacob. From the time God gave the last promise to Jacob, it was 430 years, exactly. From the time that promise was last given until the law came. The law came in the middle of those things there. And now what the Judaizers want to say, and sometimes inadvertently and subconsciously maybe even, what you and I may have a tendency to say, is that it's no longer based on the promises of God anymore. It's based on the promises of God plus what we do. Now, that in Galatians can look pretty very clear. We see, oh yeah, circumcision. Come on, we don't have to be circumcised to be saved. We don't have to keep the law that way. The dietary laws, come on. We don't have to keep the dietary laws. We say we sort of, it's all clear to us, right? But now it becomes more subtle when you apply that truth to yourself in this way. Yeah, it's just I'm not living as good as I should. I'm just, I'm struggling in this sin. We've talked about that before. I'm just, I'm having a hard time here. I mean, I want to overcome this, but it's hard. And there are times when I fall. And would a Christian really fall? The Bible says that sin's not to have dominion over me. And there's some times when this really feels like I'm enslaved to it. Or I feel like I'm really having a difficult time here. And you slip into this idea that, okay, well, if I'm gonna get rid of that, then I tell you what. And I've gotta do this, and I've gotta do this, and I gotta do this. And if I do these things, I'm right with God. But if I don't, I'm just gonna keep in this sin. And I'm not right with God. I can't be saved. And pretty soon that morphs into, if I do this, I'm lost. And if I don't do this, I'm saved. You see that progression that you get into sometimes? And in all of that, in all of that, like looking this direction and doing that, where's Christ? Where's your faith? Where's your focus on? Christ never came into that equation. You're over here having your own little pity party, dealing with your own sinfulness, trying to grit things out in your own effort. And the entire time, the only source of your power is over here that you've not even looked to. And so that's the trap then that we tend to fall into, right? It's by faith in Christ. And so here, this is lawkeeping all over again. Look at verse 17, this law that came in the middle, this Mosaic covenant. This is Exodus 20. This is God giving the law on Mount Sinai. Go to Exodus 20 real quick. Let's take a look at it. Exodus 20. This is focusing back on lawkeeping to be saved. It's like you are back under Adam when you think that way. We can't be saved that way. We're doomed in Adam. We're saved in Christ. So look at Exodus 20. And look, now God gives the law. Look, go back to Exodus 19. And then look here at verse one. In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day they came to the wilderness of Sinai. For they departed from Refideum and come to the wilderness of Sinai and it camped in the wilderness so Israel camped there before the mountain. Moses went up to God and the Lord called him from the mountain saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the children of Israel. You've seen what I've done to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people for all the earth is mine. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. So Moses came and called for the elders of the people, laid before them all these words which the Lord commanded him. So now he goes on in Exodus 20, they get the 10 commandments. God gives them the law. But now look at Exodus 20, look down in verse 18. Now all the people witnessed the thundering and the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet and the mountains smoking and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. There were very specific instructions giving. God giving the law on Mount Sinai. You don't let the people come close. They're not to touch. You don't even let an animal touch it. Anybody that touches that mountain is going to die. This covenant is far off, okay? Don't come close, you're going to die. Abraham's covenant was personal. That was God in Abraham, basically person to person, right? Very personal from God to Abraham. God walked through the pieces. God calls Abraham a friend, right? It's a very personal covenant, that promise that he made to Abraham. It was unconditional. Here, this Mosaic covenant is fear and trembling. Don't come near or you die. They were to stay away from Mount Sinai. There was such thundering and light. The voice of God, so powerful from the mountain that the people couldn't stand it. Look at verse 19. Verse 18, they stood afar off. They trembled. Verse 19, then they said to Moses, you speak with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die. Moses said to the people, do not fear, for God has come to test you, and that his fear may be before you so that you may not sin. We'll talk about that in a minute. So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near in the thick darkness where God was. That's God giving the law. That's the Mosaic covenant. Now, in verse 17, back in Galatians 3, that law that was given could not annul or change or alter in any way the promise that God had already made with Abraham. God made the promise with Abraham. Abraham believed God and God credited it to him as righteousness that Abraham's salvation was strictly based on the promise of God and the promise of God in Christ. So this law that was given now can't come in and change any of that. It can't change any of it. It can't do away with it. It can't alter it. It can't be added to it somehow. If there's law, then the promises are of no effect. We'll see that in a minute. Look down, this is Galatians 3 now, and look at again, verse 17. The law, which was 430 years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance, now that's the promises given to Abraham, for if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise. Do you see the logic there? If this law comes in and has anything to do with the promise by faith in Christ, the promise is given to Abraham, then it makes the promise of no effect. I mean, why would that be? The things are contradictory. They can't go together. If it's a promise based in God in Christ, then there's no lawkeeping that interferes with that at all. Otherwise, this promise by faith in Christ is done away with. It's rendered useless. It's of no effect. For if the inheritance of the law is of the law, it is no longer of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. And here, Paul's saying, but listen, God made this by promise. And so there is no lawkeeping that can be done. Here's how this applies to you and I. You can't do this in your own performance and think you're gonna be right with God. Stop the stinking thinking. You got, it is by faith in Christ and you must live by faith in Christ continuously as a disciple of Christ to be right with God. That's, it's by faith that we have the victory over sin, that we have the power and the enablement to live the Christian life. And so it all goes back to that. You can't do that through lawkeeping. So now then next, verse 18, or this is verse 19, I'm sorry, very obvious question comes up, very obvious question. If that's the case, and this promise to Abraham is strictly on the basis of faith, and we're gonna be saved by grace through faith, faith alone, repentant faith alone in Christ alone, then why in the world the law? I mean, what, what, why did that happen? What's the purpose of giving the law? Why did that come along? Verse 19, what purpose then does the law serve? And here's Paul's answer. It was added because of transgressions. And that is obviously sin there. And it was added in two different ways. In one sense, the law defined transgression, showed you what transgressions were more clearly, but there was transgression from the Bible says in Romans also, from Adam to Moses, there's always been sin, always been sin, and always been law keeping or law breaking, it's always been. So it was also there to increase transgressions, and we'll look at that too. It was added because of transgressions till the seed, capital S there again, should come to whom the promise was made, and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now this appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator, the mediator there is Moses appointed by angels. Says that in a couple of places. Acts seven, Hebrews two, talks about how the law was given through angels, came through the mediation of angels by the hand of angels. And then in verse 20, now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one. We'll look at what that means. This here, the law, before the law, you had guilt for sin. We all have a conscience. God gave us a conscience. So you experienced guilt over sin related to your conscience. There was always the ability to understand that prior to the law in Moses being given, and death reigned, the Bible says, from Adam to Moses. So we have law breaking. People understood law breaking. Their consciences were accusing them for law breaking. You have this guilty conscience, death reigned. When the law came, when the mosaic law came and God gave that law, it increased transgression in the sense that now, not only is there this conviction of this guilt over sin, but now there's this intense conviction that your sin violates the standard of a holy God and is against God. So the law came and it showed, yeah, you think there's sin, but this is against God, against who he is, against his nature, against his character. So that as the Bible said, sin became exceedingly sinful. It's against God. That's what we all need. You need to understand in order to be saved. No, no, you go to a person. Yeah, they know I'm a sinner. You know, like when you're an easy believer in churches and they're gonna share the gospel, just admit, believe and confess. Just ABC, admit you're a sinner. Yes, I'm a sinner. I know I'm a sinner. Do you ever disobey your mommy? Yeah, once or twice. Okay, you know you're a sinner separated from God. They believe that they're a sinner because their conscience accuses them. They know they're a sinner. What's lacking in that is the deep, profound conviction that comes in godly sorrow that your sin is against a holy God. That's what's missing in that. And that's what is to be brought about by the law. Look at Romans three. Romans three, speed through here. Romans three and look at verse 19, Romans three 19. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in the sight for by the law is the knowledge of sin. The son of a law defines sin. It clearly outlines as it being against God and that the world might not just become guilty. Now they're guilty before God, before a holy God. Look at Romans seven, just a couple of pages over. Romans seven and then look at verse 13, Romans seven, 13. Has then, Paul says here in verse 12, therefore the law is holy. The commandment is holy and just and good. He's saying the law is good. So then verse 13, has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not. Here's what's become death to you, sin. But sin, that it might appear sin was producing death in me through what is good so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. You see that? It's a loose analogy. You can't take it too far is, you know, you got a town and you got kids playing on the side of the street and they're throwing the ball back and forth and every once in a while a ball goes into the street and little Johnny runs into the street to grab the ball and they're throwing the ball back and forth over the street and maybe there's a stick ball game going on in the street and you've got, you know, you see those signs with the blind children that live in the neighborhood and you've got blind children that are walking down the side of the street and you've got little old ladies trying to get to the grocery store and every, you know, 100 feet or so they're crossing the road and you take off and you zoom through that town in your car, not just a car, you've got a Mack truck. Okay? And you're pedaled to the metal through that town. Okay? And you think to yourself, that's wrong, you know, all these kids, somebody could get hurt, I really shouldn't do that. I think it's wrong for me to speed and maybe you feel convicted about, you know, running your Mack truck through that little town. Then you have the speed limit sign posted and the speed limit sign posted says 10 miles an hour. Now you've been gunning it through that town for a long time. Now the sign comes up and you look at the sign and you say 10 miles an hour and I've been blowing that out of the water every day of the week. Wow, I am really doing wrong here. See the sort of the analogy and that's not a good, please forgive me, but that gives you an impression. The law came to increase transgression in that sense that it makes sin exceedingly sinful because you see in light of who God is, in light of his character, in light of his nature, in light of his goodness, in light of his just, holy and good law, you see how wicked and deplorable who you are is, what you do is. You see it as a defense against God. So in that sense, it increases transgressions. Look back in Galatians three. The moral demands of law didn't start or end with Moses. The moral demands of the law have always been there. Therefore they must be practiced. Now it goes without saying that in practicing this that you gotta know what that standard is. If you can imagine a teacher trying to teach a subject without talking about the subject. Like I said, there's a standardized test over here, like we know that in school system today, a teacher is teaching to try to get kids through this standardized test, but they got the standardized test, they know exactly what's on it, but you know what? Yeah, I wanna talk about this over here. And they never get to that standard. There's no way of knowing. In order for a person to be saved, they've got to know their condition under the law of God with respect to God in order to be saved. If you're over here preaching grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, and you never get someone over here where they understand their condition, they understand where they're at, they'll never understand grace. And so this is the implication here is that the law of God must be taught, must be preached when you share the gospel with somebody, you gotta take them through the law, they've gotta understand their condition in order to be saved. But I look at verse 20, we gotta do this quickly. Mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one. One of the reasons that the promise is superior to law-keeping or conditions that faith is over the law is because God in Abraham mediated the covenant himself, God is one. Here, this covenant is the Mosaic Covenant is inferior because it required a mediator. A mediator does not mediate for one only. There were two parties there, a man and God. Here in the Abrahamic Covenant, God is one. Look at verse 21. Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not. For if there had been a law given which could have given life truly, righteousness would have been by the law, verse 22, but scripture has confined all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Is the law against the purposes of God? Absolutely not. Is it against the promises? Absolutely not. They're not contradictory in that sense. They're complimentary. You have the promise of God, the promises of God in Christ. And what the law does is it comes alongside those promises 430 years later, but was always there. The moral demands of law is there. Comes alongside the law and points to Christ. It shows you your guilt, shows you your depravity, shows you how wickedly separated you are from a holy God, how far off God is and how unable to be approached he is and how fearful and terrifying he is apart from Christ, right? So that the promise might be given to you by faith and not by law keeping. When you get into a pattern of law keeping, you fall into sometimes, and correct me if I'm wrong, you experience this yourself, you fall into a pattern of viewing God as terrifying. God outside of Christ is terrifying. Is to be feared. And I mean feared in a sense of he can kill you and throw your soul into hell, that kind of fear. In Christ, perfect love casts out that kind of fear. In Christ, that fear is not to be there anymore. If you're a disciple of Christ, you're living by faith, if you start falling into this pattern of trying to restore a right relationship with God based on your works, you might experience that kind of fear again. And some of you may think, well, I know election, I mean, I understand God's sovereignty and salvation. And so you think to yourself, like maybe I did a while back that maybe God is just sort of propping me up like Pharaoh to shoot me down so that he can be glorified in my condemnation. And you have this image of God that is unbiblical, ungodly. It's not the God of the Bible. And once you've got it, and that comes from this terrifying understanding of God outside of Christ. But if you've come to Christ, you need to come based wholly and completely on the promises of God in Christ and believe him. When Abraham believed, I'm gonna let you go, I'm sorry, when Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness, Abraham took God at his word and then lived his life based on that faith. He believed God so completely by God's grace. He believed God so completely that he would have slain Isaac on the altar. That he would have left his country, left everything he knew, left probably family, left wealth behind to follow God, to do whatever God wanted him to do. Certainly it's not an empty faith that doesn't change your life. But when you come to Christ in faith, you're saying, listen, I believe the promises of God. God has said based on his grace and mercy and based on the testimony of his word and who he is, that if simply I will believe him, turn from my sin and live for him, just believe him, take him at his word, that he will save me. And it's to retreat from that is to call God a liar and not to believe him. And you're walking over here in unbelief. But by faith, faith is turning to Christ away from your sin. You're saying, listen, I'm leaving that life behind. I am trusting Christ alone to save me. I'm walking with him by faith because I love him. I want to live for him. So I'm turning to Christ. I'm turning away from my sin. And the life that you live now in Christ is lived by faith in the Son of God who loves you and gave himself for you. You live and you follow Christ in faith. And that walking in faith when you do that and you turn to Christ in faith, God, based on the promises of God's word, based on who God is, based on his character, his nature, his unconditional promises in scripture, God gives you the power to live the Christian life. And you will have victory over sin if you have faith in Christ. You will have victory in the Christian life if you simply turn away from sin and you're living by faith in Christ to do that. Makes sense? That's the promises of God to us. Sometimes it's this conception of salvation that is right back here to law keeping. Right back here to my repentance has to be, I'm gonna grit it out, I'm gonna do it. Now I'm gonna repent and I gotta repent in a way that pleases God. And I gotta perform in a way that pleases God. You're not believing God. That's not faith in Christ. That's faith in your own performance. Makes sense? You gotta have faith in Christ. That's the argument here that Paul is setting up in Galatians three. Faith is superior to law keeping in so many ways because it's God, because it's Christ. But then your salvation and your living the Christian life comes only by living with faith in Christ. You can't refer back to your own performance keeping the law, let's pray. Father in heaven, we praise you and thank you God for the salvation that we have in Christ. I praise you Lord that it's not up to me. I know Lord how weak and despicable my flesh is. A wretched man that I am and who will rescue us from these bodies of death that we carry around. It's only in Christ, only Christ. So thank you Lord for these promises. God thank you that it's in you. It's in Christ and for Christ and to Christ. All the promises of God in Christ are yes and amen. And we praise you and thank you for that God. Thank you Lord for the salvation that you've provided for us in Christ. God maybe we be vigilant about keeping our eyes on Christ's living and repentant faith in Christ. Just turning away from sin, following Christ wholeheartedly in God. We know as Bunyan did so clearly in his day and wrote so clearly that the good news of the gospel bids us to fly and then gives us wings. We praise you God for that in Jesus' name. Amen.