The last message I gave from Galatians was about five or six weeks ago, and so I wanted to recap just what we've been covering in chapter three. I won't read the whole thing, I'll just hit the highlights. And so in Galatians 3 verses 1 through 9, what Paul opened up to them was the fact that justification is by faith. And he took them all the way back to Abraham to say, here with Abraham, Abraham believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness. In other words, It came through faith. It came as a gift from God. It wasn't due to anything that they had done. And not only was Abraham saved by faith, but the promise was that all people would one day be saved through faith. All people meaning all peoples. And so at that time, God was singling out Abraham and his posterity formed them into Jews. But then it opened up to the Gentiles as well. So all the nations would be blessed through believing Abraham. And then the next section was from verses 10 to 14, and that was where it talked about how the law not only did not bring salvation, it brought a curse upon the people because the law revealed sin in them, sin that otherwise might have even been perceived as dormant, but it incited it and it brought it out. And then we had in the last section that we talked on like five or six weeks ago, how the promise and the promise to Abraham, that justification through faith, and the law that came 400 years later were distinct. That law that came later did not in any way affect the promise. It did not affect the promise that God had given to Abraham. So now that's where we've come to in our text today. And so the natural question then, and Paul perceives it, he's always asking rhetorical questions, but he's asking questions that might be at that moment in people's minds. So he says, what purpose then does the law serve? In other words, why did it come? If we already had the promise in Abraham and if we already had salvation through faith, why did we even bother with the law? Very good question. And so he gives a part of the answer here in verse 19. What purpose then does the law serve? And let me read the rest of it. It was added because of transgressions till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. Now I'm going to address them in different order. I'm gonna switch them because I wanna talk a little bit more about the transgressions. But let me talk a little bit about the seed. Last time we talked about seed being singular and obviously referring to Christ. So the seed is Jesus. And let me read to you John 1.17. John 1-18, I don't know if you know this, but John 1-18, this section was read in every Roman Catholic service for like 600 years, 800 years, I think it was. But it's because it's just such the essence of Christianity, the essence of the deity of Christ. And so by the time we get to the very end of it though, it says this. for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." So that grace and truth was pictured in Abraham even before the law came. So Moses brought the law. And yet it did not displace what had already occurred in Abraham's life. And frankly, continued to occur all throughout the nation of Israel existence during that time. When it was their blessing alone and wasn't really hadn't been given to the Gentiles yet. It was still salvation through faith. And so that is the seed. The law reveals the wound that is in all of humanity. And Jesus is that balm that heals that wound. And so the reason God brought the law, in part, was to make the wound clearer. The law aggravates that wound that is in all of humanity, that's in our existence. All this sin, the law stirs up. And it gets you to recognize the fact that this world is screwed up, and it needs to be fixed. And it can't be fixed just through more and more law-keeping. And we see the same thing in action in our culture. We see sin at work in our society, and what does the government want to do? How do they address it typically? Laws. And yet laws are made for law-keeping people. You make the laws so that the law breakers will obey them. Well, they don't care. They don't care about your laws. The laws are going to be kept by the people that keep laws. And so that's the moral people, the ethical people, the people that want to live in a civil society. Those that are undermining it are ignorant of the laws. They couldn't care less that you're making laws against them. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to talk though about that point next. And that is, it was added because of transgressions. So let's talk about that. you Phil has taught on the fact that there are at least seven purposes of the law. I'm only going to talk about two of them. The law has many uses. And as a matter of fact, I think it's 1 Timothy 1.8 talks about the law. And when I read Calvin's commentary on that, he also was very adamant that although Paul does state a use of the law in 1 Timothy, it's not the only use of the law. There are many uses of it. I'll only go into two, but there are more. So there are two that are mentioned right here. What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions. So the law was added because of transgressions. So there are two ways that this manifests our needs that affects our society. First is that law restrains sin in our civil society. We do need law. And God has not cursed us with work, I talked about that last week, nor has God cursed us with law. We have governments and they're a good thing. 120 years ago maybe, anybody that opposed government was referred to as an anarchist. And so many people who we would now consider libertarians were called anarchists 120 years ago. Now some of them probably were anarchists. I know when I read Maria Rothbard, He doesn't typically have anything good to say about law. And I know in Man, Economy, and the State, Phil has talked to some of you about how he can point you right to the flaws that Murray Rothbard makes in his book, in his reasoning, because he doesn't recognize the existence of God and the application of God's word and his law into our society. So there are some people who don't really see anything good in government at all. But that's not God's purpose for government. God has a good purpose for government. Yes, there are bad governments out there. We know that. And there are fairly decent governments that still do bad things. Because what is government? people it's people just like us churches are people governments are people everything that is consists of a social institution is people and so we people are sinful so we people will err but sin is restrained by good government by a properly functioning government And as evil as governments can become, they typically still function in some way to restrain evil. Even though they accommodate evil in many ways, they still restrain evil for the most part. So that's the first purpose. God uses law to restrain evil. And the second purpose is that it reveals sin. So there is this civil outward perspective of the law, and there is this inward spiritual perspective of the law. Both of them are at work simultaneously. Now too, when I talk about this, the law, of what good then is the law, we know that in Old Testament Israel, we had ceremonial law, we had national civic law, we had moral law. And for the Jew, they were all wrapped up together. And even now, as we study, it's really hard sometimes to come down with a division and say, this was ceremonial, this was moral, this was civil. Because God I don't know that he intended them to be so easily teased apart and yet We know that the ceremonial law was fulfilled with Christ And so we had the animal sacrificial system ended all of the purification laws Ended and God never reinstituted them in Christianity. He didn't want them in Christianity in Christianity we have Christ that which is perfect has come and So we still, though, need moral and civil law. We still benefit from it. So when we're talking here about the law, it says, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, we could then say, does that mean then that the law ended when Christ came? You could perhaps construe this to mean that, but I don't think it does. And I think scripture elsewhere is very, very clear that it doesn't. Jesus himself in Matthew 5, 17 states very clearly, until all is fulfilled, the law is still active. But I think we really can address that though by saying that till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. So to whom is the promise made? The promise of scripture, the promise of salvation. Do you know to whom the promise is made? I don't think we do. Right? Because God is saving people perpetually through time. I don't know what number I was, you know. You know, some counter somewhere, I don't know. But yet, this was active in my life at a point in time, roughly 30 years ago. It's active in everybody's life. People, many people know when they were saved. Now, not all do. Some people grew up in the faith. They've always been saved. And yet some people, their lives are just so totally turned upside down. God turns their life and shakes them up and slaps them down and now they're saved and they know it. They are forever and thankfully changed. And yet, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. So that is still being played out through time. That application of that promise to his seed that Jesus promised in the seed and promised to all these these future believers that's still being played out. Jesus himself spoke about even the elect would be deceived if those days were not cut short. He's speaking of the time of the end of the Judaism. And so he's speaking specifically about those that will come to faith. that even those people could, if it's possible for them to be deceived, they could have been because the time, during that time, it was so evil and the oppression against Christianity, this young plant was so powerful and yet Jesus protected it. He saved that young church at that time. So now we have this restraining aspect of it in our civil society. We have this revealing aspect of it in our spiritual hearts. Both are at work simultaneously. Now let's talk a little bit more about how the law restrains evil. Romans 13 verses 3 and 4 read this, do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil." So this gives you the definition of good government. Good government is to do this. And as we said, government is people, so they don't always succeed at doing this well, but this is their job. And in that this is their job, we must recognize it as their job and thank them for it, appreciate it, not undermine them in the doing of it. And to that end, I've done myself a disservice, perhaps, in recent weeks. We purchased a car for my son, and it's orange. I have never driven an orange car until the last few weeks. I've never driven a bright-colored car until the last few weeks, I don't think. Bright cars stick out. People seem to like to race me now that I'm driving an orange car. Maybe it's just my perception, I don't know. But I pull up to the light and even this grey Accord comes up, you know, and he drives away from the light. And I find myself getting drawn into this competitive environment. And it's got a V6 in it, so it's got a lot of power. I told someone, I told someone Friday actually at a work outing, I said, I had that thing going like 70 miles an hour in second gear. I mean, it really goes fast. I was near the red line. And then I thought, what am I doing? But this is a stick shift, after all. I need to move it to the next gear. But anyway, that car has kind of reminded me that this is in me, that this competitive, sinful nature. And Mike is not like me, so I'm thinking that he won't be tempted to race it like I have been. And if he does, he's going to have to answer for it. But it's in me. And this temptation, it just comes out immediately. And I'm thinking, OK, what is it that is in others that they're drawing out, but really what's in me that I'm being drawn out? I like this little stick shift. I like this V6. And yet, I am so thankful there aren't more police in Omaha. And that's maybe a bad thing, but I mean, I've found myself just, what am I doing? And I start gearing down, thinking, OK, Rod, it's orange, I know, but all you want to do is use it to get to work and back safely. But so the law is good, and this actually leads us to the quote from 1 Timothy 1, 8-10. The law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate. So the reason laws are made is to try and regulate the lawbreaker's behavior. Why? you instill fear in them. Everybody says that the death penalty does not instill fear in people. Well, the modern one maybe not, because nobody dies with the modern one. But if you commit a crime in Virginia or Texas, you can die within years, within a few years, with the death penalty. So I'm really thankful for that law. And I think if it were more If it had greater teeth in it, if people were actually being executed for their horrific crimes, maybe they would think twice about it. But right now, we just don't have teeth in that law. So people try to say, well, there is then no effect on this law. It's not deterring crime whatsoever. I don't think so. I think stiff penalties defer crime. It's that simple. As a matter of fact, who of us, if we're driving along like between here and Lincoln, and you notice that sign saying that you're fine for exceeding the speed limit at this section is $570. Who doesn't put that in the context of them paying that fine? I'm going to be careful here. If I'm not going to travel under the speed limit, I'm at least going to keep my eyes wide open, right? Where's the on-ramps? But so we break the law at our own risk, at our own peril. So Proverbs 29.18 says, where there is no revelation that people cast off restraint, but happy is he who keeps the law. Where there is no revelation that people cast off restraint. What does it mean by revelation? It means God at work in our world, God's revealed law coming to bear, being brought to bear on our society. So where there is no revelation of God, the people cast off restraint. And this reminds me of a story that I shared when I preached on this first, and it was a dad, and I think I read this a long time ago, but a dad goes to a meeting that a school official has called. and so the school official has called all the parents of like all the i think thirteen-year-olds that are going advancing in their grade and it's for the purpose of alerting them to the fact that this is the age at which these children become very sexually active and so this this school official wanted to point out the risks that these parents were going to face and the parents already kind of knew what the topic was going to be so this dad goes there and this is the time of ten or fifteen minutes prior to the meeting starting Some of the parents are talking and this dad voices his perspective that the kids just need to not do it. They need to abstain and This is such a progressive school that he's in no wonder the kids are having problems that the parents start scoffing at him You really think you can have these kids ratchet their hormones down to where they're not doing this? And this dad gets on the defensive and he's angry. I mean, he's thinking, who are these parents? So now he's kind of off by himself. He's off aloof from all of these progressives. And then the teacher that called this meeting is trying to get him over here to do an ice breaking event. He didn't want to do an ice-breaking event. My ice has been sufficiently broken already. So they do this ice-breaking event. And then after a few minutes, they're all gabbing and talking. And she says, OK, everybody, I want you to pay attention. She says, I want you to look at the card that I gave you at the beginning. And she said, I want you to see, do you have a little asterisk next to your name? And a few people raised their hands. And she said, now, whose hand did you shake? And so then they start raising hands and pretty soon everybody's got their hands up. And she said, you people with the asterisks, you had a sexually transmitted disease. You people that you greeted, you got that disease. And she is trying to point out the fact how easy this spreads and how they've all got this STD. The man wants to join in the icebreaker now. He comes over, he says, I don't have an STD. I abstained. And then he leaves. But so he proved his point so well. But see, this is in a society that has thrown off restraint. I mean, you've got a school administrator here trying to address the problem of spreading disease in their school, and all the parents can do is mock and scoff at such opportunities, at such uh... just silly attempts at controlling these young people's raging hormones and yet you've got this dad who still respects law who still understands what's at work here that corrects them that proves to them that they're shortsighted shortsighted so now the law is a good thing i want to read uh... a couple of verses that are just beautiful. One is from 1 John. It's actually the very beginning of the letter of 1 John. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled concerning the word of life. I wanted to Note that phrase, the Word of Life. What is the Word of Life? It's quoted actually three or four times in the New Testament, that phrase, Word of Life is used. Let me read another one. This one is from Philippians 2. Philippians 2, 14 to 16. Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life. so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run or labored in vain. Holding fast the word of life. So the word of life is this. Now you might think also that it kind of focuses upon the gospel perhaps more so, but I think word of life is this, it's the whole Bible. The whole Bible is the word of life. And law keeping is a good thing in our society. It can go too far and we'll talk a little bit more about that, but it is a good thing. For instance, let me give you two examples of instances where there was no law. I read Tabitha, the book Hawaii long, long ago, and it was written by Mishner. And in the mid 1700s, as you had this island chain, the island of Molokai was set aside as a leper colony. And so there was a lot of commerce at that time. And so ships would come and go from all the islands. They were very sexually active. The natives really had absolutely no morals when it came to that type of thing. So the sailors enjoyed their stops in Hawaii. And yet leprosy was kind of rampant at that time. And so anybody that was detected with leprosy would be shipped off to Molokai. And this missionary tells the story of a young woman who had been diagnosed with leprosy. She's only like 18 years old. So she marries her young man and they have this big ceremony, but then they take her to the island and they drop her off and they have this formal ceremony where it's beautiful and the boat departs. But no sooner did the boat depart, then this young woman is ravaged by the people of the island, because the people of the island had no law. It was just might makes right on that island. And so what Michener then carries out in his story is how some of the stronger, the healthier, and the wiser, more moral people on the island took matters under hand, and they formed a government, a functional government, where the strong, moral men would make sure that the ruffians didn't have their way with new people being dropped off on the beach like that. And yet... When you read this, it's just so gut-wrenching. And another example was from the Andersonville Prison. It was a Civil War prison down in Georgia. The Union troops were housed here. And at one point, there were 30,000 Union troops in this prison. And it, in no way, could handle that many troops. But early on in the war, the Union realized that they had a significant advantage in raising up troops over the South, because the South just were lacking in men. And so early on they would exchange troops and it was under the auspices that you would agree to lay down your arms and not fight against each side. But the South was reneging on that because they needed these men. So the North realized that this was not going well. So they stopped trading prisoners. They just, take our prisoners, go ahead. So now you have this overcrowded prison, underfed men, all starving, and yet, in the midst of this, you also had the Union troops that really weren't the cream of the crop of civilization from the North. Because when the draft was instituted in the North, for $300, you could escape it. You could get out of it. And so the wealthy essentially avoided the draft in the North. And then, funny, it's like 40 years ago, anybody who's in university could avoid the draft right, and so there is a corollary here. But so there were these draft riots in New York City where hundreds of people were killed. It turned into a race riot, essentially, because by that time the North was saying that this is just Abe Lincoln's war and he wants to free the blacks, and the North was very, very prejudiced. So we had these race riots in New York City because they were below their quota. And so they were supposed to provide like 20 some thousand men in order to fight the war. And they were way behind up to that point in their quota. And yet that's the type of people that were filling the ranks of the Union troops. So these men now are down here in Andersonville Prison and all structure, all military structure was gone. So typically you think of prison as that structure still functioning, but this wasn't really an established military. These were all civilians that had been pressed into service in many regards, or they had joined up for the bonus that they received. In other words, some people could pay $300 to get out, but they would pay you $100 to get in, and so people would join just for the $100. But again, there was just this violent, when new people would be taken prisoner, they have goods, right? So they come in and they come in with all that they were captured with. But the first thing that would happen is some bunch of thugs would set upon them and steal all their stuff, leave them beaten. And yet then, some of the, again, not even the military structure, not even the officers and stuff that should have known better and set up structure, they weren't even the ones that did it. The ones that did it were the brave ones, the courageous ones, the ethical ones. And so they set up structures. They established a whole rank of people that they referred to as the regulators. And these regulators had a hierarchy, and they were there to ensure that people were treated fairly. And they even, at one point, had a, a trial for someone that was convicted of crime within the prison, and they got permission from the commandant to try a person. But so, in the absence of all law and order, you have just total chaos, and all you then have is just violent, violent, might makes right type of thing. So, none of us are anarchists. All of us want law. We want good law. And yet, to a degree, we should be able to tolerate bad law to the extent that yet the good law prevails over the bad law. Now, I want to talk at length about the spiritual application. We just talked about the actual application, the benefit that God has given us with law. Now let's talk about the spiritual application of why the law is good. The law was given to make our sins evident to us. So for instance, an analogy is when I come downstairs on a sunny morning, typically like a Saturday, I'll come down and the sun is up. I go out, I make coffee and I can open the front door and look outside. What's the day look like? Bright, beautiful day. I'll go sit down on my couch. And I look over at the front door and it looks dirty. It's just all dusty and dirty. I mean, we could have just cleaned it yesterday and yet it's got all this dust on it already. And so that's what the law does to us. The sun coming in through that front door, is like the law. It just reveals stuff. It reveals our hearts. It reveals the evil that's within us. And so the sun does that on our door, and yet just as that, the law does that in my heart. The law comes to me and reveals this in me. Long time ago, I read a story, and I think a devotional, and there was a hotel being built down on the gulf, a nice new hotel. And actually, the part that faced the gulf was being built out over the water. So it was many, many stories tall. Well, the manager of the hotel, just before it opened, was touring the hotel and he was out on a balcony and he thought, you know, people are going to be fishing off these balconies, I know it. Because he's a fisherman and he looks down there. And so he had his staff make up a little sign and put it in all the rooms saying, no fishing off the balconies. So then sure enough, it opens, the hotel fills up, pretty soon he's got complaints. I hear this loud sound, and here are these people tossing their lead-weighted anchors, their fishing lines off, and they're not making it to the water, and they're hitting the side of the building. He was breaking plate glass at times, just smacking those sliding doors, and the glass would crack open. So after weeks of trying to combat this, he finally tosses up his hands. He's like, well, these signs aren't helping. He has his staff take all the signs down. People stopped fishing off the balconies. People weren't even thinking about fishing off the balconies until they saw his sign. And then they thought, well, that's a good idea. So the law reveals our hearts. It just brings that disobedience out of us. And we think, well, I can get away with it, right? So these fishermen are fishing off their balconies, takes the sign away, they don't even think about it. They just go on about their business. They go fishing off their boats down there. So now, there is a man by the name of Andrew Jukes, he was a theologian in England from the 1800s, and he has this quote in one of his books. Satan would have us to prove ourselves holy by the law, which God gave to prove us sinners. This strikes at the heart of our misapplication of the law. We sometimes think that it's meant for us to fulfill this such that we can be acceptable to God, when in reality it is only to reveal to us that no one can ever achieve perfection by keeping the law. In Romans 7 we read, What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law, for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, You shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. All of us have struggled against things, and we know that we cannot overcome it in our own strength through our resolve. We must rely upon God. Now, I might clean my storm door, right? I'm sitting there, it's Saturday morning, I might go over, my wife would be awestruck. I'd clean our front door, and I can sit down then and be so proud, right? I have no sin now on my front door, right? No sin. But what about the rest of the house? That's what Tabitha would ask me. That's a good start. But so see, we might think ourselves so holy and pure just by carving out this one thing. And frankly, we do that especially when we ourselves are not personally tempted by this or that or that sin. Then we can find it so easy to judge other people and say, how could they do that? That's so stupid. But we're not them, they're different than us. We have our own sins that they might say the same things about us concerning. So now let's say that Paul has convinced them now. The question was, I'm in the wrong book. The question was, what purpose then does the law serve? And so I've given you two, and Paul gave two. So now let's say that he has convinced them. Another question is asked in verse 21. Is the law then against the promises of God? Now we actually just addressed that in the last message. That's what the prior section is kind of about. But let me address that again. We know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. That's what Paul told Timothy. Now, he says here, if the law could have given life, it would have done so. And we know that to be the case. When Jesus was in the garden, he pled. He pled with his father to remove this cup from him. It was real. That that that he was feeling was real. He was very, very much wanting God, his father, to take this from him. If the law could have done it, God the Father would have done it. But it wasn't planned. That wasn't what was going to happen. It could not remove sin from us. We cannot keep the law and thus earn God's favor. So the law is meant to strip us of our self-righteousness. And in its place, it leaves us needing. It leaves us wanting. Now it could also, though, leave us hardened. Right? The law sometimes, because of our repeated failures in life, it can harden us such that we just continue to fail. Well, I can't do it, so therefore I'm just going to continue to give in to this sin. I'm not even going to fight against it anymore. I'm just going to give in. And yet, that attitude will get you nowhere with God. God will actually come down very hard on you, very quickly. Especially if you're His child, He will come down very hard on you when you think like that. I want to give you three quotes from Martin Luther concerning this text right here, I think are very good. Although the law kills, God brings good out of evil. He uses the law to bring life. God saw that the universal illusion of self-righteousness could not be put down in any other way but by the law. The law dispels all self-delusion. The law is the hammer of death, the thunder of hell, and the lightning of God's wrath to bring down the proud and the shameless hypocrites. When the law was instituted on Mount Sinai, it was accompanied by lightning, by storms, by sound of trumpets, to tear to pieces that monster called self-righteousness. And we know that the people then fled from that and they pled with Moses to intercede to God on their behalf because they did not want to be anywhere near that holy God. So what it was is that they knew, they knew their unworthiness to be there. They could not be in that position and escape unharmed. So they wanted Moses to run interference for them. He seems to like you, you go up there. When the law drives you to the point of despair, let it drive you a little farther. Let it drive you straight into the arms of Jesus. I believe this type of thing, what we're referring to here, was sometimes referred to as the hounds of hell. God sends the hounds of hell after you to chase you into his fowler's snare. You've got the hounds of heaven, you've got the hounds of hell, God uses them both to herd you where he wants you to go. You are his. Now, verse 22 says, that the scripture has confined all under sin. The scripture has confined all under sin. I want to focus on that word confined. I want you to imagine that you're in a prison cell. You're not in a modern prison cell. We're in one of the old West prison cells where we've got all these bars all around us. Modern prison cells, I don't think, have the bars as much. They have the bars to block the hallways and stuff, but the prison doors themselves are big steel things and all concrete. But so now, you are in this cell, and you are facing these bars. What are those bars? I suggest to you that you should think of these bars as sin. They're the sin that fills your life, that fills your heart, that you practice, and that you don't seem to be shed of. Romans 7, Paul writes, I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? So though we are saved, sin still tempts us. Though we are saved, sin can still even entrap us. The picture here, though, what I just read, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? It's actually of a body, a dead body being on you. You are this living person that's here, yet you've got this dead body you have to carry around. Now, Scripture, the truth of God, has placed us in this position. You can't escape it. The reality is that that's where you are. You are enslaved by sin. You are captured in this prison of sin. And it is God's truth that hems you in. But now some people turn to the law as their savior, right? It's what the Judaizers were doing. It's what the Jews had done. It's the trap they'd fallen into. They turned to the law to save them. But in this picture that I drew for you, where is the law? He's outside the door wearing the gun and the badge. He's watching you. He's making sure you stay there. You deserve to be there. And he's going to keep you there because that's his job. So see the law's job is to make you aware of the fact that you are not worthy of heaven. You are not worthy of salvation. That's the job of the law. So you can't get to heaven by keeping the law because it's the law that's keeping you in the prison cell. Do you see how clear Paul pictures that? The scripture has confined all under sin, under sin, that's the bars, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. So now it is actually ironic to look to the law as your savior when he's actually the sheriff that is guarding the prison and won't let you escape it. This is not a corrupt lawman. You can't buy this lawman off. He's God's lawman. He is above reproach. So the law is not bad. That lawman is good. He's just doing his job. Now verse 23 introduces a twist to this, but before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law. So before faith came. We were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith, which would afterward be revealed, kept for the faith. So now I want you to still imagine that you are not free, but now you are in protective custody because someone wants you dead. And if you were left to your own devices and you were just free to flit about, you would be dead because you'd be exposed to the harm that others could bring about you and frankly, the harm that you could do to yourself. So until faith comes, we are in protective custody. Now, let me give you illustrations of people that need this type of protective custody. A couple years ago, there was the movie Ray. And I didn't watch it myself, but I did talk to people that watched it. And they said, really, it was just kind of one drug and sexual addiction after another. It's just this guy's whole life was just filled with this. That is what our temptations do, right? They lead us. They enslave us. And if we're not in the protective custody of God, we are enduring all of these difficulties of life. I listened to a jazz series that was put together by PBS at that time. It was amazing to me how many of these musicians died young, just from a hard, hard living. Booze, and women, and heroin, and all kinds of drug addictions. There was one fellow, and I think I mentioned it here a while back, but there was one guy who went autopsied. They said he was probably in his mid to late 50s, and yet this guy was in his early 30s. I mean, he had lived that hard of a life in that short of a period of time. uh... there are many of these other people david kerridine died a bizarre death over in the or over in uh... like malaysia thailand or something a couple years back uh... seventy years old and he's over there participating in all kinds of vile uh... sexual sins uh... michael jackson died of the drug overdoses and now the drugs of choice are really the legal drugs so someone is prescribing them and then these people are choosing to OD on them but all of these people aren't really experiencing the benefit of being in protective custody because they have so much fame and so much notoriety that they've got all of these people around them, groupies that will give them whatever they want in terms of sexual or drug favors. And so these people's lives are just torn asunder because they're not experiencing the protective custody of God. His law provides that protective custody to us. Before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith, which would afterward be revealed. The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, says the next verse. Therefore, the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. And the picture here, you might think of a tutor as someone who comes into your home for an hour, or you drop off your kid at their house for an hour to learn piano or learn this or that. That is how we now think of tutor. But this is not that concept. This means someone that you give your child to in their youth, such that they can be raised and conformed to the picture that you yourself have stated. They're essentially a professional child trainer, like a wild animal trainer. They take wild children, and they conform them to the image of perfection that you want. And you tell them what you want. You're like royalty, and you hire this governess to be the one that is hard on your kids, because you yourself don't have the time for it, maybe even the will for it. But you turn them over. That's what this is about. This is turning us over. So God turned us over to the law, to tutor us, to discipline us, to have us really recognize who we are and what we are in the many ways that we're weak, the many ways that we're needy. But the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Now, isn't that interesting? So now what does that mean? Again, we have an instance where we could say, this means that the law is abrogated. This means that the law ends. But again, it's this use of the law. It's the protective custody that the law has placed us in. Let me give you another illustration. Let me expand upon the prison illustration that I told you about. When God saves you, God removes the prison door. It's gone. He's taken the law man out of that hallway. The law man's not there anymore. You now live by faith. You live by faith in the Son of God that loved you and died for you. And so what does that mean then? Does that mean then that you can do anything you want at that point? Yes, it does. And that's why Paul tells us, do not use your freedom for license. Use your freedom to serve God. Because, see, the door is gone, the lawman has been called off, and that's the way God leaves us when we are saved. Now, remember how I described the cell. What is still there? The bars. The bars are still there. Sin is still in your life. It's still a part of your everyday existence. And yet you don't have the law condemning you anymore. You have the grace of Christ at work in you, assuring you with confidence that you are God's, that you have a home in heaven. And yet you feel so unworthy because even though the door is gone, even though the Lament is gone, the sin can still be there. And so you still feel like, I don't deserve freedom. I don't deserve to have that door removed. I don't deserve to have that lawman not looking at me with the gun and the badge. But yet that is the freedom God gives you as a saved Christian. And that's why some Christians use that freedom for license. They do fall into sin. They do then begin to harden themselves in sin. That's why God has given a prescription for it in Scripture. We're all to be considered one another's helpers in this sense. So we're fellow prisoners, we're in this cell, the whole cell block has been saved, we're in a saved cell block, all the doors have been removed. And so now we can fellowship with those other prisoners, right? We can go there, we can help them. We can help them understand the situation they're in, help them understand that they are free, experience that freedom, serve God with that freedom. So law, was the prevailing thing that functioned upon these Jewish people until Christ came. It is that that people imagine. It's that that they realize. It's that that they think about. It filled their world. I mean, their whole lives revolved around all the ceremonial and moral and civil law. And yet God blew that all away with Christianity. And it left these Jewish people feeling naked. It left them feeling vulnerable to the unclean masses of the Gentiles. And that's why Paul really needed to lead the Jews out of that prison cell. Come on out here. You know, you've got to experience this world that we're in. And yet those bars can begin to melt away. Without the law being that constant judge with you wanting to serve God with your freedom, you're focusing now on the positive aspect of things as opposed to the negative. The law kind of always resulted in us looking at things from a negative perspective, whereas the grace of Christ gets you to try to focus on the positive. Are you a pessimist or an optimist? Everybody knows. Now, if you don't know what yourself are, ask your mate. Many of us, I mean my favorite character in Winnie the Pooh is Eeyore. I mean, it'll never work. I mean, who can't love Eeyore? Everybody knows an Eeyore. I have a man at work that I think of as Eeyore. I mean, he looks like Eeyore, but he certainly acts like Eeyore. And yet he calls himself a Christian. And I'm thinking, well, you know, it's just, you know, Christians shouldn't act like Eeyores. They shouldn't be the pessimist of the bunch. We often are though. So now it'll never work. We've tried that. He'll never change. He or she never does this or always does that. These are the statements of a pessimist. These are the statements of law. Let me give you statements of optimist, statements of grace. I can do all things through God who strengthens me. With God, all things are possible. This is what scripture tells you. Scripture doesn't give you quotes that are used in Winnie the Pooh like Eeyore does. It'll never work. Scripture is filled with wanting to fill your sails with the freedom to serve God. You've got the freedom to serve God in your capacity now, do so. Now I want to tell you though that Christianity, the freedom of Christ, Christian liberty, is neither legalism, we've talked a bit about that today, nor is it licentiousness, we've talked a bit about that today, but typically in the context of unbelief. But both are still factors in the life of a Christian. We can still tend toward legalism, we can still tend towards licentiousness. So you must avoid those extremes. the licentiousness or lawlessness can lead you to an early grave, whether believer or unbeliever. Because God, Phil has shared the story of how God took that one man who had hardened himself into sin and yet repented in his deathbed of having divorced his wife. God's rebuke came upon him forcefully, quickly, got cancer, died, and yet not before he had repented of what he had done and came back to God. There was an experiment once, and I remember reading about this long ago too, But there's a rat in a cage, and it has two bars. It has a bar that when it hits it, every time it hits it, it gets a pellet of food. And there's another bar that it doesn't always get it, but periodically it will get a pellet, and it's a drug. It makes the rat feel good. And this bar over here, the drug bar, Each time he gets a drug, it takes more and more hits of the bar to get the next one. More and more hits of the bar. So they said that these rats that were studied, they might hit the food bar at first until they really get it all figured out. And then they're over here at the drug bar. Hammer away. These rats hammer away at that bar until they're dead. They never go back here and eat more food. Because they're over here spending all of their time zapping at this bar because they know eventually it's going to give me what I want. And so see, that's sometimes how we live. We live like this. Even Christians can get stuck in a life of sin. It's sad but true. And so we can be like that rats. We can't just say that unbelievers act like that. No, we've seen too many believers that act like that too. I have a Christian friend who I met here in Omaha. He moved away about six or seven years ago now, but he has five children, and yet each of his three older children has gone wayward. The oldest one, even before he left Omaha, moved in with his girlfriend. The next one, they'd had trouble with her for years and years in and out of institutions. The next one was perfect. This girl was perfect. But at 16, she ran away. She had some online, a relationship with some guy going that they had no idea about. She ran away to be with him. That lasted like six weeks, and then she's living on the streets. And at this point, they were living in Texas. And I'm thinking to myself, I know this man. He's a good man. He's a good Christian man. But it's amazing that his children could be going so wayward so quickly. I don't know. I mean, he used to describe his home life to me and it was shocking how much they would let their kids get away with. I was just really surprised. And so I just must connect the two and say, well, it seems that they're related. He has two more children at home that he assured me when I talked with him last were Nice kids, you know, really well behaved, but I don't know, we'll see. But it's just, this type of stuff can affect us just as much as it affects unbelievers. And we must not think ourselves above it, that we've escaped it somehow. So now, legalism on the other hand, I just described some aspects of licentiousness, but legalism is really kind of quid pro quo, attempting to, it's almost like behavioral modification. You know, we can do it with our kids all the time. Do this and I'll do that, do this and I'll do that. If you do that, I'm gonna do that. Now granted, when a kid is little, yeah, maybe they need a lot of that. They need a lot of that structure. They need a lot of the integrity that comes with enforcing the rules. But as they mature, you have to penetrate through that just behavioral stuff and get to their heart. Where is their heart? Why are they doing what they're doing? There is a point at which you transition from physical correction to other means to try to get close to their heart. And so if that's not happening, then you're just not getting where you need to get to. And with that, our kids could perhaps be like the rat in the cage. They've got a button that says grace, but yet they've got other buttons that are like, you know, acceptance from peers, you know, getting what I want. That's a big one. You know, we all want what we want, but yet what we want isn't always consistent with the grace that God gives us. So we've got to get our children oriented towards that right way of thinking, that right way, which buttons to press, so to speak. So now, our right relationship with God is not dependent on our works. And I know that that is odd to hear, but our, Our aspect of being justified before God, of being righteous before God, is solely predicated on the grace of Christ entering into our hearts. Us having been humbled and made accepting of the grace of Christ. And yet, even after that, we can be very tempted to return to a works righteousness, to return to the fact that our relationship with God is only good if I'm doing this, that, and the other thing. If I'm doing my daily devotions, if I'm praying every day, if I'm doing this. No, those are good, perhaps, habits that you can have as a Christian. But your relationship with God, your acceptance by Him, is certainly not predicated on those things. Those are just things that we do out of love. We establish good habits. We want to be good Christians, serving God on this earth. We want to model for our children what is right. So now, It is not dependent also upon our being in competition with anybody else. We know that scripture tells us that we have works that are accumulating wealth and riches that is accumulating in heaven. We're not. Some of our works will be burned. We're laying up hay and stubble and sticks in heaven, thinking that it's so wonderful, when in reality that will burn. But there is a means of us laying up treasure in heaven, and God wants us to think that way. He wants us to be thinking of the reward that we will have in heaven, and those are for good works. But think of your life as a tree. Sometimes we think that to grow that tree healthily and stuff, we have to do the good works of like nurturing it, getting it planted, getting it watered, all that stuff. We think of that as our job when in reality it's not. All of that is God. God is the one that has planted that tree. He is the one that is causing it to grow. He's the one that's blessing it. All of our works are fruit coming out of the tree. So we have a role in producing fruit, but really for the health of the tree, God's doing all that. God's doing all of that care for the tree. He's doing all of that that we need. And our works then flow out of his blessing, flow out of his abundance. So the fact is our works just ornament the tree. They don't have anything to do with the life and health of the tree itself. They don't go into it. They come out of it. So do you see what I mean? So if our life is a tree, the works come out. They don't go in. They don't make us better. So now we are not bound to serve the law. We are not captured in that cell of sin. Yes, we all have sin that still binds us. Yes, we find ourselves going into that cell from time to time, but we're free to come and go. We're not trapped in that cell like prisoners who are enslaved. we are free in God. So there is a difference between us and the world. There is a difference between those that are saved and those that are not saved. And yet, too often we live like there isn't, and we mustn't do that. I encourage you to exercise your Christian liberty, to see your works Just ornamentations of your life. They in no way Make God love you more your sins in no way make God love you less if you are his he loves you It's that simple. Let's pray Lord we thank you for your word and we ask you to make it do its work in our hearts and we know that the word does enter into our brain and does uh... make rational sense yet we know too lord that without the power of the holy spirit sending your word deep into our souls it will just exist at the surface an hour from now a day from now it might mean nothing to us so we ask you lord to have your holy spirit to apply your word in our hearts to change us and transform us by this power We thank you now and ask you to bless our bodies for your use this day to your glory. In Jesus' name we give you praise. Amen.