This morning we go on with our study of that message in the book of Galatians. We are working our way through this very wonderful, very important little letter written by the Apostle Paul to the churches, plural, churches of Galatia. This morning we will be moving ahead, looking at chapter 3, verses 21 through 28, Galatians 3, 21 through 28. If you would please follow as I read. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore, the law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female. For ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ, Then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise." Let's just sort of step back and take a look at the sketch of redemptive history that Paul has sort of set before our eyes in the preceding verses. First of all, we begin, of course, with the fall of man. due to Adam's sin. And I might remind you that there was what is called the Proto-Evangelicum, that is, that first hint of good news, of gospel, there in Genesis 3.15, but it really wasn't much of a hint. It wasn't even spoken to man. I might have you recall that it was a conversation between God and the serpent, that the seed of the woman would come and crush the serpent's head. Now, that wasn't much, was it? Just that there's one coming from one of these whom you have plunged into sin, there's one coming from the her, interesting phrase, the seed of the woman, who will be the one who will undo, who will crush your head. It will not be until Abraham's day, a long time afterward, that we find a specific promise being given to man. God, as Paul reminds us, selected Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, brought him into the land of Canaan, and there gave him precious promises, told him that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Now, Abraham had a problem. He's supposed to be the father of nations, and he's not a father of anybody. And he keeps asking God, where's my descendant? You promised me that I'm going to bear children, I'm going to be a father of nations, and as yet I'm not the father of anybody. And there in Genesis 15, God takes him out one night and he looks at the stars and God says, can you count them? So shall thy seed be. That's how numerous your progeny will be. And the scripture says Abraham believed the Lord, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. And oh, how important that is, because that's what Paul calls our attention to, that Abraham is justified. He is made right with God through faith, faith in God's promise, faith in the promise of a coming provision. It is not until two chapters later that Abraham is circumcised. And of course, the question then, is it necessary to be circumcised to be just with God? And Paul would say, hey, that's a no-brainer. Abraham was justified in God's sight in Genesis 50. He wasn't circumcised as a sign of that covenant until Genesis 17. I mean, even I can count. By the way, in the New Testament time, baptism, of course, is the sign of the new covenant. It's not the antitype of circumcision, per se. Circumcision of the heart is that. But certainly, baptism serves as the sign. And of course, we have today, I mentioned the commercial that I saw about the fellow saying, if you only believe and put faith in Christ, you're only getting to the 50-yard line. You need to be baptized to go all the way to the end zone. We might say the same thing, is that the reality of our life in Christ, it is by faith in Christ, in faith alone, that baptism follows, like circumcision follows in Abraham's case, it follows as the sign in the seal, the outward demonstration to the eyes of all of what has been happening in our hearts. Well, then comes 430 years after Abraham's day, A fellow by the name of Moses. Moses brings Israel out of Egypt to Sinai, and there God enters into a covenant with one branch. Let me emphasize that. Just one branch of Abraham's family. By this time, there's been three generations that have gone by, and so there's a lot of different branches to the family tree of Abraham, and it is with one branch. Jacob's branch. Jacob's name, remember it, Peniel, was changed to Israel. To the children of Israel, God enters into a covenant. And oh my, what a covenant it was. Whereas the promise was a unilateral declaration of God bringing blessing upon all the nations of the earth, this covenant was very different. It was bilateral. It was uncertain like most of your covenants. Most of your contracts are if you, then I. And if you don't, then I'll do this. You go down to the bank, get a loan, they'll give you the money if you'll agree to pay it back. That's the way our contracts work, and that's the way the law worked. But the law, as Paul has spent much of this chapter proving, would never bring blessing upon this people to whom blessing was promised. It would only curse them. It cursed them because they didn't do the law. They might have thought about doing it. They might have known the law. They might have heard the law. But again, it's not the hearer of the law that's justified, is it? It's the doer of the law. They had to do it. And they had to do it all. They couldn't pick and choose. It wasn't like going through the cafeteria and saying, well, I'll do this law, but I won't do that one. You had to do all the law. And then you had to do it all the time, continually. You couldn't just do it now and then. It had to be the tenor of your life. And so this law that cursed you if you didn't do it, didn't do it all and didn't do it always, brought cursing upon a people whom God had promised blessing. And that's what sort of brings us to our dilemma here. Paul has been asking, well then, what's going on? What is the purpose of the law? Back in chapter 3, verse 19, that's what we looked at last time. Why then did God institute the law? It seems like the law is working at cross-purposes with God's promise. But Paul has assured us that it may appear to be that way, but that's not the case at all. And rather than re-preaching last week's message, if you haven't heard it, get the CD or whatever, but we will move on, because you'll notice there is a similar thing here in our text today. Is the law then against? the promises of God. It looks like it, because the law is cursing what God has promised to bless. But notice, looking back in last week's study to verse 19, the law, says Paul, was added It was not the original arrangement. It wasn't even the original arrangement with Abraham. It was added. It came into the picture after the fact. It was added, and then, until the seed should come to whom the promise was given. Notice that the law is temporary. It is not the final arrangement. It remains in place till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and of course, Paul already told us who that was in verse 16, that seed is Christ. Till the seed would come, or till Christ comes, or as the language he uses today, notice verse 23, till faith comes. Till faith comes. Now, I want you to grasp that road map. It's of great significance in your understanding of Scripture. Here you go from Adam to Abraham where a promise is given. Then to Moses, where the law is given, and finally to Christ, where the promise is realized. Get that road map in your mind, because several things fall out of it. As I've already pointed out, it proves that men are not justified by the law. Because notice back in Galatians 3 verse 6, Abraham has already believed and been accounted to him for righteousness before the law of Moses ever came into the picture. It also shows that there is a parenthesis. Our dispensational friends say, well, the church age is this parenthesis. God's original and main purpose is with the nation of Israel. And when that failed, then the church comes along as a sort of afterthought, as a plan B, as a parenthesis. And once you're raptured out of here, God goes back to the nation of Israel. Well, they got part of it right. There is a parenthesis. They just got it exactly wrong when it comes to who and what is the parenthesis. It's not the church that's the parenthesis. It's Israel that's the parenthesis. It was added until. Notice the language. It's a temporal arrangement. It was not the arrangement in the beginning. It won't be the arrangement when Christ comes. And then thirdly, it reveals that this New Testament age is indeed a new age. It is an age that everything in the Old Testament was looking unto and forward to. It is an age, as our text says, when faith comes and law goes. Did you hear me? Faith comes, law goes. That's a pretty easy way to understand our lesson this morning, our study. It can be summed up by that. So this is the model. And by the way, it points the finger right back at the Galatians to their problem. They are wanting to take a gigantic step backwards. You remember Mother, May I? Well, they are asking, May I take a gigantic step backwards from Christ to Moses? from grace to works, from the system, the arrangement of the new covenant, may I take a step back to the old covenant?" And Paul is saying, no, you may not. In fact, as he starts this chapter out, somebody is bound to put a spell on you for you even to think in that kind of terminology. What in the world has possessed you to think you would want to go backwards? Any of you want to go backwards today? You know, some of us, we have very fond memories of our childhood. We didn't have to get up and go to work in the morning. Might have had to get up and go to school, whatever. We had chores, but you know, the old eight to five grind. We didn't have to do that. Didn't have to commute to work. Dave didn't have to drive an hour and a half to get to work. And you think back, you didn't have all the responsibility, you didn't have to pay the bills. I mean, do you ever remember, I never remembered worrying about whether there was going to be food on the table the next day when I was growing up. What a blessed time. I had a wonderful childhood. And you say, well, aren't you ever tempted to go back? Well, for about a day, I get to thinking, you know, that'd be really nice for about a day. And then I get to remembering there was other things that went along with that. A mom and a dad that were disciplining me, that were telling me what I could do and when, you know, what I could eat and what I couldn't eat and how late I could stay up and when I had to go to bed. You remember that? And so just about the time I get to thinking how wonderful that was, it hits me, the reality comes home. I don't believe I want to go back. And that is the question. That is what we're working with here. Why in the world do the Galatians want to go back? Well, there's three things that pop out of our text today. Let me give you sort of a brief outline and you can follow. First of all, the question is answered what we learn from the law in verses 21 and 22. Then we see the coming of faith in verses 23 through 25, and then we see, in the remainder of our text to the end of the chapter, the great blessings and privileges that are ours through faith in Jesus Christ. So let's begin with the first one. What exactly then do we learn from the law? I told you that the law was temporal, that it was limited in time, it came into the picture, it is to pass away at the coming of Christ. But it not only was limited in time, temporally, it was also limited as to who it was made with. As I mentioned before, it was just one stream of the family of Abraham. It was not made with the entire world. God entered into a special covenant with that one nation. Well then, if that's the case, what does the law have to say to you and me, who, number one, are Gentiles. As far as I know, I don't have one corpuscle of Jewish blood flowing in my body. And number two, we're never under the law, per se. What lessons am I to draw from the fact that the law was placed upon Israel? Well, I want you to notice an extrapolation. Do you know what I mean by extrapolation? You extrapolate, you look at your data points, and then you extrapolate further as to what's coming. Notice the extrapolation that our text makes concerning the significance of Israel being under law and their experience. He extrapolates from Israel to us. Notice verse 22. The scripture has concluded all, not just Israel, all. Understand, I think the NIV says the whole world. He said, wait a minute, I can see how the law coming upon Israel and their utter failure to keep it proves they are sinners, but how does the law prove that I'm a sinner, that all are sinners? And notice that what the logic is this, that every man lives under some law. Paul in Romans points out that even the Gentiles who have not the law, the law of Moses, still have laws. They still have morality, they have a sense of right and wrong. The law is written on their hearts, he says, in Romans chapter 1. That's true. And notice that this law given to Israel was divine law. This wasn't Israel fishing in the dark saying, well, I wonder what law we ought to pass this week. Sort of like Congress trying to decide what do we do next. I wonder what law we need to pass. This is not Israel getting together for a constitutional convention and drawing up their own Declaration of Independence or their own Constitution. This is God putting the law in their lap and saying, this is it. This is what you do. You don't have to guess. You don't have to ask. You don't have to wonder about it. This is what I want you to do. It's divine law. It's the highest, the purest, the best law. Paul says over in Romans chapter 7 that the law is holy, just and good. It's not that there's anything wrong with the law. It is exactly, if you want to work your way to heaven, if you want to merit salvation, it's exactly what you need to be doing. Get with it. That's what Jesus told the scribe that asked him, how do I have eternal life? Jesus said, how do you read it? What do you think? He said, well, I think you've got to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. I think you've got to love your neighbor as yourself. You remember what our Lord said? A plus. You got it. This do, and thou shalt live. Get after it. Go to it. That's it. You understand it. You see the duty that God has laid upon man. Now get with it. In other words, wait a minute. Who is my neighbor? And of course, that then brings up the parable of the good Samaritan. In other words, wait a minute. You can't seriously mean that. And so, in other words, this is not man guessing at what law he is to keep. It is God prescribing that this is the law that you must keep. And failure to find life by God's prescribed law dooms to failure everybody else's attempts. Because nobody else is even coming close. Am I making that clear? If Israel fails to keep the law, the law, Notice the distinction in verse 21, God forbid, for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. In other words, if ever you can earn salvation, surely it would have been by observing this law, the law God gave them. And so if they couldn't do it by that law, you're sure enough not going to do it by your law. You understand the point? You can't select, you can't pick and choose. This is the God-prescribed way. You want to be justified by works? Here's the works. You say, but I think the bar's too high. Tough! God sets the bar. Thank you very much. He will decide how holy you've got to be. He will decide what's right and wrong. He will tell you how holy and godly and righteous you must be. You understand? And so if they fall short, you certainly, your messy law, you're not even going to come close. To be proved a sinner by this law proves that all others, like you or me, are certainly doomed from the very start. You say, well, wait a minute, I still don't quite understand how their failure points to my failure. I don't see how you can draw this conclusion in verse 22 that therefore all are sinners just because they're sinners. Well, if I'm going to sample the water in a well, test it to see if it's drinkable, do I have to test every molecule in the well? Or do I just dip me a test tube in that water and send it to the lab and see if it's drinkable? Right? You understand, when you test the water, you don't test it all. You just take your sample out, and the sample will tell you the nature of the rest. Guess what? God took a sample of mankind. He took one family from the rest of humanity, set them apart, dealt with them according to the law, and their utter failure under the law points to your and my utter failure under the law. We're not going to be any different. We're made of the same stuff. We're just as fallen as they are with the same mess and same sins that they had. Their failure to keep it proves our failure to keep it. I'm thinking about a teacher grading a paper. You know, they start out, and I'm thinking of, you know, grading the history of Israel. Okay, they enter into a covenant there at Mount Sinai. The first page reads pretty good. Turn the page. What happens? Moses leaves the scene and they're dancing around a golden calf. And just follow their history. Let's say you've got their history before you and you're putting red marks at every sin and every act of rebellion. And before long, what have you got? You've got an Old Testament full of red marks. What grade are you going to give Israel? You don't know about flunking. I mean, they didn't make a 69. They didn't come close. God sent His Son into their midst to be their King, and they crucified Him. You don't know about mincing it. And my friend, I would have done the same, and you would have done the same, had you been in their sandals. You understand that their failure proves my failure. And that is why we study the Old Testament. No, we were never under that exact situation that they were under, under the law of Moses. But we learn from their experience. We don't have to experience ourselves. We've got their experience, and their failure is our failure. Now, notice that text tells us in verse 21, That if there could have been a way that you and I could be saved, could be righteous by keeping the law, verily righteousness would have come that way. It shows without a doubt that the cross of Jesus Christ is not merely one way among many. It is the only way. It is for you and me our only resort. There is no other way for sinners to be just before God. And so where does the law leave us? Where does the situation? Well, it leaves us absolutely condemned, reserved for judgment, helpless, locked up. I realize if you're reading out of the King James this morning, you don't get the sense of the prison talk here, but there's a lot of it. In verse 22, the scripture has concluded all under sin. Literally, it is the scripture has locked us all up. Understand, the scripture has consigned the whole kit and caboodle of mankind to be locked up in prison under the law. With no escape, no way out. So like Peter, he's going to be executed the next day. Four quaternions of soldiers to guard him. He's chained to two of them even as he sleeps. The law has put us in that kind of a bondage, absolutely helpless, absolutely hopelessly lost. There's only one hope, isn't there? It's at verse 22. The scripture has put us all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given. There's still that promise back there, remember? where God promised unilaterally to bless all nations through Abraham. Remember that? So while we are sitting here, as I am a Jew in the Old Covenant day, locked up in this prison without any light, without any hope, I still have that, don't I? That unconditional unilateral promise of God that He will give. I won't earn it. I won't work for it. It won't be my paycheck. I'll get it because it is bequeathed to me as an inheritance. I get it because somebody else has paid for it. And so we go on. In verses 23, we see this language, before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto faith which should afterwards be revealed. Now, at first glance, that sounds like it's saying that, well, Old Testament saints couldn't be believers. I mean, faith hadn't come, so they didn't have any faith. Well, it can't mean that because, again, Galatians 3 verse 6 gives us the example of Abraham, long before Christ comes, who believes the promise. What is being spoken of here is not the act of believing, that is, faith as a verb, but the things that are believed, faith as a noun. What we would say most of the time in this discussion, it doesn't come through in English, but there is the definite article in Greek preceding the word faith. It is the faith. The faith, before the faith comes. Now, when I put the definite article before the word faith, I'm talking not so much about the action of believing as I am the things which you believe. It's like me asking you, well, of what faith are you? I'm not asking you to tell me how you believe, I'm asking you to tell me what you believe. You say, well, I'm of the faith of the Methodists, or I'm of the faith of the Catholics, or something like that. You're telling me what you believe, the things you believe. Notice that the action of faith is the same for Abraham as it is for us. The act of faith is to lay hold, to put our confidence, our trust in that which is promised by the mouth of our God. It is what has come to us. It is a testimony that has come to us from God. That's all Abraham had. He doesn't have a child. He doesn't even have the hope of having a child. All he's got is the naked Word of God Almighty. And he believes it. And by the way, folks, what we call the gospel in 1 John 5 is called the testimony of God concerning his son. When you put your faith in Christ, You believe that he is a savior for sinners. You believe that he's risen. You believe he's sitting at the right hand of God. And unless you've got a whole lot better telescope than I've got, you can't point it to a spot in the sky and see him sitting up there. You're going to have to put your confidence in the bare, naked Word of God, just like Abraham. But something is different, isn't it, between the promise that Abraham put his faith in and the fulfillment that has come to us in this thing called the gospel. What we believe is much fuller, is much more complete. Abraham put his promise, I'm sorry, his trust, his faith in the promise of God when it is so sketchy. Abraham, all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you. God didn't tell him how. He didn't tell him it's going to involve a virgin bearing, giving forth a son. He didn't talk about a cross. He didn't talk about a tomb. He didn't talk about a resurrection and ascension to glory. None of the things that we associate with the gospel. It's just the hint. It's just a very sketchy thing. You and I have a much fuller content of what we believe. He didn't tell Abraham how. He's told us how. He's let us in on how he will justify sinners. It will be through the cross of his Son. And so it's almost, as Paul uses this language, faith now has come. The themes that we are to believe as New Testament believers has now come into the picture. They cling to merely the promise of a provision in the New Testament. We have that provision revealed. That's interesting in verse 23. We are shut up. Here's prison talk again. Before faith came, we were kept under the law. Shut up. Unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. If we were going to put that word into English, just transliterate it, till it was apocalyptic. The apocalypse, you know, the revelation of Jesus Christ, first word of the book of Revelation. till faith was apocalyptic. We were kept in prison until faith comes, the things. And so here in verse 24, Paul likens the law to a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now the translation schoolmaster really misses the point because that implies that the law is like a teacher and indeed the law does teach us, we touched on that last week, points us ahead to Christ, teaches us some things we need to know about the coming Christ, but the term here is the Greek term pedagogue. And a pedagogue really was not the teacher of the children. Usually a pedagogue was an older man, a Greek slave. Oftentimes among a Roman household, they were the most valuable. Because the Greeks, the Romans just loved the Greeks. They loved Greek philosophy, Greek learning, Greek teaching. So if you had an old man who was a Greek, you put him over your children. And so the pedagogue was not so much a principal of a school or a school teacher as he was the superintendent of the child. Our best word in English, I think, is the word chaperone. He's the chaperone. Oftentimes, he would accompany the child from home to school, and then from school to home. Some Roman households, rich ones, had a whole retinue of servants and slaves that followed the child to school. Some of them carried his books, some of them carried his lunch. So, you know, that's a pretty good arrangement. Yeah, when you're six. But when you're sixteen, Because you see, these pedagogues not only were the chaperones, they went not only to school and back from school with you, they went everywhere you went. You went nowhere outside of the house without your pedagogue. And he's always there to slap your hand when you misbehave, to watch out for you, to guard you, and to make sure you don't stray one iota. That's a great idea when you're six, but when you're 16, that gets a little old, doesn't it? He is a discipliner. He is a supervisor. He is a warden. Remember that prison talk? He's got you under his thumb, and you are subject to him. I suppose here in the South, the closest thing that we have to what is being described here was in the old antebellum homes on the plantation, the Black Mammy, that oftentimes not only kept in the kitchen, but superintended the children. Some of us growing up in rural South can still remember the days of the Mammy, who didn't mind slapping your hand when you got out of line. She wasn't just a dishwasher. She had charge of the children, and she disciplines the children. She was the nanny, and that's what a pedagogue was. And what Paul is saying is, the law was that kind of a mammy, a nanny to us, a chaperone. intruding into every area of our life, slapping our hands, wouldn't let us make one judgment call for ourselves. Everywhere we went, there's the law looking over our shoulder, intruding into our life, macro-managing our life. And there's many testimonies from Roman boys growing up that they were sick and tired of the pedagogue. Sounds like a good thing, but not when you're sixteen. Well, notice as we go on to conclude that Paul has this basic premise that once faith comes, we're no longer under that Pentagon. We're no longer under that legal system anymore. Because all who believe in Christ are God's children. It's not the word child at all in Greek. It's the word son in verse 26. For you're all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. And that will be important. You are all sons. Adult sons. In other words, what he is showing here is first what faith in Christ means as far as our own experience. Verse 27 tells us that. As many of you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. May I just say that if baptism is absolutely essential for salvation, as we have it told to us, do you realize this is the only time in this entire letter, a letter that is all about how you are just in the sight of God, do you realize this is the only time you find the word baptism anywhere in the letter? Isn't that rather interesting? That a letter on how you are justified in the sight of God, how you are saved in our colloquial terminology, only has one reference to baptism, and then the jury is out on whether he's talking about water baptism, or as I would think, the baptism of the Holy Spirit placing us into the body of Christ that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 12. Water baptism merely being the sign, the outward token of that baptism. Because notice that as many of you have been baptized into Christ, that have been united to Christ by faith, you have put on Christ. That's interesting language. It's sort of like you got up this morning and you put on some clothes. You who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And I'm certainly not the first to think of this. There's many others who have preceded me that have the rather same idea. But do you realize that in the Roman family, the dress of a male child was very, very significant? I don't know if you've run into this or not. But before the age of 16, Well, everybody wore togas. And I guess about the only thing we know about togas is from Animal House, you know. And we think of a toga party as these scantily clad people with sheets wrapped around them, you know. And that was not the way a toga was at all. A toga went over an inner clothing, a tunica they called it, the inner dress. And the toga was about twenty feet long. It was made out of wool. And you would, I mean, that's a lot of cloth, 20 feet long, and you wrap this thing around you and over your shoulder, and of course, you know, you've got those Roman statues of them hanging there with the toga draped over their arm. I mean, this thing was big and long. It's made out of wool. It's heavy. But for a Roman to be dressed up and to go out into public, that's how you dressed. You didn't just have the tunica on, you put on your toga. But a boy, underaged, had a white toga with a purple border, a poor purple stripe. They called it the toga pretexta, was the Latin term for it. Olivia always laughs at my Latin pronunciation. I'll talk to you later, young lady. Anyway, it was the toga pretexta. It's the toga you wear as you are growing up. But at age 16, Roman males had what we had called a coming-out party, a bar mitzvah, or the old quinceanera down in Mexico for the young ladies. They had a celebration when the young man becomes an adult. He passes from childhood to adulthood, and part of that ceremony is he takes off the toga pretexta, and he puts on the toga virilis, or virilis. It's where we get our word virility from. It was the pure white toga of a Roman adult male. And notice, that's going to be very significant as we go on next week. Well, not next week, two weeks from today, when we're back to our study, when we start chapter four. That's significant. That's changing from a child to an adult becomes very important. But notice that we who have believed in Christ have put him on as our toga. We wear Him. We're clothed in Him. And all that He is, we become. We see the importance of this in what faith in Christ means to our standing before God. In verse 28, it means there is absolutely no difference between Jew or Gentile, between male or female, between slave or free man. Now, that doesn't mean that those distinctions are completely abolished. I mentioned in Sunday school this morning that a lot of the women's libbers, of course, love to jump on this text to say, well, clearly there ought to be women pastors because, after all, it says male and female are equal. Well, they are equal in Christ. They are equal as far as their standing before God. A female is not a second-class citizen in the kingdom of heaven. Now, when it comes to function, that's another story. The role that is assigned to a male and a female are very different. But as far as your acceptance with God or whether you're a second-class citizen of the kingdom of heaven, no. Whether you're male or female, whether you're Jew or Gentile, whether you're rich or poor, it really doesn't matter. We have all put on Christ. And God sees this flow. in the very person of his own son. And then thirdly, it's seen in what faith in Christ brings us. There was a promise to the heirs of Abraham. And I got a problem. As far as I can tell, I'm not in his earthly family tree. But there's a way out. Because Christ was. And that being joined to Christ by faith, I inherit all that he inherits. This inherits, this promise in verse 29, heirs according to promise in Christ I get what was promised to him. It's much like, you young ladies, when you get married, whatever was your husband's becomes yours. All his gold, all his silver, all his debts. Whatever he's got, it becomes yours. You're now in-law. You're married to him in a very similar way. We are married to Christ by faith. And whatever he has, we get. Whatever is his is now ours. We are his and he is mine, in the language that we sometimes sing. I think of Ruth in this respect. We don't realize Ruth was a Moabitess. And in our Sunday School class, now you begin to understand the significance of Ruth as a Moabitess. And there was a law that you don't let a Moabitess into the congregation of Israel. You do not let them enter into the worship of God. You don't let them in the tabernacle. You don't let them in the temple. They're a Moabite. Keep them out. And she's a Moabitess. She can't get in. But she did. Didn't she? By the time the first summer was over, she's not a field hand anymore. She's living up at the big house. Because she's married to Boaz. Do you see? That's us. Beggars. With absolutely no warrant to anything that God has. And yet through faith in Christ, we have received it all. Well, I give you this sketch, this panorama of history, redemptive history, and primarily it is explaining what we would say the objective picture here. But it's hard to read this, isn't it, without also thinking in terms that that big objective story, the history of things in the Old Testament leading up to Christ, is to some extent our history. That what happened to them over a period of thousands of years is what happens to each of us. That we come into this world, and we're as fallen as fallen can be. We're sinners, but we really don't have much consciousness of it. And then the law comes. That's Paul's language in Romans 7. I was alive once without the law, and then the commandment came. All of a sudden, it's like my conscience comes alive, and I realize I'm in trouble. The old Puritans called them sensible sinners. Spurgeon said he never met too many sinners that were very sensible. But they didn't mean it like that, reasonable. They meant it in the sense that they were sensible of their sin. Because you see, after all, it is a sinner's gospel, isn't it? He didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus is coming to the world to save who? Sinners. And so just like the history of the Old Testament, there was a time when I was sort of footloose and fancy free, and then the commandment came. And my conscience came alive and condemned me. And what am I going to do? How will I get myself out of this? There is the old saying, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. It's way too late in the sermon to bring up things like that. That's an old evolution argument, that the development of the fetus or the embryo recapitulates the evolution of its species. that the human fetus developing in the womb goes through the same phases as the human race did in its evolution to be a man. There was a time when they looked at the human fetus and thought they could see gill slits like a fish, and they're saying, well, see, this proves that mankind went through a similar development. Well, it's all hogwash. And it's been absolutely debunked today. No respectful evolutionist would dare bring up that argument today. But what I'm saying is, what you see here is a similar thing, that our, the history of Israel, the evolution, if you will, because evolution simply means change over time, the evolutionary revelation unveiling of truth and the gospel. We've had that same kind of thing go on in our experience, haven't we? From a time when we were locked up tight on a drum under the law without hope, without a refuge, and then faith came. The gospel, the good news came our way. We flee to Christ, and we find blessing in Him. And why would we ever want to go back? Now some claim to say that we're no longer under a schoolmaster, and that means the law, and that's very dangerous, that this is antinomian teaching, that that means we can just go do anything we want. Hardly. Number one, like putting folks under the law is going to keep them from sinning? Well, that'll work, won't it? That really worked in Israel's case. You'll give them a lot of law and they'll become holy people. Really worked good, didn't it? No. I am not free to sin. But I am free from the law's micromanagement of my life. I am free from that mammy. from that nanny that's looking over my shoulder, intruding into everything I do. I am treated as an adult son in this New Testament age. Remove the yoke of the law. That's what Peter said. You're going to put these Gentiles under that yoke that we were under and we couldn't bear it, neither could our fathers. Is that what you want to do? Put Gentiles under the yoke of the law? But to remove the yoke of the law doesn't mean I'm yokeless. For Jesus said, Come unto me ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Come unto me, he says, ye that are weary and heavy laden. Weary and heavy laden of what? Working a forty-hour week? Chopping cotton? Digging ditches? Weary? Tired of what? Trying to be saved by your own doing. Jumping under the yoke of the law. I offer you another yoke, he says, and it's easy. The burden is light, and it's light not because the demands have been diminished, but because of the one who lays the yoke on me. I am to love like I've been loved. I'm to forgive like He forgave me. I'm to serve like He stooped and served me. It's a new commandment, love one another, not because Moses didn't say it, but because it comes in a new context of a Savior who strips off His clothes, puts on a towel, takes on the guise of a slave, and kneels down and washes my dirty, stinking feet. He is the one who says, serve one another. I am now to love because I have been loved by the Son of God himself. Oh, his yoke is easy. His burden is light. Let's keep these things in mind as we now turn our attention to these elements reminds us of that date.