Just a brief word, I was thinking about the Psalm 46 there. He makes wars to cease. I was thinking about the situation with Iran and, you know, through the history of the world, war is not an unusual thing. In fact, it almost seems to be the default setting for man. Man is quarrelsome There's always fights going on between people and between nations and God in that psalm is Pointing to his own power and his power is manifest by causing wars to cease By bringing peace to a quarreling squabbling human race Galatians 3 15 through 19 is our text today we will be I'll be reading through verse 25 just because the The subsequent verses that I don't have time to really go into depth to today are so relevant to this It's all part of the same general section here So I want to read those as well, though I won't be going today really through verse 25 and any kind of detail will basically be going through verse 19 and As a reminder just from the the context of Galatians Paul has been admonishing the Galatians for their foolishness in turning so quickly from the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the false gospel of the Judaizers wherein the goal was to be found righteous through the law Paul pointed out that even Abraham was He who was the father of the Jewish nation was not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Christ. He believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And he went on to show that it is those who have the same kind of faith as Abraham, not those who have the same genetics, who are the true children of Abraham. Which means the Gentiles who believe in Jesus are the children of Abraham and heirs of the blessing promised to Abraham. In Galatians 3.10, Paul stated that those who rely on the works of the law for justification are under a curse because you have to obey all the commandments, not some of them, in order to be justified before God. And no one does that, not even close. But the good news is that Christ became a curse for us, suffering on the cross the punishment that our law-breaking deserves. and dying in our place to satisfy the righteous justice of God, it is by believing on Him and His saving work that we are saved, relying on His righteousness that He earned, keeping the law perfectly, not relying on our filthy righteousness that we've earned by disobeying God's law repeatedly. And that brings us to our text, verse 15. Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations. Even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, and to seeds, as referring to many, but rather to one, and to your seed, that is Christ. What I am saying is this, the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. Why the law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. Now a mediator is not for one party only, whereas God is only one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. So verse 15, brethren, I speak in terms of human relations, even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. He begins this passage by illustrating the certainty of a covenant promise of God by comparing it to human covenants. When two people make a covenant with each other, They lay out the agreement, the terms and the conditions. They write it the way they want to write it, the way they want it to be worded. They approve of the wording at some point. The finished product, all the changes they want to make have been made. They like it. They sign their names to it in our day. Or they swear an oath to keep it. Or whatever custom they have to ratify the covenant in whatever culture. And once it is ratified and the agreement has been made, Paul says, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. It's not a living, breathing document. It is a fixed and unalterable document. It's unchangeable. The same is true for a last will and testament. You can change that before you die, but after you die, it's fixed. If a man puts down in his will that he wants his property, his possessions, his money distributed a certain way, then he dies, then upon his death, everything is supposed to be distributed exactly as he dictated. The covenant or the will indicates no one has authority to come into that document start writing stuff in there Putting stuff in between the lines or crossing stuff out and saying I don't like that That's not allowed Paul will pick up this point again in verse 17. That's the analogy and we'll get back to that from the divine covenant side of things in verse 17, but first verse 16 and Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, and to seeds, as referring to many, but rather to one, and to your seed, that is, Christ. So here's another example of a major interpretive key, just as we have seen in other passages of Scripture. Not only is there more than meets to the eye when talking about the sons of Abraham, or children of Abraham, So there is more than meets the eye when speaking of the seed of Abraham. Once again, we have an inspired author, the Apostle Paul here, telling us something that we would likely miss in reading Genesis. Specifically, I think Genesis 22 18, which is probably the passage Paul was referring to. He makes a surprising grammatical point here about the number Singular or plural that's in grammar. That's called the number the number of the Hebrew noun Zara when we read that in Genesis seed we naturally think about the descendants plural of Abraham all the posterity of Abraham through the generations it seems the natural way to understand the verse particularly when you read the preceding verses and So looking at Genesis 22, starting in verse 16, then going through 18, it says, by myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son. This is what he says to him after he had raised the knife to bring it down into Isaac. Indeed, I will greatly bless you and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens. and as the sand which is on the seashore, and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. Plural. Plural in meaning. Then verse 18, in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. So though the word for seed, zera in Hebrew and sperma in Greek, in the Septuagint, Although that can have a singular meaning, and it is singular in form, it is often used in a collective way, just as we all know, like we see here in verse 17 of Genesis 22. I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars, plural, of the heavens. Singular in form, plural in meaning. And so while the form is singular, the meaning is plural. Then we get to 18. In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. And Paul's point is that the number of the noun is singular, not plural, and the meaning is singular, not plural. And we wouldn't know that, necessarily, if that was a big point to make here. Ordinarily, if you really didn't know and didn't have help, that wouldn't be something you'd be up here pounding your fist on. It's singular! Well, everybody knows this seed can have a plural meaning in fact usually it does We might think the opposite since we're reading on in the previous verse words this singular and form Yes, but plural and meaning but Paul says no the word is singular seed not seeds and His meaning and the meaning is singular And the point is that the promise in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, is fulfilled in one seed, one man, and his name is Christ Jesus. It's not Israel as a nation that would bless the world. It's not Jews as the ethnic blood descendants of Abraham that would be a blessing to the world. That's not the meaning. That's the popular notion amongst many dispensationalists. And so there's this kind of aura, this mystique about the Jewish people that many dispensationalists have. That's not what Paul's saying. It's Christ who would be the blessing to the world. Seed, not seeds. Think of the various Gentile examples in the New Testament. Men and women who were blessed in and through the seed. These are Gentiles, not Jews, from various nations in the world of the Roman Empire. The Ethiopian eunuch came up from Ethiopia, Cornelius and his household, Lydia and her household, the Philippian jailer and his household, the Gentiles who believed at Mars Hill in Athens, the Gentile believers at Ephesus, at Colossae, at Thessalonica, in the Galatian region, here we're reading Galatians, in Rome, in Corinth, And in the many other regions where the gospel was preached, and Gentiles are hearing it and believing, how were they blessed? Was it by the geopolitical nation of Israel? Hardly. Was it by the Christ-hating Jews in their towns throughout the Roman Empire? Those who threw dust in the air and yelled and shouted and screamed and threw a fit until Paul took those who believed and left the synagogue? No, it wasn't them who were blessing. They were blessed in Christ, the seed of Abraham. How were they blessed? They were saved from sin and hell. They received eternal life. Jesus is the name the only name under heaven by which men are saved There is salvation in no one else There is no other Savior. There's no other Messiah. No one else is coming It's him. He's it He is the blessing for the nations of the world. He is the bread which came down out of heaven To give life to the world to give food to the world. I Now, not every person in the world, of course, regards Him as such and appreciates the food of this bread that came down out of heaven. In fact, most don't. They have despised Christ. They have rejected the bread of heaven. But those who have been blessed throughout the world for the last 2,000 years have been blessed in Jesus Christ and in no other. It is those who believe who are blessed with Abraham the believer. It is those who are of faith, faith in Christ, the seed of Abraham, who are the true heirs and sons of Abraham. And as an aside, what Paul is doing here in this text in Galatians 3.16 is he's showing us how the Old Testament Scriptures point to Christ. The Old Testament is about Christ in all kinds of ways that we might miss, that might not meet the eye, that might not be necessarily obvious to us. Think of what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1 20. For as many as are the promises of God in him, that's Jesus, they are yes. Therefore also through him is our amen to the glory of God through us. Promises in him they are. Yes And what Jesus said in John 5 39, he said you search the scriptures. He's saying this to the Jews Pharisee type Jews you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life It is these that testify about me was talking about the Old Testament scriptures. They testify about me in John 8 56 he says your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and And he saw it and was glad. So as Abraham heard these promises, he was able to look forward down the corridors of time, so to speak, and see that there is a seed that's going to come from him who is the great answer, the one in whom the nations are blessed. And he rejoiced in that and believed in him. Experiences of the two disciples who were unknowingly walking along with Jesus Christ resurrected and they were very sad because he'd been crucified and they did not Comprehend that he was going to be raised and Jesus is not revealed himself to them yet. So he's just having this conversation I think they're just talking with some guy and He starts opening up the scriptures to them and says then beginning with Moses with 2427 and with all the prophets He explained to them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures." That's a conversation I would have liked to have been present for, and a hermeneutics lesson I would have liked to receive that day, that they got. Back to Galatians 3, verse 17-18. What I am saying is this. The law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on promise. But God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. So what are you saying, Paul? What I am saying is this. The law Here's the clarification. Here's the big points. Don't miss the point. The law came 430 years after the covenant promised Abraham. So? So Abraham could not have been justified by law. Are you listening, Judaizers? It wasn't yet given. God did not reveal himself to Abraham and give him the law. He did not say to Abraham, here are my commandments. Do them and you shall live. No, God appeared to Abraham and gave him a promise. He made a covenant with him and with his seed, singular, Christ. The scripture preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. Remember Galatians 3, 8? Promising to justify everyone who believes in Christ, whether Jew or Gentile. And this was 430 years before Moses received the law. Abraham believed God before the law came and received righteousness quite apart from the law But did Abraham know nothing of law that he have no understanding whatsoever of God's righteous requirements No, he certainly had Conscience and the moral law was written on his heart Romans 2 12 through 15 God gives that to every human being and But Abraham was not justified before God by following the promptings of his conscience. Furthermore, he believed and was justified before the law came and before he was circumcised. So it wasn't by circumcision that he obtained justification. Paul made that point in Romans 4. Of course, this was something the Judaizers were stressing. What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. But to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. Just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account. Is this blessing then on the circumcised or on the uncircumcised also? For we say, faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it credited? while he was circumcised or uncircumcised, not while circumcised but while uncircumcised, and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised. So that he might be a father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them, and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision, but also who follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham, which he had while uncircumcised. So if Abraham was justified by faith through a promise God made, to him and to Christ his seed, that he would justify all those who have faith in the seed, then the law, which came 430 years later, has no bearing on the promise made much earlier. That's his point. The law was not sent to bring in some new dispensation whereby men would be saved by keeping the law. The law was not sent to usurp to supplant or replace the promise of salvation by grace through faith in the seed. May it never be. The law does not change the terms of a covenant or of a last will and testament that was settled much earlier. Those terms cannot be changed. You cannot doctor them. after the covenant of promise is ratified. Paul uses that analogy going back to verse 15 of human covenants. After a covenant is made, you can't change the terms. Imagine if you could. Suppose that your father wrote out a will with directions that when he dies, a certain portion of the estate comes to you, and he puts no conditions on it in the will that you have to meet. You are simply to receive a portion of the estate because you are his son, period. That's why you're getting it, because you're his son. Then your father dies, and the day comes when the inheritance is to be distributed. But instead of receiving the inheritance, instead you get a letter in the mail from the lawyer who tells you that he has decided to start adding conditions in it that you have to meet in order to receive the promised inheritance. Your father didn't write them, the lawyer's writing them. This is unjust. This is illegal. It's robbery. You can't start adding things that the author of the coven didn't choose to put in there. Let's consider the most common type of covenant that we make in which we are accustomed to in Making in our day. It's the marriage covenant on the day of your wedding. You're married. You said something like this. I Curtis take thee Catherine to be my wedded wife to have and to hold from this day forward for better or worse For poor or for richer for poorer in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part, according to God's holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge thee my faith." Well, suppose that five years later, 10, 20, your spouse decides to start adding conditions to the unconditional promises that he or she made to you. For simplicity, we'll just illustrate this from the husband's vantage point. So, the wife comes to the husband years later and says, I know I said, for better or for worse, but I need to make an amendment to that. There's a limit to how worse it can get for me. It's not that I'm expecting you to be perfect, but I'm sorry, I really can't abide by many of these annoying things that you're doing. I can't put up with them anymore. I will not put up with them anymore. You're insensitive, you're selfish, you don't listen to me, you don't compliment me enough, you take me for granted, you hardly ever buy me flowers. I know I said for richer, for poorer, but that doesn't mean I have to put up with you being a cheapskate. I wasn't thinking this poor. I want out. Now let's suppose there's truth in her complaints. Suppose there's a lot of truth in them. doesn't matter, so far as the covenant that she made is concerned. She made a promise. She took vows, as did he. There were no conditions in the covenant. There's not a single if in those vows. If, or I take thee to be my wedded husband, if. To have and to hold, if. To love and cherish, if. Tell conflict and disappointment and anger and diminished affections do us part. Now you can't go back later and start doctoring it and changing the language of the covenant promises of unconditional love and start rewriting the terms of the conditions. That's not the way it works. I grant you that married couples try to do that. all the time, making amendments and rewriting the terms, not formally, but practically. But it's evil. The covenant of works, do this and live, don't do it and be cursed, is conditional. But the covenant of grace is unconditional. And it is the covenant of grace, not the covenant of works, that our marriages are to imitate. God loves His bride everlastingly. He promises to save her, wash her with the word, sanctify her, comfort her, withhold no good thing from her, protect her and never leave her. And the marriage covenant he makes with his bride is one in which he secures and guarantees her faithfulness. Jeremiah 32 40, I will make an everlasting covenant with them, but I will not turn away from them to do them good. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from me. And an unconditional covenant promise is just that. Once it's established, you cannot alter it by going back in and putting conditionality into it. God established the wording and the terms. God ratified it. Verse 17, a covenant previously ratified by God. And the law, coming 430 years later, is not God changing his mind and adding conditions to the promise he made to Abraham and to his seed. It was Christ. God will never do that. These things are mutually exclusive. In Romans 11, Paul puts it like this. If it is by grace, it's no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. You can't mix them together. If you sprinkle works into grace, it's not grace anymore. It's no longer grace. And here he puts it like this in verse 18. For if the inheritance is based on law, it's no longer based on a promise. But God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. It's neither law or promise. It's not both. It's not mixed together. This should be a great comfort to you, child of God. You who have believed on Jesus, he has taken away your sins and your debt, he has paid the full price for them. Your sins have been cast away as far as the east is from the west. Christ's righteousness, his perfect obedience to the law has been imputed to you, reckoned to your account. God has promised to save you, to keep you, to love you, cherish you forever. He has not and He will never change the terms of salvation on you. He will not get sick and tired of you and decide to start adding conditions to His promise to save those who believe in Christ. He will never say to you, well, you're better than you were, but you're not good enough. He will not say, well, you're obedient for the most part, but because you're not perfectly so I take back my promise. He will not do that. Men are forever mingling and confusing and combining the covenant of works with the covenant of grace. That's what the Judaizers were doing, but God will never do that. He saves you out of the covenant of works, you are in the covenant of grace, which is an unconditional promise of salvation. He will not change his mind once he has accepted Christ's work on your behalf, to change his mind and then say, no, that's not good enough. Christ's obedience is not good enough. We've got to add that, add to that your obedience. I'm changing the terms. Do I hear an amen? In Paul's powerful defense of the gospel and of salvation by gracious promise over against salvation, by circumcision, and by the law, the works of the law as pushed by the Judaizers, Paul is zealous to show what the law cannot do and does not do. It does not justify you. It cannot justify you. In fact, as he says elsewhere, the law can only condemn you if you are trying to be justified by it. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul actually refers to the law as a ministry of condemnation. So this raises the question, if the law cannot justify you, and if no one is saved by it, what's it for? What's the purpose of it? Why did God, 430 years later, give the law through Moses They can't save anyone. If Abraham saved without it, why do we need it? Paul answers that question in verse 19. Why the law then? Good question. It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. The law was added because of transgressions. What does that mean? Well, let's look at a few other verses where Paul also speaks of the purpose of the law, starting in Romans 3. We'll take them in the order in which they appear. Romans 3, 19-20. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may become accountable to God. Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. The knowledge of sin comes through the law. Romans 5 20. A couple chapters later, the law came in so that the transgression would increase. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Sin would increase But God hated sin what's he wanted to increase for? Romans 7 5 to 13 for while we were in the flesh the sinful passions which were aroused by the law Were at work and the members of our body to bear fruit for death, but now we have been released from the law and having died to that which we were bound, so that we serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? May it never be. On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the law. There you go, the knowledge of sin. For I would not have known about coveting if the law had said, You shall not covet. But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind. You see, sin is increasing. For apart from the law, sin is dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin became alive, and I died. And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me. So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good. Therefore, did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be. Rather, it was sin in order that it might be shown to be sin by affecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment, sin would become utterly sinful. And one more, 1 Timothy 1, 8 through 11. But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully. realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. So if we take all of those passages and distill them and sum them up, we end up with this. Why the law? God gave the law to expose sin and increase it by stirring it up within us, provoking our rebellious natures. And two good things happen when that happens. Two good things happen from this ministry of agitation and condemnation. One, the elect are made to discover how wicked they are, that they're not good, not righteous, and they need Jesus Christ as their Savior to give them His righteousness. The law accomplishes that in them. Secondly, on the other side, the reprobate, they will sooner or later be made to see that they are wicked and without excuse for having rejected the Savior. and their self-justifying mouths will be closed by the righteous demands of the law. It will be shown, here's what was required, here's what you did, and it will shut their mouths. And all the world is accountable to God. So when Paul says in Galatians 3.19 that the law was added because of transgressions, He's speaking of the provocation of and expose of transgression in sinful human beings. And then the next clause there, Paul refers to the law as having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator. He may be referencing Deuteronomy 33 too. which says, The Lord came from Sinai and dawned on them from Seir. He shone forth from Mount Paran, and He came from the midst of ten thousand holy ones. At His right hand there was flashing lightning for them. And Stephen, right before he was stoned to death, said the same thing about angels and the law. He said, in Acts 7.53, you who receive the law as ordained by angels, and yet did not keep it. That was one of the last words he spoke. Hebrews 2, 2-3 makes this statement, So there were angels present at Sinai and the terrible thundering of the Ten Commandments while the mountain quaked and smoked." And the mediator that Paul refers to here I think is Moses, not Christ. Moses was clearly a mediator who often stood between God and his fellow Israelites to intercede on their behalf. And remember that on Mount Sinai, the people could not bear the sound of God speaking to them in this way, and they pleaded with Moses to listen to God privately, out of their earshot. And in that sense, he is a mediator, always then interceding for them, stepping in the gap, asking God not to destroy them. Then we come to the third clause, Until the seed would come to whom the promises had been made So the whole verse reads why the law then it was added because of transgressions having been ordained through angels By the agency of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made We know the seed is Christ We know the promise made to Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed, was referring to Christ. What Paul is here giving us is then the purpose of the law in the unfolding of redemptive history. The ministry of Moses comes to its predestined end point as Christ's ministry begins, if I might put it that way. Obviously, the Son of God is active and working throughout the Old Testament era. I don't mean to suggest otherwise. The Old Testament, or Covenant, comes to an end, and it is time for the New Testament, or New Covenant, to begin. God never intended for the Mosaic economy to continue forever. Moses was preparatory. The Law was preparatory. It was preparation for the coming seed of Abraham, the son of David, the arrival of the High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Think of all the things concerning the Old Testament economy that has come to a complete end. The ceremonial laws have come to an end. The temple system is over. The animal sacrifices are finished. Some misguided people may want to resurrect all that. They want to rebuild a temple in Jerusalem today. But it would be pure folly if they did. Why would anyone do that? Christ has come and has been sacrificed once for all. Why does anyone need animal sacrifices now? This would be an offense to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ if they were reinstituted. The three feasts a year in Jerusalem are finished. The Day of Atonement is finished. Never mind the useless continuation of that day as tradition amongst Jews. Christ's crucifixion on the cross was the Day of Atonement to end all days of atonement forever. It is finished. The Aaronic priesthood is finished. There's no more priests. from the sons of Aaron. There's only one priest now, Jesus Christ, the great high priest. The clean and unclean laws are finished. The food laws are finished, along with the required separation of Jews and Gentiles, to which those food laws pointed. That dividing wall has been torn down and the two groups have been brought into one in Christ. The time of Moses is finished. The time of the Messiah has come. of the great eschatological purpose of God for the law. What's the grand purpose of this? What's the end of this, the goal? It's been realized because the seed that it was anticipating and preparing everyone for has come. And this same big picture purpose of the law on the grand scale also takes place on a personal scale for each person who is regenerated. And that's what Paul gets into in the subsequent verses that we'll look into more detail next week. But just as a little bit of, can't resist commenting on it some, before we are regenerated, we are under the law. You'll see that term used throughout the New Testament, under the law, under the covenant of works, under a system of do this and live. And if you don't, you're cursed. under condemnation, because we're trying to justify ourselves by a system that can only condemn us under the law. And this continues until when? Until the seed comes, comes into our hearts by faith, arrives to deliver us. We are broken in spirit by the law, by our view of our own wretchedness, by our failure to keep the covenant of works. And then Christ comes into our hearts through faith and gives us the righteousness that we could never obtain under the law. We go from being under the jurisdiction of the law to be under the jurisdiction of Christ. The tutor, as Paul calls it, at least NAS translation, schoolmaster, disciplinarian, That job is then over. We go from trying to find rest in the law and failing to finding rest in Christ. And once we rest in Him, we are no longer under the law anymore. I'm not talking about like, oh, now you can just live a life of disobedience. That's not what he means. We don't want to be under the law anymore. We don't want to go back there to try to find rest in our works, justifying ourselves, trying to convince ourselves we're good enough, good enough, good enough. We don't want to go back there to the system of works. We have found the one we're looking for. His name is Jesus Christ. He is our righteousness. He is our peace. He is our rest. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. Thank you for using the law to bring us to Christ. Thank you for showing us how horrible we are and of ourselves. Thank you for showing us we have not kept your law, for opening our eyes to see it requires a lot more than we thought it did, that it was way out of reach. Thank you for showing us that we've broken the law every day of our lives. There's no way we could be justified by it. Thank you for showing us that. Painful as it was, thank you for showing us. Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you for being a doctor who says, you have terminal cancer. Instead of lying to us and giving us a Tylenol hat on the head and a Band-Aid and saying, you're fine. Everything will be just fine. Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you for the grim diagnosis. Thank you for then helping us to Take it to heart so that we would not cling to our own self-justifying ways, but would turn to Christ and rely completely on Him. Thank You for giving us the faith to do that. We rejoice in Your Son. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.