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If you have your Bible, let me
invite you to turn to the book of Galatians. We have commenced,
renewed our exposition through the book of Galatians. Some months
back we worked through Galatians 1 and 2, and now we are in the
process of working through the central chapters, chapters 3
and 4. And when we complete that, we'll
go back to Luke, and eventually we'll come back and look at chapters
5 and 6. I've noted a couple of times a basic outline we could
give for Galatians 1 and 2. Paul is dealing with his own
autobiography, telling about his call to be an apostle, because
his authority was being challenged as an apostle. He's been addressing
within these churches the problem of those who are teaching that
you need to be circumcised to be a Christian, and so he's asserting
the fact that he's an apostle. And then in the central chapters,
his focus is upon the doctrine of justification by faith. We
could say the pure gospel is the focus, defining it, defending
it, is the focus of chapters three and four. And then finally,
eventually we'll see in chapters five and six, the focus is on
ethics. How are we to live as believers? And so we're in the
midst of this meditation upon what is the core of the gospel?
What is the doctrine of justification by faith? And so we're going
to pick up in Galatians 3 and look at verses 15 through 22. As you're able, let me invite
you to stand in honor of the reading and hearing of God's
word. Galatians 3, verses 15-22. Paul writes, Brethren, I speak
after the manner of men. Though it be but a man's covenant,
yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and his seed were
the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds, as
of many. but as of one, and to thy seed
which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant
that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law which
was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that
it should make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance
be of the law, it is no more of promise, but God gave it to
Abraham by promise. Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions,
till the seed should come to whom the promise was made, and
it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a
mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. 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." May God bless the reading and
the hearing of His word in this place. Let's go to work together
in prayer. Gracious God, we have come together to listen to your
word, to listen to, through the medium of the inscripturated
word, the teaching of the Apostle Paul as you inspired him. We
would realize this morning that we are not receiving the words
of any mere man, but we are receiving your God-breathed words to us. Help us to have the right spirit.
Help us to have a spirit of reverence, a spirit of expectation. As we
listen to your word, we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, I gave the title of this
message, When God Makes a Promise. And I meant by that to indicate
that it's the beginning of a sentence that you are to complete. If
I were to say to you, complete this sentence, when God makes
a promise, he keeps it. That's how you would naturally
complete the sentence. I don't know if you know this,
but this passage focuses upon God as a promise making God and
a promise keeping God. We all know as human beings what
it's like to have promises broken. Maybe you have made promises
in the past in various spheres of your life that you have broken. Or maybe you've been in situations
where people have made promises to you and they haven't followed
through. I know as parents, boy, I learned
that, you know, children are like little lawyers. And you've
got to be very careful what you say to them, because if they
ask you, are we going to do thus and such, and you say yes, and
then circumstances don't allow you to do it quite as quickly
as they wanted, they are ready to take you to child court and
say, but you promised. Some of you heard us tell the
story that when our eldest was little, she got a little CD,
a free CD with some crayons about the Crayola Crayon Factory in
Eastern Pennsylvania, and she asked me if I could take her
there, and I made the mistake of saying, yes, we'll go someday.
And every year I heard about it. We haven't gone to the Crayola
Crayon Factory yet. And I didn't follow through on
that promise. I think she was probably about
five I think it was probably when she was about 11 or 12,
finally, we went to the Crayola Crayon Factory in Eastern Pennsylvania,
which is a wonderful place to visit, by the way. Not much else
there, but it is a tremendous place to visit. But she kept
holding me to that promise, and I had to keep it. Well, the Scriptures
teach us that the God of the Bible is not like fallible and
weak men. that when he pledges to do something,
that he follows through on it, and he does it. Again, as a minister,
when I've conducted weddings, and you go through the wedding
liturgy, and you're guiding a couple and taking those wedding vows,
and they're standing before God, most importantly, and then standing
before witnesses of a congregation, and they make vows to love and
to cherish one another. in sickness and in health. Till death do they part. I wonder,
how is it that so many people can stand forward and make those
vows and then later break them? How can people do things like
that? And yet we know how. Because
we know our own hearts. And we know that we're not always
the promise keepers that we should be. Certainly in the scriptures,
there's a very high view held of keeping promises and keeping
vows. In Ecclesiastes 5, 4 and 5, Solomon
writes, When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it,
for he hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that which thou hast vowed.
Better is it that thou shouldst not vow, than that thou shouldst
vow and not pay. Jesus likewise taught that our
yea should be yea and our nay, nay. And he taught his disciples
that anyone who would come after him and be his follower should
first sit down and count the cost, lest he be like one who
starts to build a tower and isn't able to complete it, or one who
goes out to war and doesn't have the forces needed to meet the
enemy. He taught that in Luke 14. Do
not make pledges and promises that you cannot keep. In our
passage today, Paul is going to point out that there is a
model for integrity and consistency and promise keeping. And it is
found in the character of God himself. That our God is consistent. That our God is trustworthy. that our God is a promise-keeping
God. Now I want to remind, I alluded
to this a few moments ago, but let me call this back before
your attention again. What is the book of Galatians
about? Why does Paul write this letter?
It's a polemical letter. It's one in which he is exhorting
and confronting people that he believes have fallen into error,
and he often says things that could be taken as being quite
pejorative. We saw at the beginning of Galatians
3.1, he called them, oh, foolish Galatians. But the problem was, again, Paul
had preached the pure gospel in his church, but then in his
absence, false teachers had come in. And they had perverted the gospel.
They had taught, not only did you need faith in Jesus, but
you needed to keep the Old Testament law. And in particular, you needed
to be circumcised. And Paul is now confronting these
teachers. We could say that these teachers
said that what you really needed was Jesus plus Moses. You needed what Jesus did on
Mount Calvary and you need what Moses received on Mount Sinai. You need Jesus plus the law that
was given to Moses as mediated through Moses. And in order to
enter into this discussion with them, Paul counters And he says
to them, wait a second, there is someone who is more important
to consider in the holy history than Moses. I'm going to go back
before Moses, even before Moses, and remember the promise that
God made to Father Abraham. Even before God entered into
the covenant of circumcision with Abraham, God justified Abraham
by faith. The covenant of circumcision
doesn't come until Genesis 17-18, but already in Genesis 15-6 it
can be recorded that Abraham believed God and it was accounted
to him or credited to him for righteousness. And that's the
polemic, the reasoning over scriptures that Paul continues to work through
with the Galatians in the passage that we look at today. Let's
start our exposition looking at chapter 3 and verse 15. Paul starts off by addressing
the church here to whom he's writing and he starts off Brethren,
I think I pointed out last week or maybe the week before how
although Paul is going to have some hard things to say to these
folk in Galatia, he still recognizes that they are his spiritual kin.
that they are brethren. And so he's speaking to them
as Christian brothers. He says, brethren, I speak after
the manner of men. And this is a phrase that Paul
uses elsewhere in his letters. It's found in First Corinthians
nine, eight, Romans six, 19. When Paul says, I speak after
the manner of men, he means I'm going to speak in ordinary, straightforward,
an intelligible speech to you. Now, we might read this passage
and say, oh, really, Paul? Because, quite honestly, this
is a very difficult passage to understand. And perhaps even
when I read it, you might have been sat there thinking, OK, what
is he really saying here? How can we understand this? But
Paul is telling them, I'm going to try to speak in a straightforward,
plain manner with you. And then he says, here in verse
15. Though it be but a man's covenant,
yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto. And what Paul is doing here is
he's not calling the covenant that God had with Abraham or
the covenant he had with Moses a human covenant. What he is
doing is drawing an analogy And this was often done in the Jewish
way of thinking, an analogy from the lesser to the greater. What
he is saying here is that if human beings know how to make
contracts or covenants with one another, and if they know how
to make covenants that are binding and that cannot be changed, then
how much more does the God of the Bible know how to enter into
contracts or covenants that are binding and will not be changed.
Now, if you've ever entered into a contract or covenant, let's
say you've sat down and you've entered into a mortgage to buy
your home. After you close the deal with
the attorneys, you don't go home and say, you know, I think I'm
going to alter that agreement a little bit. I think the payment
is a little too high. I'd like to lower the interest rate. And
I'm just going to pencil in a few changes to the contract. No,
you can't take that agreement and disannul it. and make it
void. It's a binding agreement. The
contract has to be agreed to by both parties. And this is
Paul's point. Again, if human beings know how
to enter into covenants that cannot be unilaterally disannulled
or added to, how much more can we trust God to be faithful in
the covenants that he has made to us? How much more can we trust
him to keep the promises that he has made to us? And then in
verse 16, Paul reminds us that covenant promises were made to
Abraham of old. Now to Abraham, verse 16, and
his seed were the promises made. And what he's referring to here
is probably Got to go back to Genesis 12 verses 1 through 3. We read this last week. It's
hard, again, to overestimate how important Genesis 12, 1 through
3 is for understanding all of holy history. But this is the
place where when God calls Abraham, and to leave his father's house
and go to a land that he will show him, and he promises, I
will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make
thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing, and I will bless
them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee, and in
thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So a promise
was made to Abraham that he would make him a great nation, and
that through him all nations would be blessed. Now this is
what is called an unconditional covenant. Does it say there,
did God say to Abraham, Abraham, if you complete your part of
the bargain, then I will do all these things for you. No. He simply makes a unilateral
promise. Irrespective of Abraham, God
makes this pledge or this promise to him. And then he's going to
specifically interact with a promise that is made to Abraham in Genesis
22, 18, where it says, And in thy seed shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice. In
thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. Actually,
in thy seed. Now go back, think of Genesis
22, 18, and go back to Galatians 3, verse 16, where Paul here
is going to engage in, I guess what we could call a bit of exposition,
study of this particular promise that was given to Abraham, and
he's going to focus in on a single word within this promise from
Genesis 22, 18. He says, He saith not unto seeds
as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. So he makes a point of interpretation.
And the point is, sounds kind of like a preacher, doesn't he?
Now, friends and neighbors. Genesis 22, 18, God did not say
to Abraham, I am going to bless thy seeds, plural, but I'm going
to bless thy seed, singular. I want you to notice a couple
of things about this. First of all, note that Paul
models for us here a concern for every word of scripture. every word of Scripture. What
he's saying is the interpretation of Genesis 22, 18. It matters
whether or not the word is seeds or seed. It matters whether it's
plural or singular. Jesus taught that not one jot
or tittle would pass away from the written word till all was
fulfilled, Matthew 5, 18. We call this the plenary verbal
inspiration view of Scripture, plenary means full, that every
word of Scripture is inspired and every word is important.
And brethren, when you have that conviction, it's going to change
a lot about your faith and your practice of the faith. Let me
tell you one thing that will change. If you begin believing
that every single word of God is inspired, the plenary verbal
inspiration of Scripture, then you're going to want to understand
what every word is. For example, it's going to make
you probably want to go to a church where they actually exposit the
scriptures, where the messages aren't topics based on a couple
of verses strung together from hither and yon. If God's word
is fully inspired and every word matters, We better listen to
what every word has to say. We better study it, and we better
listen to it. It also, friends, will begin
to affect the way you think about the text of Scripture. It's not
just something for academics to ponder somewhere. But if Paul
thought it made a difference in Genesis 22, 18, whether the
word was plural or singular, and that difference made all
the world's difference for the interpretation of that passage,
guess what? That same principle applies to every other verse
in the Scriptures. And so we better know what text
of Scripture we have before us. Second, Paul is modeling, again,
the importance of studying and expositing the scriptures. And
then thirdly, Paul is making a sophisticated, logical argument
against the Judaizers. The Judaizers were those who
were teaching you need to be circumcised, you need to keep the law to be
a Christian. And I think it's this sophisticated
argument that gets maybe the reading of this to be a little
bit murky. You know, it's God's Word and let's soldier through
it and see if we can find the significance here. You see, the
Judaizers wanted to go back to Moses and the law. They wanted
to say Christ plus Moses. But once again, Paul trumps them
by going even further back and say, no, not Christ plus Moses,
but Christ in continuity with Abraham. who preceded Moses. Furthermore, he says, there was
a promise made to Abraham, not that his seeds, plural, would
be blessed. What does that mean? Not that
his physical descendants merely, not merely those who are ethnically
Jewish, would be blessed. But, Paul says, it's singular. but that his seed would be blessed. Not all the physical offspring
of Abraham, but one from his line. And who is that one? Paul tells us that one is Christ. And to thy seed, verse 16, which
is Christ? If you were to take the Gospels,
and there are two Gospels that have what are called genealogies,
where they trace the line, the physical descent of Jesus. In
Matthew's Gospel, it is traced through Joseph, the foster father
of Jesus, who adopted him and gave him sort of his legal line. And then in Luke's Gospel, Luke
chapter 3, his lineage is traced through Mary. Both of them include the fact that Jesus came from
the line of Abraham. If you search those genealogies
in Matthew 1, you search the genealogy in Luke 3, you'll find
that Jesus came through Abraham. The still further implication
that Paul will draw later on as he's going to unfold this
argument in Galatians 3, is that all those who are in Christ as
the seed, singular, of Abraham, will also be blessed by virtue
of the fact that they are in him, that they have union with
him. You see what the point Paul's
making? God promised that he would bless the seed, singular,
of Abraham. By that, he's saying you're not
blessed just because you're ethically Jewish, just because you're a
physical descendant of Father Abraham. But you're blessed if
you are in the seed. If you are in Christ. Whether
you're Jew or Gentile, you are blessed if you are in Christ. If you know Christ. In verse
17, Paul makes the point that the law was given to Moses only
some 430 years after the covenant was made with Abraham. And so
look at verse 17. And this I say, that the covenant
that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law which
was 430 years after, cannot disannul that it should make the promise
of none effect. You see his point here is? See,
God made a promise to Abraham and the fact that 430 years later
he gave the law to Moses does not disannul the promise that
he made to Abraham. God is a covenant keeping God.
He doesn't He would not allow one covenant to cancel out the
promises that he previously gave, because he's an internally consistent,
a faithful, and an unchanging God. In verse 18, then Paul adds
that the inheritance of the believer does not come of the law. That is, the keeping of the law.
So in verse 18 he says, for if the inheritance be of the law,
It is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by
promise. What he's pointing out here is
that God promised Abraham that all nations would be blessed
in his seed. And when he did this, he did not make it contingent
upon Abraham first doing something that God required. If that had
been the case, Then Abraham might have claimed some ground for
boasting. He could have said the nations
were blessed through my seed because I was so faithful. Or
he could say the nations were blessed because I was so obedient.
And no, that's not the point at all, Paul is going to say. It's not through law keeping,
but it's through promise. God gave this covenant to Abraham
by promise. The start of verse 19 has Paul
asking a key rhetorical question. Look at the very first sentence
in verse 19. Wherefore then serveth the law? Wherefore then serveth the law? If you were to read it in Greek,
it literally reads simply, why then the law? Why then the law? And really, that was a question
that really occupied Paul's thought. It's there in Romans, it's here
in Galatians. If God established this covenant
with Abraham, if God promised to bless all nations through
his seed, Christ, and he made this with no contingent obligation
on the part of Abraham or the people, why 430 years later did
God give the law on Mount Sinai to Moses? What is the significance
of the law that was given to Moses? Paul reflects in verse
19 and he notes three important things about the law. First, he says in verse 19, it
was added because of transgressions. It was added because of transgressions. The law was given due to the
sinful and depraved inclinations of the human heart. It was given
to restrain sin and to open the consciences of men to make them
aware of their sin. Second, he says, it was in all
aspects only provisional until the coming of Christ. Look at
verse 19. After he says it was added because
of transgressions, he says till the seed whose Christ should
come to whom the promise was made. This is why we believe
that once Christ has come, we're no longer obligated to keep what
are called the ceremonial and civil aspects of the law. We're
no longer obligated to try to keep the Passover. We're no longer
obligated to try to keep the dietary laws, because those were
provisional until the coming of Christ. The moral laws we've
seen before, that does continue to extend, but the ceremonial,
civil aspects of the law do not. And then thirdly, Paul says,
that the law was ordained of angels. Look at verse 19 again.
And it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. The scriptures seem to affirm
that God is so holy and men are so distant from him that even
before the incarnation of Christ, God often used creatures to mediate
his commands to his people. And it is taught in several places
in the scriptures that angels were used to mediate the law
to Moses. Stephen, the first Christian
martyr in Acts 7.53, speaks of the law being given by the disposition
of angels. And the mediator here probably
refers to Moses himself. God used Moses as a mediator
to give his law to his people. Next, in verse 20, Paul says,
Now, a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. What does that verse mean? I
have to tell you, as I was studying for this and looked at this verse
and began to turn it over, I was comforted by the fact that I
read the commentators and almost all of them said this verse is
very difficult to understand. The old Puritan expositor Matthew
Poole noted about verse 20 said, this text is acknowledged by
all interpreters to be very obscure. John Brown, the Scottish divine
in 1853 observed, perhaps no passage in scripture has received
so many interpretations as this. And then John Brown, in his commentary
on this verse, cites a scholar of his day who traced no less
than 250 different interpretations of this verse. The Dutch scholar
Herman Ritterbos, writing a commentary in 1953, said that there were
at least 430 interpretations in this verse, matching the 430
years between Abraham and Moses in verse 17. Now, a mediator
is not a mediator of one, but God is one. What does that mean? But we can ask some questions.
Is the mediator he's talking about here Moses? Or is it Christ? Or is it any mediator? Is Paul
making a positive statement here? An approving statement? Something
that he approves of? Or is he quoting his opponents
as he often does? Is he contrasting the promise
to Abraham and the giving of the law? What's going on here? Martin Luther interpreted verse
20 as follows. He says it means God offendeth
no man and therefore needeth no mediator. But we offend God
and therefore we need a mediator. That was Luther's interpretation.
If we were to attempt to exposit this, with some trepidation,
I think we should break it up and look at each part. First
of all, it says, now a mediator is not a mediator of one. And
I think the simplest way to interpret that is simply to conclude that
Paul is making kind of an obvious point here, that if there is
a mediator, that implies that he is mediating between two conflicting
or opposing parties or sides or ideas. Now, a mediator is
not a mediator of one. If you have one opinion, there's
no need for mediation, right? And then the second part is,
he adds, but God is one. And I think perhaps the point
he's making here is stressing the idea that there is no inherent
self-contradiction in God and in his character. There's no
contradiction in God's character. God doesn't act with self-contradictory
motives. He does not act inconsistently. He's not like the pre-Christian
Greek gods who are capricious. One minute they can be friendly
to men and the next minute they can play tricks on them. One
minute they can bless, and the next minute they can curse. He's
not like the god, the Allah of Islam. If you've ever read any
of the Hadith about what Muslims believe about Allah, he's completely
capricious. One day a man can do good works,
and he can say that man can go into paradise. The next day it
can be a man who's a mass murderer, has never done any good deeds,
and he can capriciously allow that man to go into paradise.
But the God of the Bible, I think Paul is saying, is not like that.
The God of the Bible is one. He is not filled with illogical
inconsistencies. And I think in this case it leads
to Paul's greater point. God did not enter into a covenant
with Abraham and justify him by faith. and then later on decide,
no, I've got a better idea. Instead of that plan, I'll give
them the law through Moses, and if they can keep the law, then
they can be justified in my sight. No. I think what Paul is saying
is that the giving of the law doesn't contradict the unconditional
covenant of faith that God made with Abraham. This interpretation, I think,
is supported by the next question Paul poses in verse 21. Is the
law, then, against the promises of God? Is the law against the
promises of God? Does the giving of a law contradict
the promises that were made to Abraham? And Paul's answer to
that, if you look at verse 21, what's his answer? God forbid,
this is one of our favorite, favorite Pauline phrases in Greek,
Meganito. Let it not even be thought about.
Let it not even be mentioned. Does the law contradict the promises?
No, not at all. And then he goes on to say in
verse 21, for if there had been a law given which could have
given life. Verily, righteousness should
have been by the law. I think what he's saying here
is that if the giving of the law was capable of giving life,
if God could just give the law and we could just obey all the
aspects of the law and be justified in God's sight, then Paul is
saying, I wouldn't be preaching justification by faith alone.
I would be preaching justification by the law. I would just I would
preach you could be in good standing with God if you just get circumcised,
if you just keep dietary laws, if you just obey Passover, if
you just keep the Sabbath, if you just do all those things,
you can be justified in God's sight. But instead, Paul says,
I'm preaching the Abraham gospel, that you're justified by grace,
through faith, not by works, lest any man should boast. The
old Protestant fathers spoke of three uses of the law. First,
they said it is like a bridle to restrain us from sin. Second,
it is like a mirror to show us our sin and to make us aware
of our need for Christ. And third, it is like a map to
guide us in faithful living. But they never taught that the
law can give life. Can the law give life? No. Paul
sums things up in verse 22 by saying this. But the Scripture
hath concluded, all under sin, that the promise by faith of
Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. The first
half of this verse is also interesting to interpret. What does Paul
mean here? But the Scripture hath concluded, all under sin. And the translation here in the
King James Version, hath concluded, is a rendering of the Greek verb
which means literally to make or to declare someone to be a
prisoner. The Scripture has confined or
imprisoned all under sin. I don't think that means that
the Scripture has actively done this, but what it's saying is
that the Scripture declares that men are all fast bound under
sin. We are depraved There is a radical
discord in our hearts that means we cannot keep God's law. That's why we can't be justified
by law-keeping. We send in Adam, our first parent,
and now we have added to that our own personal, individual
transgressions of the law. This is man's problem. This is
man's plight. If we don't get the first part
of verse 22, we're not going to understand our existence or
the existence of the rest of humanity upon planet Earth. But
the scripture has concluded all under sin. It's so interesting. I mentioned this, I think, last
week when we face things like the horrific bombing that took
place in Boston. People have no category for sin.
They just can't understand it. These fellows went to good schools.
They were friendly. One fellow is married, he's got
a child. Surely he would want to do good
and do right. And this is the problem with
the liberal, optimistic, humanistic view of human beings. They don't take into account
the fact that we are sinners. The best of men are men at best. Paul is saying the scriptures,
the scriptures have confined, imprisoned, declared what is
the reality that all men are under sin. The problem with these
Judaizers, I think Paul is saying, is they have way too optimistic
a view of who you are. They think you can be in right
standing by God by being circumcised? They keep it a few laws by keeping
the Passover, by not working on the Sabbath. That's going
to, you think your efforts, that's going to justify you in God's
sight? You think you can be in right standing with God if you're
a good person? Well, Paul says no. The solution
to our plight is in the second half of verse 22. that the promise
by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that belief. Not works of righteousness, but
faith, belief in Jesus Christ. I said last week, Paul never
gets tired of beating the drum of justification by faith alone. He just beats the drum and beats
the drum and beats the drum. He never gets tired of it. He
never tires of it. Let me draw a few spiritual applications
as we come to the conclusion and work through the passage.
First of all, I want you to note that we are all prone to fall
into the trap of thinking that we can be justified by God by
means of our own law keeping. We are all prone to the same
error that the Galatians fell into. We are all prone to fall
into the same snare, into the same pit. We are prone to think,
if I follow the right formula, if I do the right things, if
I say the right words, Even if I can find the right church,
then all will be well between me and God, if I can just do
the right things. Thomas Boston, the old Scottish
Puritan, said this. He wrote, he said, The law is
our first husband and gets everyone's virgin love. When Christ comes
to the soul, he finds it married to the law. So as it neither
can or will be married to another till it be obliged to part with
the first husband. The law gets our virgin love
and then Christ comes and says, I'm your true partner. You've
got to be separated from thinking that you're going to get a right
gain of right standing with God by what you do. But it's all
what I have done today. This passage, hard to interpret
as it is, calls us to examine ourselves once again. Isn't that
what the Christian life is about? You know, some people present
the Christian life as just some kind of simple, you walk an aisle,
you pray a prayer, and it's all done with, you know. But those
of us who've been on the path for a while know that's not what
it is. It's continual, it's incessant. It's Lord's day by Lord's day,
day by day, coming before the Lord and examining yourself.
Testing yourself. Asking yourself, am I resting
wholly in Christ or am I resting in myself? To whom am I looking? Who am I trusting? Trusting myself
or am I trusting in Christ? And this passage is calling us
once again to get in the prayer closet. This is a test that no
one can take for you. No one can do it by prophecy.
You must examine your own heart. Second spiritual point that this
passage points us to is we are led by this passage to meditate
on the consistent and faithful character of the God of the scriptures.
He is a promise-keeping God. He is a covenant-keeping God.
When God makes a promise, He keeps it. He made a promise to
Abraham that in his seed, singular, all nations would be blessed.
And it would be hundreds of years before this would happen in the
fullness of time when Christ came. Abraham, in his lifetime
upon the earth, never saw it. He just had to trust that this
would be what God would accomplish. And the witness of the Scriptures
is that this is, in fact, what God accomplished through Christ. This teaches us, it tells us
that our God is a covenant-keeping God, He's a promise-keeping God.
And what this tells us on a very practical level is that He will
keep all the promises that He makes to us in His Word. He promises,
for example, to save all those who look not to themselves, but
who look to Christ. Children, youth, perhaps not
profess faith yet in Christ publicly. I want you to understand that
one of the promises God gives us in his word. Are you listening,
children? One of the promises he gives
us in his word is Romans 10, 13. For whosoever shall call
upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved." Did you know that
even if you're a little child, and you pray, and you call upon
the Lord with a sincere heart, and you say, God, I am a sinner,
and I need You, and Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and
I believe in Him. The Bible tells you that you
will be saved. That's a promise God has given us in His Word.
If you call upon Him, you will be saved. He's a faithful God. He will keep his word if you'll
trust him. He promises those of you who
are believers, he promises to sanctify those who are saved
and he promises ultimately to glorify us. Jesus prayed for
his disciples in John 17, 17, he prayed, sanctify them by thy
truth. Thy word is truth. Don't you
think God the Father will listen to the prayers of Jesus the Son
and sanctify his people? In the golden chain of redemption
in Romans 8 30, Paul wrote that those whom God justified, he
also glorified. One day, all the aches and pains
we have in this tent will be done. One day, all the struggles with
sin will be done and we will be glorified. That's one of God's
promises to us. He kept his promise to Abraham,
do you think he will keep this promise to you? Another promise he gives us in
his word is that he works all things together for our good.
Romans 8, 28, he works all things together for our good. Trials,
triumphs. Victory, setbacks, discouragements,
encouragements. He works all things together
for our good. Did he keep his promise to Abraham?
Will he keep this promise to you, fellow believer? He promises
that he will provide for our material needs. Psalm 37, 25
says, I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the
righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread. He said, consider the lilies of
the field. Consider the birds of the air. Did he keep his promise
to Abraham? Will he keep this promise? He
promises in his word that he will come again one day to set
all things right and to take us to himself. In John 14, three,
he said to his disciples, and if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I
am, you may be also. Did he keep his promise to Abraham?
Will he keep his promise to his people, to his disciples? Friends,
let us rest in this good word today. When God makes a promise, he keeps it. He keeps it. Give me about you a stand. Let's pray. Gracious and living God, we are
thankful. That you have moved toward us,
you loved us before we loved you. And you have been so kind
as to send us father, your son in the fullness of time. And
then you sent your apostles to establish the faith and to write
down the scriptures so that we would have a confident, trustworthy place
where we could learn about your will and your ways. And Father,
we are so thankful that you have provided for your people in such
sufficient ways. Gracious God, allow us to understand
the truths that we have ponder today and to apply them in our
lives. We ask this in Christ's name,
Amen.
When God makes a promise
Series Galatians Series
| Sermon ID | 428131735457 |
| Duration | 51:14 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - AM |
| Bible Text | Galatians 3:15-22 |
| Language | English |
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