Thank you. Please bow with me for a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we are thankful to be gathered here in your presence today. Lord, we come here to worship you, to lift and exalt your name on high. Lord, we ask that we will be here to worship you in spirit and in truth this morning, to worship you straight from the heart. Lord, I pray that you will continue to be in our midst today. I pray that your presence will continue to abide in this house. Lord, I pray that you will bless the message I bring to be edifying and encouraging. I pray that I can come in the authority of the scripture and not just my own opinion. And I pray that you will bless the hearts of everyone that hears this morning. that their hearts will be open, that they'll receive the message, that they may be nourished, and that they may feed upon it, Lord. I pray that we all leave from this house today reinvigorated and ready to go out and go back to our homes and in our workplaces, that we'll be witnesses and ambassadors for Christ, that we'll be faithful to read our Bibles, to pray, and to follow after Jesus Christ. I pray all these things in the name of Jesus, amen. I'm thankful to everybody that came this morning. We do have some out this morning, still some traveling, some that are not here for health reasons. And we did, we've had a lot of camps going on and it's been kind of, been a lot going on with the members in this church. And I'm grateful to hear that the good reports from Camp Morion. and from Melody Grove, and I'm thankful to those who made the effort to come out here this morning to worship and to be with us this morning. I've been going through the book of Galatians lately, so if you will, turn to the book of Galatians chapter 3, Galatians chapter 3. Remember, Paul is writing to the people in the province of Galatia. There has been some Judaizing influencers. There's been some false brethren, as they're called, who have come in who would like to bring them back under the bondage of the law. and not in the liberty of Jesus Christ. They're telling them you have to obey all the works of the law if you want to be justified before God. You have to live by the law if you want to live a life that is pleasing to God. You have to live by the Mosaic law if you want to obtain righteousness and go to heaven. And Paul is writing to these Galatians to refute that and to correct them. So that they can have a more proper understanding of the grace that we have in Jesus Christ. So I'll start reading in the book of Galatians chapter 3. O foolish Galatians, who have bewitched you that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only what I learned of you. Received ye the Spirit by the works of law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish, having begun in the Spirit? Are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Have ye suffered so many things in vain, if it yet be in vain? He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness." So he's asking them, he's saying, you know, Galatians, who has bewitched you? Who has taught you these things? Were you born again by the works of the law? Did you, when we came and preached among you, did we, you know, have all of you circumcised and have all of you start observing the Sabbath and keeping the feast days? Was this how you were born again? Or were you born again by the sovereign work of the Spirit of God? Or now, starting in the Spirit, you have begun in the Spirit, do you now have to be made perfect by the flesh? Say, well, you know, God regenerated me, and he made it possible for me to go to heaven, and now that I've been born again, now I can, but I have to be made perfect by the flesh. I have to be made perfect by the law. I have to obey all the tenets of the law if I want to obtain righteousness and be with Jesus. He's asking them. Is this what you're have you suffered these things in vain, you know if They've obviously been suffering persecution from the the Christians in this time suffer persecution from Jews they suffered persecution from the Romans have you suffered these things in vain if it be in vain and He therefore that ministereth to you by the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doth he do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? When we're working miracles among you, are we doing it under the power of Jesus Christ? Are we doing it by faith, or are we doing it according to the law? You know, you go in here and you keep the Sabbath, and all of a sudden I'm healing people. No, that's not what happened. by the work of Jesus Christ, so that they've done these things in faith. So he's telling them, are we supposed to do these things? Are we supposed to live by the law? Or are we supposed to live by faith? So he's going to go all the way back to Abraham. You know who did not have the law? Abraham. But obviously Abraham was the father of the Jewish race. He was the father of the chosen seed of Israel. He is the direct ancestor of Jesus Christ by whom the promise came. Did he live by the Mosaic law? No, obviously not. He didn't have the law. So how did Abraham do it? It says in verse 6, Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, know ye therefore that they which are of faith the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, Indeed shall all nations be blessed. So then they which are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. For it is written, Cursed is everyone that continueth not the law in all things in the book of the law not to do them. But no man is justified by the law in the sight of God. It is evident the just shall live by faith. So Abraham, he did not have the law. He did not have the Mosaic lock as Moses came 430 years after Abraham, but he lived by faith. He was walking by faith. What does the book of Hebrews say about Abraham? He staggered not at the promises of God. God came to him when he was 75 years old, told him, I need you to uproot your entire family. I need you to leave your country. He's 75 years old. He's probably, he's getting ready to retire. When you're thinking about it, you're getting ready to retire. You're going to go and you're going to uh buy your rv maybe you're going to travel around a little bit you're going to have all your bills paid off and maybe you're just going to sit out on your porch and uh just kind of take it easy and take it slow and you know i've kind of i've done everything that i'm i'm going to do i'm getting ready to retire when god comes to him and says look i know you've got all these riches you know he was a pretty wealthy man uh pretty well to do pretty comfortable i know you're getting ready to retire i know you're later on up in life. But Abraham, I need you to uproot your entire family. I need you to leave everything you know, and I need you to follow me into this country. And I'm going to provide for you. I'm going to give you a seed. I know your wife has passed the bearing age, but she's going to give you a son. And what did he do? He uprooted and he left. He believed God. He believed that God was going to do what he said to do. He decided, he trusted in God. He was walking by faith and not by sight. So he believed the promises of God and it was counted unto him as righteousness. So how do you please God? You please God by walking in faith. When you're born again, when the Spirit has its sovereign work upon you, it gives you faith. You are given the faith that is the gift of God, and it is up to you to exercise that faith each and every day, to grow stronger, to cultivate that faith that was given you. And you don't do that by works of law. You don't do it all on your own. You can't just decide you're going to have faith one day and you can't say, well, you know, if I do enough good works, God's really going to like what I'm doing. I can make myself perfect through my own works. That's not what God wants out of you. You can't make yourself perfect by the works. You make yourself, you can cultivate your faith, you can grow your faith, and you can stand, you can be You can be justified by living by faith, by doing what God wants you to do, by obeying what Jesus has given you. You know, we are dead with Christ, but we are also risen with Him. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the law, so we are to follow Jesus Christ. We are to trust in God and not in ourselves. When they're living by the law, they're trusting in the works of the law. I'm going to trust the works of the law, the works which ultimately I do to be my salvation. Rather, we are to trust in Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ will be our Savior and will be there to lead us through. So we continue on in verse 14, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles. Hold on, excuse me, verse 12. And the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak after the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, No man disanulth, or addeth thereto. Not to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made, he saith not, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. In this I say that the covenant that was confirmed before of God and Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disanulth, though it should make the promise of none effect. So he's saying that look, the law is not of faith. The man that doeth them shall live in them. If you're living in the law, you're not living in faith. We're going to live in Jesus Christ. Did the law redeem you from your sin? Did the law save you? No, it is Jesus Christ that saves you. Jesus Christ redeemed us. You know, when redeeming, to redeem something, that's not to maybe make a down payment on. That's not to maybe be, well, we're going to, I'm going to make a bid on this, or I'm going to maybe put on layaway, whatever. To redeem something, if you look at the definition of it, If you look at the 1828 Merriam-Webster, it says, to redeem by payment of a price, to recover from the power of another, to ransom, to buy off, or even of price frame violet from the dominion of the Mosaic law at the price of his vicarious death. It's also to purchase back to ransom, to liberate, or rescue from captivity or bondage, or from any obligation or liability to suffer or to be forfeited by paying an equivalent as to redeem prisoners or captured goods to redeem a pledge. So Jesus Christ, you are bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. You are redeemed. Jesus Christ has paid your sins in full. He has bought you. He has redeemed you. He has recovered you from the power of death and hell. And now you're under his power. The elect has been freed from the dominion of the Mosaic law at the price of his vicarious death, as the dictionary says. And think about it, God made this covenant with Abraham. He said, by you all nations are going to be blessed. The chosen seed is going to come down through you. It's going to be through your seed that I'm promising you. He didn't say it's going to come through your seeds because Abraham had a chosen son, but if you look at the life of Abraham, he had more than one son. He had multiple sons. Was a promise going to come through all the sons that he had? Was it going to come through the son that he had with Hagar when he went and committed adultery with Hagar and had a child with her after the flesh? Because Abraham, he was a faithful man who lived by faith, but even Abraham made mistakes sometimes. Even Abraham didn't always do what was right. And that's the glorious thing that you think about. You look at the life of Abraham. And you see that he went unto Hagar, and two different times when he went before a king, he got scared and lied about who his wife was. Does God only look at those things and say, well, you know what? Because you messed up, I'm just going to throw you out. I'm going to hold a grudge. No, Abraham repented of those things, and he turned once again to God. He was faithful, he wasn't perfect, because any Old Testament person you read of, any prophet, any type of Christ that we see, not a single one of them are perfect. King David wasn't perfect, King Solomon was far from perfect. Samson is listed in what they call the Hall of Faith or the Heroes of Faith in Hebrews 11, and he did a lot of wicked things. None of them were, all these kept the Mosaic Law, none of them were perfect, none of them were sufficient. The only person that is sufficient is Jesus Christ. He is the only one that could redeem us, and it is because His righteousness has been imputed to us, or it has been placed on our account, He has given it to us, that we are able to be justified by God. So we are, but you look at this, going back to what he's saying, He's saying that he made this promise to Abraham, 430 years by the law, said, by you, the Redeemer is going to come, all nations are going to be blessed, all nations of the earth, they're going to be saved by your seed. And then he made another, he came and gave the Mosaic law to Moses, and Paul is saying, did that law to Moses, did that disannul the contract that he already made with Abraham? No, it did not. What the law does, as we'll see here in a moment, the law is just a picture of Jesus Christ. It's an instructor for us. It's an instruction manual for the Jewish people to follow before the time of Christ. So it says Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. Because the law is not sufficient. The law is not sufficient for us to go to heaven. But Christ has redeemed us. And all through the Bible, all through the New Testament, you're going to see that Christ is our Redeemer. that Christ is the fulfillment of the law. In fact, Christ said that himself. He said in Matthew 5, 17 and 18, I'll read that for you. Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. So he said, I'm not come to destroy the law. The law is not sinful. The law is not bad. It's not against God. I have come to fulfill it. I have come to fulfill, to do all the works of the law. Jesus kept all the works of the law perfectly, to a jot and a tittle. He did everything exactly right, because we can never do that. And because he did every single thing exactly right, because he is our head, our federal head, our representative, He's our representative. He's the one who has bought us. He's the only one who is able to redeem us. He's the only one who is able to impute that righteousness to us because He is the only man that has ever lived and still does live. If you ever find yourself saying, well, Jesus was this kind of man or Jesus was a man that lived back in those times, well, you need to change your vocabulary because Jesus is. Jesus is the Holy Son of God. Jesus is the one that redeemed us. Jesus is the man who lives in heaven even today. He is still the perfect God-man, and he is still in his glorified state. He lives even today. Now just as a side note, that's what differentiates Christianity from every other religion. You look at Islam, you look at Buddhism, you look at Hinduism, you look at every other religion that has been instated upon the earth, and all of them are falling after dead men. All of them, their representative, their God, they're all dead. They're all on the ground. You can go to Muhammad's grave and say, well, there's Muhammad right there. You can go to, you'll find them in the ground. Jesus is the only one, Christianity is the only religion whose Redeemer, whose King, the man who started it all, is actually alive and not dead. You can go, you can spend your whole life, you can go get you an excavator, you can go get you a backhoe, you can go around and dig off, dig up all the face of the earth, you'll never find Jesus' bones because He's not there. You can find everybody else that's ever lived besides Elijah and Enoch, you're not going to find Jesus because He is in heaven today. Right now as we speak, Jesus the man is in heaven, but we know that God's Spirit is here with us in this building right now. What does Jesus say? He said, where two or three or more are gathered in my name, I'm right there in the midst of them. So Jesus is right here in the midst of us right now. So that seed, the promises that was made to Abraham was by his chosen seed, the promised seed, which was Isaac. That was the seed according to the promise. You know, not every single Jewish person that, not every person that is of Jewish descent is going to be in heaven. That's not the way that it works. It was always throughout all of history, it's always been those who are saved are saved according to the promise and not according to the flesh. It's not the fact that every single person who's ever born through the line of Abraham Is going to be saved because that was some of those are by the flesh only one of those was by the promise So we see all throughout the Bible People are being redeemed by the promise of God. They are being made righteousness By they're saved by faith Even from the very first family, look at Cain and Abel. Why did God reject Cain's offering but accept Abel's? Because Abel made his offering, he made a blood offering, he did it out of faith. He did it out of trust and belief in God. What did Cain do? He offered up his fruits of the field. He offered his works before God. He did it not in faith, and that's why Cain's offering was rejected. And Abel's was accepted because it is by faith and not of works. So we'll go down to verse 18. 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 God. 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 law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that by the promise But 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." So he said, wherefore then serveth the law? Is it a... We've already covered it. Is it how you're saved? He said, well, no, it's not how you're saved because if the law could save you, If the law was all we needed to obtain righteousness, if there was somehow we could use the law to get to heaven, then Christ is dead and vain. If all we needed was the law, then there would have been no need for Christ to come and to suffer. But we do, but we, the law was not sufficient. The law could never save us. We had to be We had to be saved by Jesus Christ because as it says he's the only one who is perfect and he and By him are we given righteousness, you know, we had All are under sin just as it says in the Psalms and Paul reiterates from Romans, you know chapter 3, you know for There are none righteous. No, not one. There's not a single man righteous for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God And so, because we are in Christ, because Christ is the fulfillment of the law, because Christ is our representative, we are now, we are freed from the law as it says we have been. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. So, we are not to live under the law. And he says, Paul says the same thing in Romans chapter 7, verse 1. Paul says, know ye not, brethren, for I speak to them that know the law, how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth. For the woman which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth. But if the husband be dead, she is loose from the law of her husband. So he says that, you know, he's making reference to the law. He's talking to the Jews here. He says, as long as you are married, you are bound to your wife, you're bound to your spouse, a wife is bound to her husband. And so he keeps on, so then if law her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress. But if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." We are buried with Christ and we are risen with Christ. We are dead to the law because we have all... Christ, you know, Christ died. And because he died, being our representative, we died with him. But praise God, we also rose with him. You know, if you're saying that we're still under the law, even though Jesus has died for us, and there are plenty of people, professing Christians who say, We need to keep the feast days. We need to keep all the Jewish traditions We need you know, don't don't leave your house and don't take too many steps from Friday evening to Saturday evening just as they did in the old law Don't don't go eat bacon. Don't go eat shellfish Don't do all these things. But you know what? That is trying to live like an adulterous woman. Because if you're under the law, if you're still married to the law, then how can you be married to Christ? If you're still under the law of your husband, if your husband is still living, if you're married, you know, you can't just go out and marry somebody else. Just go out and go be with somebody else. That's adultery. You can't do that. So because we are dead, we are no longer bound under the law of our, we're no longer bound by, we're called the bride of Christ, so we're no longer bound by the law of our old husband, which was the Mosaic law, but we are now bound to Christ. We are under the law of Christ, because Christ is the husband of the church. And I'll tell you what, you won't find a better husband than Jesus Christ, praise God. So because we're dead in Christ, we also live in Christ, and we are dead to the law. So we are married to Christ, and we're not bound by the law anymore. And he said earlier, is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid. or if there had been a law which could have given life, righteousness should have been by the law. So the law is not against the promises of God. The law isn't bad, there wasn't a mistake made, it just wasn't sufficient for us to obtain eternal life. That was never the point. The point of the law was never that we could have eternal life. The point of the law was never so that we could stand perfect in glory with Jesus Christ. So if that's not what the law is, then what's the point? You read in verse 24, "...wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." But after that faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. So we're no longer under the school mastery. The law was a shadow of Christ. The law was to point to Christ, but the law was not to save us from our sins. If you look at, you just go and read through the Old Testament, you'll see that everything talks about Jesus Christ. There's a disagreement, I guess. I've read some sources that say there's this many hundreds of types of Christ, and some said, well, no, I found a couple more dozen than that. As David Powell says, if you're reading story in the Old Testament and you don't see Jesus Christ, you're not looking close enough. I mean, it's just amazing when you really dig into it and you really read all the types there are of Christ, the shadows of Christ, even down to the sacrifices. They're all pointing to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the focal point of the entire scripture. All of the Old Testament is looking towards Jesus Christ, and all of the New Testament after the Gospels is looking back at Jesus Christ. It's all pointing to Christ. And the Old Testament and the New Testament, it's just two sides of the same coin. You know, they say that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. And I love that saying, because it is so true. It's not that there's two different Bibles, there's two different books. Obviously, this is a conglomerate of 66 different books, but it's all the Word of God. It's all what God has breathed out to us, what God has divinely inspired. You know, some people don't believe in the inerrancy of Scripture. They say, well, you know, I don't believe that it's inerrant because it was written by men. You know, I don't think that you can take everything quite literally. We're supposed to kind of struggle with it in our own way. No, you're saying that because there's some things in the Bible that you don't like, that you don't agree with, that you don't think that God has the authority to tell you. And you're trying to bend the scripture. You're trying to kind of bend it to your will. You want to say, well, you know, I need to mold it to where it conforms to my lifestyle. Whereas the Bible says, no, you need to bend your life. You need to conform your life. You need to mold your life around the Bible. You have it backwards. If the Bible says something and you say, well, you know what, I just, I don't agree with that one bit, well, you need to change your point of view, because I'm going to tell you, you're not smarter than the omniscient, omnipotent God, who has been, existed from all eternity, from before eternity began, from before time began, God was there. He's the only one who is not sinful, He's the only one who is omnipotent, omniscient, and reigns forever, so you need to change your point of view if you disagree with God. But we see what the law was. If we turn to Hebrews chapter 10, we'll see what the writer of Hebrews says to here. And remember that the writer, the author of the book of the Bible is God. He did use men as instruments. Just as I will pick up a pen and use a pen to write on a piece of paper, If somebody was to come up and tell me, well, you know what, that pen's a really good writer. That pen really knows what he's talking about. I'd say, that wasn't the pen, it was me. I just used the pen to write it. So these men that wrote the Bible were just God's pen to write down what God wanted us to know. So we come to the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 1. The writer of Hebrews is going to tell us What the law was. Hebrews 10 verse 1. For the law, having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore, when he cometh to the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body thou hast prepared for me. And he goes on and he reads from the Psalms, And so he's saying that, you know, I could read the whole chapter here but I'll cut off and I will encourage you to read the rest of the book of Hebrews chapter 10 when you get home and it'll have a better explanation than of what I can give right now. But it's a shadow. It's a shadow of the good things which are to come. It is pointing to Jesus Christ. It is a type of Christ. And so, why would you worship and observe the shadows when you have the express image of God in Jesus Christ that you can worship? He's right there. We don't have to, you know, We don't have to go through a high priest anymore to make atonement for our sins because Jesus is our high priest and we can go directly with him. He is our direct line to God. Later on it'll say, you know, these burnt offerings and sacrifices, I didn't have any pleasure in. These are not what saved you. What saved you is Jesus Christ. When he had once offered permanently his body unto God, He sat down. You know, the priests, the high priests in the Bible, when they would go and make the sin offering, they could never sit down because their work was not finished. Jesus is sitting down because that work has been completed. So it's a shadow of good things to come everything that you read and the Old Testament, you know, you see that they have you know, they are to bring their their their for the first fruit of everything they have the they're supposed to bring a land without spot and without blemish to the best of the very best that they have they come and offer to God. Not because anybody was, as he just said, nobody was saved by those things, but this is a picture of Jesus Christ. It is to help us to understand what Jesus Christ has done for us. And also, it's a schoolmaster, so it shows us Christ, it points us to Christ, but also, by the law, God taught us what sin was. and if we go back to Romans 7 we go back to Romans Romans chapter 7 When we go to verse 7, Paul says, What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! Nay, I had not known sin but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence, for without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore, the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. So we know what sin is by the law. People say, well, we are no longer under the ceremonial law, but we are still bound by the moral law. And in a sense, you're not bound by any of the Mosaic law. But what God teaches in the Old Testament was an abomination. And the Old Testament is still an abomination now. You know, just because Jesus Christ came and died for us doesn't mean we can throw out the Ten Commandments. It's still wrong to have graven images. It's still wrong to serve other gods. It's still wrong to lie. It's still wrong to commit adultery. It's still wrong to kill and steal. Everything that God put in the Old Testament, people say that all the time. Well, you know, that's just old. That's in the book of Leviticus. You can't go by that. That's Old Testament. That's the old people stuff. That's all before Christ. Christ abolished the law. No, Christ did not abolish the law, as we just read. He was a fulfillment of the law. Christ kept the law for us. But also, Paul says right here that you have the ceremonial law, which is a picture and a type of Christ. All the different feasts, you know, the Passover feast is pretty direct reference. You can't get a more direct reference to Jesus Christ than that. You have all the different sacrifices. You have the high priest going in and making atonement for sins. Now, all that is a picture of Jesus Christ. And then that is one part of the school. The other part of the school is the moral law, where he is teaching us what God abhors and what God finds acceptable. He doesn't find acceptable to do anything that he listed as an abomination in the Old Testament. Well, it's still an abomination now. He said, well, I think it's okay for people to be homosexual. That's okay. There's nothing in the New Testament that speaks out against that. Well, you know what? If you say that, you're dead wrong because it is listed in the New Testament. But you know what? If God says it's an abomination, He's not going to all of a sudden be okay with it now. God abhors that, God hates that. He said it was an abomination for direct family members to be married. He said that's abhorrent, that's an abomination. And incest is still an abomination to this day. A lying heart, a proud look. Hands that shed innocent blood, all these things God hates and He still hates to this day. The law was there to show us what is acceptable and what is righteous and good in the eyes of God and also to point us to Jesus Christ. And so it says, but because Christ has come, because the law was here, for us to point us to Christ, well, now that Christ has already come, we don't need something that's pointing us to Christ. It's already here. We're here to worship Jesus Christ. We're not here to worship his shadow. I don't walk around town with Heather, and I don't try to hold hands with her shadow. You know say you know what I'm going to go on a I'm going to go out to dinner and I'm going to go with my wife's shadow tonight. I'm so excited to spend time with her shadow. No, I'm there to spend time with my bride with my wife. I'm there to commune with her and to fellowship with her, not her shadow, not the thing that is pointing to her, not a picture of her. You know, if I have the choice of going and spending the day with my wife or a photograph I have of my wife, I'm going to pick my wife every time. So we have that thing because we have the law because the law was here for us to observe until Jesus came. Now that Jesus has come, now that he has fulfilled all the hundreds of prophecies that were made of Jesus Christ before he came, he has fulfilled all the types and shadows. We're here to worship and praise Jesus Christ, our King. So he says, for ye are all the children of God by faith. Did he say by faith in the Mosaic law? No, by faith in Christ Jesus. We're back in Galatians 3 chapter 27 now. For as many of you as have been baptized unto Christ have been 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. We are all the children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is our Redeemer. Jesus Christ is our Head. We have all been baptized into Christ, where we are, we have put on Jesus Christ. And you know what, in Jesus Christ, There is no distinction between the brethren. We all have our unique capabilities. We all have our unique skills and talents and gifts that God has blessed us with. But God does not make a distinction, does not make a hierarchy. where the children of God that are all over the world, they all come from different backgrounds. Some come from different countries, different worlds, different times, but we are all one in Jesus Christ. All of us that are here today, Some of us come from a little bit different backgrounds. Some of us come from one particular part of, maybe we come from this part of the state or come from another state. We all have different jobs. We all have, some of us have different social status. Some of us are retired. Some of us are working. Some of us like, you know, maybe some of us like watermelon, some of us don't like watermelon. You know, there's all, we have our differences, but we are all one in Jesus Christ. You know, we're not, God doesn't say, well, you know what, only, you know, we have the Jews, and they're kind of a higher form of Christian than the Greeks over here. And that's kind of, we see that's kind of how they were being treated in the last chapter. There's no distinction in Jesus Christ. You're not better than somebody else because you're a vice president at a company. You can't say, well, you know what? I've got a higher place in heaven because I'm the VP of one of these big hedge funds or investment banks, and you're just over there a janitor. Poor old janitor. I'm definitely higher than you. You can't say, well, you know what? You know, I'm black and you're Asian so I'm better than you are. You can't say I'm white and I'm black and so I'm better than you. No, God doesn't make, God does not look at the outside of your skin. God doesn't look at the riches, the earthly riches that you have. You know, God doesn't need your money. If God, because all the money is God's. It's like the old story of the man that brought a suitcase full of gold to heaven. He said, you know, I'm going to impress these angels here. I think I'm going to buy my way into heaven. So he gets up to the gates of heaven, and Gabriel was right there, and he says, you know what? I found it. I'm going to earn my way into heaven. He said, come in here and look at this briefcase. And he shows Gabriel, he throws his suitcase open, and there's just this shining gold, you know, this gleaming, bright, shiny gold out of this briefcase. And he's sitting there smiling, and Gabriel calls the other angels. He says, wow, guys, come over here, look at this. This man brought us some pavement. It's all just pavement. God owns everything that you have already. Everything that you have is by the gift of God and is because you have been blessed by God. We are all one in Jesus Christ. So when you're when you're going when you're going out, we should be living according unto righteousness. We don't live according to the law, but we live according to the law of Jesus Christ. And if you read the Gospels Jesus reiterated much of the law and he even had set a higher standard for his people to live by than even the law gave. He said, you know what? You've been told that if you kill somebody, that's murder. I'm going to tell you, if you hate somebody without a cause, you're murdering your heart. You've heard it told that if you take another man's wife, you're an adulterer. But I tell you, if you look upon another woman that's not your wife and lust, you're an adulterer at heart. So he sets an even higher standard. Thank God we're all going to, even though we're all going to make mistakes and fall, we're still under grace and we can still have communion with God. God will forgive us when we go to Him in prayer and genuinely repent from that. But we should, by reading this, we can have, we can glory in Jesus Christ, we can have hope, we can have confidence that Jesus Christ, our King, the Almighty, has secured our salvation. And that we should live by faith, we walk by faith, we do the things that Christ has laid out for us, we do it trusting in God. Sometimes it's very difficult, sometimes it's hard, and you say, If I do what the Bible says, I'm not going to make it. If I do what the Bible says, I'm going to come up with my own way. Abraham, he made a mistake. He did that same thing. He said, well, my wife can't have children, so I'm going to have to take care of the situation myself. And he's caused thousands of years of problem by that one mistake. So you always trust that. And when you see what when Abraham was faithful, you see the great exploit study made, you see that by him the seed came. And so we need to leave here today. We need to walk by faith and not by sight. And even when we don't see what God is doing, you know, there's a song, farther along we'll know all about it. We sang that today, you know, and that's right. You know, there's many things that we don't understand. We don't understand why it seems like sometimes All the bad guys get all the good stuff. We must say or they seem like they're living an easier life You know what? Why do we have to do it this way things? Everything seems like it's against us. Well, you know what in due time God's gonna reveal that to us and in some cases we're not going to know exactly what happened until we get to heaven and then we're going to see God's eternal plan and we're gonna see wow, that's a That's really great. I can see it all now. Now I understand what you're doing, but we are just living in a little sliver of time. The earth has been here, the biblical scholars, they calculate by the generations in the book of Genesis, I believe, they say the earth is about 6,000 years old. So if the earth is 6,000 years old, the earth could go on for another 6,000 years or it could just be going on for another 6,000 seconds later on this afternoon. But 6,000s of years and we're here, if you're kind of an outlier, you're going to live for a whole 100 years. Well, even if you live for 100 years, most of us are going to be closer to, you know, 70, 80, 90, whatever it is, 100 years or so out of 6,000 years that have already passed. That's a very small sliver of time and you think that there are 8 billion people On the face of this earth, we've got this whole big earth, a whole giant universe. You are just a drop in a drop of a bucket of water. And so, but God is bigger than all things. God exists outside of time. God exists outside of time and space. God can see everything and he has told us, trust me, follow me because I know what's going on. I have a plan. I know I can tell you exactly what to do. I just need you to trust me and follow me and not go according to your limited amount of knowledge that you have. So we just need to be faithful and trust in God and everything that we do. Hopefully next time I speak we'll get to Galatians chapter 4, but that's all that I have for us right now. If you will please stand with me, we will sing number 398 for the last hymn. Number 398.