We're in Galatians, chapter three, and I'm doing a little bit of overlap, starting in verse six. Last week, I think we concluded in verse nine. We're going to go through fourteen. And this is what the text says. Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, know then that those of faith are the sons of Abraham and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith Preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, and you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. For all who rely on works are of the law are under a curse, for it is written curse to be everyone who does not abide by the things written in the book of the law and do them. Now, it's evident that no one is justified before God by the law for the righteous shall live by faith, but the law is not a faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. May the Lord bless the hearing of his word this morning. In his book, Losing Faith in Faith, and listen to the title of that, Losing Faith in Faith, Dan Barker writes, quote, Faith is a cop out, a defeat and admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason. Now, Mr. Barker attended Azusa Pacific University in the early 70s. Serving later as a pastor in a Quaker congregation and assembly of God Church and an independent charismatic church, he became a prominent songwriter, accompanying Pat Boone and singers on the Lawrence Welk Show. And he also wrote two of the most popular BBS drama skits of the 1970s. And then one day. Mr. Barker woke up and realized that he was an atheist. A few paragraphs after writing this statement about faith, he speaks about the gospel, thus revealing his cards on why he lost his faith. He says it was a mystery to me how anyone could be blind to the truths of the gospel. After all, don't we all want love, peace, happiness, hope and meaning in life? Christ was the only answer, I believed, and I figured all non-Christians must be driven by other things like greed, lust, evil, pride, hate and jealousy. And if you listen carefully to that statement, Mr. Barker reveals the same thing that he exposed in the title of his book, Losing Faith in Faith. He has absolutely no idea what the gospel is, nor does he have the first clue about biblical faith. His gospel is hopelessly confused with law, and his faith must therefore ultimately be placed in the wrong thing. In our culture, having faith is not really a problem. Atheists like Barker are in a small minority. George Michael in the 1980s, on the other hand, sang Western culture's anthem. You've got to have faith. Faith is an immoral imperative, but faith in what? Emily Osment recently put it this way in a song. The young singer sings live without a doubt. All we need is something. All right. Turn it out. Live without a doubt. All we need is something. Got to believe in something. Barker says that something is faith and faith. George Michael sees it is faith in me, and I tend to think that that's probably what Barker's faith was in as well. Because if you confuse the gospel with the law. You have to put your faith in yourself to keep the law. While Michael's idea is very popular, another Michael, Michael Angelo said, and I don't know if this is taken out of context or not, but as we said, faith in oneself is the best and safest course. Paula Abdul, the great sage of. American Idol said. Keep the faith, don't lose your perseverance, always trust your gut. Edwin Lewis Cole takes this to a whole new level, saying have faith in God, God has faith in you. Incredibly, now you are the object of God's faith. Another popular idea is that faith is possibility thinking. Robert Shuler and Norman Vincent Peale popularized this in the church, but 50 years before they came around, William Slater, The individualist anarchist, son of a congregational minister and friend of William James the pragmatist, put it this way. He says the essence of faith is to believe that a possibility exists. Then faith is to dream the impossible dream, as Andy Williams sang it. It is personified in movies like Field of Dreams or Tucker. That's what faith is. This pragmatic faith in human potential and reason might have made the United States of America a world power, but it isn't what the Bible has in mind by faith. Today, we enter the very heart of the Bible's teaching on salvation and on faith, how is somebody saved? The short answer is that they're saved by faith and by nothing but faith. Galatians, three, seven, those of faith are the sons, three, nine, those of faith are blessed. 311, the righteous shall live by faith. 314, we receive the promised spirit through faith. But what does this mean? Today, you just can't assume that people know, not even in churches. You can't assume that people know because we're easily tempted to turn from that which we know, which seems right to us. Recent informal surveys conducted by the White Horse and Christian convinces convention show that most Christians have the exact same answers to what faith is that the world has that I already told you about. So to counteract the creeping paganism in the church, we have to look at the text to see what it says. So our passage, as I told you, is verses six to 14. It lays out six things, the role of faith, in salvation, the contents of faith, the opposite of faith, the results of faith, the reason why we need faith, and finally, the grounds upon which God can justify a person by faith. These six ideas are tightly argued by the apostle, and here's the thing, from the Old Testament. Before I get to them, I want to ask you a question. If you had the opportunity to share your faith with someone, and I'm not talking about your personal testimony, I'm talking about the faith with a capital F, where would you turn? Most people would turn to Paul. Perhaps many of them might even go to the passage that we're looking at today. And that's obviously perfectly acceptable. But in light of how many people think that Paul created a religion out of nothing or blatantly contradicted Jesus or James, I want to give you something to think about. It's something that you'll notice about the passage today, and it's remarkable. These nine verses contain six quotations from the Old Testament. In other words, Paul did not rely on visions or dreams or encounters with Christ that no one could confirm to demonstrate his gospel, even though he could have. He relied upon God's word. He went to the law and the prophets. New Testament religion is Old Testament religion. It is true Judaism. It is not some Johnny come lately. Would you have any confidence whatsoever in proving salvation by faith alone from the Old Testament if you had to? Could you do it? It's there, you know, and it's a major theme in the Bible. Hebrews 11 does this as we read this morning. It tells us that Abel offered sacrifices by faith. Enoch preached by faith. Noah built an ark by faith. Abraham sojourned by faith. Isaac gave Jacob the blessing. Jacob blessed the Egyptian sons of Joseph by faith. Joseph gave instructions about his burial and predicted the exodus by faith. Moses left Egypt by faith. Rahab welcomed the spies by faith. The judges judged Israel by faith. David conquered kingdoms and ruled by faith. The prophets prophesied and died terrible deaths by faith. These people did all of these works by faith, you see. But works is not faith. I was reading an article this week which was presented a few years back at the Evangelical Theological Society meeting, one in the I think it was a regional meeting in the Midwest. And in the article, the writer explained his view of faith and this way says, quote, Most church doctrinal positions on faith would agree that genuine faith includes knowledge, assent and trust. I prefer to treat trust as obedience. As Paul expresses it, the obedience of faith, genuine faith must include obedience. As I when I read this, I thought this is unbelievable. He couldn't get it more wrong. No longer is it trust and obey, for there's no other way it is trust is obey. Faith and works are identical. One does not flow from the other. Like, I believe one is the other. You see, the point of Hebrews, however, is that faith precedes the things that the Old Testament saints do. There was a time when all they had was faith. Then works sprang from faith and fruit like fruit springs forth from a vine in the spring. There is no fruit in the summer. There is. It's the spirit's job to produce faith or fruit, but fruit is not faith. Paul says the same thing in our passage today when he says the law is not of faith. That's in verse 12, and if you think that it is, you've turned religion upside down, you've twisted it into a slithering serpent, you've tortured again the one who was tortured on the cross. There may be no more serious matter in all the world than this, because it drives a stake through the heart of salvation. So let's look at how Paul came to this. I'm going to give you six sections and I'm going to divide them up according to the Old Testament verses that are being quoted. So the first one is the role of faith. Somebody, I suppose, could argue that Hebrews is making all of this faith stuff up. I mean, where does it say that these people did these things by faith? The first quotation in our passage provides the answer. Paul uses Abraham, whom he calls the man of faith in verse nine, as his paradigm. He does this because Abraham comes before the existence of Israel. And thus, to the circumcision party who was forcing the people to go through that right, this would have been terribly important for them to understand. He says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. Now, there's a quote from Genesis 15, six. This verse gives you the role of faith in salvation and the role of faith is to be the means by which God justifies a person. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. You see, that's the means by which God justifies you. It was through faith, through believing God that he was justified. The words counted as righteousness. This is the Old Testament equivalent of justification. Listen to how this word is translated in other places in the ESV in the Old Testament. The word is translated as counted, calculated, considered, esteemed, imputed, reckoned, and regarded. You hear that? Notice, Abraham was not made righteous, but reckoned, regarded as righteous. He was considered, declared as righteous, even though he wasn't righteous. All you have to do is read the story of Abraham to find out this man was not perfect. Paul and Paul, this idea is set against the backdrop of a legal system, this word justification. And I think you could probably make that case in Abraham's life as well, because this statement comes in the middle of a covenant cutting ceremony in Genesis 15, which is a legal arrangement between a vassal and a suzerain lord. God pronounced Abraham righteous because of faith. and thereby he entered into this agreement with him. Beloved, this is the very heart of the Christian religion. Christians are declared righteous. They are, even though they are not righteous. And obviously, if you're not righteous, your works could not make you righteous, nor could they get God to declare you righteous. And so Abraham was reckoned righteous, not through works, but through faith, belief and faith are synonyms. And I'm going to show you that when we come to the Habakkuk quote. Second quotation is the content of faith. We see that Abraham believed God, but what did he believe about God? OK, that's an important question. Given all the things I told you at the beginning of this sermon. Well, he believed that God would make him into a great nation. In other words, he believed God's promise Not a curse, not a factoid, not something in a trivial pursuit game, not a doctrine, not a rebuke, not an idea, but a promise. He trusted something that God promised to him. Not something he promised himself, not a dream of his own, but a promise from God. Paul quotes Genesis twelve three in you shall all the nations be blessed. This is God's promise to Abraham, and it's the content of his faith. Let's think about this promise in relationship to Abraham's belief. This promise was given to Abraham when he was seventy five years old. It was a promise not to one group of people, but to the nations, those who would later be considered Gentiles. The promise is that the nations will be blessed, and as such, it's good news to the nations. Paul calls it the gospel. He says that Abraham had the gospel preached to him, which is amazing. This promise implies that Abraham would have a son, because how can you have nations come from you if you don't have a son, right? In fact, this idea is later codified in the second covenant in Genesis 15, where the first quote is given. What Abraham believed is that as numerous as the stars are in the heavens, so numerous with his descendants be in Genesis 15. And here's the thing. Abraham believed this promise when he had no son. And he would not have Isaac, the son of promise, for at least 15 more years. The point is that Abraham's faith preceded the birth of Isaac. Those who argue that Abraham was justified by what he did, going back to James chapter two, where he sacrifices Isaac, they always fail to take notice of this fact. It just doesn't fit their system. The context of these citations shows that those who have faith, the faith of Abraham, that is faith in the promises of God, our sons of Abraham. That's a remarkable idea that's tied, I think, to the birth of Isaac, Abraham's son. In Paul's theology, you have to understand that Isaac represents those who have faith because Isaac was a miraculous baby and faith is a miraculous gift of God. Remember, Abraham did have a son before Isaac, didn't he? Here's another small fact about Abraham's life that those wishing to combine faith and works need to keep in mind. After Abraham heard the promise and believed it, he still was in the darkest of how God was going to accomplish it. His wife, Sarah, had borne him no children in all the time they'd been married, and she was now old, and so she could not bear any children. Her womb was dead, the Bible says, in several places. It was a physical impossibility. And so Sarah figured that God must have another arrangement. Since he didn't specify who the mother of this great child would be, she hatched a plan to get her maidservant Hagar pregnant by Abraham. And of course, out of this scheme, Ishmael was born. Now, you can easily think of Ishmael as the child of Abraham's works because he was born from a human perspective entirely because of Abraham's deep bewilderment about God's promises coming to pass. His faith was genuine, but it was confused. And I hope that gives you hope when you read the story of Abraham, the man of faith. Even Abraham's righteous acts were filthy works, filthy rags. His works, his attempt to make the promise of God come to pass his own way, ended up causing more troubles than anyone could ever have imagined. Troubles that continue 4000 years later to this very day in the Middle East. This is a perfect example of what happens to anybody who thinks that their works will bring about the promises or, in a more general way, will bring about sanctification. And so Ishmael was born in the natural way through human scheming and carrying out of a plan. We see Isaac is different totally in every way. God came to Sarah after the birth of Ishmael and promised to give her a son. She can only do what she can only laugh. And I've often wondered, was it out of happiness or incredulity? This was not possible in any world. But God will perform a miracle and Isaac's birth would come to symbolize children of faith rather than works. This is why he says those of faith are sons of Abraham. And later in this very letter, Sarah and Hagar will be used by Paul in the same kind of a way. And in Romans, the two sons are used in the same kind of a way in Romans nine. Faith inherits the promises, just like Isaac inherited the blessing. That's the point. These people of faith are no longer limited to Jews or to proselytes that come become Jews through circumcision. These people of faith include Gentile Christians. The Galatians who were not born into the promises, but received them through faith in Christ. And these people include many here in our sanctuary this morning, Gentiles of many nationalities who gathered to worship the same God who has given us all the same faith in Christ. Isn't that an amazing thing? Paul says this entire arrangement that we now see fulfilled before our eyes was promised to Abraham 4000 years ago to us. Those included are those who believe those are the sons of Abraham. Do you believe these things for yourself? Do you trust? Only in Christ, are you trusting in your parents hope or in the church's hope? It must be your own hope, you see. As you can see, then Abraham was justified by faith, by believing the promise of God. That's how he was saved. That's the object of his faith. It had a very real content. Now, he couldn't see it. But it's not because it was irrational, not because it was a leap in the dark, not because it was blind, but because it hadn't come to pass in time. It was a promise of the future. It was about believing that God would make Sarah conceive, even though it was impossible. It was about trusting that God would deliver on his promise. Now, today, of course, we look backward, not forward. We look to the death and resurrection of something that has happened to Jesus. We believe what we believe is even less preposterous from a human point of view, because it actually happened in time. in space, in history, in front of people, in an objective world. I say that often because you can't overstate how important the objective nature of Christ's work is. This isn't just I feel Jesus did something. It's he did it. Now, what are you going to do with it? We do look forward to just like Abraham did, though, as well. But the content of our faith, whether it be Abraham or us, is always the same. It's to look to Christ. He trusted in the seed, didn't he? We'll look at that more next week. Our perspective is different. Now we trust through faith that God will raise our bodies from the grave, just as he did with Jesus. Anything that is future, we trust because of what has happened in the past. It's tragic that people turn the gospel into this. Now, remember, I gave you this quote earlier from the guy and maybe didn't catch it. So I bring it back up again. This is what he called the gospel, he said, I couldn't believe that anybody would not want love, peace, happiness, hope and meaning in life. That's what he called the gospel. Friends, that isn't the gospel. You understand that that's not the gospel. Love, peace, happiness, hope and meaning in life, that's not the gospel. Those things might result from the gospel, but they're not the gospel. These things calling this the gospel completely obscures why Jesus came and what he did, he didn't die to give me meaning. He died to give me life, to save me from God's wrath. from eternal punishment for my sin to make it possible for God to acquit me of crimes against him, to allow me to be raised from the dead in glory. That's why he died. The reason Jesus is the only answer is not because he gives me meaning in life. Plenty of non-Christians have meaning in life. This is the very problem this guy had. I couldn't believe that any non-Christian could have meaning in life, that they could be happy. There's lots of non-Christians that are happy, that feel at peace, that experience some kind of love. Come on. But none of them have those things in their relationship to Christ or to God. Their relationship with their creator is only one of enmity, striving, belligerence and hopelessness. And when they die, their fleeting feelings will leave them naked as they stand before the judge and give an accounting of all the deeds that they've done in the body. What are those deeds like? Let's look at it. Here's the third quotation, the contents of faith. I might have got that one wrong. We'll look and see when we come to the third citation. All who rely on works of law are under a curse for it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. Now, we read this for the law passage this morning, it comes from Deuteronomy, twenty seven, twenty six. This is the last word in a series of curses that Israel was to call upon itself in a remarkable covenant ceremony. Now in Israel, you can go to this place, you can see it on Google. There are two little mountains that come together and there's a valley in the bottom. These mountains are called Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. And the valley below is where the city of Shechem was located. Shechem is the place that Abraham first went to after God promised him the land in Genesis twelve, six, which is pretty interesting. It's upon these two mountains that the entire nation was to ascend six tribes and six tribes, and they were to yell back and forth to each other. The curses of the law ending with this final curse. This must have been one of the most incredible scenes in the history of the Bible. Imagine two million people yelling, cursed are we if we do not do everything written in this law and on the other side from the other mountain, everybody goes, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen. It heard the echo. What kinds of things are they yelling? What are all these things written in the law? Well, if you remember what we read, they are yelling moral laws. They're yelling laws that you can find in the law codes of the Hittites, Babylonians and the Egyptians. Cursed is anyone who dishonors her father or mother. Well, the Hittites believe that's wrong and had it in their law code. Curses anyone who moves his neighbor's boundary mark. Babylonians believe that was wrong. Cursed is anyone who misleads a blind person on the road. Egyptians thought that was wrong. The point is, the specific laws here are not only applicable to Israel. They were not invented by God with Moses on Mount Sinai. They apply to all of God's children on planet Earth always. And so Moses' citation is not only applicable to Jews, it's applicable to Gentiles. The law that Israel was given was a reproduction in stone of the law that he had written upon everybody's heart. That's the moral law. Why did God have Israel do this? To itself, curse itself like this, it was to place them under the curse of the law to show them the absolute need for faith. That's why they had to yell these things. It was to set up their failure. Because it was only through their failure that the promised seed would eventually come. The point of the citation here is similar, it's to show that the opposite of faith is relying on the works of the law. So that's the third point is the opposite of faith. What's the opposite of faith works is the opposite of faith. If you rely upon works to save you, to justify you, to sanctify you, to glorify you, you're under a curse. And you heard that correctly. I wonder if it sunk into your heart, though. Why are you under a curse? It's because to live by the law requires perfection. It's what the text says, all things written in the law. People will say that this isn't fair, that God would never require such a demanding, harsh thing. And in this, they fail to understand why God gave the law. God gave the law to show our sin, our inability to equal God's own moral perfection. God gave us the law to show us what he is like and what we are like. And this is what the law does perfectly. It's like a mirror. It shows us who we are on the inside. And therefore, the apostle, after quoting this verse in verse 11, says it's evident that no one is justified before God by the law. It's obvious. Now, you can't get any clearer of a statement than that of the opposite of faith, can you? Fourth point, fourth quote is the result of faith. Now, it's at this point that Paul cites his fourth quotation in a remarkable one, it is he moves out of the Torah now into the prophets. He goes to Habakkuk two four, which is one of his favorite verses, and it says the righteous shall live by faith. He didn't make that up. Before I explain this verse, I found this pretty interesting this week. Helpful to see that Paul was not the only Jew who understood the importance of this verse, it is recorded in the Talmud by one rabbi Simali, who lived in the third century A.D., he said this six hundred and thirteen commandments were given to Moses. David came and reduced them to eleven. Isaiah came and reduced them to six. Micah came and reduced them to three. Isaiah came again and reduced them to two. Amos came and reduced them to a single one. Habakkuk further came and based them on one, as he said, but the righteous shall live by faith. I was actually kind of blown away when I read that. Prior to the New Testament being written, the Dead Sea Scrolls record this. Quote, this concerns this verse, Habakkuk two, four concerns all those who observe the law in the house of Judah, whom God will deliver from the house of judgment because of their suffering and because of their faith in the teacher of righteousness. Whom some have speculated is a messianic figure, a hundred years before Jesus was born. An ancient Jewish commentary on Exodus says this. With all their professed faith in Egypt, there was no real faith in the Israelites until they saw God's wonders on the sea prompted by that faith. They weren't able to compose and sing the exquisite song of praise through their faith. The Israelites on the Red Sea became possessed of the Holy Spirit. Very similar to what Paul says at the very end of verse 14. The point is, even the Jews recognize that faith was necessary. And you may not understand this, but Rome has the same kind of an idea. Rome believes faith is necessary, don't they? But there's perversion that has gone on. Combining law and faith, even as we can see hints of, especially in the Dead Sea Scroll quote. People may place their hopes in the wrong messiah. Might have placed their hopes partially in faith and partially in works. But the idea is still rooted that they need faith because it comes from their scripture. Those who say that Israel was saved only by works in the Old Testament don't know what they're talking about. It's just as simple as that. Habakkuk's point is not that we're saved by a combination of faith and works, but by faith alone. Habakkuk has. Some very interesting similarities to Genesis 15, six. Both verses speak about righteousness using the same word. Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness and the righteous shall live by faith. Second thing is that both of them use the same root word for faith. I'm on. And so commentators have suggested that Habakkuk may have Genesis fifteen six in mind when he writes. But Habakkuk is hardly alone, the psalm says, I've taken the way of faith. The proverb says the one who speaks in steadfast trust, that's faith will make righteousness known. And another proverb says a man of faith will abound with blessings. The promise here is what faith brings, the result of faith is life. That's what I said earlier, so that's the thing with this fourth. quotes, is that it brings life. What does faith do? It brings life. The righteous shall live by faith. Faith raises from the dead. Faith ensures that we will be raised from the dead. Faith gives us new life. It is life in Christ. But this can only come through faith. It can never come through the law. So let's go to the fourth one. There's a good deal of debate about the translation of Habakkuk. I could spend a whole sermon talking about this, but I won't just kind of summarize it for you. Faith can be translated as faithfulness, and that's what the debate is over. The translation will be something like this, the just shall live by faithfulness. Here's the thing, faithfulness is a work, isn't it? In English, faithfulness means strict or thorough in the performance of duty. That would be. That we would be justified by duty is an impossible idea to Paul, who says in the very next breath breath, the law is not a faith. Imagine if what he really meant was, but the law is not a faithfulness. That would mean that the law is not a duty, but the very next thing Paul says is the one who does them. will live by them. In other words, the law is of duty, and that's the whole point of the law. This verse gives us the promise held out in the law of life. Now, I just told you faith promises life, but here the law promises life. The one who does them shall live by them. If you obey the law perfectly. That's what the law teaches. So both of them hold out the promise of life. The problem is that the law can't give you life, holds out promise, but it can't deliver on what it promises. The best it could do, as it did in Jesus case, is show you that you're already alive. That's why you obeyed the law. But nobody keeps the law perfectly, except for him showing that they're not alive, but dead. And that's why, though life is held out in both, It only comes through faith. That's why faith is so critical. The reason for faith is that the law can't give you what it promises, but God can give you what he promises. Through faith in Christ, through the gospel. As it comes to you and delivers abundant life. And eternal life. The sixth one is the grounds of faith. It's a serious error to turn faith into obedience or faith into faithfulness. When you do this, you obliterate the law, the gospel, faith, faithfulness, religion, salvation, justification, earth itself. You attack Christ, however, unintentionally, who is the only reason why you can be justified by faith in the first place. You attack his work and you attack, especially his death. If you confuse these two things. This is the function of the sixth and final quotation, one serious problem remains, how can just God justly justify anybody by faith? How can he do that? If a person is wicked, God can't just let bygones be bygones. Have you ever heard me say that before? Someone has to pay. In 313, Paul begins to get the grounds of our justification, the grounds of faith, the reason why God can credit faith is righteousness. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. Friend, that's what you have to believe. No other faith will save you, justify you, sanctify you, glorify you. Only faith in the atoning work of Christ on your behalf is going to do this. Do you believe it? The quotation is from Deuteronomy 21, 23, cursed as everyone is hanged on a tree. I've told you about how Israel would curse themselves. I told you that anyone who wants to keep the law remains under a curse rather than a blessing. In Christ, the curse is turned into a blessing as he's cursed on the tree so that it can become a blessing to those who believe. Christ became a curse, not through disobedience, as happened to Israel, but through vicarious obedience. Through obedience in your place, as God imputed your curse, your sin, your wickedness to him, and he was cursed on that tree. He didn't do it because he deserved it. He did it because he took it from you, for you. He took the penalty of the curse. He suffered death and separation from God on your behalf while he was on the tree. I've sometimes heard it said that if Jesus were alive today and God's plan was for him to die, that he could die in an electric chair. Have you ever heard anybody say that or something? You know, pick something, die by gunfire or whatever. The cross was just the convention of the time. Well, that's not true. The cross was an extraordinary display of God's sovereignty in the Roman Empire. Crucifixion had not been practiced and has not been practiced throughout most of the world history, only in that very narrow time frame. When Jesus was there, was it really very common anywhere at all? And God did this so that Jesus could die on a tree. In order to fulfill that law. I don't know all the reasons why dying on a tree would bring a curse. I've often wondered, and I can't think of a lot of things. The Bible says it. I know that the law has been tied up to the tree ever since the Garden of Eden. I know that there's some kind of a relationship between the law and the tree and the inscrutable mind of God. I haven't figured out yet. The point is that even in his death on the cross, Jesus fulfilled the law. And he did it that the blessing might come to the Gentiles that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. Christ meritorious works all the way up to the cross is our only grounds for justification. That's it. Through faith, God imputes to us the merits of Christ, who loved his father so much that he did everything he was required to do everything that we are required to do as sons of Adam. God imputed our sin to Jesus, and he became a curse. God imputes his righteousness to us as a blessing. God does this for Jews and Gentiles alike, and he does it by faith. Faith is absolutely mandatory. Faith saves, but this faith must have an object and it must be full of the right content. And that content is the gospel, the good news, the promises of God through Christ, the wise sages, pop singers, daytime talk show hosts, Christian turned atheist friends have it all wrong. You've heard the gospel, and so you are left without excuse. Only faith saves, because the law has no power to justify you. Faith gives life, and the reason you need faith is because you cannot live by the law, because it demands that you do all the law, and you haven't done that. God can credit faith to you because Christ has died in your place. Becoming a curse so that the blessing can be exchanged for that curse for those who trust in Christ merits to save them. All that is left for me to say is to ask if you believe this, do you believe it? You have to believe that I can't believe it for you. Do you believe it? Someday you're going to face the judge and ask you that question, especially because you've heard sermons like this. Do you believe it? Do you believe I did that for you? It's the teaching of the whole Scripture, not just Paul in Galatians 3. It's the way God has always done things. Come to Christ and taste that he is good. Let's pray. Father, please give us faith and faith alone that you have the power to deliver upon all of your promises, including even the promise to sanctify us and to give us good works. Thank you for Jesus and what he did, and I would pray that. By hearing these words today, it might impress upon our minds something that we may have forgotten some that we may have suppressed. Cause us to love you more deeply for the cost that it brought to you, even though to us it's absolutely free. Please help your people all to believe this message from the very oldest here to the very youngest among us. I would ask for Jesus' sake. Amen.