Now, let's open our Bibles together, please, to the book of Galatians, which is, of course, a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the churches in that part of Asia Minor. Most of us enjoy receiving letters, especially letters from our children. I came across a letter from a boy scout recently who was at scout camp and wrote his mother a fine letter telling her all about the occurrences at the camp.
It reminds me a little bit of that song that was popular 40 years ago, not that I knew it very well, but it was a song called, Hello, Mother, Hello, Father, Here I Am at Camp Granada. Remember that? Just imagine yourself, the mother, receiving this letter from a young person at boy scout camp telling you very easily and naturally what's been taking place. Dear Mom, our scout master told us all to write our parents in case you saw the flood on television and worried. We're okay.
Only one of our tents and two sleeping bags got washed away. But luckily none of us got drowned because we were all up on the mountain looking for Chad when it happened. Oh yes, please call Chad's mother and tell her he's okay. He can't write because of the cast. I got to ride in one of the search and rescue jeeps. It was neat. We would never have found him in the dark if it hadn't been for the lightning. Scout Master Webb got mad at Chad for going on a hike alone without telling anyone.
Chad said he did tell him, but it was during the fire, so he probably didn't hear him. Did you know that if you put gas on a fire, the gas can will blow up? The wet wood still didn't burn, but one of our tents did, and some of our clothes. And John is going to look weird until his hair grows back. We'll be home on Saturday if Scout Master Webb gets the car fixed. It wasn't his fault about the wreck. The brakes worked okay when we left.
He said that with a car that old, you have to expect something to break down, and that's probably why he can't get insurance on it. We think it's a neat car. He doesn't care if it gets dirty, and if it gets hot, sometimes he lets us ride on the tailgate. It gets pretty hot with ten people in the car. He let us take turns riding in the trailer until the highway patrolmen stopped and talked to us. Scout Master Webb is a neat guy. Don't worry, he's a good driver.
In fact, he's teaching Terry how to drive. But he only lets him drive on the mountain roads where there isn't any traffic. All we ever see up there are logging trucks. This morning all the guys were diving off rocks and swimming out in the lake, and Scout Master Webb wouldn't let me because I can't swim, and Chad was afraid he would sink because of his cast. So he let us take the canoe across the lake. It was great. You can still see some of the trees under the water from the flood.
Scout Master Webb isn't crabby like some Scout Masters. He didn't even get mad about the life jackets. He has to spend a lot of time working on the car, so we're trying not to cause him any trouble. Guess what? We've all passed our first aid merit badges. When Dave dove in the lake and cut his arm, we got to see how a tourniquet works. So Wade and I threw up. Scout Master Webb said it probably was just food poisoning from the leftover chicken.
He said they got sick that way with the food they ate in prison, too. I'm so glad he got out and became our Scout Master. He said he sure figured out how to get things done better while he was doing his time. Well I have to go now, we're going into town to mail our letters and buy bullets. Don't worry. Don't worry about anything. Love, Corey. Well let me tell you, the Apostle Paul wrote a letter that was more meticulously and carefully written than that which we have just read.
It was, however, a letter freely expressing his heart to the Galatians. He chose his words carefully, and of course we know that the Holy Spirit superintended those words so that what Paul wrote became the very words of God Himself. Paul writes with alarm at the betrayal of the Galatians, the betrayal of the gospel. They knew better, but they were not thinking. It was as though, he says, a magic spell had come over them.
They had believed the gospel of grace, but now some of them were accepting a new thinking, a new message that one had to also keep the rituals of the law in order to be right with God and to experience the blessing of God. It was necessary, they said, to keep the law in order to earn God's favor, which was made possible, they admit, by Christ's death. So Paul writes very plainly and sternly at times to assert to them that God promised justification by faith apart from works of the law.
Now I need to stop just a moment and define justification, because that's one of those big words that sometimes is unfamiliar to people these days. To be justified means, essentially, to have a right relationship with God, a relationship that comes about by God declaring the believing sinner righteous in Christ.
It means more than just as if I had never sinned, a little statement that a lot of us have learned in the past, and which is true enough, but it also means that God imputed Christ's righteousness to us. It's not as though all of the negatives were removed and were brought back to zero. It means that God has also given to us all of the righteousness that belongs to His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we can say, I am fully, completely, and eternally accepted by God.
And God says to you and to me, whom He has justified, I count you as precious and as loved as my own Son. Justification means that God has received us, that He fully accepts us in Christ, never to reject us. Now in chapters three and four of Galatians, Paul is arguing regarding this doctrine of justification by faith.
And last week we saw him use three arguments, an argument from their own profile, their own spiritual experience, an argument from the patriarch Abraham, and an argument from the prophet Habakkuk, the just shall live by faith, said that prophet. Now as we come to our text for today, beginning in verse 15, he argues from principle what a covenant is. You see, he's saying now, God has made a promise, and a promise is a promise. God has promised justification by faith apart from works.
And to underscore this theme, this message, Paul uses several means in our text. First of all, he relates a comparison in verse 15. Follow along in your Bible. He says, Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations, even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. In this verse, Paul relates a comparison. He is comparing God's promise to a human promise made in an agreement or in a covenant.
And he says, even with humans, even on the human level, an agreement is an agreement. And he said, once an agreement has been reached, it cannot be annulled, and it cannot be amended. Now let's not read into what Paul says, the laws that may affect agreements in our day. Paul is thinking, of course, of the covenants and agreements in his day, which were fixed. And he says, once the covenant is made, it's permanent. Once the promise is given, it's given.
And of course, his point is that God has promised justification by faith apart from works. And God is not going to change that promise by adding works now to the equation. His point is, if men make agreements and they're not annulled and they're not amended, how much more is that true of God? The second thing then that Paul does is that he recounts history, verses 16 through 18. Again, follow along in your Bible, where Paul says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
He does not say, and to seeds, as referring to many, but rather to one, quote, and to your seed, that is Christ. He is referring here to God's restatement of his promises to Abraham in Genesis 22, when God very specifically says, and to your seed. And Paul says, by the inspiration of the Spirit, that when God said that to Abraham, his primary reference was the Messiah, Abraham's descendant, the Christ.
He says, what I'm saying is this, the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. Paul reminds us that there was a time when God made promises to Abraham, promises of a land, of a great nation, and the promise that he would bless all the nations of the world through Abraham's descendants.
That means all of the Gentile nations of the world. For Abraham himself, you recall, was a Gentile. Not only was this promise made to Abraham, but it was made to his seed, Christ, and in his seed, who is Christ. In other words, the promises that were made to Abraham, Paul says, will be realized through Christ and in Christ, his human descendant. It was a promise that God made.
Now he says, 430 years later, and we don't have time this morning to go into the number issue here, but the main point that Paul is making is later, later, God did make another covenant with Abraham's descendants at Sinai. It's called the law. By the way, it's the same law that these false teachers influencing the Galatians were trying to enforce on them. Paul says it is true that God later made another covenant with Abraham's descendants.
However, the law did not invalidate God's earlier promise given hundreds of years before to Abraham. God's promise was that he would fulfill his covenant with Abraham unconditionally. Abraham believed God, and as a result of that was justified with God. Paul's point is that the promise that leads to justification by faith is still valid. It is not annulled, it is not amended by the ensuing law. What he is saying here is that the promise still stands.
The promise of God's blessing to those who believe still stands. It is not changed by the giving of the law. And he is warning here that one cannot mix promise and the law, faith and works. They are mutually exclusive.
As we saw last week and suggested at least, there are still those today within Christendom and certainly outside of Christendom that try to tell us that faith alone is not enough, that we must do something in order to earn credit with God, to earn merit that God then might bless us. That is the same sort of heresy and false teaching that Paul is arguing against here. He says just because God brought the law later does not mean that he abrogated his promise.
God still honors faith and faith alone. That raises some questions. And that brings us now to the third means by which Paul is underscoring his theme, justification by faith alone. The third means that Paul uses is that he reflects on some questions. He asks the questions that might normally be in the mind of someone thinking with him. We begin reading in verse 19. He says, why the law then?
It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed should come to whom the promise had been made. Now mediator is not for one party only, whereas God is only one. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.
But the scripture has shut up all men under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before this faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith, period. There are two questions that Paul raises and answers. The first question is this, and it's in the minds of the people undoubtedly.
All right Paul, if God later gave the law and it didn't change the idea that God blesses faith in His promises, why did God give the law? Why the law then? And Paul answers briefly here, more fully actually in Romans. The reason for the law was to define sin, to give definition to specific transgressions. Now sin existed all this time before the law, but when the law came, it exposed what sin looks like. It gave it a certain character. Now Paul acknowledges that the law is important.
In fact, he says it was mediated by angels and by Moses. It was that important. But he says on the other hand, the promise that God would bless those who have faith in Him, the promise was given directly by God Himself, not through a mediator. And therefore it's better. Furthermore he says the law was important, but it was for a temporary time, for a specific purpose until the seed should come. Who's the seed? Verse 16, it's Christ.
And so the law had a temporary setting, and therefore it was inferior. It had a purpose, and it still has a purpose today in exposing sin. But it is not as glorious as the promise of God, which is that He honors faith. A dear friend of mine by the name of Fred Brown, who was an evangelist, gave a message one time regarding the law. And in that message he compared the law, among other things, to a dentist's mirror. I went to the dentist this last week.
You know the best part about going to a dentist, it's when you go out the door. It's when it's all done. It's such a good feeling, isn't it? And as I lay back there in the dentist's chair, and the technician began to check my teeth, she put this mirror in my mouth. And she began to look for problems, for cavities or cracks, for stains on my teeth from coke and tea and coffee. And of course there was none there when they were finished. Now that mirror that she used exposed the problems.
Thankfully there were very few. But the mirror couldn't fix the problems. She had to get out some other instruments and tools to go to work on my teeth, to scrape and to poke and to scrub in order to do the job. But the mirror exposed the problem. You see, that is what the law is about. Fred was right. The law can expose the problem, but it can't fix the problem. It wasn't intended by God to fix the problem. And that's what Paul is saying here.
Don't mix up the law with God's promise, which is the problem solver. Now there's a second question. That is, is the law then contrary to the promises of God? And Paul's immediate response is, no way. It's not contrary to the promises of God. Now he says, if there had been a principle of law that might have been given that could have produced righteousness, then justification would have come that way. But he says the fact is that the scripture, the law, has shut up sinners under sin.
The word shut up here means to be in confinement together. In other words, what the law really has done is to put us into prison as sinners so that there's no escape for us. And in doing this, it begins to prepare us to see that we are unable to earn our own righteousness before God. We can't find our way out of this dilemma. It exposes our sin, and indeed it shows to us the exceeding sinfulness of our sin. And in that sense, it comes around us like a military garrison to imprison us.
And he compares it also to a tutor. He says the law is like a tutor. Not the kind of tutor, by the way, that they have at the University of Minnesota. But this is a specific kind of tutor that Paul is talking about in that day. It was most usually a very well-educated slave to whom a wealthy master would commit his minor children. This man, this tutor, would then be responsible for bringing the child to a point of maturity. Paul is saying that's really what the law was like.
It was preparing us for maturity, which is the point when we understand that justification is by faith, not by the law, which has only been our tutor to bring us to see our need of this gift of God. Well we finally close in verses 26 to 29 with Paul's fourth means for underscoring that justification is by faith. Here he reveals the results of this. In doing this, Paul wants to show us the superiority of the promise of God that comes by faith. Its superiority over law keeping and works.
He says in the first place, the one who believes the promise of God has a new position. Let's read the text first, beginning in verse 25. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There's neither Jew nor Greek. There's neither slave or free man, neither male or female. You are all one in Jesus Christ.
And if you belong to Christ, then your Abraham's offspring errs according to promise, not law. Errs according to promise. He gives us here five results of this justification by faith. The first place, the one who believes the promise of God in Jesus Christ has a new position. No longer a child who is under a tutor. But he's come to maturity. He has believed in Jesus Christ as his sin bearer. And as a result of that, now he is a son of God.
This is not a term that necessarily represents male or female. It is a term that represents maturity. For one was declared a son in that day when he arrived at the point of entering manhood. It was a term that was reserved for those who were mature and considered full grown. He says that we now have this position as those who have been justified by faith. God considers us His mature sons. We are already in His family as adult children who have privileges and responsibilities as adults.
Secondly, He says those who believe in justification by faith in Christ have a new identity. He says we were baptized into Christ. Baptism is symbolic of identification. We are baptized into Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, which means we are identified with Him. We have a new identity. His point is that we are now clothed as it were with Christ. So that when God sees us, He sees us clothed in His Son. We sometimes say, God accepts me just as I am. That really is not true.
God accepts me in Christ, not as I am, but as Christ is. That's the greater truth. I have a new identity. When God sees me, He sees me perfect and righteous in His Son. There's no issue between God and me, and God and you, if you have been justified by faith. Thirdly, He says that the one who believes the promise of God has a new unity. He says before there were all kinds of human distinctions based upon social standing, or upon ethnicity, or gender.
But He says in our standing with God, that is no longer the case. All of those human and earthly divisions are taken away. We have a new unity now. We are together as Jew and Gentile. By the way, that is one of the sub-themes of Galatians. Paul wants to be sure that the Jewish believers understand that the Gentile believers are fully accepted by God and one with them, and that they don't have to undergo any rituals of the law to become as good as the Jewish believers. We are all one now.
There is a new unity. A fourth result for those who believe the promise of God is a new relationship. He says now you belong to Christ. You see, before we had no relationship with God, but now through faith we have been justified and we belong to Jesus. Jesus said in John chapter 10, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. He says my sheep. You see the one who is justified by faith belongs to Jesus Christ. A new relationship.
And finally he says the result of believing the promise of God in Jesus Christ is that the believer has a new inheritance. We are Abraham's offspring. We are heirs with Abraham. Now the point that Paul is making here is not that we will inherit the earthly promises of Abraham. Those are yet to be fulfilled to Abraham's earthly descendants in the coming kingdom.
His point is that we have become the spiritual heirs of Abraham and that with Abraham we inherit a justification by faith that we now have a right relationship with God because we too have believed the promise of God, which is in Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection. And so this is Paul's fourth argument, a powerful argument for the gospel. It is based upon the principle of promise. In closing I want to remind you never to forget this, that God will keep His promises.
You can count on God to do that. God has so ordered our experience in this world that He ordains that we should live by faith in His promises. Not just that we are justified by faith, but that then we continue to live by faith. We live in a world that very much says that seeing is believing, right? But God says, know us the other way around for the believer. He says, for you, my children, believing is seeing. The just shall live by faith.
And so whatever your circumstances today, child of God, God has provided promises for you. These promises address your issues. Maybe you're sitting here and you have an issue of the assurance of salvation. That was a huge issue in my life in my later childhood until I became a teenager. And maybe you today are struggling with that issue. How do I know that I know that I'm saved? God has promises in His word related to that. Maybe you're struggling today with unanswered prayer.
Or maybe there is some question mark about the future in your life and you're saying, I don't know what's going to happen. There are promises of God that relate to that. Maybe you have a crisis in your personal life, in your relationship with your wife or your husband or with your employer. Maybe there's a crisis in your personal life. I want to tell you something, God has promises in His word related to all of the issues of life, whatever they are. And so walk by faith.
Trust Him with your life. God blesses those who live by faith in His promises. The story is told about old Uncle Oscar who took his first airplane ride. He was of course, like most people the first time up, fairly apprehensive about it. His friends were eager to hear how it went when he landed and so they, at the very first opportunity, inquired of him how he enjoyed his flight. You know what Uncle Oscar said?
He said, well it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, but I'll tell you this, I never did put all my weight down on that seat. I can identify with that. Maybe you can too. You know, folks, we're on the airplane and we can put our weight down. We can trust this God who has justified us by faith to meet our needs in life. So let's believe on Him. Let's put our weight down on the promise of God and receive the blessings that He so desires us to have. We have to close. Let's pray.
Now if after we have prayed and dismissed you desire to have more personal prayer, I invite you to come. I'm going to stand here at the front afterward and you're welcome to come and we'll pray together.
Father, I pray that wherever this message finds us today that it may encourage us to trust your promises and not to lean upon our own understanding or to depend upon our own wisdom or ingenuity or our own works, our own efforts, our own performance, but wherever we are today in our spiritual journey, may we learn what it means to really believe you and to sit down in the seat and to relax and put all of our weight upon what you've promised us in your word. In Jesus' name, amen. God bless you.
Amen.