Ken and Mary Weimer are friends
to all of us. Congregations in each of the
places and those of you who know them have a warm and a dear place
in your heart for them. They've come to be with us this
weekend and to share the gospel with us. Ken has been the pastor
for 13 years now at Shreveport Grace Church, Shreveport, Louisiana. He's fresh off of a trip to Africa
and India, so he's probably a little physically tired, maybe a little
mentally weary at the same time. Yet, I believe that the Lord
has given him a fire in his heart and a message for us to hear
of God's Word. Come preach to us. I'm going to ask you to turn
to Galatians chapter 3. And you can put a paper clip
here if you want, or a bookmark, because This is going to be my
text for the three occasions that I've been given to preach. And I want to speak with you
on the promise of God. The promise of God. Eight different
times in this portion of Scripture, that particular term or phrase
is used. And so I believe it's important
for us to understand exactly what the Scriptures mean when
it refers to, notice, the promise of God found here primarily in
the singular. I know that there is today in
preaching a lot of talk about the promises of God. And in fact, driving up today,
we saw painted on the back of a RV. I don't know whose it was,
but it says, God keeps all His promises. You never know what
someone means by that. Typically what it means is, I
did something for God and He honored what I did. That is a
very common way of men looking at this. The name it, claim it. And yet, as we come to Scripture,
we find that as the Scripture sets forth the promise of God. Now it does say there in 2 Corinthians
that all of the promises of God are in Christ, yea and amen. So we know that the promise of
God or promises, in other words, as He has revealed Himself down
through time, all have to do with not your well-being or mine,
but the honor and glory of Christ. It's hard for some people to
get a hold of that God's honor is in His Son. And any blessing
that He brings to sinners must be through what He has purposed
or promised to do through His Son. Now, left to ourselves,
we're going to deviate. And that's what I see here in
Galatians chapter 3 having taken place. When the Scriptures here
were written to the Galatians, this is a whole region. that
you can find over in Turkey. In fact, when I was flying to
India, our plane left London, and it was a beautiful, clear
day. And all the way, I had a window
seat. You could follow it on the little
map that they had there. We flew right over some of this
area that I'm speaking to you tonight about. It's a phenomenal
thing. I've never visited there, landed,
and but just to fly over it and to consider that back in this
day, Paul was directed by the Spirit of God to go preach the
gospel in this region. But as he left these people to
whom he had preached, others came in and began to preach a
message of conditions, of rules, of regulations, of obligations. In other words, law preaching.
that was put up as a rival to the gospel. And when Paul heard
of these things, he wrote, you can see it back here in Galatians
chapter 1 and verse 6, I marvel that ye are so soon removed from,
notice, him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another
gospel. All of the doctrine of Scripture
has to do with the person of Christ. has to do with Him who
has worked out salvation and grants it according to His free
and sovereign will unconditionally. It's unconditional to the sinner,
but it was all conditioned upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And so,
Paul takes this opportunity to write again and to remind them
of this truth. It shows me that we need to be
reminded of it, no matter how much we have heard this Gospel
that gives all the glory to the Lord Jesus Christ, we need to
hear it one more time. Because we have in our nature,
in our flesh, if left to ourselves, the same tendency to look to
the flesh or look to some condition, especially when things get tough
in our life. What's the first thing you think
of when something doesn't go quite right? What am I doing
wrong? What's the Lord We assume that if I'm living right and
doing right, then all will be right. That's our first thinking. And yet, that's wrong thinking
because we live and move and have our being in Him. And I
know that we can look back at the end of the day and everything
that the Lord has brought to pass in our life, whether we
consider it good or bad, is exactly according to what He has purposed
for us. And if it's a blessing, we know
it's only because of Christ, not anything in us. Some might
read this verse 1 as being a little harsh, where we read, O foolish
Galatians. What a way to start a statement. And yet, I see this as a loving
chastening by the Apostle Paul in writing these to whom he had
preached. O foolish Galatians, who have
bewitched you. Strong language and yet necessary. Because if we ever get our eyes
off of the Lord Jesus Christ, onto this flesh or onto some
condition that we need to fulfill in order to either obtain salvation
or maintain it, then we've been bewitched. The word there is
to have a spell cast upon you that you should not obey the
truth. So the Scriptures are very specific
with regard to the doctrine of Christ, or that which pertains
to the gospel. It is called the truth, not just
a truth, and certainly not truths. You'll never find that word in
the plural in Scripture, the truth. And then he explains what
that is, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set
forth, or set forth with great evidence, crucified among you. In other words, the preaching
of the truth was set forth with great evidence among you. And
what does the truth pertain to? Christ and Him crucified. Christ and Him crucified. The
cross, dear friends, I hope you understand is not just a footnote
in history. All of history pertains to the
cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's interesting even that in
our calendar we talk about before Christ A.D. and the one central
point of history. Everything counting down to this
time and then going away from it all has to do with that time
when the Lord Jesus Christ came, lived, died and rose again and
set it on high. So we can't even look at a calendar
without that particular reminder that God has given. But then
when we come to Scripture, I've had people say to me, the Scriptures
seem to be so complicated. Well, you know what complicates
it is preachers many times. Because they will read one particular
portion and maybe preach on tithing. Or they'll read another particular
portion and preach on morality. They'll read another particular
portion and preach on marriage. And so you've got people sitting
out there trying to keep all these subjects straight. It's
just like one more rule every time they get together. One more
rule. No wonder it's complicated. And I love to stand and to tell
people If God will enable you to put all of this aside and
consider that this whole book that we have open before us has
to do with one subject, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Now,
start reading in Genesis and read all the way through the
Scriptures because that is exactly what this book is about. How
God is just to justify sinners. And do it in a just manner. When
we preach to you how God is just to justify in the death of the
Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn't take a theologian
to understand that what that means is simply that for God
to save a sinner, He had to put their sin to the account of the
Savior. And that He did at the cross.
Christ had Him crucified. But at the same time, not only
did He put the sin to the account of the Savior, but He took the
righteous obedience of the Savior and simultaneously put it to
the spiritual account of those sinners that He purposed to save.
Now I ask you, how can it be any more simple than that? Evidently
set forth. If you want to know how God can
be just and save a sinner like you are, I've just told it to
you in a nutshell. And you go back and start reading
the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, and you'll find that's
exactly what God is saying in every book, in every age, all
the way up to this time. The message hasn't changed. You
can see here Paul's concern, O foolish Galatians. That word
foolish means senseless. In other words, you're not thinking.
You're not thinking. If you look anywhere else for
any hope of salvation or for any assurance of salvation, for
forgiveness of sins, you're not thinking according to this Word. You're not thinking according
to what God has promised. See, here's where we get down
to the promise of God. What has God promised? And what
has God accomplished based on that promise? All the way back
from the fall, God promised to raise up a seed of a woman who
would come and crush the head of the serpent. Where's the venom?
But in the head of the serpent. So for Him to crush the head
means to stamp it out. Stamp out the curse. All those
that God purposed to save, Christ dealt with that curse in the
death of his son. That's why he had to die. And
we're going to see that as we go on in this chapter. So, verse
2, he asks some questions. It's good to ask questions. To
get people thinking about where they are. But here's the question.
This only would I learn of you. Receive ye the Spirit by the
work of the law or by the hearing of faith? Now here's some scriptural
terminology that I believe is important to understand. When
we talk about God saving sinners, there's really only one of two
ways, and one is no way at all when I finish explaining it to
you. But it's either going to be by works, what you do to satisfy
a holy God, or it's going to be by grace. You can take all
of the denominations that exist in the world today, and there
are many, there are many, but you can put them in one of these
two categories. It's either of works, warts of
grace. It's either of Cain's religion. Remember all the way back there
in Genesis chapter 4 when Cain sought to bring the best fruit
of his hands and offered it to the Lord and the Lord rejected
it? Was it because Cain was worse than Abel? No. But it all has
to do with the sacrifice. God never commanded a sacrifice
of the works of men's hands. There is no work of your hands
or mine that could ever satisfy a holy God. That's why from the
beginning when Adam and Eve put those fig leaves on and tried
to cover themselves, God took it off. He killed an innocent
animal and shed that blood and then placed that clothing upon
them. Right from the beginning, God
was the very first to preach the gospel. And what was it that
He preached? That it's not going to be anything
you do that's going to give you right standing before Him. It's
a work of God. And it's going to be a work through
a just sacrifice. The wages of sin is death. So
it required a sacrifice. And that's what that lamb, that
animal slain, that blood shed represents. But it also includes
a clothing, doesn't it? The skin of that animal was taken
and placed upon Adam and Eve. The fig leaves removed. There's
a beautiful picture of imputation based upon the shed blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it looked forward
to, you see. And so that's how God set the stage right from
the beginning. And that's how Abel came. Now
granted, he was a sheep herder. Some people might say, well,
he had it easier than Cain because Cain labored the field and Abel
already had the sheep. That didn't matter. In fact,
when the Lord told Cain, He said, do good and you'll live. Otherwise,
sin remaineth at the door. What was He saying? Go get you
an animal sacrifice. Shed that blood. That's what
it is to do good. To look to Christ and Christ
alone and His shed blood is our only hope. is the only good that
can be said of one of the Lords. You see, it's because of the
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul again, you know, you
say, well, didn't he already preach the gospel to these people?
Absolutely. But I find it loving here that
he didn't write them off either. It's easy whenever someone strays
to just say, well, they're a reprobate. Well, Paul uses a strong term
here, He's not writing them off. He said, O foolish Galatians
who have bewitched you. And as we're going to see a little
bit later on here in verse 4, he says, Have ye suffered so
many things in vain, if it be yet in vain? In other words,
he was still hopeful that that gospel preached had indeed found
its place in their heart and that they were true to the Lord
and that this reminding of them again would draw their hearts
again off the flesh, off of conditions, off of rules, off of obligations,
off of things that man must do and on to Christ and what He
has done for the salvation of His people. So he's asked a good
question here. Received ye the Spirit by the
works of the law? In other words, does God look
at you first and see something good in you by your obedience
and then based on that give you His Spirit? That's what he's
asking. Well, if you ask most people in religion today, in
so-called Christianity, they're going to say, yeah, God expects
you first to repent. He expects you first to believe. He expects you to live right.
And if you do, then He'll give you His Spirit. But the whole
point of the question here is to show how false that is. And
if there's any here tonight that believes that somehow their standing
with God is based upon something you have done, In order for God
to bless you in return, you've got the cart before the horse.
And I have to say to you, oh foolish hearer, that's senseless. I hope that God will enable you
to hear of Christ and that He would make Christ and Him crucified
so precious in your eyes that never again would you ever consider
anything of these hands or this flesh or this mind or this heart
as having any sort of credence before God as far as Him blessing
you. If he blesses, it's because of Christ. It's because of his
finished work. And that's why he asks here,
was it by the works of the law? Do you realize what the law requires? Absolute perfection. I'd like
to hear somebody in this room, if they believe that that's the
basis on which God is blessing you, I'd like to hear your testimony.
I'd like to hear how you, to this point, had a sinless life. I'd like to hear how you, to
this point, not ever had a sinless thought or said anything contrary
to the law of God. Is there anybody who wants to
stand up and testify? You see, our mouths are stopped,
aren't they? That's why the law was given, that every mouth might
be stopped and the whole world found guilty before Him. So there's
no hope in our keeping the law. So He asked, received you the
Spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Now, when it's talking about
the hearing of faith there, it's not talking about just physically
hearing. The Scriptures use the word faith as a synonym of the
gospel. The faith, once delivered unto
the saints. And when it talks here about
the hearing of faith, you could even substitute there the hearing
of Christ. Because faith, as it's set forth
in Scripture, has but that sole object, Christ and Him crucified. And so, he's asking the question
here, receive ye the Spirit by the works of the law, Was it
some obligation that a preacher put you under? Whether it was
walking an aisle, saying a prayer, promising to turn over a new
leaf, giving it your best, going back and reviewing the Ten Commandments
again as is popular today and hanging that sign out in your
front yard and letting everybody know you're giving it your best
shot? That is not how God gives His Spirit. Or was it by the
hearing of faith? In other words, God causing you
by His Spirit to hear the truth. concerning Christ and Him crucified,
not just with the physical ears, but revealed in the heart?" Well,
we know the answer. Anyone that is the Lord's will
testify, it was the Spirit of God that caused me to hear of
Christ and Him crucified and caused me as a sinner to know
myself as nothing before a holy God and to see Christ as all. Christ is God's Savior. Before I ever saw Him, As my
Savior, God saw him as his Savior. When he shed that blood, just
like back there in the Passover, when I see the blood, I'll pass
over you. It wasn't the Israelite seeing the blood, it was when
God sees the blood. And what God was talking about
wasn't the blood of animals. He was looking forward to the
blood of his Son that would be shed. And that's the basis upon
which he saves sinners. And the hearing of faith, as
described here, is in conjunction with the receiving of the Spirit.
You'll never hear in the heart or bow to, hear in the sense
of obedience, bowing or submitting to the one righteousness of Christ.
You can never do it of yourself. It just goes against everything
in this flesh. So if I'm brought to bow, it means that the Spirit
caused me to bow. So again, Paul's reminding them
of this. Don't put any confidence in the flesh. Again, verse 3,
"...are ye so foolish..." Again, senseless. not thinking straight? Are you so foolish, having begun
in the Spirit? Are ye now made perfect by the
flesh?" How many people preach? Well, they'll say, now I believe
that Christ's death takes care of me up to the point of believing.
But then after that, I'm responsible now to work out my sanctification. Well, let me ask you, how are
you doing? How's it going? Would you really want God to
accept you on that basis? I'd get an F every time, you
know. You feel pretty good like you've got things under control
until someone pulls out in front of you and you have to slam on
your brakes. And then all these thoughts break loose. Where were
they? They were there all the time.
There's nothing in this flesh that could ever please God. There's
nothing in this flesh that could ever be said to be satisfactory
to God. The only reason why God ever
blesses any sinner and calls them His own is based upon, again,
the promise. That's what we're going to see,
what He promised, what He purposed to do through His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, and accomplished. He did it to His satisfaction. In fact, here in verse 3, Are
ye so foolish, having begun this spirit? Are ye now, in the original,
as literally being made perfect by the flesh? It's not implying
that this flesh can improve, but Paul is taking their thinking
and turning it back on them. Are you saying to me that all
you needed was a little push from the Spirit to get the engine
started and now you're working on it and improving it? Far be
it. God forbid. See, this is a question that
begs an answer of God forbid. God forbid. Again, he's showing
them the foolishness of such thinking. And it is foolishness.
It is foolishness. And then he says, Have ye suffered?
so many things in vain. That word might imply the idea
of having already endured some affliction because of the message
of Christ in the gospel and now turning back from it, but it
also could be used in a broader sense of experience. Have you
experienced under the preaching of the gospel so many of these
things and yet it be in vain? In other words, you've not really
heard. No, we're all dull of hearing. Look how many times
Christ had to say that of His disciples, O ye of little faith. I'm so thankful that my justification
before God is not based upon how I believe because so many
times this Word of Christ has had to be directed to my own
heart, O ye of little faith. I know it to be so. But I'm thankful
for a Savior who is faithful and who has accomplished all
of the conditions, all of the requirements, that God can be
just in forgiving a sinner such as me. How? Through the death
of His Son. When He died, that sin was put away. Or to make
me righteous before Him. How? Through the death of His
Son. When He died, so perfect was the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ that He declared everyone for whom He died to be just as
perfect and just, holy as Himself. So have you experienced so many
things like this? You who sit here regularly, some
of you from the other congregations, this is the message we rejoice
in. This is the message that gives hope and assurance. But
now to turn from that and to begin to follow after some message
that would put compromise to this message of the gospel or
conditions on it, how can that be? How can that be? It says
here in verse 5, "...he therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit."
Who is this talking about? He. Well, who ministers the Spirit? But God. It's not a man. I'm
not going to ask you at the end of this worship time to come
forward and let me put my hands on you so I can minister to you
the Spirit. There are men all over the world
who would like to try to have you do that. When I was in India,
I could tell that that had been the practice of preachers that
had come there before, because after I finished preaching, there
were five, six hundred people. And these people were coming
after I was done, grabbing my hand and literally putting it
on their head. And I couldn't figure out, I would pull it away
and they would hold it. They would grab it. And people
would translate it and say, they're wanting you to bless them. And
you just person after person have to stop and say, don't look
to these hands for any blessing. Don't look to these hands. The
only way that there's going to be blessing is if God grants
you a hearing of the message of Christ that you just heard
with your physical ears. It's not in the physical hands.
And it's speaking here, he therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit. Let's talk about God working
in their midst. And worketh miracles among you,
and the original might also be in you. Is not the work of regeneration
a miracle? The fact that God would take
a dead sinner and bring him to life and cause him to repent
from dead works and look to Christ alone for salvation? That's a
miracle. You can't talk somebody into
that. You might talk them into a profession, but you can't reveal
Christ in their heart. That takes God doing it. And
I believe that's the sense here. "...and worketh miracles among
you, in you. He that ministereth to you the
Spirit." I'm as conscious as anybody that if anybody is to
see Christ and be brought to bow to Him alone and to rest
in that work that He's accomplished for sinners, it's going to take
the Spirit of God doing it. Not Ken Wymer, not the best illustrations
that I could ever come up with, but the Spirit, the Spirit of
God. But it's the fruit, you see, and this is what we're going
to see as we go on here. People are confusing justification
with regeneration. They're saying that Christ died,
yes, but it's when you believe now, and they make your believing
to be the condition, then God gives you His Spirit, and then
He forgives you of your sins, and then He declares you righteous. They make it at the point of
believing. Why? Because that's man's idol. It
gives him something to do. I believed, and that's what opened
then the floodgates of all the rest of these blessings. No,
it isn't. That's backwards. I'll tell you what, if you have
believed on the Lord Jesus Christ and are resting in Him right
now for forgiveness without looking anywhere else, trusting Him alone,
there's only one reason, and that's because God has worked
in you that miracle by His Spirit, that grace to know of His Son. And you know what? If He's done
that, it's because when Christ died, He died for you. It's based
upon what Christ did at the cross. The giving, the ministering of
the Spirit, that working of the miracle. It's not by the works
of the law. That's why Paul asks this question
in verse 5. He therefore that ministereth
to you the Spirit and worketh miracles among you, doth He It
by the works of the law, in other words, by what you do, perish
the thought. Or is it by the hearing of faith? The faith. Hearing of Christ.
There again, put it in there. Christ and Him crucified. I'll
tell you, it's going to be by the hearing of Christ. That's
how God does His work. That's how He's calling out a
people unto Himself. And you know, it's all base.
We're going to see this. I want to pick up with this tomorrow
with verse 6. It goes all the way back to Abraham.
You see, in verse 6, "...even as Abraham believed God, and
it was accounted to him for righteousness." In other words, for Abraham to
believe God, there had to be that hearing of the faith as
well. There weren't two ways of salvation,
Old Testament and New. The very content of the faith
had to be revealed unto Abraham. That's what it means for him
to have believed God. What was the subject of what he believed?
Well, Christ said, "...he saw my day and rejoiced." when He
took His Son up on that mountain to offer Him up, Mount Moriah.
Do you realize that Mount Moriah was the same place that the temple
was built, the temple of Solomon? The same place where Christ was
crucified 2,000 some years later? Was that just a happenstance? And to see His Son substituted
for by a ram? What was all of that saying to
Abraham? Abraham believed God. In fact, he called the place
Jehovah-Jireh. God will provide Himself a land. Was he just spouting off? No.
He was looking to this day. And that's what it means it was
accounted to him for righteousness. In other words, he wasn't looking
to his believing as the basis of his righteousness, but what
that faith revealed. The Lord Jesus Christ and that
work that he would accomplish. And we're going to get to this
eventually. I want to work down through this passage because
all of this has to do with the promise of God. If you'll take
the time to read this chapter and reread it, I think we'll
be better prepared as we move ahead But you can see in verse
18, and I'll leave you that for tomorrow morning. Go back if
you have some time and read and underscore how many times the
word promise is referred to in this portion of Scripture. I'll
give you an example in verse 18. If the inheritance be of
the law, in other words, wherever you see that, it's talking about
the works of your hands or your obedience. It is no more of promise. But God gave it to Abraham by
promise. So there's a connection here
that we're going to get to. And again in verse 22, "...but
the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise
by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe."
That's an important word. And Lord willing, we'll come
back and take a look at it tomorrow. Lord bless you.