Take your Bibles and turn with
me to Galatians. Galatians chapter 3. This thing is going
to cooperate with me. Galatians chapter 3, begin our
reading in verse 10. I'll tell this message, the three
states, three states of every believer. Cursed, redeemed, and
blessed. Cursed, redeemed, and blessed. The apostle here says, 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 in all things
which are written in the book of the law to do them. But no
man is justified by the law, and the sight of God is evident. For the just shall live by faith,
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. And here's the reason
that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
faith. Now the apostle has gone to great
lengths here. The church at Galatia had made
a grave error. They believed on Christ. They
trusted Christ. And then some men came in and
said, well, that's good. You should. You have to believe
on Jesus Christ, but you must also obey the law of Moses in
this one thing. You have to be circumcised. And
Paul is spending his time in this book correcting this grave
error. This grave error. And he says
in the beginning of this chapter, O thoughtless Galatians, foolish. Who bewitched you that you should
not obey the truth? Have I not preached Christ, evidently
said Christ before you? And then he asked these questions,
how is it then you that confess Christ, how is it that you have
received the Spirit We know this, that the Spirit of God is a gift
of God's grace and mercy. And if you are a believer in
Christ, you know this, without the Spirit of Christ, you are
none of His. So they all profess to have the Spirit, but tell
me, how did the Spirit come to you? How did you receive the
Spirit? Was it by the obedience of the
law or by the hearing of faith? Tell me. Did the Spirit look
down at you and see how great you were, and then made a judgment
to come to you because you were obedient to the law? No. He said, did you receive him
by the law, works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Well,
it's a self-evident question. It's a rhetorical question. Of
course it was by the hearing of faith. We heard the gospel
of Jesus Christ, and through the preaching of the gospel,
the Spirit worked upon our hearts, and we believed. And he says, now you so foolish
having begun this way, are you now made perfect by the flesh?
Are you justified, made righteous by Jesus Christ and then by your
obedience are you now made sanctified? No, that's foolish thought. In
verse five, he says, he that ministereth the Spirit unto you
and works miracles among you. How does he do it? He's talking
about God, not talking about the preacher. Preacher don't
minister the Spirit unto you. Preacher don't work the miracles.
It's God that works the miracles. It's God. Now, how did he do
it? Did he do it by the works of the law or by the hearing
of faith? And listen to what he says, even as Abraham. That's
how he did it. Just like he did Abraham. He preached the gospel to Abraham,
and by the grace of the Spirit, he believed, and it was counted
to him for righteousness. In verse 9 he said, so then,
even as, verse 6, Abraham believed God was counted unrighteous,
so then, they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. And so he says, Abraham believed
the gospel. Now then, he turns their attention
back to this law that they so much desired to obey. And he
is going to cause them to consider this He says, for as many as are of
the works of the law are under the curse. Under the curse of
the law. Paul says, you that desire to
be under the law, I want you to know that you can only be
under its curse. Why? Because it is written, cursed
is everyone that continueth not, listen to this carefully, in
all things written in the book of the law to do them. In other
words, there is no such thing as picking out a certain section
of the law and trying to obey it, such as men do in our generation. The Ten Commandments seems to
be the one. Here, it was circumcision. In
other places, it was Sabbath worship. In other places, it
was the feast days. But in our day, it seems to be
the Ten Commandments, that that's the section of law that they
desire to pull out for their sanctification or their righteousness
or whatever. And Paul says you can't divide
it If you are James says this he said I like the way James
puts it we we look into the perfect law of liberty That's that's
where our law is a law of liberty. It's not talking about the law
of Moses Why he even says in chapter 2 he says if you are
guilty in one of the law of Moses you are guilty of all So I've
been Saying this over and over, if anyone desires to be in any
part of the law, Sabbath worship, tithing, if you desire to do
that, if you desire to obey the Ten Commandments, you better
find you a high priest, go knock down the mosque that's built
over in Jerusalem, and offer sacrifices according to the law. Because that's just as much as
part of the law as the Ten Commandments. And if you are guilty, if your
desire is to be under the law, you are under its curse because
there's an impossibility. It's an impossibility. It's not
only to give homage to the law, but rather to do them. That's
what he said. Curse everyone that doesn't do all of them.
Therefore, the conclusion is this, Paul says, no man, in verse
11, is justified by the law and the sight of God. That's just
evident, isn't it? Go look in the mirror. Isn't
it evident? Look in your heart. Isn't it
evident that you're not gonna be justified before God? Not
by the deeds of the law. No flesh is going to be justified,
but we are justified. How? Justified by faith. Now we who are justified by faith,
we are not lawless. We're not without law. Why? He tells us our law right there
in that same verse. He says, for the just shall live
by faith. That is our law. Here's the law
of faith. The law of faith. The just shall live by faith. And this faith that we have is
not a one-time thing. This tells us this. It's a constant,
perpetual thing. I remember this from many years
ago. God helped me at one point. I
was struggling with my faith. I didn't know if my faith was
real at all or not. I was mixed with so much unbelief
and fear. And Todd preached a message. It was called Faith Now. And
he said, Faith, ten minutes ago, And faith 10 minutes from now
will not help me. Faith now is all that matters. Do you believe now? And now? How about now? That's how faith matters. We're just going to continually
live by faith, looking always and only to Jesus Christ for
every aspect of my acceptance with God. I'll tell you, we struggle
with that one, don't we? Our faith is so mixed with unbelief
and fear, and yet God continually gives it to us. Therefore, we
have no confidence in the flesh. We have no confidence in the
flesh. We look not to the law or to works for any measure of
our acceptability with God. God's people do do good works.
They do. He read 2 Peter, he put off all
malice, and isn't that just right? But as newborn babes, desire
the sincere milk of the word, that's how we act, we desire
to be that way. We long to be as his dear children,
be followers of God as dear children. But yet we do not trust in any
work that we have ever done or are doing. Never lean on it,
never depend on it for any acceptance. Therefore it is the love of Christ
that constraineth us, isn't it? That constrained me from sin.
Ten commandments don't constrain me from sin. Have they stopped
you? What do you say then? Verse 12,
the law is not of faith. These two are opposed to one
another. Got it? They just don't mix. You don't start by faith and
finish by law. You start by faith, you walk
by faith, and you're gonna finish by faith. Law is not of faith. Now, I got plenty more I wanna
say about that, but I gotta move on. That was introduction. Now I want us to look back at
this text and look at this good and perfect work of our Lord
Jesus Christ as it's mentioned in verse 13. He said, Christ,
if there's anything I want to do,
I want to point you to Christ. My harsh desire is that we all
would fall at the feet of Christ. I thought of Ruth today and how
she fell at Boaz's feet and said, cover me, please, cover me. That's how I want us to do. I
want us to come to Christ and lay down and ask him to cover
us with his righteousness, his grace, Christ. What'd he do? Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law. How'd he do it? Being made a
curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth
on a tree. What'd he do it for? That, the
blessing of Abraham. What was that? The righteousness
of God. Abraham believed God and he was counted in Christ.
It was a blessing. That was the blessing. that that blessing
of Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,
that you might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Now in these two verses, we have
the three states of every believer cursed. Christ hath redeemed
us from what? The curse of the law. We were
all cursed. Secondly, I want to see the state
Christ hath redeemed us from the first estate. He redeemed
us. And thirdly, I want us to see
that everyone who is redeemed is blessed. Is blessed. First of all, the curse. Curse. And we know this, the
law is holy and just and good. There's nothing, when I said
those things about the law, I'm not condemning the law. The law
is good. The problem is us. Problem is us. The law is holy
and just, and it demands that a man be holy and just. It demands
absolute perfection in thought, in word, and deed. And as soon
as a man commits one sin, as soon as one sin is committed,
he is under the curse of the law. He is under its curse. And we just read, cursed is everyone
that is written. That is, as many as are of the
works of the law are under the curse, as it is written, cursed
is everyone that continueth not in all things written in the
book of the law to do them. This is the first state, everyone
who is a believer in Christ, you know this about yourself.
This was our first estate. We were cursed. We were cursed. This is truly the nature of every
one of us who has come into this world as a result of the fall
of Adam. This curse was passed upon us. Our Lord God said to Adam, in
the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. I thought
of it today again and I said, you know what, He didn't say,
if you eat of this, you shall die. No, He said, in the day
you do. This was ordained, it was purposed,
but when you do, you will surely die. And as sure as he did, as
sure as he did, he died. But it wasn't an isolated event,
was it? Wherefore, as by one man, Romans
5, 12, Sin entered into the world, and
what happened? The curse. Isn't death the curse? God pronounced a curse, and the
curse was death. Death is always the result of
sin, and death passed upon all men. For, this is why, all have
sinned. I wasn't physically there when
Adam did it, but I was in him when he did it. He was my head. He was your head. It just don't
matter what men like or dislike about that. It don't matter. And therefore the Scripture has
said, concluded this, there is not a just man upon the earth
that doeth good and sinneth not. There's not one. There's not
one. Our Lord Jesus Christ said, I
came not to condemn the world. Now why didn't He do that? Why
didn't He not come into this world? He was already condemned. He was already condemned. He
said, He that believeth on Him, on the Son, is not condemned. He's justified and He's righteous. You that believe on Him, I want
to give you a sneak peek of what redemption does. It frees you
from this curse and this. You're justified. You're righteous
and you are not condemned. But he that believeth not is
condemned," what? Already. He's already condemned. We didn't come into this world
believing, did we? We were unbelievers from birth and we stayed that
way until God came and gave us the Spirit and life. We are by nature children of
wrath, Paul says, even as others. because Adam, our federal head,
sinned against God. The curse of death had fallen
upon us all. We are born dead in trespasses
and sins. We are born at enmity against
God. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. Now why is that? For it is not
subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can be. Natural
man by nature hates God. You know, a man will believe
anything but Christ alone. I mean, you can take some really
smart, intelligent people and talk about their religion, and
that's just stupid. It makes no sense whatsoever,
and they don't care, as long as it's not Jesus Christ alone. People say, well, I don't hate
Jesus, I love Jesus. Listen, if you add anything to
Jesus Christ, if you add anything to His death, to His burial,
to His resurrection, to His righteousness, if you take anything you have
done and try to finish the work that He did, you hate Him. You hate Him. You despise His
work. You are telling Him His work
is not sufficient. When God said it was done, God
said it was sufficient, and you say, no. That's what you're doing. The fool has said in his heart,
no, God. No. And because of sin, because of
the curse that's upon us, we are blind, ignorant of the things
of God. We're ignorant to this, the soul
that sinneth, it shall surely die. We're ignorant, the wages of
sin is death. When Adam was cursed, he brought
spiritual death upon his whole creation, and he brought physical
death. We see the result of sin often. We see our family, our
friends that die. We see the full effect of what
happened at the garden. Death came in the world. And
then those that are without God, without Christ, who remain under
this curse, there is an eternal death, second death in which the body
and soul will forever die. Audrey was reading a book, I'm
not even going to mention the name of it because it's a load
of garbage. Guy said that hell was just a
reference of mind, the state of mind. If he kept on believing that,
I swear he knows now it's not a state of mind. He knows it's
a place. But every believer in Christ
understands this because we too had our conversation in time
past. We walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
But who? God. But God. If it was not for God to intervene,
we would have remained cursed. But God, who is rich in mercy
for His great love wherewith He loved us, in that while we
were cursed, what did He do? He sent His Son. He sent His
Son to do what? This is what is mentioned here
in verse 13. Christ hath redeemed us from
what? The curse. We were by nature
cursed, but here is our hope. Here is our standing. Here is
our desire to worship and praise God for this one person, Jesus
Christ, who hath redeemed us from the curse. redeemed us from
the curse. Christ has redeemed us. If sinners
are to ever know the salvation, the redemption of Jesus Christ,
they must first know they're cursed. Isn't that right? You're
never going to desire to be redeemed from the curse if you don't know
you're cursed. But this is what God reveals
first, is that we were cursed. And when we feel the weight of
that, when we feel our sin and our iniquity, what do we need? We need someone to redeem us
from this. We need someone to pay the debt
of this curse. So all of the elect of God were
cursed as all of Adam's race, but now we see the love of God. You want to see the love of God. Oftentimes, I'm ignorant about
this, and I want to see the love of God in circumstance. I want
to see the love of God in something around me that I can touch, taste,
and feel. A lot of times we don't get that.
But I tell you where you can see the love of God, you can
see it in the death of His Son. You can see it in the giving
of the most glorious and most precious thing He had, His Son. We see the love of God displayed
in this, that Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. So look now to Jesus Christ,
who was appointed of God to be our Redeemer. Our Redeemer. God said, behold, my servant. You see, Christ was still in
glory with the Father at this time when that was written, right?
And yet he was always purposed to be the servant. He was purposed
to come into this world as a servant. He said, the one whom I uphold,
my elect whom my soul delighteth. When he comes, Isaiah wrote this,
he shall not fail. You look at my servant. Don't
look, I say look in the mirror, don't look there. It's all you're
gonna see is a failure. When you look to Christ, you
ain't gonna see a failure. You're gonna see someone who
was successful. And therefore, he voluntarily, in love, Christ
voluntarily came to be our Redeemer. He came down from heaven, took
upon him the form of a servant. He became a man. He became subject
to the law of God. What happened when we were subject
to the law of God? We were cursed. Oh, but not this
man. This man was not of the seed
of Adam. He was the seed of the woman.
He was of the Spirit of God. His body was made, and yet he
had no sin. And he willingly came down, subjected
himself to the law of God, and then offered himself upon the
cross as a sacrifice for sin. And by his death, the scripture
says he hath redeemed us. I like some, the past tense of
that, he's already done it. Christ has already redeemed us
from the curse of the law. He did not make redemption possible. If you make something possible,
then it's possible it fails. Possible it succeeds, but then
it's possible it fails. No, when Christ went to the cross,
he did not make redemption possible. He actually redeemed. He redeemed. When he died upon
Calvary Street, he had redeemed who? Us. Us. Now by this, we know that Jesus
Christ did not redeem those who are not redeemed. Very clear,
isn't it? All those in hell are not redeemed.
So when He went to the cross, He did not redeem them. He had
no intention of redeeming them, and He didn't redeem them. But He did redeem us, those who
were chosen of God. He redeemed who? The elect of
God. That's who He redeemed. In 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 13
he says, We are bound to give thanks always to God for you,
brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning
chosen you to salvation. He chose you to be redeemed.
He purposed for you to be redeemed. Have you thought of the spiritual
blessing of that? That God chose you to be redeemed? that He purposed and willed that
you should be redeemed. That there was nothing that would
ever move Him from this purpose. When Christ came into this world,
He set His face like a flint. He would not be moved until you
were actually redeemed. He redeemed all those that the
Father gave Him. In that higher priestly prayer,
he says, I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but
for who? For them that thou has given
me. That's who I pray for. I pray
for them. Why? Because they're yours. You
chose them and you gave them to me and I pray for them. In that 20th verse of that John
17, he said, neither pray I thee forlorn, but for them also which
shall believe on me through their word. Everyone that believes
on the Lord Jesus Christ, these are the ones he has redeemed.
Those the Father gave him before the world began, those that the
Father gives him in the saving operation of grace, every one
of them will come to him by faith. He said, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me. All of them that I redeemed,
none of them shall fail to come to me. I know, I do this every Sunday,
I see the fewness of those who really believe the gospel or
have any interest in it. I do. Often I feel discouraged, but
I want you to take to heart the church is always full. Isn't it? Isn't it always full? Is there
ever a time where one member is going to be missing? No. Because at the appointed time,
those that are lost, at the appointed time, He saves. There's no gap. There's no time where there's
not one missing. They will all come. None of them
will be lost. All of them will come to Me.
And when they do, I will in no wise cast them out. Isn't this
an encouragement to sinners to come? Listen, if you can believe,
believe. And when you do, he's not gonna
cast you out. He just said it. He said, I'm not gonna cast him
out. Why? He said, I came down from
heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent
me. What was his will? That you be redeemed. I came to do that
will. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that of all he has given me, I should lose how many? How
many will he lose? How many did he say he will lose?
Nothing. Zero. He will lose none of them but
raise them up at the last day. And he has redeemed all who believe. Do you believe? Do you believe on the Son of
God alone? I've got nowhere else to go,
and I don't want to go anywhere else. Christ is all. I believe. Listen, what he said to you,
believe. Christ hath redeemed you from the curse of the law. Yeah, this is then is the evidence
of our redemption is faith in Jesus Christ. Wasn't that the
evidence of Abraham? Even as Abraham believed God,
and it was counted to him for righteousness. So they that which
be of faith are blessed with who? Faithful Abraham. All the blessings of Abraham
are yours. Why? Because Abraham was redeemed. He was redeemed by the same blood
you were redeemed by. And the evidence of this is faith
in Christ. Now, how has He redeemed us?
We who were given to Christ from eternity, but born in darkness
and under the curse of the law, yet God had Pronounced the curse
upon us. He had also purposed that Christ
deliver us how being made a curse for us We will believe are redeemed
by Jesus Christ who was made a curse And we were born under
we were born cursed He was not You see he had to be made a curse
Something he wasn't so that you can be made something you weren't.
You weren't righteous. But in order for you to be righteous,
he had to be cursed. He had to bear the curse of the
law. See, now that Jesus' redemption
was accomplished, so as to release us from the curse, so that instead
of God's curse, we should receive what? That, the blessing of Abraham
might come on us. That's why he did it. Now, redemption. Now, why don't you consider redemption
for a minute. It has two parts. Two parts in redemption. First
of all, a price must be paid. If someone is going to be redeemed,
it means that a ransom price is set and a ransom price must
be paid. Otherwise, you can't be redeemed.
And the second part of redemption is, if the price is paid, the
captive must be delivered. Must be delivered. We, by nature, were born under
the curse of death, and Jesus, in order to redeem us, must pay
the ransom price. And so as we were given to Christ,
He came as our substitute and out of love for us. In order
to ransom us, He willingly bore the curse. That's what Paul says when he
says that in 2 Corinthians 5, whereas He was made sin. God
made Him sin for us. Made Him to be sin for us. This is the most astounding thing
in all of Scripture, that He was made sin for us who knew
no sin. That's astounding. I don't grasp
it and I don't dare listen to anybody who thinks they got it.
I just don't. I'm not going to be able to grasp
this. He was made sin and yet, listen, He thought no sin. He
felt no sin. He did not love sin. Everything in him was righteous. And yet, under the justice of
God, he was made sin. Mystery. Mystery. God doesn't punish a man that
really isn't guilty. That's an abomination, isn't
it? I don't understand it. But that's how he redeemed me.
He became a curse. And I like this. It's written.
You know, when you read that, that ends all debate. I quit
after this. Once you understand what this
says, I don't like to talk to you. If you're going to argue
with me, I don't want to talk to you anymore. It's written. Curses everyone that hangeth
on a tree. Was he hung on a tree? Was he cursed? It's written he
was. It's written he was. He bore our sin in his own body
and for three hours our Lord suffered the holy justice of
God's wrath without mercy. the only one who deserved mercy. And to pay my debt, he had to suffer without it. You want to know how precious
his blood was? In three hours, He did what no
man could do in an eternity of hell. And in three hours, He suffered
not just for the sins of one man, but all the sins of all
the men that were given to Him. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
the man that is my fellow. Saith the Lord of hosts, smite
the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. Why? So I can turn
my hands to the little ones. I can't turn my hands to the
little ones unless they answer me. I can't save my people unless
my justice is satisfied. Go to Hebrews 10. I think this is a most, I love
this passage of scripture. It sure gives me a lot of comfort.
Hebrews 10, verse nine, our Lord said this, lo, I come to do thy
will, O God. What's that? I'm gonna take away
the first and I may establish the second. The first covenant
brought a curse. that I may establish the second,
which is a covenant of mercy, a covenant of grace. I came to do His will. What was
His will? By the which will we are sanctified. Oh man, I love this scripture
because it sums up sanctification very clearly. You are sanctified
by the will of God. You're made holy because God
purposed you to be holy. Listen, how? Through something. Through the
offering of the body of Christ, you were sanctified. You were
sanctified by the will of God. You were made holy by the will
of God. You were made holy when he paid for your sins at Calvary. You were made holy. Where's your
sin? If he really paid for it, where
is it? Could God ever be just to bring
it up again? If it's really paid, now if it's
pretend paid, sure, we're not talking about a pretend savior,
we're talking about a real redeemer who actually redeemed. And how many times were you sanctified?
What does it say? Once. You were sanctified by the will
of God through the offering of the body of Christ. How many
times? Once. Now you did receive this sanctification through faith.
You received it. It's yours right now, you that
believe. You are sanctified by the Spirit of God. I just read
that in 2 Thessalonians, didn't I? He said that God chose you
to salvation, how? Through sanctification of the
Spirit and belief of the truth. That sanctification that was
bought for you, you received it through the work of the Spirit. Look what it says. And every
priest, standing daily, ministering, offering the same sacrifices,
never removed sins. But this man, after he had offered
one sacrifice for sins, what did he do? He sat down. He sat
down and showed you what? It's finished. You don't sit
down until it's done. What did he do? He sat down. Henceforth expecting his enemies
to be made aware. He said that he sat down at the
right hand of God. He just sat down anywhere. He sat down on
the throne. From henceforth expecting till
his enemies be made his footstool for by his one offering, he hath
perfected forever them that are sanctified. You sanctified by
the will of God. You sanctified through the redemption
of Christ. Listen to what he did for you. He perfected you
forever. Why? How did He do that? He was
made a curse. He was made a curse. And His
death actually redeemed His people. He paid for all their sins. That's
the first part of redemption. Sin must be paid in order for
you to be redeemed from the curse. And that's exactly what happened.
He redeemed us. What's the second part of this?
Deliverance. If you go and you see someone
you love is in prison, you go pay a fine. And you pay the fine,
but they never let him go. What good is that? Obviously
you didn't pay enough. Obviously something's wrong with
this transaction. Either the judge is unjust, the
law is unjust, or you didn't pay enough. But we know both
are true, that Christ paid exactly what God demanded. He said it's
finished. He said it's paid. And God is
just. Therefore, what? Everyone that
is redeemed must be delivered. I like that when he said, other
sheep I have of this fold, them I also, what's the word? Must
bring. Now, when God says he has to
do something, that's important, isn't it? I can't do anything else but
deliver them. Or as the scripture, deliver
him from going down the pit. Why? I have found a ransom. I have found a ransom. Behold, the price is paid in
full. And I want you to know this,
if you try to add anything to His price, you are again telling
Him His price is not sufficient. I ask this to people who want
to talk about progressive holiness. What do you suppose to add? Okay, there's Christ and His
righteousness. Now what do you suppose to add
to that? What work are you going to put
up there? If they say anything at all,
I'm just done. There's no reason for it. They
don't have any clue about the curse that they're under. They
don't know. Our redemption is full, and I
know this, everyone He redeems, He's going to deliver. I like
the illustration of Gomer and Hosea. Remember that? Now, He bought her. He bought
her. And you remember how she left
him and went whoring after her lovers. And all the while she
was doing this, he was still providing for her. Until the time of her deliverance. When he said, okay, that's enough. What did he begin to do? He took
away all of those things that he was given. All those things
she thought came from her lovers. He took them away. He took her
joy. He took all the pleasures of
these things away. He made her gods to be as they
are vanity. Isn't that what he did to us?
Did he not redeem us? And then where did we go? We
went a-whoring. He still provided all that we
needed all along our life until when? Until the time He said,
that's enough. And He started taking away the
joy of sin, taking away the joy of this world. Showing us the
vanity of our false God that we have made in our minds. Notice
how He brings her to Himself. You remember in Hosea He said,
I will allure her. That just don't sound right.
Maybe he should have said something like, I should beat her. She
was a wicked woman, boy. No, he said, that's not how I'm
going to do it. How did he bring you? Do you
not allure you into a wilderness, a solitary place, and speak comfortably
to her? What is he going to say? I'm
going to give you those vineyards and the valley of Achar for a
door of hope. Remember old Achar? The valley
of Achar is where Achan was. That old Achan stole all that
stuff and they weren't allowed to defeat that little village
of Ai. And you remember, it was only
after Achan died that they were able to win. Achan was a picture
at that point of Christ. Where'd that happen? Valley of
Acre. God's always pointing you to his son. And what is Acre? A door of hope. Senator, you need hope. I ain't got no hope in the law.
I got no hope of saving myself. Christ says, look, I have redeemed
you. That's comfortable words. And
he says, in that day, she's gonna call me beloved husband, and
she's not gonna call me master anymore. Before that, she's called
him master. But after that day, she said,
that's my beloved husband. This is how he delivers us, even
as he did Abraham. Look, the third state then of
everyone who is delivered, everyone who is called, look at this,
that, verse 14, the blessing of Abraham might come on the
Gentiles through Jesus Christ. What's this blessing? That we
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Abraham was blessed in this,
he was justified. He was justified. A lot of men in religion seek to
be justified by men. I tell you that's of no value. I need to know if I'm justified
before God. And what did Abraham find? When
he heard the gospel and believed, God says he counted it to him
for righteousness. I preached this last week that
there's only one righteousness, and not many righteousnesses
are there. Who possesses righteousness?
Whose only one has it? God. God's only one righteousness
belongs to him. You know what he does to everyone
he delivers? He gives us his own righteousness. That's the blessing of Abraham.
That's the blessing of Abraham. Paul says in Romans 4, verse
3, said, What sayeth the scripture of Abraham? Believe God who has
counted him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is not
the reward reckoned of grace, but of debt. Do you work for
this righteousness? Nope. Nope. But to him that worketh
not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith
is counted to him for righteousness. What is the object of our faith? It is Christ and His righteousness. And this blessing of righteousness
is imputed to us by God. Paul says in Romans 4.16, therefore
it is of faith. What? Righteousness. It's received
by faith. Now righteousness isn't made
by faith, it's received by faith. Christ made the righteousness. Therefore it is of faith, and
that by grace. What's by grace? Faith. For what
purpose? To the end that the promise might
be sure to all to see. See, it's sure. You who were
cursed are redeemed. You're redeemed. You that are
redeemed and have received this redemption through faith, you
have the promise of God that he gave to Abraham, which is
what? The promise of life, the promise
of mercy, the promise of forgiveness, promise of peace. For Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. So how do we
live? We that have been redeemed, how
do we live? We live continually looking to that redemption. We
continually hold fast to that redemption as all are standing
before God. You were cursed, now you're redeemed.
And you that were redeemed are blessed. Blessed with faithful
Abraham. Pray God will bless this to you.