Alright brethren, let's go back
here now to Galatians chapter 3. Now, we saw last time how the
Holy Spirit moved Paul to use Abraham as the example. Abraham
didn't have the law that was given at Sinai. If he didn't
have the law given at Sinai, Noah didn't have it, Enoch didn't
have it, Then how was it that God said that Noah was righteous
in his generation? It's in Christ, and it's by Christ,
receiving from Christ's fullness through the Spirit, knowing how
to walk, and walk by faith. And Abraham didn't have the law.
He was under the curse because he fell in Adam, just like we
all were, but he didn't have the law to do works of the law,
to try to justify himself or to try to make himself righteous.
So how was he made righteous? It's good to look at Abraham
because he was made sin and put under the curse by a head, Adam. And he was made righteous and
blessed by the last Adam, who was his head, and the law had
nothing to do with it. His own works had nothing to
do with it. God sent the preaching of the
gospel to him, and he declared that in thee, Abraham, in Christ
your seed, I will bless all my elect in every nation. And he
gave him the Spirit of God, and he gave him faith, and Abraham
believed God. And God counted the righteousness
of Christ to Abraham. And from then on, Abraham walked
by faith. He walked looking to Christ,
from whose fullness we receive all things. We receive everything
from Christ, through the Spirit, through the Word of God. And
that's how Abraham walked all his days. As a justified man,
a man righteous before God, he walked by faith, looking to the
Lord to lead him. And when the Lord records Abraham
and speaks of Abraham in Hebrews 11, he says nothing about Abraham's
sin. Not a thing about it. He walked
in faith. He did what he was supposed to
do. He looked to Christ, he walked by faith, and God commends him.
Because Christ put his sin away. Christ put his sin away. He was
righteous before God. And as Brother Scott just read,
in his new man, he couldn't sin. He couldn't stop believing Christ
and he couldn't stop loving his brethren. He couldn't stop it. Paul said, so then, they which
be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Now we're going
to look tonight at the opposite. What is it to be of the works
of the law? He says, because as many as are of the works of
the law are under the curse. For it's written, curse it is
everyone that continueth not in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do them. but that no man is justified
by the law in the sight of God, it's 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's written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that
the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
faith. Now, first of all, to be of the
works of the law, he says, is to be under the curse. Now, what
does it mean to be of the works of the law? What does that mean,
to be of the works of the law? Well, the simple way to tell
you what it is is it's those that don't believe on Christ
alone. If a man doesn't believe on Christ
alone and trust Christ alone for righteousness and everything
he needs for salvation, he's under the works of the law. He
is of the works of the law. The man who lives by faith, receiving
everything from Christ through the spirit, through the gospel,
this is the blessing of Abraham. But the man who doesn't walk
by faith, he's of the works of the law. Now some trust in their
works who are not religious at all, and they're of the works
of the law. Everybody who, whether they're
religious or not, we come into this world with a defiled nature,
so we think somehow we can work and make ourselves accepted of
God. We just hope our good outweighs our bad. That's to be of the
works of the law, is to be under the curse that we that we came
under in Adam. And then others insist that certain
works must be done before one can believe on Christ. There
are places where if somebody begins to express that they believe
on Christ and they want to confess Christ, they need to see some
works done. They want to see some works done.
They want to see if they're a notorious sinner, they want to see them
stop sinning before they can give them any comfort that they
believe on the Lord Jesus or point them to believe on the
Lord Jesus alone. These are folks who would have,
they'd have put works between Mary Magdalene and Christ because
she was a harlot. Christ received her. These are
folks that wouldn't have us be found as the baby cast out into
the field, polluted in our own blood, they'd have us first wash
ourselves and supple ourselves and swaddle ourselves and then
come to Christ. That's to be of the works of
the law. But as the Judaizers did here, they said that after
faith is come, works are necessary. Works of the law are necessary
to add to Christ or to supplement Christ or whatever it was, or
they can't be saved. And Paul is addressing that and
he's telling them, you take these Gentile believers who've been
purified in heart by Christ through faith and you bring them and
tell them they have to live by the law? You're taking them from
those that be of faith and blessed with faithful Abraham and making
them to be of the works of the law. but all who think their law keeping
in some way is necessary. They think that what they do
or what they don't do is going to affect their standing in Christ. That's not so. That's not so. When you mortify the deeds of
the flesh, one thing it involves is knowing that your flesh has
been crucified in Christ. What you do or don't do will
have some effect on this life, but it affects nothing to do
with our standing before God. So that's what it is to be of
the works of the law, is to look to law-keeping to add something,
or to be the thing you need to come to Christ. But now look,
here's why we're under the curse if we be of the works of the
law. If we're of the works of the law, we're under the curse,
and here's why. He says, for it's written, verse
10, for it's written, this is God's word. This is God's word,
for it's written, curse it, is everyone that continueth not
in all things which are written in the book of the law to do
them. The law requires the same thing of everybody. He says there,
cursed is everyone that continueth not. The law requires the same
thing of everybody. It doesn't matter if a man's
in the pulpit or in the pew. It doesn't matter if he's a prince
or a pauper, if he's rich or poor, male or female. The law
requires the same exact measure from everybody. The law requires
continual obedience. Continual obedience. He says,
curse is everyone that continueth not. That's God's word from Deuteronomy
27, 26. God requires we must continue. We must continue. We have to
begin being obedient. And we have to continue all the
way to the end of our life being obedient to the law. You can't
get a good ways and then stop or falter or have a misstep. Can't do that. You have to continue
all the way to the end. And he requires that we not leave
out obedience to even one law. He says, cursed is everyone that
continueth not in all things, which are written in the book
of the law to do them. If we depend on God's law to
bring us to God, make us accepted with God, to add to our standing
in Christ, we must do all of God's law. Moral, ceremonial,
and civil. Somebody wants to start observing
a day, or a feast, or a Passover, You better go to the law and
see exactly how that has to be observed. But not only that law,
all the law, every bit of it, all of it. We don't get to pick
and choose which of God's laws we're gonna do. We have to do
all of it if we're gonna try to come to God in the law, every
word. Look at Jeremiah 11. This is the same word again over
in Jeremiah, and I want you to see this because I want you to
pick up on something here. Jeremiah 11 and look at verse
3. Say thou unto them, he's talking
to Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, say thou unto them,
thus saith the Lord God of Israel, curse it be the man that obeyeth
not the words of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers
in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt
from the iron furnace. That's what we've been looking
at in Exodus there at Mount Sinai in Exodus, he's talking about
that covenant. Obey my voice and do them according to all
which I command you. So shall you be my people and
I'll be your God. That law's got to be kept if
we're gonna be God's people and he be our God. The whole law's
got to be kept perfectly. That I may perform the oath which
I've sworn unto your fathers to give them a land flowing with
milk and honey as it is this day. That oath he's talking about
is the blessing he promised Abraham. After he promised that blessing
to Abraham, God brought the covenant of works in. He brought the law
in. And God's telling them here, every word of this law has got
to be fulfilled. Every word of it's got to be
fulfilled before I can be God to you and you can be a child
to me. For God to count obedience, what
does it have to be? I gotta continue, I gotta do
all the laws. So what is obedience? I have
to be as righteous and holy as God himself without any sin. Obedience must be perfect. God
demands perfect righteousness continually in all the law from
a perfectly holy heart with no sin ever. It's not obedience
to do our best. It's not obedience to be sincere.
It's not obedience to just be obedient outwardly. It must be
perfect righteousness from a perfectly pure heart if God will accept
it. It's got to be perfect. And God
looks on the heart. God looks on the heart. The law
is spiritual. It reaches to the thoughts, the
imaginations, the desires, the lusts. it reaches to the heart. A man can be morally good outwardly, but God's looking on the heart. God's looking on the nature of
a man. If a man does nothing wrong,
he doesn't break one law, but he fails to do what God says
is right in a positive way. Sins of omission are just as
much sins as sins of commission. Missing the mark's missing the
mark, whether you shoot over the mark or you hit below the
mark. Still missing the mark. The slightest
deviation in perfect love to God and perfect love to our neighbor
is sin, not obedience. The slightest failure means we're
under the curse. You see, this is the issue right
here. Do I know how holy God is and
how righteous God is and what God requires? If I'm going to be honest, if
I know something of God's righteousness and I'm honest, I'm going to
have to say, when I read the Ten Commandments, I'm going to
have to say, When I read one, I say, I'm guilty of that one. When I read the next one, I'm
guilty of that one. A preacher, surely you're not
saying that as a believer. Oh yeah, as a believer, I'm guilty
of that one. And I go through 617 laws, and
I'm guilty of all of them. That's why God says, there's
none righteous, no, not one. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. Well, God says it's evident no
man's justified by the law. It's evident we can't come to
God in the law, because God makes, he has to justify, and he justifies
his people and applies that free justification through faith.
Makes his people live by faith, not by law. He says here in verse
11, but that no man is justified by the law and the sight of God.
It's evident. For the just shall live by faith.
And the law's not of faith. But here's what that means. The
law's not of faith. The law says do and live. Disobey, die. That's all it is. There's no faith involved. No
mercy, no love, nothing. Just do it, live. Don't do it,
die. No man's justified by the law
and the sight of God because God must justify. Only God can
justify. He wasn't surprised when Adam
sinned in the garden. He gave Adam that one law and
when he gave it, he said to him, in the day that you eat. Not if you eat of it, but in
the day you eat of it, you're going to die. Why did he do that? Why did he give all those commandments
at Sinai? He wasn't so we could try to
come to God by them. He was to show us something of
how wicked we are and what totally ruined sinners we are and how
that God must do the justifying. He must do the justifying. To
be just is to have no record of sin before God ever, past,
present, or future, and no even possibility that God will ever
charge you with a sin. That's justification. So that
from the first moment you breathe to the last moment you breathe,
you don't have a record one that you ever sin. That's what it
is to be just with God. And it's only through Christ,
it's only by Christ that He justifies us and God only brings us into
this good news through faith in Him. He brings you to trust
His Son and He makes you know you're justified. You're justified. There's no curse upon you. And
then by the same Holy Spirit that made us to live and made
us to have faith and made us to rest in Christ. The same Holy
Spirit now is going to teach us. He is going
to teach us. He is going to teach us all things. And this is what He is teaching
us. Right here in this verse. We can't live to God until we
are dead to the law. We can't live to God until we
are dead to the law. The law, everybody's under the
curse and everybody's going to die under the curse. I mean die
the second death. I mean die that eternal punishment.
Not one person's going to escape that. We're either going to do
it in ourselves when we meet God without Christ or we're going
to suffer it in Christ. But everybody's going to suffer
that. That's the curse. The curse says the soul that
sins must die. And he's talking about that eternal
death. He's talking about separation from God. God will execute that
curse and that condemnation of justice on his people. It's going
to happen. And only those that come to Christ
and rest in Christ and cease from dead works of trying to
soothe our conscience into thinking we're just before God, until
we can rest in Christ and completely Stop being discouraged by ourselves
or encouraged by ourselves until we find all our fullness in Christ
alone. We're not dead to the law yet.
And there's a Pharisee with me and you all the time that keeps
on bringing out that law and would bring us into bondage to
it. How are you going to be delivered from that? How was Abraham delivered
from that Pharisee? God came to him, God preached
Christ to him, God sent the Spirit to him, God gave him life, God
gave him repentance from his dead self and turned him to faith
in Christ. That's what it is to live by
faith. It's for God to keep doing that to us, in us, through the
Spirit, keeping us looking to Christ only. And if he took his
Spirit from us just like that, we'd be gone. We'd be right back
onto the yoke in free will, works, religion, trying to come to God
by our work. And it's the same, he's going
to keep you. Now you remember, Abraham didn't
have the law. How did God teach him his sin?
The law is on our heart by nature. but the Spirit of God comes and
makes the commandment come. He has to do that. It's not just
going to the letter of the law and seeing what the law said.
It takes the Spirit of God to come and make that word alive
in our heart and convict us and command us and teach us, this
is wrong. And when he does that, he's gonna
do it in light of how Christ bore that sin and how Christ
put that sin away. And it's going to be that dying
love that's going to turn you to Him. I'll pour out the Spirit
of grace and supplication on my people. And they'll look upon
me whom they've pierced. And they'll mourn for me as one
mourns for his only son. And they'll be in bitterness
for me. What's that about? That's something only God can
do. That's true repentance. That's truly making you hate
your sin and sit at the feet of the Lord and beg God to have
mercy on you, beg God to keep you, beg God to teach you, beg
God to lead you, beg God to save you from yourself and from your
sin. John looked at the Pharisees,
John the Baptist, he looked at the Pharisees and he says, who
told you generation of vipers to come here? He said, bring
forth fruit and meat for repentance. Those men were as morally righteous
looking outwardly as you could find. What was he talking about? A man's got to be brought to
have his conscience purged by the blood of Christ to behold
that he's never done one thing any good. and God turn him from
himself and make him hate himself, make him loathe himself, so that
he stops exalting himself over people, and he comes and bows
down to Christ and says, Lord, if you don't save me, I won't
be saved. I don't have anything to bring. I don't have anything
to bargain with. I don't have any righteousness
to bring to the table. I don't have any good works.
All my righteousnesses are filthy rag. Lord, I need you to save
me. I need you to justify me. I need
you to make me righteous. And then from then on, we live
a life of faith. We live knowing in our conscience, with
a purged conscience by the Spirit of God, we live knowing that
we're just before God. God is not going to charge you.
God's not going to condemn you. And He keeps you knowing that.
He keeps you knowing that. And what He says in Hebrews,
He said, that's the only way men will turn from dead works.
The conscience has to be purged. And once the conscience is purged
and you behold it, Christ is truly your completion. You are
complete in Him. God requires nothing else but
what His Son has accomplished for us. When you behold Him and
rest in Him, He keeps you knowing He's everything. And that's what
keeps us from getting a guilty conscience and trying to do this
and that and the other thing to soothe our conscience and
make ourselves feel like we're right with God. And even when
we try to do that, how we turn from that? How we turn from that
self-righteousness? He has to come and show you this
is not your, this is not what delivers you from the curse.
It's Christ. It's Christ alone. and He keeps
you walking by faith. What did John say? Of His fullness,
of Christ's fullness, have all we receive grace for grace. Wave upon wave of grace we receive
from Christ. Where does it come from? From
His fullness. You need righteousness, he has
fullness of righteousness. Holiness, he has fullness of
holiness. This is wrong to send people
back to the law for sanctification. Sanctification's not found in
the law. Sanctification is Christ. He's the one that's gonna have
to purify the heart. He's the one that's gonna have
to keep us walking in godliness. You need redemption, he's the
fullness of redemption. He's liberty who redeemed us. You need guidance. Christ is
the one who's gonna guide through the spirit of God, through his
preaching of his word. We need strength. We're weak. When we're weak, that's when
we're strong. When we stop trusting ourselves and depending on our
wisdom and our works and our way and our trying to fix things
and just shut it up to Christ, that's when we're strong, because
he's the only strength we had all along anyway. When we start exalting ourselves
and being boastful and putting down others, what's going to
save us from that? Christ has to come and remind
us again. I believe, brethren, do you believe that I believe
Christ works this as surely and as real and as powerfully right
now from the throne of glory right here in our midst as he
did when he stood in flesh on this earth. Religion don't believe this.
Self-righteous folks don't believe this. They got to constantly
be yoking and using every other extra kind of means to keep people
corralled and hurting them in one way. Christ is the one that does this.
The law's not of faith. The man that does them, he got
to do them all, and that's the only way he'll live in them.
The law doesn't involve faith. Those justified by Christ walk
by faith in Christ. How are we brought from under
the curse of the law to enjoy the life of this free justification? How are we brought there? Who
took off the curse? He says here, verse 13, Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse
for us. For it's written, curse it is
everyone that hangeth on a tree. It might be your thought, when
you preach or when you hear preaching, to say, well, that's just, we
just know that verse so well, we quote it just about every
message. Well, there's a reason. That's the gospel. That's all,
that's all my eternal salvation right there in that verse. That's
the only hope I got right there in that verse. Don't ever grow
weary of, You know, you call them the popular passages or
whatever, but there's a reason they're popular for God's people.
And this is it right here. Christ was set up as head of
his people from eternity. From eternity. That covenant
was confirmed from eternity. And he would come and he would
be the redeemer, and that means to redeem you've got to pay a
price. There's a ransom. When you're held for ransom,
the law held us for ransom. He wasn't going to let us go
until we paid the price the law demanded. And Christ came to
pay the price. The price was that curse has
got to be poured out. You've got to be separated from
God in an eternity of hell. Now either you're going to have
to suffer that or Christ will have to suffer it for His people
and we come and trust that He did it for us. When Christ came,
this is the love. This is the love that's that
perfect love to God and perfect love to our neighbor. This is
it. This is the righteousness of the law right here. Christ
Jesus made himself a sacrifice for his people to be made the
curse. That's even a step beyond being
made sin. When Adam broke the law, he was
made sin. Then God came to him and cursed
him. And brethren, when he bore our sin, then because he bore
our sin, God made him a curse. And God made the world go black
and in total darkness to give you and I a clue that we can't
even enter in to what was happening. But he was forsaken of God. He
bore the forsaking of God that his people deserved. I don't
know what that will be like. I don't know what it will be
like for God to take His hand off all your enemies and give
every enemy the vent of their heart to unleash the gnashing
of teeth that they want to unleash on you. I've experienced a little
bit of it in this life and I can tell you that's not even the
full unleashing. And to not have God, to have
nothing but just the perfect unfulfilled desires and to never
be able to have that quench, to never be able to have God's
presence. Christ bore that. Christ went
on that cross and was separated from the Father who He desired
above all else, the one He loved in perfection. And He had to be separated from
Him. And there was more to it than
we can understand in that though it was but three hours, it was
an eternity for His people. He bore the hell we deserve on
that cross, alive, living it, dying it, living it, dying it,
suffering it, on that cross, the curse that God poured out,
the fury and the condemnation of God's wrath upon it. It was
as bad as what the men and the people around him did, and all
of that, it was nothing compared to what we can't see, agony of
soul. And His perfect love brought
in an everlasting righteousness, and He did it by redeeming us,
by justifying us, by totally taking away all the sin of His
people. It's gone. It's gone. He gave
the law the price it demanded. I wish I could put this in the
heart. I wish I could put it in the heart. I can't. He gave God the price that was
demanded, declared God just, declared Him the justifier, and
by that redemption, we Gentiles now, we receive the same free
blessings Abraham did, though we were never under that covenant
of works. We were never under it. We were
under the curse from Adam, he took that away off of us, but
he fulfilled that covenant of works now that we can receive
the same free blessings that Abraham received. See there that
the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through
Jesus Christ. All blessings are going to be
through Jesus Christ. This is to you and me who are
Gentile. This is why he bore that cross. that we might receive
the promise of the Spirit through faith. Remember the blessing
of Abraham? Abraham didn't have the old covenant
law of Sinai, neither did we. But Abraham was under the curse,
so were we. But he comes to you and he preaches
the gospel and he lets you know that through Jesus Christ there
is no more curse for you. That was the blessing of Abraham.
Christ redeemed us that we might receive the promise And I think
here's how we ought to read this. He redeemed us that we might
receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. It's not the,
although he did promise the Spirit, he promised the Spirit throughout
the Old Testament. He said, I'm gonna, he gave all
his people the Spirit and he redeemed us and gave us, regenerated
all his people even then by the Spirit. But he said, but when
Christ has redeemed them, I'm gonna pour out my Spirit. And He gives you all those promises
that He gave Abraham through faith in Christ. Through faith
in Christ. He writes the covenant on our
heart. We have the law of faith on our heart so we don't look
anywhere but to Christ. And in Christ we've established
the whole law. We're not trying to establish
it. We're not trying to keep it. We've established it. I can't give it what it demands.
Christ gave it all. And he writes the law of love
on our hearts so that knowing we've established that law and
now we do nothing by the constraint of law. Now we sin, when our brethren
sin, now by the constraint of love, we cover their sin, We
bear their sin, we forgive their sin, and we restore them to Christ. What makes you do that? That's
the love that Christ did that to us. He did the same thing
to us. He covered it, He bore it, He
put it away, He forgave it, and He restored us. That's love. That's love. But having the law of Christ
on our heart, that's what we do. We have the law of liberty.
We keep ourselves unspotted from the world and especially unspotted from being taskmasters, from
being lawyers, from exalting ourselves over one another. He promised Abraham an inheritance.
Christ is our portion, and we're his portion. And Abraham walked
through this world looking to Christ, looking for that city
whose builder and maker is God, who has foundations, Christ our
foundation, and that's his inheritance. And that's it. We're now dead
to the law, the law's dead to us, and our righteousness is
Christ, and he that believeth on him is not condemned. And
it's from His fullness, all His promises to us. I'll never leave
you, I'll never forsake you. All His promises to us. I'm going
to keep leading you, I'm going to keep guiding you, I'm going
to keep directing you, I'm going to keep humbling you, I'm going
to keep, I'm going to keep you. And I'm going to bring you to
your inheritance. That's exactly what He did with Abraham. Every
fall is necessary, every sin is necessary, every sin of your
brethren is necessary. You think of how much drama there
must have been in the amongst the tribes of Israel. And God
just gives us some of the highlights. Every bit of it's necessary.
Because this is how he's teaching you. You just ain't big as you
thought you was. You just ain't needed as much
as you thought you was. It ain't your power, it ain't
your righteousness, it ain't your strength, it's nothing about
you. I'm the one that's saving you. And He keeps teaching us that.
Doesn't let us forget it. Thank God He does. All right,
brethren. Pray that's a blessing to you.