Genesis chapter 21. We're going
to just read that, and then we're going to go to the New Testament,
to Galatians chapter 4, the first 12 verses of Genesis chapter
21. But before we do, let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father,
we pray that you would, through the Lord Jesus, hear our need
and tell us the old, old story about your eternal grace and
love in Christ and your purpose of redemption and his accomplishments
in that redemption that saved us from our sins. and how your
spirit taught this to us and drew us to him and preserves
us now and keeps us and will eventually present us in the
presence of your glory. Lord, we pray that we would see
this story throughout scripture over and over about Jesus and
his love, his glory, how he set it aside in order to have a people
and took it again in order to save them to the uttermost. Lord,
we pray that you would be with us today. For Jesus' sake, in
his name we pray, amen. Genesis chapter 21, And the Lord
visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as
he had spoken. And Sarah conceived and bare
Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which God
had spoken to him. And Abraham called the name of
his son that was born to him, whom Sarah bare to him, Isaac.
And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac being eight days old as
God had commanded him. And Abraham was a hundred years
old when his son Isaac was born to him. And Sarah said, God hath
made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me.
And she said, Who would have said unto Abraham that Sarah
should have given children suck, for I have borne him a son in
his old age? And the child grew and was weaned,
and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned. And Sarah saw the son of Hagar
the Egyptian, which she had borne to Abraham, mocking. Wherefore
she said to Abraham, cast out this bondwoman and her son, for
the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even
with Isaac. And the thing was very grievous
in Abraham's sight because of his son, his son Ishmael that
is. And God said to Abraham, let
it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad, and because
of thy bondwoman, in all that Sarah hath said to thee, hearken
to her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Let's stop
right there. Turn with me to the book of Galatians
chapter 4, if you would please. Galatians chapter 4. Now, the
things we just read about in Genesis chapter 21 there is a
historical account of what really happened. But God arranged it
that way, and God recorded it to teach us something else. Not
about the birth of a son to an old woman, but something else. And that's what we're going to
read about here in Galatians chapter 4. And this is the message
of Scripture. It's about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so, in verse 21, the Apostle Paul is addressing the Galatians.
And he says this to them. Because the Galatians were those
who had professed faith in Christ and yet they had been influenced
by these people who tried to convince them that they needed
something in addition to Christ. That they had not yet achieved
that level of pleasing God that would really give them a blessing.
So they needed to be circumcised. It's okay, just a little bit.
Add this to what Christ has done in order to be more pleasing
to God, in order to be accepted by Him, and in order to make
yourself more holy in His sight and before men. And so the Galatians
were tempted to begin to believe that message. The book of Galatians
is a very, very, very strong correction to that false notion.
And he uses the account we just read in Genesis to show how God
had taught that for this purpose, to correct that wrong thinking.
So Galatians chapter 4 says this in verse 21, the Apostle Paul. He said, Tell me, ye that desire
to be under the law, under the law of Moses, in order to please
God by what you do. Do you not hear the Law? The
Law of Moses. Because Moses wrote more than
just the Ten Commandments. He wrote Genesis too. And he
wrote the account we just read. So Moses actually had a larger
message than just the Ten Commandments. He started with Genesis. He started
with God's creation. And he taught how man fell, and
then how God clothed Adam in the skins of the animal. And
all through, what led up to the law was all about God's purpose
of grace in Christ. That was the first thing Moses
taught. But then the law came in order
to coincide with God's purpose to prove us that we were sinners.
And to shut us up under our guilt and helplessness to Christ. Which
had already been preached in Genesis, but it would be preached
again here. He says, don't you hear that
law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons. The first one,
remember, was Ishmael. The other one was Isaac. The
one by a bondmaid, that would have been Hagar. The other by
a free woman, that would have been Sarah. But he who was of
the bondwoman was born after the flesh, but he of the free
woman was by promise. Which things are an allegory.
In other words, God wrote them for a different purpose, with
a different purpose in mind. Even arranged them in order to
teach that purpose. For these are the two covenants,
these two women. The one from the Mount Sinai
which gendereth to bondage, which is Hagar. In other words, the
covenant God gave at Sinai corresponds to Hagar. This wife, not this
wife, this woman who was a slave woman who bore Ishmael to Abraham
corresponds to the giving of the law at Sinai. He says, for this Hagar is Sinai
in Arabia, and answereth, or corresponds to, Jerusalem, which
now is, and is in bondage with her children. So not only does
Hagar represent the covenant God made at Sinai with Israel,
but Hagar also represents another Jerusalem. And that Jerusalem
is an earthly Jerusalem where is the capital of those who serve
God and try to worship God through keeping the law. He says in verse
26, but Jerusalem which is above is free. Now this is a different
Jerusalem. This is Jerusalem in heaven.
This is the church of the living God which when Christ comes again
will descend out of heaven with all the beauty of her Savior.
And this Jerusalem is the mother of us all, all believers, all
children of promise. Verse 27, "...for it is written,
Rejoice thou barren, that bearest not..." That would be Sarah.
Break forth and cry thou that travailest not, not with children,
she had no children. For the desolate, Sarah, hath
many more children than she which hath a husband, who seems to
be the one who was blessed because she had Ishmael first. But no,
God says, what's going to come later is Sarah and Isaac, which
corresponds to the Lord Jesus Christ coming through his people
in the church into the world in order to save his people.
And he says in verse 28, Now we brethren, as Isaac was, are
the children of promise. We, brethren. He applies this
now suddenly to the Galatians, who were Gentiles and Jews. Mostly Gentiles, but he speaks
in the we because he's including the Jews in order to show that
God's purpose of grace always had in view the salvation of
his people, both Jews and Gentiles, who were called here the children
of promise. The children of promise. But as then, he that was born
after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit,
even so it is now. Nevertheless, what saith the
scripture? Cast out the bondwoman, and her son, or the son of the
bondwoman, shall not be heir with the son of the free woman.
That was God's message from Sarah. When she said that to Abraham,
the Lord said to Abraham, listen to what she says, because she's
speaking my word. And so what we see here is an
amazing thing. God arranged and recorded the
events around the birth of Isaac and the birth of Ishmael to Hagar
in order to teach us two covenants two Jerusalems, and two people.
The two covenants are the covenant, the first one was the covenant
God gave at Sinai, the law. And the law requires us to keep
the law in order that we might be righteous before God. Look
at Deuteronomy chapter 6, I want you to see this. When God gave
the law, the people said this, they said in chapter 6 of Deuteronomy,
Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 24, he says, And the Lord commanded
us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our
good always, that He might preserve us alive as it is this day. Preservation
based on their obedience. Verse 25, And it shall be our
righteousness if we observe to do all these commandments before
the Lord our God as He has commanded us. That's proof that they understood
correctly that the covenant of the law was given by God in order
that those who keep it would be considered righteous. And
that's a bad thing for us, isn't it? Because we fail to keep it.
And that's the first covenant. That corresponds to Hagar. Hagar
corresponds to that Mount Sinai covenant where God gave the law.
And those who understood it. And when they heard it, the people
said, all that the Lord has said, we will do. And then if you look
at Romans chapter 10, just a few pages back from Galatians. He says in Romans 10 and verse
5, he says, Moses describes the righteousness which is of the
law, We just read about it in Deuteronomy 6. Moses describes
the righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth
those things shall live by them. So God is teaching through Hagar
and Ishmael that there was a covenant that God made with Israel. And
in that covenant, men were able to establish a righteousness
if they kept the law. And by that righteousness, obtained
life from God. As long as they kept it, and
they had to keep all of it, and they had to keep it from the
heart, soul, mind and strength perfectly, then they would receive
this life. And Paul is telling the Galatians,
in chapter 4 of Galatians, he's telling them that corresponds
to Hagar, the earthly Jerusalem, and leads to bondage. All who
adhere to that principle of coming to God on the basis of what they
do corresponds to her. And how did this come about?
How did Hagar have a child? Well, remember, because Abraham
and Sarah, God had promised them a son, and Abraham and Sarah,
even though they believed God, were tempted, these were believers,
they were tempted to think that they had to do something in order
to make God's promise come to pass. What they did would ultimately
be a condition that had to be met in order to fulfill God's
promise. And that's called works, or a
covenant of law. That's a covenant in which our
blessings from God, our life from God, His acceptance of us,
our justification, and all that flows from God to us is dependent
upon us meeting the conditions. And in Exodus chapter 24, the
nation of Israel said, all that the Lord has said, we will do.
Because in a covenant of works, man promises God. And that's the covenant that
won't work for us, because we're sinners. But then he goes on
in Galatians and points out that Sarah corresponds to another
covenant. And that covenant... It's not
a covenant of works, but it's a covenant of promise. Because
in that covenant, all that God gives to his people has nothing
to do with conditions they meet. But everything to do with God's
purpose, God's promise, and God's providing, fulfilling that promise. Therefore, everything in that
covenant has nothing to do with our contribution. Abraham and
Sarah were told, they were promised by God, that they were going
to have a son. And even though their bodies
were dead, unable, impossible for them to have children, impossible
for Sarah, because she was barren and they were both old, God did
what was impossible for them. And he did it not because of
conditions they met, But because He purposed and promised and
He fulfilled His purpose and promise to them. And this is
to teach us the whole gospel of our salvation. This is why
God wrote it. This is why it was arranged in
history that way. In order to teach us how we are
saved. And how God blesses His people.
And this is the message that I want to bring today. The message
of grace. Grace. What a word that word
is, isn't it? Grace. God has arranged history
and recorded in His word throughout the Old Testament and the New
Testament the message of His grace to sinners. Grace. What a word. What does
grace mean? I think that when I was younger... I used to hear, and they would
say it correctly in a sense, but it just never sunk in for
me. What is grace? They would always, I mean, the
people in church would always say grace is unmerited favor. God's unmerited favor. Of course,
the word unmerited didn't work too much for me when I was, you
know, even 10 to 15 years old because I didn't use the word
merit in my vocabulary. So merit just didn't have an
internal, an intuitive sense of what the word meant. So unmerited
certainly didn't mean anything to me. But unmerited means that
you don't deserve it. You don't do something to deserve
it. And in that sense, it's a good definition. But it doesn't go
far enough. And that's why I think that we
need to understand what God means by grace. And that's why I want
to look at this word with you today, grace. In the old covenant,
man promised God. But in the new covenant, in the
covenant of promise, which is called the everlasting covenant,
God promises. In the Old Covenant, man promised
God and tried to do what he promised. But he failed. At every point.
But in the New Covenant, God makes the promises and he fulfills
it unfailingly. He can't fail. He will do what
he said. So, we saw that in Abraham and
Sarah's life, God promised this a long time before it was fulfilled.
And that's the same way it is in history. Because it was a
long time before when God gave that promise initially to Adam.
That the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent.
That serpent that led them into sin and they were therefore separated
from all the blessings of God in the garden. That was a long
time between then and when Christ actually came in fulfillment
of that promise. But that length of time was repeated
in the lives of Abraham and Sarah because they waited for God to
fulfill his promise concerning Isaac. And you know that Isaac
was simply just the one through whom Christ would come. So he
was really speaking about his son coming into the world. Isaac
was just a stand-in for the Lord Jesus Christ in God's promise.
And that length of time that they endured teaches us how to
live in our lives. Because God has made promises
and God will fulfill those promises. And those promises represent
promises of grace. Because grace is God not giving
us what we deserve, but giving us what we don't deserve. He doesn't give us the condemnation
and judgment our sins deserve. But He gives us the blessings
that we don't deserve. Even the blessings that Christ
deserves. That's what grace is. Grace is
a wonderful thing to sinners. God declares salvation by grace
to sinners. That right there tells you something.
The objects of God's grace have no merit. In fact, they have
what's called demerit. They don't deserve. They didn't
do what's necessary to deserve it. They actually did the opposite
of that. They sinned against God. They
made themselves hateful to God. And yet God not only didn't give
them the punishment for their sins, but He actually blessed
them with the highest possible blessings. Even the blessings
He gives to His Son for His obedience. Look at Titus, the book of Titus
in chapter 3. We see this there in Titus chapter
3. It's right after the book of
Timothy. Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus. In Titus chapter 3 he says this,
Verse 3, This is our demerit. We ourselves also were sometimes
foolish. Foolish. We were ignorant of
God. We didn't know God and we acted that way. Disobedient. Deliberately disobeying God and
deceived. We were blind to the truth and
willingly blind. Serving divers lusts and pleasures. In other words, living for ourselves.
Living in malice. That's hate. Hate and violence
against others. And envy, like Cain who killed
his brother. Hateful. and hating one another. That describes us. And listen
to what happened when we were in this condition. This is why
God's grace is not giving us what we deserve, but giving us
what we don't deserve, even the blessings in Christ. He says
this, verse 4. But after that, After that, the
kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared. After
we were like this, then the kindness and love of God our Savior toward
man appeared. This is grace. This is God's
promise. Did it depend on us? How could
it have depended on us? We were foolish, disobedient,
deceived, and all these things. And hateful. Even to God. And He found a way. He had a
purpose of grace. And He fulfilled that purpose
and promise. Listen to what he says. But after
that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared,
not by works of righteousness, which we have done. It was not
only, we were not only hateful and sinful, but we didn't do
anything in order to attract God's favor, in order to get
God to do what God wanted to do. But according to His mercy
He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of
the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus
Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might
be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. We were
heirs of God by by purpose, by God's choice, and because He
justified us in Christ, we were made His sons, and therefore
the heirs of all this inheritance, the hope of eternal life." All
of God's promise. All springing from God. Grace
is not God's response to us. Sometimes we think so much that
way, it's hard for us not to think that way. God responds
to us. No, He doesn't. Not in grace. Grace is God responding to Himself. God Himself, in His nature, is
gracious. Look at Exodus chapter 34. Exodus
chapter 34 and in chapter 33 also. I will read both of them. In
Exodus 33, Moses is praying to God and he says, I beseech thee,
show me thy glory. Show me what you consider your
perfections. What attracts attention and adoration
and worship from others. From sinners even. And the Lord
said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee. That's his
glory, his goodness. And I will proclaim the name
of the Lord before thee. And I will be gracious to whom
I will be gracious. And I will show mercy on whom
I will show mercy. It's God's nature. to be gracious,
and it's His sovereign choice to be gracious. Look at Exodus
34 and verse 6. This is the request that Moses
made, show me your glory. And the Lord passed by before
him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious. The first things God says, merciful
and gracious. long-suffering, and abundant
in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means
clear the guilty." What does God say to sinners? The Lord,
the Lord God, merciful and gracious. Doesn't that disarm a sinner?
Here he is in hostility against God in his mind, and by his wicked
works he's been cast out from God's sight. The only thing he
knows is the wrath of God against him in his conscience, who, knowing
the judgment of God that they which commit such things are
worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in
them. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. You can't please God. Those who
are in the flesh cannot please God. And yet here, those who
were hateful and hating one another, God says to them, the Lord, the
Lord God, gracious and merciful, forgiving iniquity. Before you
even think about God, your thinking is wrong. You're deceived and
you're hateful. And yet God makes himself known.
Look at John, the Gospel of John. In John chapter 1, the Lord,
gracious. The Lord God is gracious. God
our Father. In every epistle in the New Testament
written by Paul and Peter, it begins by these things. Grace
from God our Father. Grace from God our Father. Grace
and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
God is gracious, isn't he? God's grace. Look at John chapter
1 and verse 14. And the word, that's the Lord
Jesus Christ, the eternal word, was made flesh and dwelt among
us and we beheld his glory. His glory. What we think of as,
this is His greatest, this is the greatness of Him. This is
His greatness. The glory as of the only begotten
of the Father, the Son of God, full of grace and truth. Full of grace and truth. And
then in verse 16, and of His fullness, of Christ's fullness,
have all we received and grace, for grace. That's a mysterious
phrase, isn't it? Grace for grace. My Bible has
a reference to the different phrases in it. And in this one,
it puts a reference there and it puts a question mark behind
it. I've never seen that before because they don't know what
it means. I'm not sure I do either. But I'll tell you what I understand
about it. Grace for grace? What is this?
I think God purposely left it in this widely applicable manner by saying
grace for grace because we see in God's grace to sinners that
it was the grace of God the Father that gave his only begotten son.
That's grace. His grace flowing from His heart
that gave. That's grace, isn't it? The grace
of God gave us His Son. And then we see that in giving
that grace, we receive grace in Christ because Christ gave
Himself in grace for sinners. You know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ. That though He was rich, Rich
in glory, rich in his position as God, the riches of heaven
and earth were his. Though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor, that you, through his poverty, you who
are poor, might be made rich. That's grace. He humbled himself. The grace of God the Father gave
his son, but then the grace of Christ the Lord gave himself.
And that grace established his giving himself in obedience to
God. What did it do? He established, by his obedience
in death, our righteousness. So that we see in Romans 5 that
it is a gift of righteousness. God the Father, out of his grace,
gives to us the obedience we didn't work out. perfect obedience
before Him and took away, covered our sins all by His grace." Grace
for grace. God the Father's grace that gave
His Son, Christ's grace that gave Himself for sinners and
He established their righteousness and then from heaven out of His
grace He gives His Spirit to us that we might know these things.
So He gives the Spirit of grace and the Spirit of grace in us
reveals to us God's grace in Christ. And then we see his grace
and we think, this is how we stand before God. What he thinks
of his son. How could that be? Because of
God's grace. He said, his righteousness is
yours entirely by my grace. That's how I did it. But how? You don't have to worry about
it any further than that. By God's grace. Being justified
freely by His grace. Through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. Romans 3.24 is by His grace. And then He shows us, not only
did He give us His Spirit to show us Christ, but He tells
us, this is what I want you to do. This is how you're going
to live in your life. Look to the Lord Jesus Christ. Look upon
Him and see there the grace of God. Know this, that you're not
under the law. But you're under grace, and therefore
sin shall not have dominion over you. It's God's promise. How
could it fail? How could it not be successful?
Because God promised, and Christ did it. And God has given us
His Spirit to teach us this, and to point us to Christ. All
who look to Him live, they have eternal life. And all who look
to Him are freed from sin and its guilt and condemnation. And
we will stand before Him in righteousness because of His grace. God gives us everything in Christ
and it's all of grace. All of grace. We didn't do one
thing to earn it. We don't do one thing to keep
it. We don't do one thing to bring it to fulfillment. God
does it. Faith itself is not the condition
we meet in order to bring God's grace to us. Faith is the gift
of God's grace. In order for us to understand
and be persuaded of the greatness of God's grace to us as sinners.
And see that the strength is not in us, but it's in Christ. The accomplishment of God's purpose
is not in us, it's in God. That's what God was saying to
Abraham and Sarah. Look to the promise, look to
the one promise and stand and walk in that truth that God's
going to do it. And so we stand and we look and
we see grace for grace, grace for grace. The law was given
by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. What a
price God paid to bestow His grace. And that amplifies, that
makes God's grace seem all the more greater, doesn't it? Look
at Acts chapter 15. Acts chapter 15, he says this.
This is Peter talking. The Gentiles were saved. The
Jews who saw it, they were, I don't know about that. And Peter stood
up, who was a Jew, who had been with the Lord Jesus all those
years. He's the one who denied the Lord Jesus. And after he
denied Him, Jesus looked upon him. And then later remember
how Jesus asked him, do you love me Peter? And Peter said, you
know all things Lord, you know that I love you. Because he understood
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so in Acts chapter 15, when they wanted to require the
Gentiles to be circumcised in verse 9, he says that God God,
which knows the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the
Holy Ghost, even as He did to us, and put no difference between
us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. When they received
the Spirit of God, they were given faith to see Christ, and
see that in Christ's death their sins were purged before God.
Then he rose from the dead. Then he took his place in heaven's
glory. And they believed that. And they were persuaded that
that was all their salvation. God purified their hearts by
faith. Now therefore, why tempt ye God and put a yoke upon the
neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were
able to bear? It's a bondage to do anything
in order to acquire or maintain or obtain God's favor. It's just bondage because it's
futile. It's futile. We'll never, never
get there. And it's an endless futility.
We'll never achieve the goal. We're always going further and
further from the goal. But he says this, but we believe,
and he's speaking of himself, we, we Jews who have been saved
by the grace of God. We believe that through the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they.
And look over at chapter 18, Acts 18. He says this in verse
27. 1827, and when he was disposed to pass
into Achaia, the brethren wrote exhorting the disciples to receive
him. This was to receive Paul, who when he was come, when Paul
came to those disciples, he helped them much which had believed
through grace. There it is. Our faith in God. Our faith in Christ. That faith
by which we come to God and bring, as it were, what Christ has already
accomplished for us. Bringing the sacrifice of Christ,
laying hold on that, and coming to God and trusting that God
will receive us for what He already received from His Son and thinks
of Him. That faith, to believe that, is a gift of God's grace. Look at Ephesians chapter 2.
We are saved by grace alone. By grace alone. Because of Christ
alone. Look at Galatians chapter 2 and
verse 1. You who were dead in trespasses
and sins, when in time past you walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air.
You were dead in sins and you were slaves of Satan. the spirit that now works in
the children of disobedience, among whom we all, we all, without
exception, had our conversation, our behavior, our manner of life
in time past, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling, actually
fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were
by nature, what we were in ourselves, by nature, we were the children
of wrath, even as others. That's our condition. And it's
a helpless and hopeless plight. We're under the judgment of God,
hateful to God, hateful to others. We hate God. And here we see
something. Something happened. But God,
that's grace, who is rich in mercy. See how it points us to
who He is in His nature and His purpose? Who is rich in mercy
for His great love. Wherewith He loved us, even when
we were dead in sins. Because His love is unchanging
and eternal, hath quickened us together with Christ, for by
grace you are saved. And hath raised us up together,
and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And that
in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of
His grace and His kindness towards us through Christ Jesus. For
by grace are you saved." You are already saved. You didn't save yourself, you've
been saved. Through faith. How did this grace
come to us? God gave it. What did that grace
do? He saved us. And how do we know
that we've been given this grace? Because he also gives us faith
to see Christ through faith. Grace saves through faith. And that faith is not of yourselves. We're so weaselly to think that
somehow our decision, our response to God, our commitment, our surrender,
our tears, our experience of a crisis of some kind of a super
conviction of sin and sorrow is going to make me somehow now
able to be saved by God. That is Hagar and Ishmael in
bondage. The only thing that saves is
what God thinks of His Son, what God purposed, what God did in
Christ. And that will ever be our only
plea, that because Christ died, And he died for sinners that
I approached God on the basis of his blood received, like Abel
came to God with a more excellent sacrifice, and he was declared
righteous because of the sacrifice. That's the way we come. Faith
excludes itself, faith doesn't look to itself, abandons all
that I am and my foul and filthy self, and lays hold on Christ
where all Merit in all righteousness is found. That's what grace is. Grace not only saves us, but
keeps us. It brings us and conforms us
to God. Look at, since we're here, just
turn back a couple of pages to Galatians 3. The Galatians were
confused like most people are. Like we are too, unless God corrects
us and teaches us. They believed that they were
justified by what Christ did and what they would do in being
circumcised. Or they believed that they would
somehow be better by keeping the law in addition to just looking
to Christ. And so in chapter 3, Paul asks
this question concerning their attitude that they would have
to live their life under the law. In other words, trying to
please God by what they did. Making promises and trying to
keep them. That's what the law is. Trying
to obtain God's favor by something I do. By my response to God,
instead of realizing that faith is God's gift of grace. To see
what God has already done and standing in it. So in chapter
3, verse 1, Paul says, oh foolish. Remember, we were sometimes foolish?
Oh foolish Galatians. Who hath bewitched you? You're
walking around like you're on drugs. Who hath bewitched you
that you should not obey the truth? What is that truth? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ
hath been evidently, openly, without denial, this has to be
true, evidently set forth, crucified among you. This only would I
learn of you. Received ye the Spirit? Did you
receive the Spirit of Christ by the works of the law or by
hearing? in faith, or the hearing of faith.
You see, this is all of grace comes to us by the gift of God's
Spirit when he causes us to see Christ. What a thing that is. Our justification, our sanctification,
being conformed to Christ's image, it's all of God's grace. This is why, as Abraham and Sarah,
they should have had complete confidence that even though their
bodies were now dead, God's promise had been made. They were going
to have a son in parallel fashion. We live our lives though our
bodies are now dead because of sin. We look to Christ and we
have confidence that because of what God has received from
Christ, having completed the work of our salvation, sitting
in heaven in glory, He reigns now, by his life we shall be
saved to the uttermost. And we walk in confidence, looking
in expectation of what God has said to be fulfilled in us. Therefore,
sin shall not have dominion over you. You're not under the law,
you're under grace. Someone came to Abraham. How
old are you? Ah, too old to count. Why did God give you a name about
being a father of many nations? Well, God promised that I am.
Well, you don't look like it. I don't see how Sarah is going
to. She's never had any children. It's impossible, isn't it? It
is impossible. It's absolutely. And there isn't
any outward evidence that God has said this to me. But I can
tell you this. God will not fail to do His will
because it's all of grace. And so the believer walks. And
he goes through his life this way. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter
3. It's all of grace. If I could
just lay hold on that, then we would be free in our souls to
worship God. And come to Him, looking to Him,
giving Him glory. Looking to Christ, knowing that
where He sits now is where I am in Him. Having been accepted
by God and been given glory already with Christ. And that is the
certainty of it. We're already there. Then look
at 2 Corinthians chapter 3. He says in verse 17, now the
Lord is that spirit. The Lord is that spirit. And
where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty or freedom. Remember what Galatians 5.1 says,
stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Verse
18, but we all with open face beholding as in a glass, in other
words, Without pretense, an open face, we look squarely into the
mirror of the gospel. Beholding as in that gospel,
the mirror, the glass, the glory of the Lord, which is Christ
and Him crucified. Accomplishing our salvation,
now sitting in glory because of it. We are changed into the
same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the
Lord. Not by flesh. This is not by
our works. This is by the Spirit of God's
grace. Amazing! That's not what I expected. I thought I had to do all these
things in order to make myself better, somehow, before men and
God. No, you look to Christ. You look
to God's promise. You have no other foundation. But God's word, and your only
foundation from God's word, is that it's Christ that died. It's
Christ that rose. It's Christ that seeded. It's
Christ who intercedes. If God reconciled us to Himself
by the death of His Son when we were sinners and enemies of
God, how much more will we be saved by His life? And one more
verse. Look at Jude chapter 1. It's
all of grace. Oh, that we could just lay hold
on this. What God started, He will complete. He cannot fail. God cannot lie, cannot change. He cannot fail. He will do all
His will. I have spoken it, the Lord said,
I will also do it. Has God promised? Then it's done. Jude chapter 1. And we only have
to look in hope by the Spirit of God. We wait. for the fulfillment
of the promise of our righteousness in Christ, when we will receive
in ourselves a glorified body, consistent with what we are in
Christ, consistent with His Spirit in us. Galatians 5.5, remember
it says, we by the Spirit of God do wait for the hope of righteousness
through faith. But here in Jude chapter 1, he
says this in verse 24, Having surveyed all of those who perished,
the angels that sinned, the people in Noah's day, Sodom and Gomorrah,
the present case of wicked and ungodly men, and you see yourselves
there, you should see yourself there, I see myself there, now
unto Him. that is able to keep us from
falling, to keep you from falling. Lift your eyes up from all of
the weakness of your flesh and all of the fear and the hopelessness
of your life, all the trouble, because all things are working
together for this eternal purpose God already set down to conform
you to the image of His Son. And nothing in heaven and earth,
nothing in hell below, nothing in your soul can stop Him from
accomplishing His purpose. So He says, now unto Him, who
was able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless
before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only
wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
both now and forevermore, saved by grace and made to know it
in faith. Let's pray.